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Apr 10, 2019 | www.theguardian.com
Thousands of people march through London to protest against underfunding and privatisation of the NHS. Photograph: Wiktor Szymanowicz/Barcroft Images M y life was saved last year by the Churchill Hospital in Oxford, through a skilful procedure to remove a cancer from my body . Now I will need another operation, to remove my jaw from the floor. I've just learned what was happening at the hospital while I was being treated. On the surface, it ran smoothly. Underneath, unknown to me, was fury and tumult. Many of the staff had objected to a decision by the National Health Service to privatise the hospital's cancer scanning . They complained that the scanners the private company was offering were less sensitive than the hospital's own machines. Privatisation, they said, would put patients at risk. In response, as the Guardian revealed last week , NHS England threatened to sue the hospital for libel if its staff continued to criticise the decision.
The dominant system of political thought in this country, which produced both the creeping privatisation of public health services and this astonishing attempt to stifle free speech, promised to save us from dehumanising bureaucracy. By rolling back the state, neoliberalism was supposed to have allowed autonomy and creativity to flourish. Instead, it has delivered a semi-privatised authoritarianism more oppressive than the system it replaced.
Workers find themselves enmeshed in a Kafkaesque bureaucracy , centrally controlled and micromanaged. Organisations that depend on a cooperative ethic – such as schools and hospitals – are stripped down, hectored and forced to conform to suffocating diktats. The introduction of private capital into public services – that would herald a glorious new age of choice and openness – is brutally enforced. The doctrine promises diversity and freedom but demands conformity and silence.
Much of the theory behind these transformations arises from the work of Ludwig von Mises. In his book Bureaucracy , published in 1944, he argued that there could be no accommodation between capitalism and socialism. The creation of the National Health Service in the UK, the New Deal in the US and other experiments in social democracy would lead inexorably to the bureaucratic totalitarianism of the Soviet Union and Nazi Germany.
He recognised that some state bureaucracy was inevitable; there were certain functions that could not be discharged without it. But unless the role of the state is minimised – confined to defence, security, taxation, customs and not much else – workers would be reduced to cogs "in a vast bureaucratic machine", deprived of initiative and free will.
By contrast, those who labour within an "unhampered capitalist system" are "free men", whose liberty is guaranteed by "an economic democracy in which every penny gives a right to vote". He forgot to add that some people, in his capitalist utopia, have more votes than others. And those votes become a source of power.
His ideas, alongside the writings of Friedrich Hayek , Milton Friedman and other neoliberal thinkers, have been applied in this country by Margaret Thatcher, David Cameron, Theresa May and, to an alarming extent, Tony Blair. All of those have attempted to privatise or marketise public services in the name of freedom and efficiency, but they keep hitting the same snag: democracy. People want essential services to remain public, and they are right to do so.
If you hand public services to private companies, either you create a private monopoly, which can use its dominance to extract wealth and shape the system to serve its own needs – or you introduce competition, creating an incoherent, fragmented service characterised by the institutional failure you can see every day on our railways. We're not idiots, even if we are treated as such. We know what the profit motive does to public services.
So successive governments decided that if they could not privatise our core services outright, they would subject them to "market discipline". Von Mises repeatedly warned against this approach. "No reform could transform a public office into a sort of private enterprise," he cautioned. The value of public administration "cannot be expressed in terms of money". "Government efficiency and industrial efficiency are entirely different things."
"Intellectual work cannot be measured and valued by mechanical devices." "You cannot 'measure' a doctor according to the time he employs in examining one case." They ignored his warnings.
Their problem is that neoliberal theology, as well as seeking to roll back the state, insists that collective bargaining and other forms of worker power be eliminated (in the name of freedom, of course). So the marketisation and semi-privatisation of public services became not so much a means of pursuing efficiency as an instrument of control.
Public-service workers are now subjected to a panoptical regime of monitoring and assessment, using the benchmarks von Mises rightly warned were inapplicable and absurd. The bureaucratic quantification of public administration goes far beyond an attempt at discerning efficacy. It has become an end in itself.
Its perversities afflict all public services. Schools teach to the test , depriving children of a rounded and useful education. Hospitals manipulate waiting times, shuffling patients from one list to another. Police forces ignore some crimes, reclassify others, and persuade suspects to admit to extra offences to improve their statistics . Universities urge their researchers to write quick and superficial papers , instead of deep monographs, to maximise their scores under the research excellence framework.
As a result, public services become highly inefficient for an obvious reason: the destruction of staff morale. Skilled people, including surgeons whose training costs hundreds of thousands of pounds, resign or retire early because of the stress and misery the system causes. The leakage of talent is a far greater waste than any inefficiencies this quantomania claims to address.
New extremes in the surveillance and control of workers are not, of course, confined to the public sector. Amazon has patented a wristband that can track workers' movements and detect the slightest deviation from protocol. Technologies are used to monitor peoples' keystrokes, language, moods and tone of voice. Some companies have begun to experiment with the micro-chipping of their staff . As the philosopher Byung-Chul Han points out , neoliberal work practices, epitomised by the gig economy, that reclassifies workers as independent contractors, internalise exploitation. "Everyone is a self-exploiting worker in their own enterprise."
The freedom we were promised turns out to be freedom for capital , gained at the expense of human liberty. The system neoliberalism has created is a bureaucracy that tends towards absolutism, produced in the public services by managers mimicking corporate executives, imposing inappropriate and self-defeating efficiency measures, and in the private sector by subjection to faceless technologies that can brook no argument or complaint.
Attempts to resist are met by ever more extreme methods, such as the threatened lawsuit at the Churchill Hospital. Such instruments of control crush autonomy and creativity. It is true that the Soviet bureaucracy von Mises rightly denounced reduced its workers to subjugated drones. But the system his disciples have created is heading the same way.
George Monbiot is a Guardian columnist
The other point to be made is that the return of fundamentalist nationalism is arguably a radicalized form of neoliberalism. If 'free markets' of enterprising individuals have been tested to destruction, then capitalism is unable to articulate an ideology with which to legitimise itself.glisson , 12 Apr 2019 00:10Therefore, neoliberal hegemony can only be perpetuated with authoritarian, nationalist ideologies and an order of market feudalism. In other words, neoliberalism's authoritarian orientations, previously effaced beneath discourses of egalitarian free-enterprise, become overt.
The market is no longer an enabler of private enterprise, but something more like a medieval religion, conferring ultimate authority on a demagogue. Individual entrepreneurs collectivise into a 'people' serving a market which has become synonymous with nationhood.
A corporate state emerges, free of the regulatory fetters of democracy. The final restriction on the market - democracy itself - is removed. There then is no separate market and state, just a totalitarian market state.
This is the best piece of writing on neoliberalism I have ever seen. Look, 'what is in general good and probably most importantly what is in the future good'. Why are we collectively not viewing everything that way? Surely those thoughts should drive us all?economicalternative -> Pinkie123 , 11 Apr 2019 21:33Pinkie123: So good to read your understandings of neoliberalism. The political project is the imposition of the all seeing all knowing 'market' on all aspects of human life. This version of the market is an 'information processor'. Speaking of the different idea of the laissez-faire version of market/non market areas and the function of the night watchman state are you aware there are different neoliberalisms? The EU for example runs on the version called 'ordoliberalism'. I understand that this still sees some areas of society as separate from 'the market'?economicalternative -> ADamnSmith2016 , 11 Apr 2019 21:01ADamnSmith: Philip Mirowski has discussed this 'under the radar' aspect of neoliberalism. How to impose 'the market' on human affairs - best not to be to explicit about what you are doing. Only recently has some knowledge about the actual neoliberal project been appearing. Most people think of neoliberalism as 'making the rich richer' - just a ramped up version of capitalism. That's how the left has thought of it and they have been ineffective in stopping its implementation.economicalternative , 11 Apr 2019 20:42Finally. A writer who can talk about neoliberalism as NOT being a retro version of classical laissez faire liberalism. It is about imposing "The Market" as the sole arbiter of Truth on us all.Pinkie123 , 11 Apr 2019 13:27
Only the 'Market' knows what is true in life - no need for 'democracy' or 'education'. Neoliberals believe - unlike classical liberals with their view of people as rational individuals acting in their own self-interest - people are inherently 'unreliable', stupid. Only entrepreneurs - those close to the market - can know 'the truth' about anything. To succeed we all need to take our cues in life from what the market tells us. Neoliberalism is not about a 'small state'. The state is repurposed to impose the 'all knowing' market on everyone and everything. That is neoliberalism's political project. It is ultimately not about 'economics'.The left have been entirely wrong to believe that neoliberalism is a mobilisation of anarchic, 'free' markets. It never was so. Only a few more acute thinkers on the left (Jacques Ranciere, Foucault, Deleuze and, more recently, Mark Fisher, Wendy Brown, Will Davies and David Graeber) have understood neoliberalism to be a techno-economic order of control, requiring a state apparatus to enforce wholly artificial directives. Also, the work of recent critics of data markets such as Shoshana Zuboff has shown capitalism to be evolving into a totalitarian system of control through cybernetic data aggregation.manolito22 -> MrJoe , 11 Apr 2019 08:14
Only in theory is neoliberalism a form of laissez-faire. Neoliberalism is not a case of the state saying, as it were: 'OK everyone, we'll impose some very broad legal parameters, so we'll make sure the police will turn up if someone breaks into your house; but otherwise we'll hang back and let you do what you want'. Hayek is perfectly clear that a strong state is required to force people to act according to market logic. If left to their own devices, they might collectivise, think up dangerous utopian ideologies, and the next thing you know there would be socialism. This the paradox of neoliberalism as an intellectual critique of government: a socialist state can only be prohibited with an equally strong state. That is, neoliberals are not opposed to a state as such, but to a specifically centrally-planned state based on principles of social justice - a state which, to Hayek's mind, could only end in t totalitarianism. Because concepts of social justice are expressed in language, neoliberals are suspicious of linguistic concepts, regarding them as politically dangerous. Their preference has always been for numbers. Hence, market bureaucracy aims for the quantification of all values - translating the entirety of social reality into metrics, data, objectively measurable price signals. Numbers are safe. The laws of numbers never change. Numbers do not lead to revolutions. Hence, all the audit, performance review and tick-boxing that has been enforced into public institutions serves to render them forever subservient to numerical (market) logic. However, because social institutions are not measurable, attempts to make them so become increasingly mystical and absurd. Administrators manage data that has no relation to reality. Quantitatively unmeasurable things - like happiness or success - are measured, with absurd results.It should be understood (and I speak above all as a critic of neoliberalism) that neoliberal ideology is not merely a system of class power, but an entire metaphysic, a way of understanding the world that has an emotional hold over people. For any ideology to universalize itself, it must be based on some very powerful ideas. Hayek and Von Mises were Jewish fugitives of Nazism, living through the worst horrors of twentieth-century totalitarianism. There are passages of Hayek's that describe a world operating according to the rules of a benign abstract system that make it sound rather lovely. To understand neoliberalism, we must see that it has an appeal.
However, there is no perfect order of price signals. People do not simply act according to economic self-interest. Therefore, neoliberalism is a utopian political project like any other, requiring the brute power of the state to enforce ideological tenets. With tragic irony, the neoliberal order eventually becomes not dissimilar to the totalitarian regimes that Hayek railed against.
Nationalised rail in the UK was under-funded and 'set up to fail' in its latter phase to make privatisation seem like an attractive prospect. I have travelled by train under both nationalisation and privatisation and the latter has been an unmitigated disaster in my experience. Under privatisation, public services are run for the benefit of shareholders and CEO's, rather than customers and citizens and under the opaque shroud of undemocratic 'commercial confidentiality'.Galluses , 11 Apr 2019 07:26What has been very noticeable about the development of bureaucracy in the public and private spheres over the last 40 years (since Thatcher govt of 79) has been the way systems are designed now to place responsibility and culpability on the workers delivering the services - Teachers, Nurses, social workers, etc. While those making the policies, passing the laws, overseeing the regulations- viz. the people 'at the top', now no longer take the rap when something goes wrong- they may be the Captain of their particular ship, but the responsibility now rests with the man sweeping the decks. Instead they are covered by tying up in knots those teachers etc. having to fill in endless check lists and reports, which have as much use as clicking 'yes' one has understood those long legal terms provided by software companies.... yet are legally binding. So how the hell do we get out of this mess? By us as individuals uniting through unions or whatever and saying NO. No to your dumb educational directives, No to your cruel welfare policies, No to your stupid NHS mismanagement.... there would be a lot of No's but eventually we could say collectively 'Yes I did the right thing'.fairshares -> rjb04tony , 11 Apr 2019 07:17'The left wing dialogue about neoliberalism used to be that it was the Wild West and that anything goes. Now apparently it's a machine of mass control.'It is the Wild West and anything goes for the corporate entities, and a machine of control of the masses. Hence the wish of neoliberals to remove legislation that protects workers and consumers.
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Dec 28, 2019 | off-guardian.org
The question has yet to be asked what role the FISA Court played in its own debasement by blindly accepting the majority of surveillance requests and by lax procedures that allow its own credibility to be violated.
What remains uncertain is exactly how Crossfire Hurricane was born. While it is known that the Clinton campaign (via the DNC) hired GP Fusion (which hired DOJ deputy AG Bruce Ohr's wife) to dig dirt on a Republican candidate for President and we know that former MI6 asset Christopher Steele became involved with creating a salacious Dossier – but the specific links tying those diverse parts to the FBI remains enigmatic.
An almost immediate response to the ' no bias ' allegation came from AG William Barr stating that
The Inspector General's report now makes clear that the FBI launched an intrusive investigation of a U.S. presidential campaign on the thinnest of suspicions that, in my view, were insufficient to justify the steps taken."
with Special Investigator US Attorney John Durham adding that he:
advised the IG that he did not agree with some of the report's conclusions as to predication and how the FBI case was opened."
Both responses were highly unusual and may be interpreted as affirmation of a deeper level of complicity than the IG discovered although his investigation was limited to DOJ employees and to the FISA Court process.
It was not until IG Horowitz's testimony before the Senate Judiciary Committee that the true scathing impact of the full Report was understood; thus revealing the true depth of the FBI's embedded systemic problems.
Horowitz told the Senate panel:
We found and are deeply concerned that so many basic and fundamental errors were made by three separate handpicked investigative teams on one of the most sensitive FBI investigations after the matter had been briefed to the highest levels within the FBI even though the information sought through the use of FISA authority related so closely to an on-going Presidential campaign and even though those involved with the investigations knew that their actions would likely be subjected to close scrutiny .
The circumstances reflect the failure not just by those who prepared the applications but also by the managers and supervisors in the Crossfire Hurricane chain of command including FBI senior officials who were briefed as the investigation progressed"
In dialogue with Sen. Crapo about FBI misconduct as ' mind-numbing ', Horowitz responded "there is such a range of conduct here that is inexplicable and the answers we got were not satisfactory that we're left trying to understand how could all these errors occur over a nine month period or so "
In other words, the FBI, with a tainted history of deeply embedded corruption, has been out of control for decades with an aggressive pursuit of political opponents , corruption of its Forensic Lab and a COINTEL program against American citizens.
It is ironic that some of the FBI's Congressional supporters are now recipients of that corruption.
In response to Barr's statement regarding the IG Report, former Attorney General Erik Holder who once referred to himself as "still Obama's wing man so i'm there with my boy," wrote a divisive op ed for the Washington Post provocatively entitled "Eric Holder: William Barr is Unfit to be Attorney General " .
In a classic example of covering one's butt, it can be assumed that Holder is still protecting Obama's wing as he took cheap shots at Barr for a " series of public statements and taken actions that are so plainly ideological, so nakedly partisan and so deeply inappropriate " making him ' unfit to lead the Justice Department. "
Suffering a partisan anxiety attack, Holder has clearly been directed to slander a predecessor who exhibits more candor and principle than he himself demonstrated as AG.
Given the IG report's otherwise thorough analysis, the Hope and Change crowd may be feeling the heat that those morning tete a tete intel briefings in the Oval Office may have included updates on Crossfire Hurricane.
Holder's condescension, as if he had special privilege to pontificate on "career public servants," falls flat with his thinly veiled threat to Durham:
I was troubled by his unusual statement disputing the inspector general's findings. Good reputations are hard-won in the legal profession, but they are fragile; anyone in Durham's shoes would do well to remember that, in dealing with this administration, many reputations have been irrevocably lost."
With focus now on whether Durham will succumb to Holder's warning may instead boomerang, inspiring Durham to dig deeper than he had previously planned.
The IG Report cited former FBI Director Jim Comey for " clearly and dramatically " departing from department norms in the investigation of HRC's email server and that he made a " serious error of judgment " in sending a letter to Congress announcing the re-opening of the Clinton probe. Comey was fired from the FBI for 'insubordinate' acts and 'dangerous' behavior in deceiving the FISA Court.
When asked by CNN's Anderson Cooper,
"When you read what the report said, do you think this is a vindication
Comey responded:
It is. The FBI has had to wait two years while the President and his supporters lied about the institution, finally the truth gets told."
Apparently Comey had not read the Report in its entirety, not listened to Horowitz's testimony to the Senate or he continues to live under a rock.
In a recent interview with NBC News Pete Williams, Barr explained that
"One of the problems in the IG investigation is that Comey refused to sign back up for his security clearance and therefore could not be questioned (by the IG) on classified matters. so someone like Durham can compel testimony."
In other words, Comey is shrewd enough to know how to deliberately avoid pertinent questions from Horowitz without implicating himself but the day will come when Durham has the legal authority to demand Comey's full participation.
In a Fox News Sunday interview with Chris Wallace, Comey refused to accept and was significantly at odds with many of the IG most significant findings including denial of any personal role in Crossfire. "I didn't know, As Director I am not kept informed on the details of an investigation.
I didn't know the particulars with an agency of 38,000 people 'seven layers below." Wallace repeatedly pushed back with Comey remaining smooth as silk, carefully coached, as he slipped around every iota that he had any responsibility for the investigation of a President and its constitutional screw ups.
When asked if he would resign if all these misdeeds were revealed under his watch, Comey replied "No, I don't think so. There are other mistakes I consider more consequential than this during my tenure."
Pray, we await those revelations.
Renee Parsons has been a member of the ACLU's Florida State Board of Directors and President of the ACLU Treasure Coast Chapter. She has been an elected public official in Colorado, an environmental lobbyist with Friends of the Earth and staff member in the US House of Representatives in Washington, DC. She can be found on Twitter @reneedove31.
MASTER OF UNIVE ,
Even if the FBI, CIA, NSA, et cetera, are rotten to the core we know that Trump is worse, and a rotten businessperson. The Deep State USA is reasonable to want a good businessperson at helm in the White House, and so are the Democrats. Republicans just want two terms of finance largesse off the taxpayers' dime because two terms constitutes effective backstroke in the public trough.Congress just wants yet another paycheck.
I'll back the Deep State wishes to oust Trump and his spawn from the swamp.
Elizabeth Warren is the safest bet for the USA going forward.
MOU
Antonym ,
Elizabeth is another clueless figure head like Corbyn, but at least she has a good family name: War -run.Antonym ,
Plus she is a woman like 50% of the voters. Tulsi Gabbard is too but she has a mind of her own, so no thanks from the Establishments.MASTER OF UNIVE ,
Obama has already endorsed Warren, and he told big money backers to back Warren too.
What Obama wants Obama gets.MOU
Antonym ,
In other words: "The Swamp" that Trump lamented about. Washington keeps on proving that he was right and assists him getting a second term.Another stink with Obama at the center:
Obama gave Pearson Publishing a government contract worth $350 million for their work to create the Common Core text for his administrations education initiative. A subsidiary of that same publisher gave Obama roughly $65 million for his book deal after he left office.
https://twitter.com/MichaelCoudrey/status/1210328992684707840
Dungroanin ,
Why are all the comments published in italics?They are harder to read and look normal when typing
pasha ,
"Lies, damned lies, and statistics . . . "
This whole mess doesn'y even qualify as a statistic.Gall ,
I've always said that the FBI should have been abolished long ago since while pretending to be a "federal law enforcement agency" it is in fact a means of political control. CoIntelPro mentioned in the article is a perfect example since it went after those involved in any form of political dissent i.e. the Black Panthers, the American Indian Movement, the Anti-war and Peace Movement and it seems to have been directly involved in the assassination of Martin Luther King Jr.I'm sure J Edgar Hoover was smiling from his special place in hell when they initiated "Cross Fire Hurricane" based on fabrications of a former MI6 officer to implicate Russia.
richard le sarc ,
The FBI is the US Gestapo.Antonym ,
The FBI drifted into politics because they have a double function: not only fight inter state crime but also find foreign spies on US soil – counter intelligence.
Move the latter into a separate agency and they might be able to concentrate on the most important job, the former.Igor ,
The FBI was born out of the Palmer Raids of 1920-21, orchestrated for the Justice Department by J. Edgar Hoover early in his career. The first Red Scare, 30 years before McCarthy's theatrics.Antonym ,
Thanks for that info about Hoover's early twist of the older BOI. The FBI historians admit that AG Palmer Hoover went overboard in 1920; maybe 100 years later they might write the same about their 2019 "Russiagate".
https://www.fbi.gov/history/famous-cases/palmer-raidsBigB ,
The MI6 Oldboy network I call the Dearlove Cabal set up the Trump Tower meeting to target Papadopoulos. From which the FBI obtained the FISA Warrant. The details are extremely complex: and probably not all known. Apart from Steele: Bill Browder was an important part in bringing the meeting to public attention. I refer you to Lucy Komisar, jimmysllama.com, or the various articles about Browder on this site for details.I am of the personal opinion that this also catalysed the persecution of Julian Assange. Not least because he tweeted out this thread just six days before he was made incommunicado by the Moreno junta.
https://twitter.com/DefendAssange/status/976943598049558528
Notice that the account was taken over and renamed. You might want to read jimmysllama's take on that. This site has some good background info. Be sure to follow the internal link to the "Dearlove Connections: Hakluyt". It's circumstantial: but it looks as though it was the UK that interfered in the US elections – nor Russia.
What is less circumstantial is that Julian will not live to see the inside of and American court. The British authorities are making sure of that. Abandoned by BOTH neoliberal imperialist parties; deplatformed by Corbyn on Press Freedom Day; assigned a biased Judge who's husband was implicated by Wikileaks; being slowly tortured to death with cruel and inhuman punishment; and facing 175 years in prison for telling the truth that's British justice. No less corrupt than American justice or the obfuscatory IG report. They do not want us to know how they work, that's for sure.
richard le sarc ,
The role of the loathsome Alexander Downer must not be forgotten. Papadopoulos's recollection of his meeting with Downer in the wine bar differs markedly from the Downer version, and I know from his political career that Downer is an invertebrate liar. Downer was also a member of the aforementioned Hakluyt, and at present a real Inquisition/Star Chamber perversion of a 'trial' is proceeding against a whistle-blower who revealed the bugging of the East Timorese Government when Downer was a particularly vicious Foreign Minister (who did not disguise his racist contempt for the Timorese)during negotiations over shared gas rights in the seas between the countries, where Australia bullied the Timorese into submission. The whistleblower's lawyer is on trial, too, their passports were seized to prevent them providing evidence at the Timorese appeal at the ICJ, and the trial is proceeding in secret, for 'national security' reasons.Jen ,
I think you meant to say "inveterate liar" but since you were referring to Alexander Downer, the closest thing Australia ever got to having its own BoJo Klown leader, I realise that for once the Spellchecker over-ruling was more appropriate.paul ,
There seems to be a lot of confusion about Mifsud as well. He hasn't been seen for months and has either gone to ground, or else they've done an Epstein/ David Kelly on him.MASTER OF UNIVE ,
Assange is being tortured by the silence of his adherents, hangers on, and bandwagon jumpers that were too busy enjoying Christmas & watching movies to write articles in defence of his freedom.You are a reasonable writer BigB. Off-G will accept articles according to protocol.
MOU
Jen ,
Is this Attorney General William Barr the son of the fellow Donald Barr who gave Jeffrey Epstein his first job as a maths and physics teacher?ttshasta ,
Yes at the Dalton School, NYC.Stephen Morrell ,
The FBI made no 'errors', since they weren't random and all pointed in the same direction. As Bill Binney points out, if you take the 17 instances as each having a 50:50 chance, then the probability of the outcome was 1 in 131,072. It's only mind numbing to entertain the notion that the FBI committed 'errors'.As Durham's remit is well beyond the DOJ, his chances of an unfortunate motor vehicle or aircraft accident are considerably higher than 1 in 131,072.
paul ,
The same seditious and treasonous intrigues from higher and mid level bureaucrats in the military/ secret police/ intelligence/ media/ think tank establishments have been very much in evidence on both sides of the Atlantic.
Previously, they did at least go through the motions of preserving some kind of pretence of political impartiality.
Now, like the Zionist power elite, they have thrown caution to the winds and emerged from behind the curtain to interfere directly in party politics.
You have to think in terms, not so much of a smear campaign as a whole smear industry, manufacturing hoaxes to order on an industrial scale.
Iraqi WMD, Iranian WMD, White Helmets, Syrian Gas false flags, Skripal, Gaddafi's Viagra fuelled black rape gangs, Russiagate, Ukrainegate, and much else, all churned out precisely on cue to enable the next criminal war of aggression. It is clear that these efforts were closely coordinated on both sides of the Atlantic.
All the organs of the Deep State conspired to rig the 2016 elections to prevent a Republican victory, and having failed to achieve this, to undermine the administration of an elected president (whatever you think of Trump.) Comey, Clapper, Brennan, Strzok, Page, and their ilk, and people like Ioanovitch, Vindman, Cohen and Sondland, were basically just political hacks with an axe to grind.
Former Chief Spook "We Lie, We Cheat, We Steal" Pompeo, who now passes for Chief Diplomat in the Trump Circus, promised an assemblage of Zionist luminaries that he would do everything necessary to prevent the election of Corbyn, if the smear campaign being run by the Board of Deputies failed to achieve the desired result.
There were at least 40 leaks and smears from UK spooks and the military establishment, declaring Jezza to be a communist agent and a threat to national security. Dearlove, that ridiculous old bag Manningham-Buller, and assorted General Blimps were wheeled out on a daily basis with shock-horror-gasp revelations to be peddled by tame media hacks like Luke Harding and Sid Scurvy from the Daily Bugle. Our very own General Allendes and Greek Colonels could be relied upon to intervene if people elected the wrong person.
These people are a greater threat to our countries than any foreign terrorist organisation (most of which they control anyway.) We would be better off without them.Antonym ,
mark, Corbyn would have lost all by himself with his wind-vane Brexit non directions. Dragging in "the Zionists" undermines your narrative.
I imagine MI6 will love you for keeping them partly out of the cross hairs.MASTER OF UNIVE ,
Smear campaigns are so yesteryear, man. The USA has just passed a law allowing spooks to commit murder to protect National Security. This means that they can shoot first and ask questions later which is pretty seamless for accurate record keeping IMHO.MOU
Dungroanin ,
Is this correct?".. Holder has clearly been directed to slander a predecessor.."
Isn't Holder the PREDECESSOR and Barr the incumbent?
fritzi cohen ,
Actually Barr was the AG under George W. Bush, 1991-93, so he was Holder's predecessor.
He is the current AG, having succeeded I believe Jeff Sessions. I found Parsons article incredibly informative, whether you consider Barr, Holder's predecessor or successor.
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Dec 25, 2019 | off-guardian.org
Jen ,
What would Dr Kampmark consider to be an ecologically cleaner alternative to Nordstream I and 2? The US proposal to supply LNG via an endless conga line of tankers across the North Atlantic would be an ecological nightmare, to say nothing of the specialised port facilities that need to be built to accommodate the tankers, the extra pipelines needed to pipe the gas to areas of Europe away from the Atlantic and the potential for accidents and disasters during annual hurricane season. Europe needs the best energy supply solution possible from a sustainability POV and other POVs and while Nordstream I and 2 may not be perfect, other solutions are either worse, more expensive or less certain and stable in the long term.RobG ,
Shale gas is also poop. Only someone totally corrupt or totally insane would buy such junk from the USA.The collapse of an empire brings up such interesting stuff.
I am of course a Russian troll for stating the obvious, so a merry Christmas from the Kremlin.
Let nuclear bombers fly, baby. Who wants another Christmas. The majority of the present American government (including Trump) are evangelical Christians who believe in the Rapture . You wouldn't put such people in charge of a car park, let alone put them in charge of the biggest nuclear weapons arsenal on the planet.
But that's where we are at the moment.
The Presstitutes will never tell you any of this.
RobG ,
I find this a bit of a strange piece, for reasons that many others have pointed out here in the comments. With regard to the environmental angle, I should perhaps point out that by far the biggest polluter on the planet is the US military.MASTER OF UNIVE ,
The US Military pollutes everything under the sun far past Internet & the over 900 worldwide bases it occupies. Heck, the US MIC pollutes all sports venues with their propagandistic parades of adherence to state & flag military shows.In the USA they make you stand in honour of the military at sports events.
I'm glad I don't go down to the USA for the USA Grand National Drag Racing events just because of the MIC pollution at events. Their propaganda pollution is all over the Internet and that is toxic waste that we all have to sift through on our way to real news aside from institutional American killing of the third world.
GI-Joe turned out to be anything but a good hippie in my book.
MOU
ttshasta ,
The article mentions Rex Tillerson, yet fails to mention Qatar. Exxon Mobil & Exxon Mobil Qatar, that Tillerson worked for, want to run an LP pipeline from the Norths Pars gas field, the worlds largest, and Qatar owns 2/3 of,through Saudi Arabia, through Jordan, Syria, through Alleppo then through Turkey on to Europe. Thus Qatar, S.A. and Turkey have sponsored the foreign invasion of Syria that the the dolts at NPR to this day call a civil war. The US's Al Udeid air base in Qatar is the largest in the region, Cheney has been to Qatar many times as have Barack and Michele Obama, John Ashcroft was paid $2.5 million to defend Qatar from post 911 terrorism charges.Does it seem the article misses the elephant in the room? US Qatari investments must profit?
Never forget the Clintons, Qatar donates to Clinton Foundation, State Dpt. sells weapons to Qatar (diverted to Syria?), candidate Clinton to declare no fly zone over Syria as POTUS.
In 2016 Thierry Messan's Voltairenet dot org translated an article from Petra the official Jordanian press paper that S.A. financed 20% of Clinton's campaign, which is illegal under US law. Subsequently, and conveniently, Saudi Prince M.B.S. declared Petra had been hacked and the report was false. I rely on Thierry's translations, and his voluminous site.
Jen ,
Excellent comment. As always, one should follow the money trail.paul ,
I've never understood the argument that buying Russian gas is a threat to the security of European countries. Russia doesn't supply the gas out of altruism, it does so because it wants their money. They are dependent on Russian gas. Russia is dependent on their money. Mutual dependence, mutual gain.During the Cold War, Russia always supplied every last gallon of oil and every cubic foot of gas that contracts obliged it to deliver. It did so, again because it wanted their money. Simple as that.
It would have been simpler and much cheaper to supply the gas through land pipelines via Ukraine, the Baltics and Poland. But the undersea pipelines had to be built because the Levantine dual nationals parachuted in by the State Department to rule over Ukraine and the Baltics on Washington's behalf have shown themselves to be totally unreliable economic partners. Ukraine refused to pay for gas that was supplied and stole gas intended for European countries. The rabid Levantines in the Baltics and Poland were equally hostile. They could have made billions in transit fees, but they always insisted on cutting off their noses to spite their faces. Bulgaria blocked South Stream on Washington's instructions and lost a reliable source of cheap gas and $400 million a year in transit fees. A lot of money and a lot of jobs for a poor country. US satellites pay a high price to kowtow to Uncle Sam. Russia developed its own port facilities in the Baltic and Riga is now a ghost town.
Uncle Sam is now waging economic warfare and imposing sanctions on its previously most loyal and obedient satellites, Canada, Mexico, France, Germany, Japan, South Korea, Turkey.
Its surprising how history repeats itself. In the first decade of the nineteenth century, Napoleon achieved dominance over continental Europe. Only Britain stood against him. Napoleon tried to bring Britain to heel through economic warfare, the Continental System, ordering European countries not to trade with his sole remaining enemy. His orders were ignored all the way from Spain to Russia, and this lucrative trade continued. The invasion of Russia and the debacle at Moscow were an attempt to enforce the Continental System. In a similar fashion, Washington's hubris and unbridled arrogance are now alienating even its most abject, cringing, servile satraps like Macron, Merkel, and Erdogan. With the same result.
MASTER OF UNIVE ,
Uncle Sam sees Nord-2 as an energy superpower challenge to energy supremacy which equates to American supremacy & hegemonic supremacy writ large across the world. If the pinko commie bastards in the Russian Federation make inroads by unilaterally making massive energy deals with the entire EU we will see American interests clamoring for market inroads & market share so that the pinko commie bastards in the Russian Federation don't make a dime.Uncle Sam is in actuality a waning ex-superpower thug that is yesterday's man but can't stand being taken out of the limelight being the narcissist nation it is.
MOU
So many sources one cannot trust ..Russian Greenpeace, NATO, the Merkel Bundesrepublik, the European Commission, the Texan oil business, the Saudis and the Pentagon. How on Earth is anyone on Earth supposed to make an informed decision based on such a truth-strangulating tangle of hegemonic propaganda? From The Slog archives:
https://hat4uk.wordpress.com/2018/03/15/analysis-the-factors-that-make-pompeo-russiaphobia-oil-pipelines-water-supply-and-brexit-inseparable/pàul_m ,
Can you imagine being dependent on the usa for anything never mind fracked gas at twice the price.no doubt brave new worlder boris will go for it.gb inc looks over and done with.Guy ,
"Can you imagine being dependent on the usa for anything" Yes I can .I live in Canada and they basically own our country, for all intent and purposes .
They did not conquer us militarily but they so corporately.MASTER OF UNIVE ,
Zackarova is bang on in that the USA is wholly incompetent to govern their own business interests let alone other sovereign interests. Nord-2 is necessary infrastructure that the USA wants to thwart for their own monetary benefit.The USA is anachronism, insolvent, and lacks common sense as well as entrepreneurial spirit & business acumen.
MOU
padre ,
How very concerned about environment we are, when somebody else is "destroying" it!paul ,
The US certainly showed how concerned it was about the environment with the North Dakota pipeline.Francis Lee ,
Stepping aside from the geopolitics for a moment. In terms of economics the US is attempting to push Russia out of natural gas markets. If a company did this it would be attempting to construct a monopoly and be subject to anti-competitive laws. If the US becomes the sole supplier in Europe then it has a stranglehold, both economic and political, on Europe. That's the strategy, and it seems blatantly obvious.But the construction being put on this sordid little play by the Anglo-American MSM is that the US frackers – who never make a profit – are doing Europe a really big favour by enabling them not to become dependent on Russian gas. The Europeans should there for be grateful for US LNG since it will enable to diversify away from Russian gas.
The reality is, however, that once you become dependent on a single overseas crucial energy source you have been unceremoniously grabbed by the short and curlies.
Antonym ,
Simply connect more European harbors to the existing gas pipeline network and choose the LNG supplier you want. Not rocket science but Dutch PM Rutte was sold on abolishing natural gas because of CO2, while trees from North America for burning in power plants was fine.Neighbour PM Merkel Germany wants gas but not nuclear (a scientist!). France wants nuclear but rely on a new unproven expensive design.
Political inmates are running the EU madhouse.John Deehan ,
In this article, it misses the whole point of why the USA wants to impose sanctions, rather late in the day, on companies involved in its construction. Namely, the continued attempts by it to isolate The Russian Federation and its its long term strategy of preparations for war. Moreover, the omission of the reasons why Russia built the gas pipeline could not be more striking. The coup in the Ukraine made the transit of Russian gas to western Europe via its territory open to pressure from the USA. Hence why the Russians built the pipeline in the first place. It's the same reasons why the USA is attempting to prevent other Russian gas/oil pipelines in other parts of the world.Francis Lee ,
If anything illustrates the reality of the EU-NATO 'alliance' it is this. The US to Germany – and by extension the rest of the EU – 'You will take expensive US LNG gas and like it' Me Tarzan you Jane. This brazen realpolitik illustrates the true nature of the vassalised EU. And of course Poland, Romania – please station your inter-mediate range missiles here – and the Baltic uber-Petainist elites come chiming in 'America the Beautiful.' More than anything this explodes the idea of the EU as a third geopolitical bloc. It is an occupied region always has been and is composed of countries which can't actually defend their own interests whilst privileging the US.Gutless and spineless!
George Cornell ,
Indeed. And as reluctant as I am to entertain it, the Brutish ( spellcheck wants it to be British, no irony there) US is forcing any vertebrate in the EU to crave armed forces. Why poor EU countries buy the bollocks that is the relentless pressure or requirement from NATO to buy American and Israeli arms is beyond me. They should be much more frightened of the Americans than the imaginary bogeymen to the East.You mean like the Azov Battalion, Right Sector and C-14? Those bogeymen Tim? Some of whom are now in Hong Kong helping Joseph Wong and his mates fight for 'freedom and democracy' with some help from people in, er, Langley Virginia. Oh, and Nancy Pelosi.Well, I support the right of all peoples to self-determination as a universal right and oppose imperialism/neo-imperialism regardless of who does it, so your false dichotomy does not apply to me.I thought you were referring to the neo nazi thugs in Ukraine that sprung up like weeds after rain following the overthrow of Yanukovych by you know who. No, it wasn't Putin. And no, I'm not a fan either. All bullshit pushed by Mr Hopey Changey that has put the world in grave peril.In fact the changes of nuclear war are greater than any time in history. And what happened when the Berlin Wall came down Tim? Bush solemnly promised Gorbachev that NATO would not move one inch eastward. And where are NATO now?
paul ,
Then no doubt you support the right of the Crimea and Donbas to self determination from the CIA installed Fascist Coup Regime.George Cornell ,
Oh for Chrissake! And where were you about Gitmo? And Iraq, and Yemen, and Syria, and Libya? And the lithium in Afghanistan makes it morally justified? Put the photo of Kissinger on a bearskin rug in your drawer and tell me about how the 95% of Crimeans who wanted to be part of Russia invalidates what happened there.Come back to me about the sandbars in the South China Sea. Now there's a place to increase your debt.!
lundiel ,
Russia isn't occupying any of Ukraine. There are Russian volunteers and Russia is giving them some weapons and no doubt finance but the Russian army isn't at war with Ukraine.Jay ,
If they were, the war would have been on Kiev's doorstep.Francis Lee ,
The only people 'taking' seven percent of the Ukraine are those who already live in the Donbass and Crimea are the Russian-speaking inhabitants who have lived there for generations and who are defending their homeland against the Ukie Army and its Waffen SS look-alikes in the Azov Battalion and various other neo-nazi outfits like Praviy Sektor, and the Tornado Battalion and Dnipro1 and other charming little outfits such as 'Patriots of the Ukraine' – backed by right-wing fanatics in the Ukrainian Rada namely Biletsky and Parubiy.These people are the direct descendants of the scum of the murderous Banderist pro-Nazis who were responsible for mass extermination of Russians, Jew, and above all, Poles in Volhynia in the far west of the Ukraine between 1943-45. The Ukrainian Insurgent army (UPA – led by Shukeviych) was the military wing of Bandera's OUN-B (Organization of Ukrainian Nationalists). Unfortunately for for Mr B, he had an unfortunate rendezvous with a KGB hit-man in Munich in 1955. RIP.
Long live the heroic resistance of the Peoples Republics of Donetsk and Lugansk.
Frank Speaker ,
Exactly Francis. Some of my family were massacred by these bastard who were their neighbours: a woman cut upon at the front, a woman with a wooden stake driven through her head, two children thrown down a well. That NATO aided and abetted these same evil scum to overthrow a democratically elected government and re-start their murderous ways – this time around upon the ethnic Russians in the wast of the country – I cannot forgive my political leaders who have done this.That our MSM completely ignore this situation, I cannot forgive them, and that's why I am here.If there's a place called hell, I hope there's a special place reserved for our leaders and media owners who have done this.
eddie ,
They are occupying Jacque Schitt, but their 93rd aid convoy to the Donbas in November, consisting of 45 trucks, was not imaginary.Gall ,
Greenpeace is yet another "NGO" that is heavily influenced by the National Endowment for Democracy a CIA front that supports US Imperialism.I'm ambivalent on the issue of pipelines ( see Keystone XL Pipeline being driven through Indian Land in total violation of the Laramie Treaty) since they are environmentally destructive but the fact is that this is all about politics and has nothing to do with protecting the environment.
If "Russia's" Greenpeace was so concerned about the environment they'd worry about their backyard first such as the network of pipelines being run through Siberia.
richard le sarc ,
One wonders if the invertebrates of the EU will ever tire of being bullied by the Global Bullying Thug in Chief? The clerico-fascists of priest-ridden Poland one can understand, and the phony 'greens' of Greenpeace the sell-out specialists, but the others are just like mongrel dogs-the more you kick them, the more they lick your boots.Boats of LNG floating across the Atlantic to Poland is not energy security. Whatever the politics of Nord Stream 2 we may be assured the US has not got our back in Europe on this.We may also be in need of energy sooner than we think, as professor Valentina Zharkova of Northumbria University suggests. Unlike the Guardian her catastrophe theory goes in the other direction where in the next few years Earth will enter into a cooling phase. That will set off a series of events leading to a mini ice age as happened with the Maunder Minimum of the 17th Century.
http://thefreethoughtproject.com/ice-age-astrophysicists-climate-change/
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Dec 24, 2019 | off-guardian.org
The United States is less concerned with matters green. Nord Stream 2 poses a security threat.
Trump's former secretary of state, Rex Tillerson, saw it as "undermining Europe's overall energy security and stability."
US energy secretary Rick Perry argues that "Russian gas has strings attached." The claim is that Germany will be come too reliant and Ukraine further weakened. Ukraine had been the premier gatekeeper for Russian gas supply, with 40 percent of Europe's total amount transiting through Ukrainian soil. A slump in gross domestic product occasioned by an end to transit fees is considered imminent.
Other European states have been crankily concerned about the prospect of Gazprom's deepening involvement in the continent's energy market. Poland's anti-monopoly body UOKiK showed a measure of that opposition by fining France's Engie Energy (ENGIE.PA) 40 million euros in proceedings against Gazprom.
In February, EU ambassadors agreed that the project be subjected to greater scrutiny. A Franco-German compromise was struck : Nord Stream 2 would be placed "under European control".
The Trump administration's actions against Gazprom and Russia's energy influence, found in a provision of the 2020 National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA), can hardly be seen as noble endeavours.
The provision threatens sanctions and the freezing of assets against entities laying down the pipeline unless their activities cease "immediately". The United States has its own energy interests in Europe, and wishes to frustrate the effort. Market share is at stake.
The suspension of laying activities on the part of Allseas, a Swiss company, suggests that Trump's announcement is already biting.
"In anticipation of the enactment of the National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA)," went a company statement , "Allseas has suspended its Nord Stream 2 pipelay activities." The company would "proceed, consistent with the legislation's wind down provision and expect guidance comprising the necessary regulatory, technical and environmental clarifications from the relevant US authority."
The angle taken by the European Union, Germany and Russia can hardly surprise. Themes of energy security are reiterated. The Nord Stream 2 consortium makes the claim that, "Completing the project is essential for European supply security." Russian foreign ministry spokeswoman Maria Zakharova spikily condemned the sanctions measure. "A state with a $22 trillion national debt prohibits creditworthy countries to develop the real sector of their economies!"
For a EU spokesman, this constituted "the imposition of sanctions against EU companies conducting legitimate business." A German government spokesman suggested that such actions "affect German and other European businesses, and we see the move as meddling in our internal affairs." Finance Minister Olaf Scholz has sees it as an infringement of sovereignty. "It is up to the companies involved in the construction of the pipeline to take the next decisions."
Nothing is quite so simple. Gas pipeline politics has always been contentious. One state's sovereign promise is another's weakening. Concessions made to corporate monopolies are risky, capable of fostering insecurity as much as reassurance. Those who control the tap control a country's future.
But the imposition of any sanctions regime signals another bout of economic violence. In the international market, where governments operate as ready gangsters for corporate interests, prompted by such motivations as seeking more natural resources, tools of state become handmaidens of economic self-interest...
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Dec 20, 2018 | off-guardian.org
It is an anger that would be shared by millions, if they understood the truth about the way they have been deceived and manipulated by the UK Establishment, not simply over the election but over the most fundamental issues of trust and decency.
Some of the most evident deceptions that were used against Jeremy Corbyn, such as the mendacious claims of anti-semitism, have been well aired – if not successfully countered.
The failure to challenge and dismiss these claims rests almost entirely with the most influential media – the BBC and Guardian particularly – who have the greatest influence with Labour voters, even though they may not have been initially responsible for contriving this high-level smear campaign.
The producers of those media and the journalists who work for them are also primarily responsible for failing to present an opposing view that legitimised Labour's position and demonised that of the Tories.
One issue stands out a mile in the context of anti-Semitism claims, being Israel's continuing crimes against Palestinians, and the silence on the extraordinary and illegal moves being made by the Israeli government during the election period.
The apparent basis for accusations against Corbyn of anti-Semitism is because of his historic support for the Palestinian cause and legitimate criticism of Israel's barbaric and criminal treatment of those living in the occupied West Bank and in Gaza. If any direct reference was made to this viewpoint, it was only in references to Corbyn's "support for terrorists" – meaning Hamas.
But reflecting on the election campaign, the absence of any direct reference to foreign affairs, and policies on which Labour may have had significant support from many in the UK, is striking. In fact it is more than that – it is indicative. Because the sub-text – the subliminal message beneath the main issues of contention was always about foreign affairs.
... ... ...
In his recent essay on the operation of propaganda , Edward Curtin highlighted the power of movies in embedding false ideas in peoples' minds, something also noted by Christopher Donnelly in his exposition on "hybrid warfare".
There is, I think, now substantial evidence that both the broadcasting and suppression of particular movies played a part in pushing the UK electorate into voting against its interests. It was the coincidence of these two movies' appearance – and disappearance, with the election period that makes the case persuasive.
Capricornia Man ,
I was with this author all the way until he made the infantile complaint that only 30 per cent of the electorate voted for Brexit. The corollary of this is, of course, that LESS than 30 per cent voted to remain. But such inconvenient, if obvious, truths need not be mentioned if you happen to be a crusading leftist remainer.Also seldom acknowledged by left remainers is that the EU is structurally neo-liberal and is enforcing austerity on the peoples of Europe. Read Costas Lapavitsas: 'The Left Case Against the EU'.
Unmentionable, too, is that the undeclared leader of the stop-Brexit campaign is one Tony Blair who has called Brexit "rancid" and has reputedly put ten million pounds of his own money into this campaign.
Another unmentionable is that important parts of Corbyn's programme would have been illegal under the rules of the EU's single market.
The author follows a well-trodden path in insulting working-class people who voted 'leave' allegedly in "ignorance" and had "longstanding prejudices".
With this kind of stuff coming from sections of the left, why be surprised that sections of the working class voted for the right?
When Labour promised in 2017 to implement Brexit, it achieved a 10 percent swing and almost won the election. When the Blairites turned Labour into a remain party in 2019, it lost the general election badly.
How many times does the electorate have to show what it wants before EU-idolaters will accept it?
Gall ,
You have some very insightful comments on this site. Also you publish a needed antidote to the Guardian and all the other mainstream propaganda out there.Personally I was ambivalent about Brexit being from across the pond or as the elites like to say from the "colonies" I didn't really think it was my business. Unlike some from the commonwealth ( the euphemism for the British Empire) like to go on about our love for guns.
Compare what happened at the Battle of the Little Big Horn to Wounded Knee. Just as a thought experiment but I digress. Not too much because we're told that thanks to what would become the Second Amendment we gained "Independence" from Britain. A nice fairytale we were all taught in school and like GW chopping down some cherry tree because he couldn't tell a lie or whatever. More myth than actual truth.
The fact is that America became an extension of Britannia. Actually the biggest part of the Empire known as the East India Company. Don't believe me. Take a look at the flag. All the bars without the stars.
Maybe I'm wrong but I see this whole Brexit now is an effort to resurrect an Anglo-American alliance and all drunken Boris who has as much tact as his Russian counterpart who almost single handedly and handily destroyed Russia by selling it off at bargain basement prices which is what I'm sure Boris II plans to do and set up the old mercantile empire using America's military much like Israel is using us as a "force multiplier".
Thus I sympathize with you all over there. Here we dodged the bullet known as Clinton who probably would have turned us all into radioactive dust if elected for Trump who in reality was the lesser of two evils but evil just the same since he seems to be selling us out to the Rothschilds who as you know rule the City of London and are the benefactors of the terrorist state of Israel.
Personally I thought you would have been better off with Cobryn but instead got Boris the Terrible who promises to "get Brexit done". I wish you all the best and hope that it all comes out alright.
George Mc ,
More fun:https://www.globalresearch.ca/boris-revenge-coming-assault-britain-democracy/5697885
" things will certainly go wrong for Boris. The great "Get Brexit Done" lie may have helped him back to Downing Street, but it left untouched the insoluble conundrum at the heart of Brexit – the fact that we can maintain the close economic relationship with the European Union on which Britain's prosperity depends; or we can go for the sort of low-cost, low-regulation "Singapore-on-Thames" that Johnson's financiers (oligarchs, hedge funds, expatriate media barons) demand "
Merry Christmas!
M. le Docteur Ralph ,
You are a civil servant for an exceptional nation, a nation so exceptional that it expends almost 4% of its GDP on defence, but a nation that is also so exceptional that it expends that 4% of GDP simply by printing up pieces of paper in the basement.Imagine a bunch of loser nations get together and have this really stupid idea of creating their own new currency.
If these bunch of losers succeed instead of printing up pieces of paper in the basement you will have to pay real money to finance that 4% of GDP and pay those outlandish bonuses to the bosses of the industrial complex that receives your defence spending.
So, the first thing you do is you use your prison bitch to join the proto-new currency and then you use your Hungarian Jewish asset to force your prison bitch to leave. A failure.
Next, you push the exchange rate against your own currency so low that you are sure the loser nations will bend, they do not. A failure.
Next, you raise their new currency so high against your own currency that they cannot trade and you are sure that the loser nations will bend, they do not. A failure.
Next, you take the country where your security services have previously established a military junta and with your leading investment bank help you falsify their national accounts. A failure but a disaster for the country in question. Everyone is too scared to sue your leading investment bank.
Next, you take your prison bitch of a country and get them to run a referendum to leave the loser nation trading block. You fix the referendum through postal votes. Then you run an election and get an upper-class clown elected to make sure they leave on absolutely the worst terms possible.
You are sure that this time you are on to a winner, pity for the prison bitch country, pity for the risk for the whole of the rest of the world given what happened when you helped your buddies at Goldman tank Lehman, but who cares you live in Chevy Chase and your government pension is perfectly secure.
George Mc ,
Just found this helpful essay on possible future scenarios of the UK. And they're not happy ones:https://www.globalresearch.ca/brexit-collapse-british-labour-post-mortem-uk-election/5698109
The ending is ominous:
"Corbyn in the UK represented a last futile effort to re-transform the British Labour party, trying to turn the clock back into what it was once. But the core and base for that reconstitution no longer exists. And that's also, at least in part, why Labour suffered the historic defeat yesterday. And why Nationalism is on the ascend once again.
And why, after the next crisis, even ascendant Nationalism as we see it today may not be sufficient for the continuation of late Neoliberal rule for global capitalism."
because it refers to an earlier part:
"Nationalism is undermining national unity in the UK–just as it is doing so in the USA and in Spain, Italy, and elsewhere in Europe, and let's not forget India and Kashmir, and other locales in Asia. Capitalism in crisis always turns to nationalism as a shield to divert blame for its economic and social troubles on 'the others'. The extreme version of this nationalist 'blame it on the outsiders game' is called Fascism."
Dungroanin ,
Not so George. Here are 3 simple upsides:1. Even with all the abuse, gaslighting, spoiler candidates and a winter election on cold rainy dark prexmas day – nearly 11 MILLION GENUINE voters did choose Corbynite Labour.
2. Many of the backstabbing exLabour and pains in the arses are gone from their shouty AS accussing perches.
3. Aside from losing Pidcock (to postal fraud) the next leadership is looking like a great team and will be backed by the still solid membership- and the remainder shit on shoe parachutists are deselected in good time for next election.
Its a long game politics and there was no predicted wipeout – Again.
That what does not kill you makes you stronger!
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Dec 21, 2019 | discussion.theguardian.com
New_Balls_Please , 19 Dec 2019 09:44
Impeachment is rancid centrist theatre performed by the wizened walking corpses of Pelosi and Schumer, acted out to make it look like they actually have a sliver of decency and acts as a distraction from the election.helenus , 19 Dec 2019 09:19Democrats applauded and encouraged and voted for Trump's funding of ICE, increased surveillance, and removing funding from welfare. This will change absolutely nothing.
The impeachment vote along strict party lines, with both parties hearing the exact same evidence, mathematically proves that the evidence didn't have any bearing on the voter's decisions.YouHaveComment -> SnowyJohn , 19 Dec 2019 09:24Impeaching and losing is worse than not impeaching as it makes the division worse. And the Democrats know they will lose and knew this at the start of the process.ID7776906 , 19 Dec 2019 09:50The solution is to give the electorate the evidence for when they vote in 2020. Some of them will reject the evidence as fake or biased or irrelevant. That is a voter's prerogative.
Truth is the Democrats all held their noses when they railroaded this through the Kangaroo Court of the House and voted on Party lines for impeachment. Very noteworthy that not one Republican agreed and voted Yea. This will backfire on the Democrats and undermine the US political system and do much harm.badbeard -> AndreiK , 19 Dec 2019 09:50I agree with you that the focus ought to be on policy and winning the election; positive campaigns fare better, and impeachments is negative, boring, likely to fail.lightchaser , 19 Dec 2019 09:50And I also agree that the Democrats are not squeaky clean.
However:
Proceeding with impeachment does not prohibit the Democrats form being positive about their own policies and vision. Especially the candidates. The smart Dem candidates will move the conversation on quickly to how good their ideas are whenever they are asked about impeachment.
Unwillingness to impeach in this case would support the claim that they're all as bad as each other, and that the president can do whatever he wants. It is duty to do it.
They have to go for it. It may damage their chances in changing MAGA people's minds, but it will help shore up the democratic vote (something that Hillary struggled with).
This comment was removed by a moderator because it didn't abide by our community standards . Replies may also be deleted. For more detail see our FAQs .Ade1342 -> Truthdotcom , 19 Dec 2019 09:50Quid pro quo is not a crime. The nature of a quid pro quo can be.CommunityMod , 19 Dec 2019 09:49What you describe above is not a crime.
What Trump did (ask for an investigation on a political rival) is.
Comments will close here in ten minutes.LibertarianLeaning -> petekreff , 19 Dec 2019 09:49Sovpat -> dallasdunlap , 19 Dec 2019 09:49The best way to sink Trump would be to get hold of his tax returns.
Er yeah... and exactly what do you think these are going to reveal?
Do you think The Donald himself fills these things out? He has scores of companies, and he'll have an army of tax attorneys who deal with this stuff. The returns themselves won't show the tens of thousands of line items for each company's expenses.
People with TDS are delusional. You think you'll you'll find something in his returns that the IRS hasn't?
great post.scipioafricanus , 19 Dec 2019 09:48What's shocking to me is how closely Republicans are copying the behaviour of Trump himself: the insults, the hyperbole, the shouting and screaming, the calls for his political enemies to be censured, the cries of hoax and witch hunt. It's very reminiscent of totalitarian states where the leader's allies compete with each other to prove their cult loyalty to the Chosen One. It's the Trump Party now; what was once Reagan or Bush conservatism has long since departed. The leader can do anything he likes, say anything he likes, and his followers will forgive him everything.Jamie McMillan , 19 Dec 2019 09:48Another confusing article saying Trump 'faces impeachment', then later says he 'was impeached'.Nin Jin -> peacefulmilitant , 19 Dec 2019 09:48What happened in the House? Was that Impeachment? Or does Senate have to vote for it as well?
Dammit. That's actually a good point!ethelbrose , 19 Dec 2019 09:48Putin says charges are made up. Why don't I believe the b*st*rd?AspasiasUli -> vammyp , 19 Dec 2019 09:48Here's a different American perspective: yes, it's a political as opposed to a criminal process. That doesn't mean it is necessarily a partisan political process. Impeachment is the mechanism the Constitution provides for removing a corrupt official. That's what we've got. I have grown very, very tired of people treating this as a horse race, rather than as the only thing that can protect our democracy from an overreaching, dishonest leader. If it hurts election chances, it really doesn't matter, because unless we want to give up altogether on the framework of U.S. government, impeachment has to happen now. This is not a small matter of a phone call. It is a very big matter about betraying the interests of the nation for short-term political gain. And by the way, if it were a Democrat behaving the way this president has, he should be impeached and removed from office. The flaw in the system is the cult behavior of one political party. And I have no idea how that flaw can be mended.pfg2powell , 19 Dec 2019 09:46The subhead says it all: Trump will not be removed from office.stepheinCO -> PeatearGriffin , 19 Dec 2019 09:46Worse, he will have spurious 'proof' that by fould means 'the Washington swamp' is out to get him and ruin his good fight on behalf of 'the people'.
His supporters will be even more determined to see him re-elected and it's even possible that a few 'undecideds' have sympathy on him and swing his way.
That's why it strikes the writer as an anti-climax.
So. Bill Clinton almost got back into the White House. the only thing that stopped him was the stupidity of Hillary, he also has made himself very rich in the process.Craig VanCoevering -> One2Three4 , 19 Dec 2019 09:46"Trump attempted to enlist the help of another country in his campaign for a second term (this is no longer denied), "peacefulmilitant -> UncleKarlM , 19 Dec 2019 09:45Sure. Some Democrats bureaucrat said he overheard, someone who said he overheard someone say that Trump wanted something.
The president of Ukraine even denies there was any solicitation.
It never even reached the level of denial.4LetterFeeling , 19 Dec 2019 09:45An anticlimax, as opposed to Bill Clinton's "climactic" impeachment!!
Who can forget the oral arguments in the Clinton case?
Isn't it the duty of politicians to impeach if the president has broken the law?gottliebvera , 19 Dec 2019 09:45Doesn't this transcend political motivations, and is irrelevant whether its going help or harm at the next election, or even if it's an anti climax or not.. it's an absolute duty
His ego must be hurting something awful. Perhaps Time Magazine should name "Peach of the Year"???bobthebuilder2017 -> MTavernier , 19 Dec 2019 09:42Yet the charge of extortion is speculation. Why didn't the House ask Zelinsky to testify? Perhaps because he himself doesn't believe he was extorted?Truthdotcom -> Cynthia Almy Savage , 19 Dec 2019 09:42Regarding investigating political opponent: is that not what the Obama DOJ was doing in the run up to the 2016 election - predicated on falsified documents and outright fraud to secure a FISA warrent? Is that not what the House has been doing all this time?
I believe that a "political rival" should not be off limits to investigation if they appear to have done something wrong - but do you? Where are the 8 Billion American tax dollars that disappeared in Ukraine during Biden's watch? Why was the investigation called into that called off?
And Obama colluded with Iran to drop cash to those Mullahs in the dead of night--when people are sleeping.AndreiK -> Colin Clarke , 19 Dec 2019 09:40I am sorry, but what you are saying is bullcrap. Hunter Biden was on the board of a Ukrainian natural gas business earning US$600k per year (a mindboggling CEO level salary) whilst at the same time being in rehab in California for a crack addition. There is so much more to that story as well. Here is a well known left wing YouTube channel talking about this - the stuff that just defies belief - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Y0RiUWBXGY4peacefulmilitant , 19 Dec 2019 09:40Unlike his four immediate predecessors Trump has not started a foreign war. That might be reason enough to keep him in the White House for now.Irshguy , 19 Dec 2019 09:17Disclosure: I don't like Trump. I would never vote for him.But why is naivety a prerequisite for being a liberal? When did this puritanical mindset take root?
Foreign 'aid' is always on a quid pro quo basis. It's used as a soft power tactic to prevent a commie revolution in mineral rich countries. It ensures a compliancy. It's NOT the same as donating a few quid to the Red Cross.
Discuss
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Dec 21, 2019 | discussion.theguardian.com
Truthdotcom -> Upjors , 19 Dec 2019 08:59
But it was totally partisan based what constitutional scholar Jonathan Turley called "non-crimes". Trump would wear such as badge of honour--in the sense he was attacked non-stop by what he calls "The Deep State" and survived.OpenSociety , 19 Dec 2019 08:59He would also claim that the elitist bureaucracy in Washington tried to destroy a President who was for "We the People"--whom the elitist classes call "deplorables" and whom can even be smelt at Walmart.
I was against the impeachment of Bill Clinton. At that time democrat supporters made pantomime protests by dressing as puritans and Mrs Clinton referred to the "Vast Right Wing Conspiracy". The case for Trump impeachment is even weaker and unlike with Clinton there has been a lack of due process and no bipartisan support. Impeachment has now become the pursuit of politics by other means which is a bad precedent for the future.Truthdotcom -> Kalumba , 19 Dec 2019 08:52But if you want to re-energise Trump's base, this is a good move.
In the U.S. Schiff is seen as dishonest, a parody make-up trickster, a liar, etc. Pelosi is seen as intellectually feeble and somewhat ditzy. She was pushed onto the impeachment path by the hard Left of the Democratic party. An example of that is the words used by Democrat Rashida Tlaib to refer to Trump--a very vulgar "Impeach the mfer[abbreviation".AndreiK -> Jonathan Stromberg , 19 Dec 2019 08:49No they don't - I paste this from a CNN article:SolentBound , 19 Dec 2019 08:47'a new Gallup poll released Wednesday morning, before the House vote, which shows two things happening since House Democrats, led by Speaker Nancy Pelosi of California, opened up a formal impeachment inquiry in October:
1) Trump's job approval rating has gone from 39% to 45%
2) Support for Trump's impeachment and removal has dipped from 52% to 46%.'Tulsi Gabbard on Twitter a few minutes ago, explaining her refusal to vote:stratplaya , 19 Dec 2019 08:39"A house divided cannot stand. And today we are divided. Fragmentation and polarity are ripping our country apart. Today, I come before you to make a stand for the center, to appeal to all of you to bridge our differences and stand up for the American people. #StandWithTulsi"
According to the latest polls her support is about 2% nationally but higher in Iowa and New Hampshire. Will her supporters stick with her? If not, where do they go? Sanders?
It feels anti-climatic because it was purely political. Democrats have set a terrible precedent here. With no votes from the opposition party and cheers afterwards from the majority party, they proved the impeachment was just a laborious exercise in bold faced politics.HarryFlashman -> tobiastertius , 19 Dec 2019 08:38Now impeachment can be used whenever the roles are reversed and one party simply hates the president from the other party.
So it's ok to have half of the court made up of people who have stated from before he was elected they would impeach him, but wrong for him to have people in the court who are prepared to defend him?Lost_Keys , 19 Dec 2019 08:34You want a show trial in which only the prosecutors get to make their case?
This impeachment is at best a symbolic act of defiance with no consequences.Sithan , 19 Dec 2019 08:16At worst, it's a cynical ploy by establishment Dems to keeps Sanders and Warren tied up in pointless Senate hearings, making it difficult for them to campaign for the election, and giving Grandpa Joe an easy ride. Might Sound a bit tinfoil-hatty, but they'll do just about anything to prevent meaningful change.
That being said, I also don't believe in the strange notion that this has somehow handed Trump reelection. Why? The only people enraged by this are his cult, and they'll show up anyway.
Nahh... We Brazilians have additional reasons to celebrate Trump's Fake Impeachment because Dilma Rousseff was the victim of a Fake Impeachment sponsored by US Embassy in Brazil.PhilSophia , 19 Dec 2019 08:15
The self-destruction of the American political system sounds like music in my ears, as the motherfucker Americans helped a handful of bandits tear my vote. Fuck US very much.And now the poor Jair Bolsonaro is crying for his ass. Each politician mourns the loss of his protector through his hole that it misses him, as we all say in Brazil.
This will likely backfire. Regardless of the rights and wrongs.PaulieneM -> BaronVonAmericano , 19 Dec 2019 08:15
It will entrench most of his supporters and it will turn some waverers agains the Democrats.That's a different debate. And one in which everything is viewed trough a short term opportunistic myoptic lens. In some occasions that might be -accidentally - successful. But mostly short term opportunistic behaviour is strategically (long term) stupid.I agree that it was not very smart for Trump and later republicans to focus on the Biden/Ukraine episode :-). I remember this cartoon with the one person covered in lots and lots of spots pointing at another person who had just the one small spot while crying out: 'look: you have a spot'. Whatever you think about rich offspring getting into high end schools and getting board positions (not a fan): the problem is a lot bigger on the republican side.
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Dec 21, 2019 | discussion.theguardian.com
America is a write-off. It was a terrible idea from the beginning. An empire? Now? Really? Not learning anything from the history books, eh? Ye need an American Union, asap, before ye destroy us all.
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Dec 21, 2019 | www.theguardian.com
LibertarianLeaning -> Afraid of Americans , 19 Dec 2019 09:59
pfg2powell -> pfg2powell , 19 Dec 2019 09:58You people need to have stronger memory. Remember all the Iran-Contra criminals who illegally funded right wing terrorists? The guy who pardoned them all is our fucking Attorney General! Trumps presidency is a continuation of the right wing terrorist cabal going back to Reagan; guest starring several Bush regulars.
Yeah Obama fucked up, that doesn't make shit close to even. Obama would have had to kill thousands more people with drones to even come close to the bush/reagan death tolls.
Oh please. The Big O has far, far more blood on his hands than Rump (at least so far). Destroying Libya? Supplying munitions at Al-Qaeada in Syria? Overthrowing Yanukovich and kicking off the Ukrainian civil war? Greenlighting the Sauds genocidal war with Yemen?
Or are you going to insist on including Bush and Reagan in Trump's tally as they're Repug too. Then, it that case why don't we include Wilson (D), Truman (D), Johnson (D), and Clinton (D) In Obama's tally?
Your partisanship is showing, chum.
Trump wasn't impeached for 'alleged sexual assaults, deporting desperate migrants to their deaths, destroying the possibility of preventing catastrophic climate change, causing thousands of deaths by rescinding environmental rules and then covering up the human toll and escalating drone strikes and then hiding the civilian deaths' because as far as I know grounds 'impeachment' under the constitution must be based on misuse of office.TheRedBadboy -> AndreiK , 19 Dec 2019 09:58The point raised by Robinson, however valid, are political. And impeachment is not supposed to be political.
NB As has been pointed out elsewhere impeachment will set a precedent: in the 240 odd years since the US has had a president, only three have been impeached, two in the last 20 years.
You can bet your bottom dollar that the next Democrat president will have everything he/she says or does under scrutiny 24/7 by the Republicans to find grounds for impeachment.
"In the eyes of the majority of the electorate, Democrats have zero moral authority to pursue this impeachment"AndreiK -> badbeard , 19 Dec 2019 09:58And on what evidence do you make this risibly and self-evidently false assertion? The authority of the House Democrats lies in the votes of the Electorate that turned out the Republicans and gave the Democrats the majority.
The only candidate with a realistic chance of winning the nomination that seemed to be following the lead and not going impeachment crazy is Bernie Sanders.And I understand what you are saying, but I do disagree with your last two paragraphs. Especially with respect to shoring up the democratic vote. The times are changing and long term allegiances are shifting. Democrats have to attract Trump voters in key battleground states to win. This impeachment process is massively damaging to that in my opinion.
But look, time will tell come next election. What we know for sure is that Trump will be contesting it.
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Dec 21, 2019 | www.theguardian.com
Trump, who was due to arrive at his private Palm Beach resort late Friday, has been looking forward to a trial in the friendlier Republican-controlled Senate and is riled up about the delay, according to Senator Lindsey Graham.
“He’s mad as hell that they would do this to him and now deny him his day in court,” Graham told Fox News Channel after meeting with Trump at the White House on Thursday night.
McConnell has all but promised an easy acquittal of the president. He appears to have united Republicans behind an approach that would begin the trial with presentations and arguments, lasting perhaps two weeks, before he tries drawing the proceedings to a close. The Senate will reconvene 3 January.
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Dec 21, 2019 | off-guardian.org
Capricornia Man ,
lundiel (and Seamus) have it right.
The Blairites foisted the U-turn on Brexit onto the party when most of the seats it held in the old parliament, and most of the seats it needed to win, voted leave. Now the Blairites are hypocritically blaming Corbyn for the result of their own policy. The election loss was exactly what they wanted: Corbyn out of the way and Britain 'safe' for neo-liberalism.
BigB ,
31 mn people voted to extend the consensual mandate of the neoliberal capitalist state to globally expand, extract and expropriate planetary wealth for themselves. Unconsciously: without any consideration of the consequences. Now, nearly 11 mn of them want to pretend they were duped into this because two films did not get released? Can there be a more deluded abdication of self-responsibility? Without any inherent maturity at all: it's hard to see where UK politic goes from here? What is the deepest spot a mile below the nadir? The 'People's Government' of Boris Johnson we co-constituted the reality of last week?
The election was for a successor capitalist imperialist state: the capitalist imperialist state was duly elected. No one – no one – can then abdicate responsibility to say it was the "wrong capitalist state". If people do not like this process – and it is the most debilitating, dehumanising, and destructive of all processes – then it is their social responsibility to at least explore the possibility of finding another process. In the co-creation of superior/inferior status and co-determination of the master/slave dialectic – we volunteer to choose position of the inferior and the enslaved. Then spend the consensual contract term complaining about the subordinant class politics we voted for. Projecting blame scattergun everywhere but where the blame is due: with the voters and endorsers of globalised neoliberal capitalism.
Is no one else getting bored of this? Not just the embarassment of excuses we can find for our own self-inferiorisation and voluntary infantalisation: but the fact that no one will make a positive assessment of how to break this vortex cycle of self-defeatism and performative powerlessness so we never have to go through the same charade again? Which, no doubt we will in five years time. Unless we take it on the chin: and fess up to what we have created as a social reality the Trump/Johnson axis of world power.
If this below and beyond the low point cannot act as a bifurcation point – whereby we totally reject the state electoral inferiorisation process – I do not know what can. It is unlikely there will be much left to reclaim in five years: much less so in ten. If we cannot claim humanity and ecology back from neoliberal globalisation in the next few years well, it ain't going to be pretty.
A good starting point would be to admit the corruption of the entire state electoral process of inferiorisation: and take co-responsibility for our part in the election of Johnson. Then the avowal never to do it again and take the legislative and judicial power we abdicated back. Which is the socially responsible alternative to the drawnout emetic debrief that seems to be favoured.
GEOFF ,
Great point BigB I think you're wasting your time they don't care what happens here so long as they're out of the EU that is all that matters to them. I'm so happy I don't have any grandchildren, although I fear for those that have, so sad all done in the name of getting our country back, I wonder how they will feel if farage gets some kind of peerage, you know the one that has been fighting the elites, and celebrating his birthday at the Ritz owned by those two socially aware brothers barclay , ha ha ha ha .smelly ,
We have the very few, the few, and the serfs. The politics of the world is driven by the Economics of the very few. The very few have created for themselves a feudal system, its informal, its hidden, but its highly functional and it accounts in large measure for the global atrocities.The chiefs (a very few) distribute to the feudal lords(the few) in a variety of ways.
1. direct government contracts
2. privatize the assets and government services that remain after regime change or infra structure destruction of economic value from regime sex corrupted, blackmailed, regime changed or defeated nation states and or from sweetheart deals in corporate takeovers.
3. appointment to and assignment to intelligence, or high level diplomatic positions in defeated entities.
4. promotion to USA congress or the USA presidency or to a high level corporate job.
5. control of access of the goy to education, entry level jobs leading to the knowledge to be promoted, to bank loans, to houses in neighborhoods, to medical care, and to a massive variety of other things. They are all in on it together.
6. many othersThe tools of the trade are coercion by any means available to include sex, blackmail, spy technology, war machinery, military, intelligence, private armies, dark money and money laundering operations to name but a few.
Dependency : it is
This is no longer a problem bounded by one nation, it has become a problem important to the liberties and freedoms and the station of status of person in the society, membership in clubs, obtaining credentials to be eligible for licenses (law, medicine, home building, contracting, service provider, and everything else). License is a huge gate used to keep the GoyaWhat Bexit has shown is that there is not a bit of difference between those governed by any of the nation governments of any kind(they are controlled by the same few), we are just the Goy or as Hilary Clinton puts it: the deplorables. No longer should we look at ourselves as citizens of Britain, or Citizens of the United States, or citizens of France, or citizens of Saudi Arabia, or citizens of Israel, or citizens of Libya, or whatever, we must recognize that it is the many vs the few . from here on out. We must not identify and expose all of the ways nation state leaders use or allows others to use information to control our behaviors and to dictate our rights.
We must help each other no matter or sex, language, religion or nationality because they have made us all one, but trying to control our lives from birth to death and by trying to use us, at our expense, for their purposes.
MASTER OF UNIVE ,
Professor Emeritus Vilfredo Pareto outlined the empirical skew of wealth transfer for 'the few' as a function of culture whereby all have the same or similar wealth distribution. Post-Lehman evidenced the wholesale destruction that empirical skew manifested on the Western Banking System & concomitant ruling oiligopoly.Empirically, the Western Fractional Reserve Banking System has crashed outright to reveal
even greater skew after all the M&A post-Lehman debacle. In terms of wealth distribution we are now in what Professor Emeritus Minsky characterized as Late Stage Ponzi Capitalism. Amazon & Bezos are transnational, leveraged like a Hedge Fund, and a monopoly that was legislated against during the 30s in the USA.Today, in contemporary totalitarian society we are fed a daily diet of pseudoscience & half-baked so-called 'truths' that serve to mask the lies & falsehood.
What is evidently true today is that the empirical skew of wealth has become a matter of superstructural fault where the tectonic plates of sovereign nations are bound to give us all degrees of continental shift in contradistinction to the empirical skew of wealth transfer which is by no means immoveable.
Like gravity, what goes up must come down. Wealth hoarding sub-groups of elite will have nowhere to hide when the avalanche cascades on top of them without notice before hand.
Six Sigma extinction level events exist for all empirical distributions given the right conditions.
MOU
BigB ,
The other problem with 'the Few' analysis I have been trying to highlight is that we are in it the Few that is. In terms of per capita mass aggregate consumption/pollution rates – 93% of us in the UK are in 'the Few'. Which holds for a rough Pareto Principle (80/20): we are among the top 20% of consumers responsible for 70% of the lifestyle consumption emissions [Anderson; LabourGND; Oxfam]. Which amounts to 28,000 tonnes per capita of aggregate material flows: against a global average of 7,000 tonnes [Hickel]. In global consumption/pollution terms: we are among the "wealth hoarding sub-groups of [the] elite" of the mass material consumption bourgeoisie.There are unfair distributions: and inequitable distributions between the haute bourgeoisie and we in the bourgeoisie. But the greatest inequitable maldistribution is North to South: where the poorest 50% of the global population are limited – by being resource cursed and having to subsidise us – to 10% of lifestyle consumption emissions. If you can call it a lifestyle; a consumer lifestyle; or a profligate pollution problem which is doubtful? And it current rates of wealth redistribution: it will be 200-900 years before they are out of poverty.
As for 'wealth hoarding sub-groups': we in the UK voted to extend the amount of mass material material aggregate demand. Which is complex: because UK rates have been falling but only because of the service economy. Rates of industrialisation and resource extractivism are effectively exported. Global demand rises: and so must global supply. Our consumption fetishism is driving global capitalism. Not solely: the whole of the developed world is.
It is this material economy that acts as a baseline – of sorts – for the overfinancialised derivative, arbitrage, and highly leveraged stocks, bonds, and equities and any other exotic financial instruments that can be gambled on. A market that is roughly 75 times the size of the material 'real' productive economy. The market that is likely being subsidised by the repo- and other 'not QE' hypertrophic liquidity supplements. The market that is going to collapse when the anabolic steroid effect fails to maintain exponential growth. Professor Minsky will have his moment!
Whereupon the UK will quickly realise that it is a pissling little island in a sea of globalisation. With an 80% tertiarised service economy. Servicing an extinct financial market economy. With failing services and no food coming in from abroad. Or medicines. Or water purification products. And possibly no energy. But we will have 60,000 military and paramilitary police to uphold the private property rights of the haute bourgeoisie.
Maybe then we will see and feel what it is like for the rest of the world? Who we have only ever viewed as subsidisers of our wealth? Just as we subsidise the wealth of those we choose to be subordinate to. It's a shitty, shitty, system which the UK has done not too badly out of. Well, enough for us to never look from the outside in through the eyes of a Frantz Fannon: and try to change the system for a globally more equitable system free from our white privileged ethnosupremacist racism.
We got the government we deserved – and voted for. And we await the fate of collapse we deserve – and voted for. As John Michael Greer said: the UK is rushing to collapse early to avoid the disappointment in the rush. We live in a complete fantasy bubble of a post-Empire state of mind. As if other – dehumanised foreign – people and the holistic integrity of the biosphere did not exist. Well, thanks to our lifestyle choices, they may not for much longer. But the only thing that has perturbed our reserved compassion and indifferent inhumanity is our election of a Johnson government. Well, that is an indignity! But not even a fraction of an indignity that we are quite happy to violently impose on the rest of the world. But let us pretend and console ourselves it would have been a utopia if they had not held back those films.
Dungroanin ,
"We don't have to join too many dots to see why a discussion about Wikileaks, war crimes in Iraq, and OPCW crimes in Syria was something the Tories didn't need,"They also didn't need the Intelligence report of 'Russian' influence in their party and government; the direct threat made by Pompeo to stop Labour, the deal which they have been negotiating with the US which confirms the NHS is part of it amongst many other things – as was confirmed by their Ambassador Woody (Of Johnson&Johnson fame who stand to benefit hughy) ;the dangerous levels of capacity in the NHS; etc etc etc.
Anyway the Graun is claiming to run a ask us a question about the election now on their blog – I've asked mine but am not holding my breath for an answer.
tonyopmoc ,
David Macilwain usually writes far better than this. In fact 90% of this, is the same sort of nonsense, he has apparently been brainwashed with, by reading the Guardian et al.He displays his own ignorance and arrogance, by yet again telling over 50% of The British voting public that we didn't know what we were voting for re Brexit.
"not least because only 30% of that public actually voted for Brexit, and did so in complete ignorance of what it might mean and because of their own long-standing prejudices."
He analysed Skripal very well. This is total crap.
Tony
JudyJ ,
As soon as UK based Russian oligarchs are mentioned the presumption of many – encouraged by Western media – is that they must be 'friends' of Putin or have 'close connections' to him. In fact, in respect of most of them, it is exactly the opposite. They are based in London precisely because the UK establishment doesn't clamp down on tax dodging and corrupt business dealings as Putin has done since the beginning of his Presidential tenures. Corrupt business owners donations to parties in power? Hmm, I wonder why it is that they are given every encouragement and incentive to settle in London undisturbed?https://consortiumnews.com/2018/02/06/understanding-russia-un-demonizing-putin/
Tallis Marsh ,
This article is wrong to imply/assume that Brexiters/Lexiters didn't know what they were voting for. Wrong to suggest/assume we did/do not have a strategy to try to help leave the EU. Wrong to assume we are racist and/or stupid. Of course there are a few exceptions but on the whole people know the score and we love the individual, distinct European countries; we just despise the imperial, uber-technocratic, ultimately anti-democratic superstate that is the EU.See UK Column & similar websites, and the archive of Tony Benn/Barbara Castle/Peter Shore/Bob Crow (on the reasons for disliking the EEC/EU/Maastrict & Lisbon Treaties etc) for why so many people voted to leave the EU. I reckon when the options on who to vote for were purposely limited by the LP (in the last few months after JC was forced to go along with the PLP) and TBP (after Farage made a deal with Trump/Boris) many Brexiters (and a few Lexiters?) were forced to vote for the Tories to give a message to the establishment? I am guessing they thought the election would result in a hung parliament with the tories having to ally with the DUP again.
Imo – I have a strong suspicion that the real result was a very close result (hung parliament) and that the establishment using the secret services helped in some way to engineer this landslide result (probably through postal ballot rigging). On the day of the election many people observed and commented on the huge queues in the poll stations and seeing so many young people voting like never before (including many photos on social media). The result does not seem plausible and the status quo has/had so much to lose.
Incidentally, and this is obviously anecdotal but in my household (and as far as I know) all my friends voted Labour or stayed at home (we are mostly Lexiters, don't-knows, and a couple Brexiters) and only know quite well of two openlyTory voters (at my partners' workplace). On the other hand, I do know my local area (which has been impoverished since the Thatcher years) is a heavy leave-voting area and I reckon most people here lend their vote to Tories for strategic reasons (I know a neighbour who wants the Tories to 'own' Brexit knowing full well they will renege on all their promises and not just the Brexit promise – they think Boris is a fake and wants to BRINO or, ultimately, even to remain).
I can only state what I observe and hear around me, and what I saw on social media during the election, but I do know people are so much more informed than the establishment/media would like to admit.
Francis Lee ,
I was shocked, yes shocked, to see the type sentiments espoused below."No-one could seriously believe that Brexit is something the ruling elite has pursued because it respects the so-called democratic will of the British public – not least because only 30% of that public actually voted for Brexit, and did so in complete ignorance of what it might mean and because of their own long-standing prejudices.
That could have come from the mouth Jo Swinson, the Economist, the Guardian or any other ultra-remainer rag.
It gets better, or worse depending on your point of view.
"Had the Government not had an interest in restructuring its relationship with the US and NATO, and seen political and economic gains – well illustrated by the jump in the value of Sterling following the result – then the idea of Brexit would just have quietly died away."
Yep, it's those damn proles who voted for Brexit again and "did so in complete ignorance of what that might mean and because of their own long-standing predudices." But of course! Time to rethink the idea of universal suffrage perhaps. Actually those sort of sentiments (see above) are precisely why Labour lost the election so heavily.
The point seems to be missed that euroland is an occupied zone and has been zone since 1945 – it is a neoliberal juggernaut and junior partner in the geopolitical global order. In addition it is the civilian wing of NATO, another American construction. It is based upon a core-periphery economic structure and upon a currency which locks its members into a neoliberal straight-jacket, and since they cannot devalue the core runs up trade surpluses whilst to periphery runs up permanent trade deficits. The euro currency is designed to do precisely this. Moreover the Stability and growth pact robs states of their ability to have an independent foreign and economic policy. The eastern and southern peripheries are little more than colonies. Printing their own currencies – God forbid – is strictly verboten, so that they cannot and will not recover. Taking Italy 137% of debt-to-gdp ratio and Greece with a staggering 181% of debt-to-gdp you will get a pretty good picture of what is happening in Euroland.
It really don't know why I have to explain all of this, particularly in light of the fact that Corbyn himself has always been a eurosceptic, along with other notables such as Benn (Sr.) Bryan Gould, Peter Shore and Barbara Castle, that was a unlike the present time when Labour was Labour.
I think the Labour party has now gone to far to reverse course; it has become an anachronism, and a neo-Blairite – ultra-remainer – is party now taking shape.
GEOFF ,
I've no idea why you keep going on about the EU , you got your way, we're leaving forget it, lets see how good it's going to be in this shithole without some protection from the EU , why do none of you address that, the slob has already started with his refusal to include workers rights, the fat slob says we can have better employment protection once we leave ha ha ha ha ha ha whats been stopping him from doing it for the last 40 years ? nothing. everyone is entitled to their view obviously and I respect it, but you just shut us out as if your opinion is all that matters, I would suggest 80% of those that voted leave know absolutely nothing about the EU, I arrive at that by talking incessantly to people, who think they're clued up and when you start pointing faults with their argument, you get the usual ' hey mate I've only come in for a pint'Francis Lee ,
"Share On Twitter" target="_blank" href="https://twitter.com/intent/tweet?text=But+we+haven%26%238217%3Bt+left+it.+And+there+is+g...+&url=https%3A%2F%2Foff-guardian.org%2F2019%2F12%2F20%2Fofficial-secrets-lies-and-the-five-eyes%2F%23comment-107077">
But we haven't left it. And there is good reason to suppose that we never will. A BRINO is being cooked up by a coalition of the usual suspects whose object is to end the existence of the UK as an independent nation state and turn it into a province of a European super-state. We will be voting – if at all – in the equivalent of local government or council elections with decisions, with economic and geopolitical issues being decided by non-elected technicians and bureaucrats.Democracy is only meaningful at the national level. Democracy and Empire (the EU) or should I say the EUSA, do not mix. Even Thucydides knew this.
GEOFF ,
But that happens here without the EU there are two pricks zac goldsmith and morgan, both been rejected by the electorate , both been given a place in the H.O.L £305 a day , totally unelcted but there to make our laws and you still won't see i twill youCassandra2 ,
Very much agree, I don't trust Boris to effect a clean break.I generally trust my instincts like most normal plebs, but since the Lisbon Treaty Europe has consolidate Federalisation, far removed from the original concept and principles of a Common Market and my instincts prompted a closer look.
Delving deeper, an easy process given internet access, one discovers a cesspit of deception. European Union is in reality the successor to the (totalitarian) Third Reich. Refer to Christopher Story's YouTube 3 part lecture on the subject. EU was planned in 1942 by a German social elite hierarchy in the likely event of Hitlers defeat. Key members of this hierarchy were transferred (operation paperclip) to USA at the end of the war and were integrated into a form of 5th column governing elite (power behind Deep State) who have since 1946 systematically hollowed the out the USA by undermining it's production base (excluding military hardware production) and displacing economic investment through reckless speculation/manipulation and perpetual global warfare.
Other than filling the Elites multi-trillion banking chest USA's resources and manpower (Military & Intelligence) have been utilised to construct a global platform for imposing a 'New World Order'. Europe's homogenization simply forms an essential part of this ambition.
Given a cursory (pleb) assessment of Europe's widespread corruption, undemocratic structure and it's true strategic purpose I cannot help but feel that those who voted 'remain' have had their critical faculties effectively lobotomized by Elite owned State MASS INDOCTRINATION i.e. BBC et al.
MASTER OF UNIVE ,
Goldman Sachs engineered the entire EU finance by first fudging the books on Greece. The whole edifice was built upon a shifting substrate of sand.Castles made of sand float into the sea, eventually. Jimi Hendrix Axis Bold as Love
MOU
Francis Lee ,
"NOBODY voted for a HARD brexit onto WTO rules and the country should have been asked very specifically if that is what the mythical 17 Million wanted."'Nobody voted for a hard -Brexit.' Really!
How come you are privy to this "information?" It would be amusing to see you trying to substantiate this statement.
And as for the 'mythical 17 million' (17.2 million actually) 'well, yes that must have been a mirage; it didn't happen.
Strange times in which we live when conjecture is treated as if it were fact. Yep, that is one of the hallmarks of the totalitarian mindset. In his marvellous essay, 'Notes on Nationalism' Orwell captures this frame of mind perfectly. He writes:
"By 'nationalism' I mean first of all the habit of assuming that human beings can be classified like insects and that whole blocks of millions or tens of millions of people' (Leave voters by any chance?) "can be labelled 'good' or 'bad' But secondly (and this is much more important) I mean the habit of identifying oneself with a particular nation, political party, religious group or even football team, placing it beyond good and evil and recognising no other duty than that of advancing its interests" (Remainers perhaps?)
Moreover, "although endlessly brooding on power, victory, defeat or revenge, the nationalist is somewhat uninterested in what happens in the real world. What he wants is to feel that his own unit is getting the better of some other unit, and he can more easily do this off an adversary than by examining the facts to see whether or not they support his views Arguments with his adversaries are always inconclusive since each of the contestants believe themselves always right and always winning the victory (in the sight of God anyway).
Some of the true believers are not far from clinical schizophrenia, living quite happily amid dreams of power and conquest which have no connexion with the physical world."
Sadly true.
Dungroanin ,
WE will NOT let YOU forget the VoteLEAVE bs. Paul & co.
Here is Vote Leave NOT saying we are going onto WTO rules:'The day after nothing changes legally. There is no legal obligation on the British Government to take Britain out of the EU immediately. There will be three stages of creating a new UK-EU deal – informal negotiations, formal negotiations, and implementation including both a new Treaty and domestic legal changes. There is no need to rush. We must take our time and get it right.
WHAT'S THE OVERALL FRAMEWORK WE NEED?
Overall, the negotiations will create a new European institutional architecture that enables all countries, whether in or out of the EU or euro, to trade freely and cooperate in a friendly way. In particular, we will negotiate a UK-EU Treaty that enables us 1) to continue cooperating in many areas just as now (e.g. maritime surveillance), 2) to deepen cooperation in some areas (e.g. scientific collaborations and counter-terrorism), and 3) to continue free trade with minimal bureaucracy. The details will have to await a serious negotiation but there are many agreements between the EU and other countries that already solve these problems so we will be able to take a lot 'off the shelf'.'
Etc.
http://www.voteleavetakecontrol.org/briefing_newdeal.htmlAND HERE IS FACT CHECK
'As far as we've seen, Leave campaigners hardly mentioned the customs union in explicit terms at all, so there was generally little clarity about what leaving might mean in that regard.'
&
'There are also examples of leave campaigners claiming the UK could adopt a position similar to Norway -- which is still part of the single market while not being an EU member.Arron Banks, a founder of the Leave.EU campaign tweeted in November 2015 "Increasingly the Norway option looks the best for the UK".'
And so on – NO FULL HARD BREXIT
https://fullfact.org/europe/what-was-promised-about-customs-union-referendum/Now Paul& co show us where the HARD brexit was part of the Leave campaign.
Well observed David, thank you. I have already lobbied my new Tory MP with relevant articles and have a meeting scheduled with him early in the New Year to push for Julian's release and freedom. I am appalled at how our supposed freedom-loving society has been corrupted beyond measure by manipulative 'deep state' actors. http://www.ronpaulinstitute.org/archives/peace-and-prosperity/2019/december/12/edward-snowden-speaks-out-for-julian-assange-and-chelsea-manning/Furthermore, I remain confused about what the globalists actually want apart from their final goal of New World Order global government, global currency (probably now being crypto) and removing the use of cash entirely.
https://www.zerohedge.com/geopolitical/who-are-globalists-and-what-do-they-wantThis article has clarified the main targets for the globalists but where do you think Brexit stands in their agenda, do they want out of the EU or not? I am confused which side is in favour of freedom and liberty and which one wants global centralised command and control.
Long ago John Perkins exposed the elites' nefarious agendas with 'Confessions of an Economic Hitman': https://johnperkins.org/ and the book is well worth reading:
https://www.amazon.co.uk/New-Confessions-Economic-Hit-Man/dp/1785033859/ref=sr_1_1?adgrpid=57307986950&gclid=EAIaIQobChMI34Dt8tzD5gIVC7DtCh3pXgnREAAYASAAEgJ7cvD_BwE&hvadid=259102724630&hvdev=c&hvlocphy=1007152&hvnetw=g&hvpos=1t1&hvqmt=e&hvrand=9838918690422858993&hvtargid=kwd-295426377502&hydadcr=24461_1816157&keywords=confessions+of+an+economic+hitman&qid=1576827695&sr=8-1And my own book: 'The Financial Jigsaw' (due to publish in Q1 2020) exposes the globalists' financial agenda extant today.
A free PDF of my manuscript is available on request to: [email protected]
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Dec 21, 2019 | discussion.theguardian.com
Reading the comments, my thought is:rottenboro , 19 Dec 2019 08:15"American 'exceptionalism'? Don't make me fucking laugh."
Look at this way, the Democratic Party had two terms in office, under Obama,in order to deliver a 'New Deal'. It turned out,they were selling Snake Oil, life got no easier for ordinary Americans, particularly those of colour.Justlyjohn -> cmouse , 19 Dec 2019 08:09So, the poor decided to give the Republicans a try, cutting out the middle men of the democratic party. Now,in order to get back into power, the neoliberal Left are breaking Trump's legs and the cycle will start all over again, with so much time and money that could have been used to help those who need it, going to the politicians and lawyers who run the charade.
The rich will get richer and the ears of the suckers who vote will bleed from listening to all the bullshit.
Well, calling out the democrats for these. Things is not really a problem rather the depressing truth. With clown shows like Nader and Schiff on display its not hard for voters to conclude that the Democratic Party has become haters, undemocratic, not believers in rules of evidence or due process, all foundations of American justice.third_eye , 19 Dec 2019 07:49In other words anti-American. Turning their so called investigation into the Schiff show has confirmed what most Americans have come to understand, democrats are not fit to lead the country, and will not after this next November.
When justice is muddied by the vengeance of politics there is little surety of integrity for the common citizen believe in. When fighting each other in the name of the people becomes an obsessive intent to hurt but not to serve, there is little foundation left for the common man to be believe in.LynchBlob , 19 Dec 2019 07:37Whilst perfection was never sought nor expected of those who were chosen by the people to represent their hopes and wishes, the boundaries of common sense and commonwealth must never be breached. The war which rages on in Washington is one which represents little, if anything, of or for the people. In truth, regardless of Trump's fate, the theatre of narrow political dreams go on, in the name of the people.
Since Trump stepped into office the Democrats were looking for something that would make him impeachable. The deep state delivered them Russiagate, the claim that Trump 'colluded' with the Russian government, by taking seriously an obvious fake dossier the Clinton campaign had ordered and paid for. FBI agents who hated Trump even faked FISA court certification submissions to be able to spy on the Trump campaign. They found nothing that supported the 'collusion' claims.BaronVonAmericano , 19 Dec 2019 07:19The FISA court is not amused about that:
"The frequency with which representations made by FBI personnel turned out to be unsupported or contradicted by information in their possession, and with which they withheld information detrimental to their case, calls into question whether information contained in other FBI applications is reliable," Judge Rosemary Collyer wrote in an order published Tuesday.
The Dems would have been.better off just coming up with some better more appealing policies but here's the rub, they haven't and that's because they can't, their agenda is one of stay tje same, no change, keep the status quo, forever wars and printing money and just hope it all gos away. Instead of hope we've got horseshit.
This article is spot on. Impeachment probably persuaded only a tiny number of vacillating voters, sidelined Trump's worst crimes, and rallied his base. Meanwhile, as the author states, the public is no closer to knowing what the Dems stand for -- another downside in their election chances.BertieBallcock -> Glitchd , 19 Dec 2019 07:19There has never been a president in my lifetime at least that has been so put under the spotlight as Trump. Literally under investigation since the day he took office and yet the best they have is a highly disputed telephone conversation. Meanwhile Biden is there on video in all his glory boasting about using US aid to force behaviour that suited him.axis45 -> ArturoRosales , 19 Dec 2019 07:19
Trump will be aquitted and the Democrats will suffer for their desperation.you seem to be suffering from the delusion that actual policies and beliefs are being fought over by two opposing sides,its a pathetic sideshow between two almost identical parties with identical policies and the same paymasters,the outcome of this farce is utterly meaningless to the ordinary citizen.
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Dec 21, 2019 | www.theguardian.com
On Tuesday, Donald Trump showed that it is not only through the spoken word or his Twitter account that he is able to raise eyebrows, when he sent an angry and frequently bizarre letter to House speaker Nancy Pelosi .
The six-page missive was remarkable for a number of reasons, not least for Trump's claim he has been subjected to worse treatment than that endured by people accused of witchcraft in the 17th century.
Here are five highlights, or otherwise, from Trump's dispatch. 1) 'More due process was afforded to those accused in the Salem Witch Trials.'
Fourteen women and five men were hanged in colonial Massachusetts the late 1690s, for supposedly engaging in witchcraft. "Spectral evidence" was admissible in the trials – evidence where a witness had a dream, or apparition, which featured the alleged witch engaged in dark deeds. Spectral evidence is yet to feature in Trump's impeachment hearings.
2) 'You [Nancy Pelosi] are offending Americans of faith by continually saying: "I pray for the president," when you know this statement is not true, unless it is meant in a negative sense. It is a terrible thing you are doing, but you will have to live with it, not I!'Nancy Pelosi has repeatedly said she prays for Donald Trump. In October, the House speaker said she was praying for his "health", after Trump had what she described as a "meltdown" during a meeting with Democratic leaders. It's not the first time she has claimed to be appealing to a higher power on Trump's behalf. It seems Trump doesn't like it. Or believe it.
3) 'There are not many people who could have taken the punishment inflicted during this period of time, and yet done so much for the success of America and its citizens.'Trump's claims that he alone could withstand such rough treatment from his opponents rather fall down here – located as they are in a six-page ode to self-pity.
4) 'You view democracy as your enemy!'This exclamation comes midway through the letter, after Trump claims the Democrats have developed "Trump Derangement Syndrome". Trump is not confident of the odds Democrats will recover from the malady: "You will never get over it!" he writes.
5) 'I write this letter to you for the purpose of history and to put my thoughts on a permanent and indelible record. 100 years from now, when people look back at this affair, I want them to understand it, and learn from it, so that it can never happen to another president again.'There's a slightly self-satisfied air to the final paragraph of the letter, as if Trump feels he has delivered a piece of soaring oratory which will be pored over by scholars in years to come. At least here, in a sense, Trump is correct. People are unlikely to forget "this affair" – his presidency – for a long, long time and historians of the future will certainly examine this letter: just perhaps not in the way Trump would want them to.
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Dec 21, 2019 | discussion.theguardian.com
Truthdotcom -> Upjors , 19 Dec 2019 08:59
But it was totally partisan based what constitutional scholar Jonathan Turley called "non-crimes". Trump would wear such as badge of honour--in the sense he was attacked non-stop by what he calls "The Deep State" and survived.He would also claim that the elitist bureaucracy in Washington tried to destroy a President who was for "We the People"--whom the elitist classes call "deplorables" and whom can even be smelt at Walmart.
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Apr 23, 2019 | off-guardian.org
As a history student years ago I remember our teacher explaining how past events are linked to what happens in the future. He told us human behaviour always dictates that events will repeat in a similar way as before. I remember we studied 20th century history and discussed World War I and the links to World War II. At this time, we were in the middle of the Cold War and in unchartered waters and I couldn't really link past events to what was likely to happen next. Back then I guess like many I considered US presidents more as statesman. They talked tough on the Soviet Union but they talked peace too. So, the threat to humanity was very different then to now. Dangerous but perhaps a stable kind of dangerous. After the break up of the Soviet Union we then went through a phase of disorderly change in the world. In the early 1990s the war in the Former Yugoslavia erupted and spread from republic to republic. Up until the mid-to-late nineties I didn't necessarily sense that NATO and the West were the new threat to humanity. While there was a clear bias to events in Yugoslavia there was still some even-handedness or fairness. Or so I thought. This all changed in 1999 with the war in Kosovo. For the first time I witnessed shocking images of civilian targets being bombed, TV stations, trains, bridges and so on. But my wake-up call was the daily NATO briefings on the war. The NATO spokesman boasted of hundreds of Serbian tanks being destroyed. There was something new and disturbing about his manner, language and tone, something I'd not encountered from coverage of previous conflicts. For the first time I found myself not believing one word of the narrative.
When the peace agreement was reached, out of 300 Serbian tanks which had entered Kosovo at the start of the conflict, over 285 were counted going back into Serbia proper which was confirmation he had been lying .
From this conflict onwards I started to see clear parallels with events of the past and some striking similarities with the lead up to previous world wars. This all hit home when observing events in Syria and more recently Venezuala. But looking around seeing people absorbed in their phones you wouldn't think the world is on the brink of war. For most of us with little time to watch world events there are distractions which have obscured the picture historians and geopolitical experts see more clearly.
Recent and current western leaders haven't been short people in military uniform shouting. That would be far too obvious. It's still military conflict and mass murder but in smart suits with liberal sound-bites and high-fives. Then the uncool, uncouth conservative Trump came along and muddied the waters.
Briefly it seemed there might be hope that these wars would stop. But there can be little doubt he's been put under pressure to comply with the regime change culture embedded in the Deep State. Today, through their incendiary language we see US leaders morphing into the open style dictators of the past. The only thing missing are the military uniforms and hats.
Every US military action and ultimatum to a foreign state has been aggressively pushed by the losing Democrats and particularly 'liberal' mainstream media, any dissent met with smears, censorship or worse. I would argue that today similarities with events leading up to previous global conflicts are too striking and numerous to ignore.
Let's look at some of these:
1) Military build up, alliances and proxy wars – for all the chaos and mass murder pursued by the Obama Administration he did achieve limited successes in signing agreements with Iran and Cuba. But rather than reverse the endless wars as promised Trump cancels the agreements leaving the grand sum of zilch foreign policy achievements. NATO has been around for 70 years, but in the last 20 or so has become obsessed with military build up. Nowadays it has hundreds of bases around the world but keeps destablising non-aligned states, partly to isolate Russia and China. And Syria sums up the dangers of the regime change model used today. With over a dozen states involved in the proxy war there is a still high risk of conflict breaking out between US and Russia. The motives for military build up are many. First there are powerful people in the arms industry and media who benefit financially from perpetual war. The US while powerful in military terms are a declining power which will continue, new powers emerging. The only return on their money they can see is through military build up. Also there are many in government, intelligence services and media who can see that if the current order continues to crumble they are likely to be prosecuted for various crimes. All this explains the threatening language and the doubling-down on those who challenge them. In 1914, Europe had two backward thinking military alliance blocks and Sarajevo showed how one event could trigger an unstoppable escalation dragging in many states. And empires such as Austro-Hungary were crumbling from within as they are now. So a similar mentality prevails today where the powerful in these empires under threat favour conflict to peace. For these individuals it's a last throw of the dice and a gamble with all our lives.
2) Israel and its US relationship – I think Syria is where global conflict is still likely to start. As Syria has been winning, the involvement of Turkey and Saudi Arabia appears to receding. More recently Israel have taken their place and is relentless and unyielding and has its own wider, destructive plans for the Middle East. Israeli influence in the US is now so great that the US has more or less ceded its foreign policy in the Middle East to Israel. In 1914 Austro-Hungary pursued a series of impossible demands against Serbia managing to drag its close and more powerful ally Germany (led by someone equally as obstinate and militaristic as the US leadership) into World War I. Incidentally, some readers may have noticed the similarity between the 1914 diktats and modern-day US bullying towards Venezuala and other states – and perhaps most striking, by Saudi Arabia in its dispute with Qatar not long ago .
3) Ideology, paranoia and unstable leaders – history tells us that ideology, paranoia and power are not a good mix and this is in abundance in western elites and media. These establishments are rabidly hostile to Iran and Russia. In addition we face a situation of highly unpredictable, ideological regional leaders in Turkey, Saudi Arabia and Israel. Most worrying of all, the language, threats and actions of Trump, Pompeo and Bolton suggests there are psychopathic tendencies in play. Behind this is a Deep State and Democrat Party pushing even harder for conflict. The level of paranoia is discouraging any notion of peace. 30 years ago Russia and US would sit down at a summit and reach a consensus. Today a US leader or diplomat seen talking to a Russian official is accused of collusion. When there are limited channels to talk in a crisis, you know we are in trouble. In Germany in the 1930s, ideology, propaganda and creating enemies were key in getting the population on side for war. The leaders within the Nazi clique, Hitler, Goring and Himmler look disturbingly similar to the Trump, Pompeo, Bolton line up.
4) Media deception and propaganda – The media have been responsible for getting us to where we are today. Without them, the public would have woken up long ago. Much of the deception has been about the presentation of the narrative and the leaders. And it's been a campaign of distraction on our news where the daily genocide in Yemen gives way to sensationalised non-events and celebrity trivia. The terms and words; regime change, mass murder and terrorist have all been substituted by the media with 'humanitarian intervention', 'limited airstrikes' and 'moderate rebels' to fool a distracted public that the victims of the aggression are the bad guys. Western funded 'fact checking' sites such as Bellingcat have appeared pushing the misdirections to a surreal new level. Obama was portayed in the media as a cool guy and a little 'soft' on foreign policy. This despite the carnage in Libya, Syria and his drones. Sentiments of equal rights and diversity fill the home affairs sections in the liberal press, while callous indifference and ethno-centrism towards the Middle East and Russia dominate foreign affairs pages. In the press generally, BREXIT, non-existent anti-Semitism and nonsense about the 'ISIS bride' continues unabated. This media circus seeks to distract from important matters, using these topics to create pointless divisions, causing hostility towards Muslims and Jews in the process. The majority of a distracted public have still not twigged largely because the propaganda is more subtle nowadays and presented under a false humanitarian cloak. A small but vocal group of experts and journalists challenging these narratives are regularly smeared as Putin or Assad "apologists" . UK journalists are regularly caught out lying and some long standing hoaxes such as Russiagate exposed. Following this and Iraq WMDs more people are starting to see a pattern here. Yet each time the media in the belief they've bamboozled enough move on to the next big lie. This a sign of a controlled media which has reached the point of being unaccountable and untouchable, deeply embedded within the establishment apparatus. In the lead up to World War II the Nazis ran an effective media propaganda campaign which indoctrinated the population. The media in Germany also reached the point their blindingly obvious lies were rarely questioned. The classic tactic was to blame others for the problems in Germany and the world and project their crimes on to their victims. There are some differences as things have evolved. The Nazis created the media and state apparatus to pursue war. Nowadays this is the opposite way around. Instead the state apparatus is already in place so whoever is leader whether they describe themself as liberal or conservative, is merely a figurehead required to continue the same pro-war policies. Put a fresh-looking president in a shiny suit and intoduce him to the Queen and you wouldn't think he's the biggest mass murderer since Hitler. Although there are some differences in the propaganda techniques, all the signs are that today's media are on a similar war-footing as Germany's was just prior to the outbreak of World War II.
5) Appeasement – because of its relative weakness and not wanting a war, Russia has to some extent appeased Western and Israeli aggression in Syria and beyond. To be fair, given the aggression it faces I don't think Russia has had much choice than playing for time. However at some point soon, with the West pushing more and more, something will have to give. Likewise, in the 1930s a militarily unprepared UK and France appeased Germany's expansion. The more they backed off the more Germany pushed until war was the only way.
6) False flags – for those watching events in Syria know that the majority of the 'chemical attacks' have been carried out by Western supported opposition. The timing and nature of these suggest co-ordination at the highest levels. Intelligence Services of the UK and other agencies are believed to co-ordinate these fabrications to provoke a western response aimed at the Syrian Army. On more than one occasion these incidents have nearly escalated to a direct conflict with Russia showing the dangerous game being played by those involved and those pushing the false narrative in the media. The next flashpoint in Syria is Idlib, where it's highly likely a new chemical fabrication will be attempted this Spring. In the 1930s the Nazis were believed to use false flags with increasing frequency to discredit and close down internal opposition. Summary – We now live in a society where exposing warmongering is a more serious crime than committing it. Prisons hold many people who have bravely exposed war crimes – yet most criminals continue to walk free and hold positions of power. And when the media is pushing for Julian Assange to be extradicted you know this is beyond simple envy of a man who has almost single-handedly done the job they've collectively failed to do. They are equally complicit in warmongering hence why they see Assange and others as a threat. For those not fooled by the smart suits, liberal platitudes and media distraction techniques, the parallels with Germany in the 1930s in particular are now fairly obvious. The blundering military alliances of 1914 and the pure evil of 1939 – with the ignorance, indifference and narcissism described above make for a destructive mix. Unless something changes soon our days on this planet are likely be numbered. Depressing but one encouraging thing is that the indisputable truth is now in plain sight for anyone with internet access to see and false narratives have collapsed before. It's still conceivable that something may create a whole chain of events which sweep these dangerous parasites from power. So anything can happen. In the meantime we should keep positive and continue to spread the message.
Kevin Smith is a British citizen living and working in London. He researches and writes down his thoughts on the foreign wars promoted by Western governments and media. In the highly controlled and dumbed down UK media environment, he's keen on exploring ways of discouraging ideology and tribalism in favour of free thinking.
comite espartaco says Apr, 24, 2019
2- 'Israel and its US relationship'. The 'hands off' policy of the Western powers, guarantees that Syria cannot even be a trigger to any 'global conflict', supposing that a 'global conflict' was on the cards, especially when Russia is just a crumbling shadow of the USSR and China a giant with feet of clay, heavily dependent on Western oligarchic goodwill, to maintain its economy and its technological progress.olavleivar says Apr, 24, 2019In 1914, the Serbian crisis was just trigger of WWI and not a true cause. It is not even clear if it was Germany that dragged Austria-Hungary into the war or Russia. Although there was a possibility (only a possibility), that a swift and 'illegal' attack by Austria-Hungary (without an ultimatum), would have localised and contained the conflict.
There is no similarity whatsoever between the 1914 'diktats' and modern US policy, as the US is the sole Superpower and its acts are not opposed by a balancing and corresponding alliance. Save in the Chinese colony of North Korea, where the US is restrained by a tacit alliance of the North Eastern Asiatic powers: China, Russia, Japan and South Korea, that oppose any military action and so promote and protect North Korean bullying. Qatar, on the other hand, is one of the most radical supporters of the Syrian opposition and terrorist groups around the muslim world, even more than Saudi Arabia and there are powerful reasons for the confrontation of the Gulf rivals.
You should go back in Time and STUDY what really happened .. that means going back to the Creation of the socalled British Empire ..the Bank of England , the British East Indian Company , the Opium Wars and the Opium Trafficing , the Boer Wars for Gold and Diamonds , the US Civil War and its aftermath , the manipulations of Gold and Silver by socalled british Financial Interests , The US Spanish Wars , the Japanese Russian War , the failed Coup against Czar Russia 1905 , the Young Turk Coup against the Ottoman Empire 1908, the Armenian Genocide , the Creation of the Federal Reserve 1913 , the Multitude of Assinations and other Terror Attacks in the period from 1900 and upwards , WHO were the perpetraders ? , , WW 1 and its originators , the Bolshevik Coup 1917 , the Treaty of Versailles and the Actors in that Treaty ,the Plunder of Germany , the dissolution of Austria Hungary , the Bolshevik Coup attempts all over Europe , and then the run up to WW 2 , the Actions of Poland agianst Germans and Czechs .. Hitler , Musolini and finally WW 2 .the post war period , the Nuernberg Trials , the Holocaust Mythology , the Creation of Israel , Gladio , the Fall of the Sovjet Empire and the Warshav Pact , the Wars in the Middle East , the endless Terror Actions , the murder of Kennedy and a mass of False Flag Terrorist Attacks since then , the destruction of the Balkans and the Middle east THERE IS PLENTY of EXCELLENT LITERATURE and ANALYSIS on all subjects .comite espartaco says Apr, 23, 20191- Military buildup, alliances and proxy wars.Shardlake says Apr, 23, 2019It was your Obama that 'persecuted' Mr Assange !!!
Syria demonstrates that there has NOT been a Western strategy for regime change (specially after the 'defeats' in Iraq and Afghanistan), let alone a proxy war, but, on the contrary, an effort to keep the tyranny of Assad in power, in a weaker state, to avoid any strong, 'revolutionary' rival near Israel. Russia has been given a free hand in Syria, otherwise, if the West had properly armed the resistance groups, it would have been a catastrophe for the Russian forces, like it was in Afghanistan during the Soviet intervention.
Trump's policy of 'equal' (proportional) contributions for all members of NATO and other allies, gives the lie to the US military return 'argument' and should be understood as part of his war on unfair competition by other powers.
The 'military' and diplomatic alliances of 1914 were FORWARD thinking, so much so that they 'repeated' themselves during WWII, with slight changes. But it is very doubtful that the Empires, like the Austro-Hungarian o the Russian ones, would have 'crumbled' without the outbreak of WWI. They were never under threat, as their military power during the war showed. Only a World War of cataclysmic character could destroy them. A war, triggered, but not created, by the 'conflict seeking mentality' of the powerful in the small countries of the Balkans.
Generally attributed to Senator Hiram Warren Johnson in 1918 that 'when war comes the first casualty is truth' is as much a truism now as it was then.I'm more inclined to support hauptmanngurski's proposition that the members of the armed forces, from both sides, who return from conflicts with life-changing injuries or even in flag-draped caskets defended only the freedom of multinational enterprises and conglomerates to make and continue to make vast profits for the privileged few at the population's expense.
As Kevin Smith makes abundantly clear we are all subject to the downright lies and truth-stretching from our government aided and abetted by a compliant main stream media as exemplified in the Skripal poisoning affair, which goes far beyond the counting of Serbian tanks supposedly destroyed during the Balkans conflict. The Skripals' are now God knows where either as willing participants or as detainees and our government shows no signs of clarifying the matter, so who would believe what it put out anyway in view of its track record of misinformation ? The nation doesn't know what to believe.
Sadly, I believe this has always been the way of things and I cannot even speculate on how long it will be before this nation will realise it is being deliberately mis-led.
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Dec 20, 2019 | off-guardian.org
On November 22nd, a 100-page Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) data-dump was made by the U.S. Department of State, to the Democratic-Party-aligned nonprofit "American Oversight," which had been founded in March 2017 by liberals (really by some of the main billionaires who fund the Democratic Party ) after the 2016 Democratic electoral defeat (by Republican billionaires ).
The now Republican-headed U.S. State Department made it as difficult as possible to report the contents of this dump; Most especially by providing only a photographic image of each page, making it impossible to search on most systems; and also impossible to Copy/Paste any quotations.
Consequently, on November 23rd, I made a pdf copy of that document to the Web Archive (the first of probably many that will become posted there), in order to be able to link here to something that will come onscreen less sluggishly for any interested reader who will want to see the document.
I am herewith pasting below what I consider to be the most important extended passage in the document, so as to make that passage especially available online. I have manually transcribed the photos, in order that any portion of this important passage (pages 61-66) can now be easily found and cited by other reporters.
This way, at least that passage might become more widely disseminated to the public -- which it should be, because the information there contradicts many of the 'news'-reports about Ukrainegate, or the impeachment case against Trump. (Some excerpts from this extended passage were reported on November 25th by the great non-mainstream news-site Zero Hedge, and that was entirely accurate.)
In this passage, President Trump's lawyer Rudolphe Giuliani, on January 23, 25, and 26, of 2019, took a deposition from Viktor Shokin, whom Joe Biden had forced to be fired on 29 March 2016 as Ukraine's Prosecutor General, and also a deposition from Yuriy Lutsenko, who replaced Shokin and thereby freed-up from the Obama Administration in 2016 a one-billion-dollar donation ('loan guarantees' to the then-and-now bankrupt Government of Ukraine) from America's taxpayers, to fund the then just-recently-installed-by-Obama anti-Russian Government of Ukraine, for it to stay afloat just a while longer.
Here is that passage (pages 61-66):
Shokin/Lutsenko Notes – U.S. Department of StateShokin – January 23, 2019, 445 Park Avenue New York, NY 10022:
On January 23, 2019, a telephone interview with Mr. Viktor Shokin the former General Prosecutor of Ukraine was conducted. Present in the New York location were: Rudolph Giuliani, Mr. Igor Fruman, Mr. Lev Parnas and Mr. George Boyle.
The conversation was conducted through the use of two (2) interpreters one (1) in Ukraine and one (1) Lev Parnas in New York. The sum and substance of the conversation are as follows:
Mr. Shokin stated that he was appointed to the position of General Prosecutor of Ukraine from 2015 until April of 2016 when he was removed at the request of Mr. Joseph Biden the Vice President of the United States. Mr. Shokin was a Deputy Prosecutor prior to becoming the General Prosecutor. He became involved in a case against Mr. Mykola Zlochevsky the former Minister of Ecology and Natural Resources of Ukraine.
The case was opened as a result of Mr. Zlochevsky giving himself/company permits to drill for gas and oil in Ukraine. Mr. Zlochevsky is also the owner of Burisma Holdings, which is a corporation registered in Cyprus. Mr. Shokin stated that there are documents that list five (5) criminal cases in which Mr. Zlochevsky is listed, with the main case being for issuing illegal gas exploration permits. The following complaints are in the criminal case.
Mr. Zlochevsky was laundering money Obtained assets by corrupt acts bribery Mr. Zlochevsky removed approximately twenty three million U.S. dollars out of Ukraine without permission While seated as the Minister he approved two addition[al] entities to receive permits for gas exploration Mr. Zlochevsky was the owner of two secret companies that were part of Burisma Holdings and gave those companies permits which made it possible for him to profit while he was the sitting MinisterThe above cases were closed after Mr. Zlochevsky was dismissed from the Ministry.
Mr. Shokin further stated that there were several Burisma board appointees [that] were made in 2014 as follows:
Hunter Biden son of Vice President Joseph Biden Joseph Blade former CIA employee assigned to Anti-Terrorist Unit Aleksander Kwasnieski former President of Poland Devon Archer roommate to Christopher Heinz the step-son of Mr. John Kerry United States Secretary of StateMr. Shokin stated that these appointments were made by Mr. Zlochevsky in order to protect himself. Mr. Zlochevsky left Ukraine while the above-mentioned cases were open.
Mr. Shokin stated that the investigations stopped out of fear of the United States. Mr. Shokin attempted to continue the investigations but on or around June or July of 2015 the U.S. Ambassador Geoffrey R. Pyatt told him that the investigation has to be handled with white gloves, which, according to Mr. Shokin, implied to do nothing. On or about September 2015, Mr. Pyatt gave a speech in Odessa where he stated that the cases were not investigated correctly and that Mr. Shokin may be corrupt.
Mr. Shokin stated that in 2014 Mr. Zlochevsky was in the UK and that the twenty three million dollars were frozen in the UK in the BNP Bank. Mr. Shokin stated that false documents were prepared and the money was released so Mr. S[sp]lochevski before Mr. Shokin took office. That release of the money made Mr. Shokin look into the above cases again.
Mr. Shokin stated that there were several articles written about bribes being taken during the investigation of the cases. The bribes were an effort to have the cases closed. On April [actually 29 March ] of 2016 Mr. Shokin was dismissed as the General Prosecutor of Ukraine [and both the U.S. and its stooge the EU celebrated his firing -- the EU aquiesced in the U.S. regime's Ukrainian coup ]. In November of 2016 the cases were closed by the current Prosecutor General Yuriy Lutsenko.
Mr. Shokin further stated that on February of 2016 warrants were placed on the accounts of multiple people in Ukraine. There were requests for information on Hunter Biden to which nothing was received. It is believed that Hunter Biden receives a salary, commission, plus one million dollars. Mr. Shokin stated he was warned to stop by Ambassador Geoffrey R. Pyatt.
President of Ukraine Petro Poroshenko told Mr. Shokin not to investigate Burisma as it was not in the interest of Joe and/or Hunter Biden. Mr. Shokin was called into Mr. Poroshenko's office and told that the investigation into Burisma and the Managing Director where Hunter Biden is on the board, has caused Joe Biden to hold up one billion dollars in U.S. aid to Ukraine.
Mr. Shokin stated that on or around April of 2016 Mr. Petro Poroshenko called him and told him he had to be fired as the aid to the Ukraine was being withheld by Joe Biden. Mr. Biden told Mr. Poroshenko that he had evidence that Mr. Shokin was corrupt and needed to be fired. Mr. Shokin was dismissed in April of 2016 and the U.S. aid was delivered within one and one half months.
On a different point, Mr. Shokin believes the current [U.S.] Ambassador Marie L. Yovanovitch denied his visa to travel to the U.S. Mr. Shokin stated that she is close to Mr. Biden. Mr. Shokin also stated that there were leaks by a person named Reshenko of the Ukrainian State Secret Service about the Manafort Black Book. Mr. Shokin stated that there is possible deceit in the Manafort Black Book.
End of interview.
*
Yuriy Lutsenko January 25, 2019, 445 Park Avenue, New York, NY 10022:
On January 25, 2019, Mr. Yuriy Lutsenko the current Prosecutor General of Ukraine was present at 445 Park Av e, New York, NY. He was present to speak about corruption in Ukraine. He was accomapnied by Glib Zagoriy, Gyunduz Mamedov, Lev Parnas, Igor Fruman. Also present were Mayor Rudolph Giuliani and George Boyle.
Mr. Lutsenko stated that he is currently the Prosecutor General for Ukraine. He was the Minister of Interior from 2007 to 2010. He further stated that he was placed in jail for two and one half years as a political prisoner.
Mr. Lutsenko stated that his office has the following units under his purview:
Police Department Fiscals Secret Service Investigative DepartmentMr. Lutsenko stated that his office has recovered several billion dollars and has had two thousand six hundred thirty-seven [2,637] verdicts of corruption. Mr. Lutsenko went on to explain that there is a unit called Specialized Anticorruption Prosecutors Office (SAP) which has under its purview National Anticorruption Bureau Ukraine (NABU) which investigates corruption cases that involve public figures from Mayors upward. He stated that the current U.S. Ambassador protects SAP and NABU.
He feels they are good organizations but have terrible leadership. His office has absolutely no control over SAP or NABU and can't even ask what they are working on, however they fall under his 'control'.
He further state[s] that he believes Mr. Viktor Shokin, the former Prosecutor General, is honest.
Mr. Lutsenko went on to say that he began looking at the same case Mr. Shokin was looking at (mentioned above) and he believes Hunter Biden receives millions of dollars in compensation from Burisma. He produced a document from Latvia that showed several million dollars that were distributed out of Burisma's account.
The record showed two (2) companies and four (4) individuals receiving approximately sixteen million dollars in disbursements, as follows [the breakdown is shown].
Mr. Lutsenko feels that the total disbursements can be as high as $100,000,000.
Ambassador Pyatt gave a speech on September 25, 2015 in Odessa against the Prosecutor Generals' Office.
Yuriy Lutsenko Continued:On January 26, 2019, Mr. Yuriy Lutsenko, the current Prosecutor General of Ukraine, was present at 445 Park ave., New York, NY. [His second day of testimony contained only one specific mention which was not vague and which had not been indicated previously by Shokin: A "system was set up in order to remove money from the Ukraine, have it laundered, and then collect the laundered money.
These companies were all headed by one Chief Financial Officer.
Mr. Lutsenko stated that about twenty (20) to forty (40) of these companies were shell companies. He further stated that there were twenty-three (23) companies located offshore, and that two of them had approximately seven billion dollars that were placed in the Templeton Fund. The system ran similar to a 'pyramid' scheme and all of the beneficiaries were pro-Russian [which was undefined but presumably meant associated with the pre-coup Ukrainian Government].
For background and context in order to interpret those depositions, it might be helpful to see my recent "Ukraine, Trump, Biden -- The Real Story Behind 'Ukrainegate'" .
Zlochevsky is actually the decoy, but the real person who has majority-ownership of Burisma, after Zlochevsky sold to him most of his shares in 2011, is the key Ukrainian billionaire who had backed Obama's February 2014 coup, Ihor Kolomoysky. And Kolomoysky is now far more interested in recovering a few billions from his bankrupt PrivatBank, Ukraine's largest bank, than in trying to extract the relative pittance that might still be entailed in Burisma (which probably isn't much, now that no established fracking company has found it to be worth developing).
Apparently, Trump hasn't yet decided whether to continue the Obama-installed regime in Ukraine or else to expose it and to go after both Obama and Kolomoysky, and to abandon the cover-story of Biden and Zlochevsky. If he does decide to go after the principals in the case, then he'll have to expose whom were the actual principals, and whom were merely their agents.
Thus far, in the American press, all of the attention has been only on actual agents, no principals. Given the way in which Trump's State Department buried the release of that data-dump, Trump has not been particularly eager to get the real story out there. Nor, of course, are the Democratic Party billionaires whose "American Oversight" has likewise done nothing to facilitate the exposure of the actual historical narrative in this case.
Also of interest in the document are (p.79):
Dec 7, 2015: Biden-Poroshenko meeting in KievDec. 9, 2015 : Hunter Biden and business partner Devon Archer meet at State Department regarding Burisma Holdings prosecution. [But no online record is provided, no documentation here, of what was said.]
Feb. 11, 16, 19, 2016 : VP Biden holds series of phone calls with President Poroshenko to check on status of pending items from their December 2015 meeting. Removal of general prosecutor raised again. [But, again, no online record is provided. No evidence is provided of any mention of replacing the prosecutor.]
March 15, 2016: Assistant Secretary of State Victoria Nuland demands Ukraine "appoint and confirm a new, clean Prosecutor General, who is committed to rebuilding the integrity of the PGO, and investigate, indict and successfully prosecute corruption and asset recovery cases -- including locking up dirty personnel in the PGO itself." She offers no proof that special prosecutor's [General Prosecutor's] office is corrupt.
March 22, 2016: VP Joe Biden engages in a phone call from Washington DC with Ukrainian President Poroshenko about U.S. loan guarantees [there is actually no indication in the official readout regarding any "loan guarantees"].
It is believed in this call that Biden renews his demands that the president fire Prosecutor General Shokin, but this time Biden warns Ukraine risk[s] losing the next $1 billion in U.S. loan guarantees [and, yet again, Pompeo's State Department falsifies, because the official readout says nothing of the sort].
[The only useful information that's provided there is that seven days before Shokin was fired, Biden did phone Poroshenko, and that Pompeo's State Department isn't to be trusted in anything it asserts, because it misrepresents here what that readout says. Therefore, the "Dec. 9, 2015" entry also isn't to be trusted, since no accompanying documentation is provided for its allegation.]
Originally posted at strategic-culture.org
Arby ,
I thought that the Republicans and Democrats decided to, essentially, kill the impeachment (hoax) in order to protect the entire political class. I mean, Really, the contest between Republicans is phony so that development is not surprising. Also, according to Alexander Mercouris (who wants to see Trump re-elected!), both Shokin and Lutsenko (who doesn't have a lawyer background) were doing dirty work on behalf of their respective oligarch patrons. That's Ukraine now and peviously.It does seem that there's a lot of dislike for Trump by the Dems and many Repubs but there's an even stronger dislike by those enemies of Trum, together with the rest of the political class, of democracy. And there's a culture of criminalit and impunity which members of the American political share or the exposure of Russiagate would have seen a chastening of the Democratic Party et al instead of a doubling down on whatever lies might help remove Trump. Neither is Trump chastened by his brush with the tainting of his crown as he signs laws that codify the lie that peaceful protest and honest criticism of Israel is antisemitism.
Antonym ,
Imagine the confidence the Democrats still have today that with "Ukrainegate" they can criminalize sitting president Trump instead of their own much more guilty opposition leaders: US deep state is almost 50 rooted with many appointees in all power branches.ttshasta ,
Three billion dollars of USAID money sent to Ukraine over 3 years is not accounted for, no documents, no audits. The Clinton Foundation has received $10 million in donations of $500K and up from Ukraine this century. Igor Pasternak had a fundraiser in Washington for Adam Schiff; $1000/plate- guest, $2500/plate-sponsor. Ukranians and US taxpayers should like to know where did our dollars go, and who else in addition to the Bidens are at the trough.
https://www.zerohedge.com/geopolitical/plundering-ukraine-corrupt-american-democrats
paul ,
Ukraine is not quite the most corrupt country on the planet, but it gives Afghanistan and Somalia some pretty stiff competition.Many tens of billions have been poured into the country by the US and EU taxpayer, via the IMF, CIA, NED, and similar organisations. It has promptly vanished into thin air. There is nothing to show for it. Ukraine is a Big Black Hole. It is now just a CIA/ NATO playground in the grand scheme of things to install an openly Fascist Regime in Kiev to encircle and destabilise Russia.
The main players in Ukraine are Levantine oligarchs like Kolomoisky and his ilk, who have stolen everything that wasn't nailed down in Ukraine since independence. And everything that was nailed down. Just like Russia in the 1990s. They were joined by a whole host of all the usual suspects, dual/ triple national Jews with a visceral hatred of Russia. The Nulands, the Vindmans, the Ioanovitches and all the rest. Ukraine has been a happy hunting ground for these people. There has been a virtually unlimited bonanza of western taxpayers' money to divvy up between them. Together with a few goy stooges like the Bidens, who were also allowed to wet their beaks. There was enough to go around, after all.
No wonder they hate Trump so much for spoiling the party. Over to Schiff, Nadler, Cohen, Cohen and Cohen. Reacting with all the fury of a dog that has had its bone taken away.
Dungroanin ,
So the documents were released three weeks ago? Giuliani had the evidence in JANUARY? So the Quid Pro Quo kerfuffle was manufactured thereafter?So the QPQ is actually by Dems' trying to stop prosecution of Biden and above? Clinton and Obama? Which is why the impeachment bs? Or is it to stop the prosecution of the chiefs of the 3 letter agencies in their manufacturing of Russiagate? And their 5+1 eyed cohorts? In a conspiracy against the potus? Now just fit in Syria, White Helmets and Skripals and all the dots join up.
It can lead to the immediate collapse of the new bozo house of cards and clear the swamp in one Herculean flushing! You may even be able to save Assange from martyrdom in the British dungeon.
What's it to be Me Zuesse?
George Cornell ,
Thanks for this. It is surely complex and after all why shouldn't Miss Vicki decide who should lead the Ukraine. And why should anyone begrudge the right of an exemplar sovereign state to deep six a prosecutor who went after criminal corruption? But even the incognoscenti can appreciate that Hunter Biden, the cokeheaded nitwit who was shoehorned into the Navy, by his fathers' friends, was unable to forgo the coke till his urine got tested. His length of service could be measured in hours or days (how long does it take to get the urine test results) as he was immediately dishonourably discharged. Further, that he could not possibly provide service to Burisma that was not corrupt, simply because he had no demonstrable expertise in their affairs. Unless Biden Jr's expertise in marital infidelity, fathering children out of wedlock with strippers, and spending his marital income on lap dancers and drugs (according to his ex-wife) dovetailed with Burisma's undeclared interests.It was reported in the NYT that Bidens presence on the Burisma board gave it respectability. Of course it must have, although presumably by error, Burisma was left out of any of the lists of most admired companies. Perhaps these were compiled before Jr. was taken on board, so to speak. Ukrainians can hold their heads high, such an incredible coup it was to have Biden Jr. grace their country. And he picked the Ukraine over the horde of other countries which must relentlessly vie for his services, whatever they might be. Just his accepting their cheques is surely enough.
It is not difficult to appreciate how the Democratic Party leapt at the chance to show the American public how those big meanie Republicans have wagged their tongues so uncharitably against the upstanding and virtuous seed of the loins of their leading 77 yr. old presidential candidate. After all, boys will be boys. Say what you like about the Dems but you can't deny their canny shrewdness and ability to sniff out talent.
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Dec 20, 2019 | off-guardian.org
J_Garbo ,
I suspected that Deep State has at least two opposing factions. The Realistists want him to break up the empire, turn back into a republic; the Delusionals want to extend the empire, continue to exploit and destroy the world. If so, the contradictions, reversals, incoherence make sense. IMO as I said.Gary Weglarz ,
I predict that all Western MSM will begin to accurately and vocally cover Mr. Binney's findings about this odious and treasonous U.S. government psyop at just about the exact time that -- "hell freezes over" -- as they say.Jen ,
They don't need to, they have Tony Blair's fellow Brit psycho Boris Johnson to go on autopilot and blame the Russians the moment something happens and just before London Met start their investigations.
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Dec 18, 2019 | www.unz.com
thotmonger , says: December 17, 2019 at 7:02 am GMT
How would it fly if Trump's EO instead forbade criticism of Russia in schools and colleges in USA?Very strange that something like this could ever be written and signed. A fast budding and explicit "Judeo lese majetse" is unfolding before our eyes. And if it is meant to protect Jews as a race and nation, then that will naturally induce people to see them as exactly that: a separate nation. Will this quell concern about loyalty or raise more doubt?
p.s. In 2018, Israeli army expert snipers made a turkey shoot of Palestinians marching on the 70th anniversary of their people being ethnically cleansed from their ancestral homeland. A "shoot to cripple" policy only murdered several score but, with high speed dum dum bullets, they blasted bloody wreckage through the flesh and bones of many thousands of unarmed people. You may not see them on your porno channels and game shows, but a large number will be crippled for the rest of their lives.
This is a good example of a very recent state sponsored atrocity on a large scale. Students in our schools and colleges might want to examine this in a variety of ways. The history, legality, ethics, demographic dilemmas etc. Sure, it might roll over into some criticism and activism, e.g. DBS Israel, but is that to be prohibited by our government? What sort of citizens are our schools and colleges supposed to be cultivating if students are not permitted to exercise their freedom of speech, freedom of assembly and freedom of conscience?
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Dec 15, 2019 | off-guardian.org
nottheonly1 ,
What just happened was an inverted U.S. selection. In the U.S., a confused rich man got elected, because the alternative was a psychopathic war criminal. In the U.K. a confused upper class twat got elected, because the alternative was too good to be true.
Something like that?
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Dec 14, 2019 | off-guardian.org
George Cornell ,
"Share On Twitter" target="_blank" href="https://twitter.com/intent/tweet?text=So+your+argument+consists+essentially+of+name-...+&url=https%3A%2F%2Foff-guardian.org%2F2019%2F12%2F12%2Fwill-pelosi-have-the-votes-to-impeach%2F%23comment-105752">
So your argument consists essentially of name-calling to exercise your own demons. You make Trump look good, like the other stark raving lunatics opining on this , many in the Democratic Party. You have zero chance of unseating Trump by impeachment and by the looks of things that might not be such a bad thing, he said, making the sign of the cross and mouthing pagan incantations, begging forgiveness from the ether.You recall Bill Maher's comment before a previous election. "The Republicans have shifted to the right and the Dems have shifted right into the insane asylum."
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Dec 12, 2019 | off-guardian.org
Despite an inadequate performance last week by Constitutional law experts before the House Judiciary Committee, Chair Jerrold Nadler released a unilateral committee report on Saturday entitled " Constitutional Grounds for Presidential Impeachment ." The Report came the day after Speaker Nancy Pelosi's press conference in which she directed the formation of Articles of Impeachment.
As has become apparent to any objective observer; that is one who prefers facts over fiction, the Democrats remain locked in an imaginary world struggling to maintain relevance, a stature of standing that no longer exists.
Presumably with no Quid Pro Quo, no allegation of criminal conduct, no legally substantial evidence or factual basis and no bipartisan support, in defiance of previous impeachment norms, the Democrats are hell bent on making public jackasses out of themselves.
In a hearing with Constitutional legal experts expected to score big legal points in support of impeachment, the witnesses instead turned out to be smug, hyper partisan activists as they were consistently unpersuasive and unimpressive .
All three displayed not a wit of objectivity or neutrality while touting their own personal political agenda with a foreign policy ax to grind, leaving the unmistakable impression that their testimonies were nothing short of conflated.
Condescending as if pontificating to a class of mediocre law students, Professor Noah Feldman had suggested in 2017 that Presidential tweets could be grounds for impeachment, indicative of the depth of his thinking as he repeatedly impressed himself with his own rhetoric.
Professor Pamela Karlan opened with a shrillness that grew into a hyperbole spewing divisiveness among the American people and went on to revisit the Russiagate and foreign electoral influence myth ad nauseam. Those dim witted Democrats on the committee repeated the mantra as if held in a spellbound trance whenever "Russiagate" was mentioned. There was no mention of Israel interference in US elections. Testimony of Professor Michael Gerhardt .
Stating that he had not voted for Trump in 2016, GWU Law P rofessor Jonathan Turley who is a registered Democrat (as is yours truly) opened with a brilliant statement as he set the tone for an extraordinarily compelling testimony throughout the day, carefully explaining to the Democrats why they had not met a credible legal threshold for impeachment.
Factually concise with rational, impartial explanations, Turley effectively disputed Democratic claims that an abuse of power stemming from a presumed effort to help one's own re-election is " inferred " and does not constitute proof of intent or direct knowledge of what was in the President's mind.
However, it did not appear that any of the Democrats had the acute sensibility to understand Turley's point as there is an edge of lunacy to the collective Democratic mind these days.
What the Democrats fail to grasp is the double-standard that every politician makes decisions based on what is best for their reelection just as the Dems are hoping to benefit electorally in 2020 with the farcical impeachment.
After his testimony, Mr. Turley tweeted. " Before I finished my testimony, my home and office were inundated with (death) threatening messages and demands that I be fired from GW. "
While it was surprising that there was no Democratic Star on either the Intel or Judiciary Committees who stepped forward to make a credible, cogent case for impeachment, it was somewhat surprising that the Republicans had an energetic array of participating Members not limited to Intel ranking member Devin Nunes (Calif), Judiciary ranking minority Rep. Doug Collins (NC), Rep. Jim Jordan (Oh), Rep. John Ratcliffe (Texas) and Rep. Mark Gaetz (R-Fla) all of whom can be expected to continue their Bulldog approach as the Committee begins preparing Articles of Impeachment.
For instance, Rep. Martha Roby (R-Ala) asked the defining question regarding the purpose of the hearing with "no fact witnesses " via a process that has been " insufficient, unprecedented and grossly inadequate ." Roby pointed out that the Dems had apparently not considered: that a constitutional law panel should come " only after specific charges have been made known and underlying facts presented in full due to an exhaustive investigation. How does anyone expect a panel of law professors to weigh in on legal grounds for impeachment prior to knowing what the grounds brought by this Committee are going to be ?
At her news conference the day after the Judiciary committee hearing, Pelosi was asked by a reporter " Do you hate President Trump ?" Pelosi responded with a shaky false piety as if she knows the votes are not there:
We don't hate anybody. Not anybody in the World. And as a Catholic, I resent your using the word 'hate' in a sentence that addresses me. I don't hate anyone. I was raised in a way that is full – a heart full of love and always pray for the president, And I still pray for the president. I pray for the president all the time, So don't mess with me when it comes to words like that.
It is a curiosity that with the 2020 election a scant twelve months away, the Democrats have not made the case for the urgency of why impeachment needs to occur right now, immediately, before the Christmas holidays when the Spirit of Good Cheer, Universal Love and Peace for all Americans should take precedence over the Democrat's divisive animosity, pitting one American against another.
In 2018, thirty-one new Democrats were elected to the House; predominately from districts that voted for Trump in 2016 assuring a tough 2020 re-election campaign.
Let's assume that every one of those 31 newbies have been paying very close attention to the Intel and Judiciary committee hearings with two questions in mind:
Is there sufficient legal evidence to convince my constituents to support Articles of Impeachment and is this flawed impeachment campaign worth losing my seat in Congress?
Did any of those 31 notice when the Constitutional law experts were asked by Rep. Matt Gaetz " Can you identify one single material fact in the Schiff Report? – all four remained silent.
House Majority Whip James Clyburn (D-0SC) has already indicated that he does not intend to 'whip" the Dems in preparation for an Impeachment vote on the House floor and that the Dems "expect to lose some votes."
Let's do the math: With 233 Dems and 197 Republicans, if 18 of the 31 House newbies do not vote to impeach, the Democratic Motion to approve Articles of Impeachment will fail with a tie of 215 votes. Whether the Dems lose 18 votes or less, the damage will be irreversible.
As the Democratic party appears to have lost whatever is left of its sanity and integrity, the question remains why are the Democrats willing to sacrifice losing some of those 31 House seats in 2020?
Seamus Padraig ,
This whole Schiff-Show is just bizarre. Why are the Dems doing this? In an election year to boot? There is just zero chance that the Senate will remove Trump from office, and the case against him is a total laughing stock anyway. All that's going to happen is that the senators are going to start discussing L'affaire Biden openly and loudly, thereby killing the Dem's current front-runner. Is that what Pelosi wants? Meanwhile, none of their other three dozen or so candidates are going to get any media at all, once this impeachment sucks all the oxygen right out of the room. Is that intentional?All I can say is, you have to really dig all the way to the bottom of the tinfoil-cooler to find an explanation for this one. Others it makes no sense whatsoever.
wardropper ,
This person has made herself ridiculous by refusing to impeach GWB in 2003, when she knew he was lying about Iraq's weapons.
What has Trump done which is comparable to that death toll?
Proof enough that Washington has nothing more to say to human beings.
The place belongs in The Book of Revelation – and not in the optimistic partGeorge Cornell ,
So your argument consists essentially of name-calling to exercise your own demons. You make Trump look good, like the other stark raving lunatics opining on this , many in the Democratic Party. You have zero chance of unseating Trump by impeachment and by the looks of things that might not be such a bad thing, he said, making the sign of the cross and mouthing pagan incantations, begging forgiveness from the ether.You recall Bill Maher's comment before a previous election. "The Republicans have shifted to the right and the Dems have shifted right into the insane asylum."
Rhys Jaggar ,
Would Ms Parsons like to write an OpEd on the US Senate pushing forward false narratives that Russia is 'a promoter of terrorism'?The biggest promoter of terrorism workdwide since 1945 is the USA, be it through OSS, CIA, or other outsourced channels of coup-promoting violence .
Is it not time a motion were voted upon in the UN on precisely that postulate?
wardropper ,
Unfortunately, as you know, the UN, like NATO, to all intents and purposes actually IS the USA, and vetoes all criticism of itself. And if vetoing doesn't work, it just ignores the criticism. Other recent farces at the UN show the US and Israel sitting alone while the rest of the world condems them, and the condemnation is simply shrugged off.Astonishing that educated adults put up with it, but there it is.
Rhys Jaggar ,
It is always good to hear of committed political activsts demanding that their own party stick to fundamental principles of justice, adherence to the Constitution etc etc. There does come a point when you have to ask whether this is temporary insanity or metastatic terminal cancer. If it is the latter, America needs new political partieswardropper ,
This person has made herself ridiculous by refusing to impeach GWB in 2003, when she knew he was lying about Iraq's weapons.
What has Trump done which is comparable to that death toll? Proof enough that Washington has nothing more to say to human beings.
The place belongs in The Book of Revelation – and not in the optimistic part
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Dec 14, 2019 | www.theguardian.com
angie11 -> ID3119269 , 10 Dec 2019 16:05
"I wish that people would realize that to interfere, in any way shape or form in wars that occur in Islamic States is pissing into the wind.We simply cannot and do not understand the religious/tribal and feudal component of these societies.
It is better that we just let them go at each other. Sooner or later one despot will end up being top dog - so be it."
Hmm. Do you know the history of colonialism in MENA? I did not think so.
My guess is that your 'knowledge' of Afghanistan and its history is based on your obvious xenophobia aka Islamophobia and lofty Western superiority complex. Don't feel alone, that's what folks use to make themselves feel better and able to sleep at night. Check this out:
"Despite close relations to the Axis powers, Zahir Shah refused to take sides during World War II and Afghanistan remained one of the few countries in the world to remain neutral. In 1944 and 1945, Afghanistan experienced a series of revolts by various tribes.[13] After the end of the Second World War, Zahir Shah recognised the need for the modernisation of Afghanistan and recruited a number of foreign advisers to assist with the process.[14] During this period Afghanistan's first modern university was founded.[14] During his reign a number of potential advances and reforms were derailed as a result of factionalism and political infighting.[15] He also requested financial aid from both the United States and the Soviet Union, and Afghanistan was one of few countries in the world to receive aid from both the Cold War enemies.[16] In a 1969 interview, Zahir Shah said that he is "not a capitalist. But I also don't want socialism. I don't want socialism that would bring about the kind of situation [that exists] in Czechoslovakia. I don't want us to become the servants of Russia or China or the servant of any other place."[17]
Zahir Shah was able to govern on his own during 1963[9] and despite the factionalism and political infighting a new constitution was introduced during 1964 which made Afghanistan a modern democratic state by introducing free elections, a parliament, civil rights, women's rights and universal suffrage.[14]"
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Dec 14, 2019 | www.theguardian.com
The easy answer is that there’s a long tradition in Washington, particularly among the foreign policy establishment, that self-reflection, taking responsibility and admitting failure is a big no-no. Heck, you can get convicted of lying to Congress about illegal arms sales, and cover up brutal atrocities and still get a job at the state department. Did you torture anyone? No problem.
While DC’s culture of no culpability certainly plays a role in this case, the more compelling answer lies somewhere near the fact that once the American war machine kicks into gear, no amount of facts undermining its very existence is going to get in the way.
Indeed, the United States has so far doled out nearly one trillion dollars for the war in Afghanistan (the true cost of the war will be trillions more) and everyone’s on the take: from defense industry executives, lobbyists and US political campaign coffers to Afghan government officials and poppy farmers to anyone and anything in between.
What’s more is that this military-industrial-congressional complex is largely insulated from public accountability, so what’s the incentive to change course? The Pentagon’s entire budget operates in much the same way: unprecedented amounts in unnecessary appropriations resulting in hundreds of billions of dollars in waste, fraud and abuse. Yet Congress continues to throw more and more money at the defense department every year without ever requiring it to account for how it spends the money. In fact, the war in Afghanistan is small potatoes by comparison.
The bottom line is that the Afghanistan Papers clearly show that a lot of people were killed, injured and subject to years, if not lifetimes, of psychological trauma and financial hardship because a bunch of men – yes, mostly men – in Washington didn’t want to admit publicly what they knew privately all along. If we don’t start holding these people to account – and it’s not just about Afghanistan – the DC foreign policy establishment will continue to act with impunity, meaning that it’s probably more likely than not that in 50 years there’ll be another batch of “papers” revealing once again that we’ve failed to learn obvious lessons from the past.
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Dec 14, 2019 | discussion.theguardian.com
One aspect of this report in the NYT is very troubling but not a great surprise to those who pay attention to Asian affairs.The reports that US military leaders had no idea of what to do in Afghanistan and constantly lied to the public should rouse citizens in America to take a different view of military leaders. That view must be to trust nothing coming from the Pentagon or from spokespersons for the military. Included must be any and all secretaries of defence, and all branches of the military.
It is totally unacceptable that 1-2 trillion dollars and several thousand lives were spent by America for some nebulous cause. This does not include many thousands of civilians.
During the Vietnam disaster, it became obvious that American military was lying to the public and taking many causalities in an unwinnable war. Nothing was learned about Asia or Asian culture because America entered Afghanistan without a real plan and no understanding of the country or it's history.
The experience of the USSR in that country should have sent up all kinds of red flags to the invading US military but it apparently did not. Both USSR and America lost thousands of military lives -- but nothing has changed in the country. Life in Afghanistan is actually worse now than before the multiple invasions. The only think which has improved is the cultivation of poppies and the export of opium.
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Dec 14, 2019 | discussion.theguardian.com
The Washington DC foreign policy establishment are too busy appearing before the impeachment inquiry and telling them how the orange man hurt their feelings.jmac55 , 10 Dec 2019 16:40File under: Tell us something that we didn't know already!The reality is of course: that the media knows and understands that we are being lied to all the time about these interventions, be it in Iraq, Libya, Syria, Honduras, Venezuela and soon Iran, but they go along with it all because they are in the regime change echo chamber club!
As George Carlin said: "It's a big club...but you ain't in it!"
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Dec 13, 2019 | discussion.theguardian.com
The US lied about the Gulf of Tonkin in order to justify attacking North Vietnam, it then proceeded to lie about the conduct of the war and the terrible genocide it was committing. No lesson learned because in a heartbeat the US was lying about Chile, Brazil, Argentina, Colombia, Nicaragua and El Salvador, committing a wide range of atrocities in each.Irascible45 , 10 Dec 2019 12:08Add Somalia, Libya, proxy wars in Angola and Yemen, efforts to destabilize Cuba, Venezuela and Iran, illegal wars in the Lebanon and Syria, the annihilation of Afghanistan in retaliation for what was actually a Saudi terrorist act, the destruction of modern Iraq and her people using trumped up claims, to say nothing of Clinton's cheery disregard for the welfare of Balkan residents when the US rained (illegal) uranium bombs down on the hapless inhabitants.
And now the WP and Congress are worked up over spending a trillion dollars when plainly they could care less about the Afghan casualties and American war crimes. Heck this goes back to Theodore Roosevelt seizing Cuba claiming he was saving it from the ravages of Spain or even further back to government backed settler land grabs "saving their white women from the savages". Savages, indeed. Zero accountability and Britain still playing faithful lap dog.
My take on this is that the American Department of Defense war machine remained in a state of perpetual excitement after their successes in WW11.. almost as if they had to continuously invent an enemy in order to maintain their war time budget.. (and therefore demonstrate their ongoing prowess etc etc) in a cycle of wars starting with Korea and bringing us up to date with Afghanistan.. so that's nearly 70 years worth of international hubris on display.UnrepentantPunk -> NadaZero , 10 Dec 2019 11:57
All on the excuse of spreading their version of democracy.. is money talks!!DoctorWibble , 10 Dec 2019 11:55It wasn't a mistake. It was a deliberate decision from a bunch of warmongers
The last patriotic Republican, President Dwight D Eisenhower, warned US against the military-industrial complex in his farewell address .
In the councils of government, we must guard against the acquisition of unwarranted influence, whether sought or unsought, by the military-industrial complex. The potential for the disastrous rise of misplaced power exists and will persist. We must never let the weight of this combination endanger our liberties or democratic processes. We should take nothing for granted. Only an alert and knowledgeable citizenry can compel the proper meshing of the huge industrial and military machinery of defense with our peaceful methods and goals, so that security and liberty may prosper together.
That both the Afghan war and the invasion of Iraq could happen at all tells us that the UN Security Council is not fit for purpose. These wars also told us that British pretense at being the voice of reason or the steadying hand that prevents US foreign policy being subsumed by the visceral and synthesised reactions of a US public is no more than empty cant.BaronVonAmericano , 10 Dec 2019 11:54If the US is unable to prevent foreign and defence policy being captured by money interests and remains inclined to deliver revenge to its public on demand howsoever it might be misdirected then the US should not be on the UN Security Council at all. They are fast becoming the number one major rogue state. And the outlook suggests this is more likely to get worse than improve. Whatever happens to Trump One more (and likely smarter) Trumps are coming down the track. More Dick Cheneys too. More Bushes, more Rumsfelds, more Nixons, Boltons, Kissingers, Johnsons and a host of others we'd all much rather were one offs. The US is the biggest extant threat to world peace. It is too powerful and far too easily played by warmongers and terrorists of every stripe and every persuasion. And by those seeking to profit from war.
To call war profiteering and murder a geopolitical "mistake" is to EXCUSE criminal activity.thedisciple516 -> sijacks , 10 Dec 2019 11:50Anyone responding to this latest revelation of military dishonest as a "mistake" is actually part of the crime. They are aiding the abettors. Everyone in Congress knows what everyone in this comments section knows: our military and its global actions are, first and foremost, a financial fraud.
But not American oil companies which were basically shut out outside of a few minor service and procurement contracts. Looks like all the "Blood for Oil" poster were BS.thedisciple516 -> Boltedhorse01 , 10 Dec 2019 11:42The Iraq War was only partly, however, about big profits for Anglo-American oil conglomerates - that would be a bonus (one which in the end has failed to materialise - not for want of trying though).
- Nafeez Ahmen Guardian 2014
Yes, and it made no conclusion as to whether the war was legal or not.Cronus Titan , 10 Dec 2019 11:40" The inquiry did not reach a view on the legality of the war , saying this could only be assessed by a "properly constituted and internationally recognised court", but did make a damning assessment of how the decision was made."
- Guardian 2016
Just think - the USA spends more on its military then the combined amount of the next 10 nations in the list (incl. China/Russia/India). That is a major major spend commitment. A small percentage of that could be used for US citizens to fund their healthcare - but I suppose they prefer to spend it to threaten and bomb other nations to their will.capatriot , 10 Dec 2019 11:39Just to think - a similar report was produced post Vietnam and in the 50's even Eisenhower was worried about the US military backed by private companies becoming a perpetual spending machine.
GraphiteCommando , 10 Dec 2019 11:36But there's one big question the Post report raises but does not address: why? Why did so many people – from government contractors and high-ranking military officers, to state department and National Security Council officials – feel the need to lie about how the war in Afghanistan was going?
Because "how the war is going" is not the operating question. Because it does not matter if the war is just or unjust, whether it's winnable or not winnable, nor whether it's supported in the "homeland" or not. No, the operating principle is that there is a war. By its existence, the war creates funding and jobs and profits for the people that matter, the people the author mentions, from the Security/Military complex corporations all the way to careerists in the Pentagon and State.
So, it is NOT a waste of $1 trillion dollars ... it is just as it was supposed to be. That is why the war president (W), the peace president (Obama), and the swamp drainer (Trump) have all supported it. The war is doing what it's supposed to do.
In time, the US national debt will force them to rein in their military spending. By lowering taxes while continuing to spend like drunken sailors on military adventures the national debt is ballooning. US government debt is currently rated AA whereas Canada is AAA. US debt to GDP is significantly higher than Canada's. (and that's just Canada vs the US). Trump is trying to create a mafia style protection racket to force other countries to subsidize reckless US military spending. "Pay up or who knows what might happen?" It is high time US taxpayers ask why the US can't lower its' out of control military spending rather than pressuring others to match their profligate ways? Some US citizens say they pay low taxes but it seems they get nothing in return; no health care, no equal access to education, decaying public infrastructure, etc. The rest feel overtaxed when they realize they get nothing in return but don't question the elephant in the room. If other countries maintain responsible levels of military spending the US will dig itself deeper into debt until the debt markets force them to see sense.DenryMachin , 10 Dec 2019 11:22Military spending is a fine way to transfer wealth from the general population to the rich. War has always been a fabulous business opportunity, but what has never been so very clear is how, even for the winning side, it represents a major defeat as wealth is transferred from the common good into the hands of the rich.kropotkinsf , 10 Dec 2019 11:09In such matters always consider 'Who will prosper'.
Follow the money...Considering the United States has been involved in one war or another, directly or indirectly, for all but about 20 years of its existence, this latest revelation shouldn't shock anyone. We're a violent country with a violent history and never more so than now, with our built-on-conflict empire losing steam. We point fingers ("It's the Russians!" "It's the Chinese!" It's the Iranians!") to deceive ourselves and others, but we're the real threat to peace. Us. The United States.CTanner52 , 10 Dec 2019 11:09Every time I see a person on the street nobly collecting 50ps or the odd fiver for a good cause like Cancer Research or some other charity, I wonder why they have to do this when the US has spent over a USD$1 trillion on the Afghan war and other militaries continue to soak up massive amounts of funding. How much more could we have achieved by now for the real good of humanity if these funds were focused on research and real human need?damientrollope , 10 Dec 2019 11:09Te US military has been practicing genocide around the world since WW2, millions have been murdered and still are. But hey, they are the leaders of the free world, the corruption in the US government, corporations, and military has no bounds. Their own poorer members of this society are dying in their thousands for lack of medical care, innocent black people are murdered by police, yet the greed must go on nothing else matters. The only question now being, which country will they invade next, which government will they plot to overthrow. How many will be murdered in the process, not that it matters, greed cannot be measured in dead people.BaronVonAmericano , 10 Dec 2019 11:09For crying out loud, it was never a mistake.manoftheworld , 10 Dec 2019 11:00World peace and the safety of the American public has never been a priority. Entirely the opposite. Standard procedure: foment fear to wage immoral, endless, profitable war.
This isn't conjecture or "conspiracy theory"; it's as obvious as the sun rising. Anyone casting this in any other way is either behind the curve or dangerously soft pedaling -- or lying to stave off actual accountability.
Please stop pretending that our "leaders" are mistaken. They aren't They're doing the jobs for which they were paid.
It's worse even than a crime... it's insanity to keep excusing a failed 18 year strategy costing a trillion dollars, resulting in the death of more than 100,000, and the country ending up worse than when they started. The military, politicians and the media are all to blame. The military for being too frightened and too stupid to admit they were losing and had no idea how to correct it.. the politicians for being too frightened to call out their beloved but incompetent military, and for not "getting it" after more than a trillion dollars had already been spent; the press and media for being embedded (sometimes literally) with the military and acting as no more than unquestioning cheerleaders for a self-evidently failed strategy. It is a terrible indictment of the US on so many levels... where were the public anti-war protests or activists? Couldn't they see or didn't they care? Either way it's pathetic.tenientesnafu , 10 Dec 2019 10:55Almost every year US generals stood before the media and politicians, jutting jaws and feeble minds, to say that this year was going to be decisive against the Taliban. The fact is, after Al Qaeda was scattered in 2001, the US picked on the Taliban pointlessly. They stayed pretending they were engaged in countering the return of al Qaeda (that was never going to happen) but actually made a new enemy of the Taliban by picking the wrong side in what was a civil war. The US never understood what it was trying to do so it lied and lied out of fear of being found out. I find it sickening that this country -the US - pretends it is a force for good in the world when they are quite prepared to keep killing innocent people in order to mask the generals' cowardice about facing the truth of their own incompetence.
A terrible but interesting dichotomy. You have Governments and a broad part of the public fiercely opposed to public spending and any kind of redistribution. It is all about the individual.lalaeuro -> GeraldLobOn , 10 Dec 2019 10:53Yet they sport and actually worship an institution where the individual counts for naught. In the military it always is about the collective. They throw huge swaths of money to the military. Which is the only place in the US where dreaded universal healthcare, pensions and free education exists. Not only that, even the army shops sell goods as subsidised prices, something unthinkable outside the barracks.
Entirely intentional according the PNAC document Rebuilding America's Defences, Orwellian for we're going to make a lot of pointless weapons with huge mark-ups for profit by bombing the shit out of foreigners.kapsiolaaaaa , 10 Dec 2019 10:37I was listening to NPR about how Veterans turned against the Vietnam war. The people of south Vietnam would collect shells and explosives that did not detonate and gave to US troops for a small financial reward. In one such case - the shell exploded killing few kids and injuring a girl. That girl was refused treatment from US medics because she was one of them. That soldier involved later joined the anti war movement.
All the veterans were surprised with the image that soldiers coming back from war were spat at and disrespected by the anti war protesters - this could not have been further from truth.Back in Vietnam you were taught how to destroy a village, poison drinking water sources etc. And understandably many GIs fought back.
There are similar stories out of Afghanistan - the naked prisoners with soldiers acting as if they are engaging in a sexual act and many such shameless incidents. These soldiers were acquitted which is another way of saying - An Afghan and his life and honor are below us. It has de-stabilized the region for many decades.
There is a bright side to Donny and his conmen - maybe there will be less intervention and more introspection - which can only be good for the World.
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Dec 13, 2019 | discussion.theguardian.com
NickStanford , 10 Dec 2019 12:24
I think it should have been seen as a thirty year campaign and the same with Iraq and Libya. The northern Ireland campaign took 30 years and many people are as bitter as they ever were much of it secondhand from younger people who weren't even alive during the conflict. The idea of a quick war is a very big mistake I think and flawed short-term thinking.Piet Pompies -> MrMopp , 10 Dec 2019 12:24Most decorated Marine officer ever? I thought that was Chesty Puller?sammer -> tenientesnafu , 10 Dec 2019 12:24That was very well put. Thank you for being so succinct.easterman -> MrMopp , 10 Dec 2019 12:23The process of waging war is lucrative - positive outcomes (gas and oil) are a bonus.MyViewsOnThis , 10 Dec 2019 12:22The West and the USA in particular have always taken the stand that their ideology is the only right one. That they have a right to interfere in the interns, affairs of other countries but their own internal affairs are sacrosanct.easterman , 10 Dec 2019 12:21So - USA, with UK support decided that Saddam Hussein had to be removed. They moved in to do so - they killed Saddam but had no plan to return the country to a functioning nation. Instead they facilitated the unleashing of internal wars and have now left the citizens of that country in utter turmoil.
& then went and repeated the exercise n Libya.
Decades ago, Britain decided that Palestinians could be thrown out of their homes to make way for the creation of Israel and laid the foundation for the Middle-East turmoil that has caused untold misery and suffering. They followed that up with throwing out the Chagosians out of their homes and making them homeless. Invited Caribbean's to the 'Mother Country' to serve their erstwhile lords, ladies, masters and mistresses only to then drive to despair the children and grandchildren of the invitees who had contributed to the 'Mother Country' for decades.
Lest we forget Cheney salivating over the gas in the Caspian Basin http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/world/west_asia/37021.stmPiet Pompies -> cephalus , 10 Dec 2019 12:19Yep, biggest terrorist state in the world, ever.KoreyD , 10 Dec 2019 12:19We are 18 years into an illegal invasion and occupation of Afghanistan. We are the invaders, the terrorists. The Taliban are fighting for their country, they may use brutal methods but so did the French, Dutch, Russian freedom fighters during the Nazi invasions. America's puppet regime in Afghanistan is reminiscent of the Quislings of WW2. And to use drones to kill Afghans and to say it is progress that there is more transparency is the height of hubris. All it does is show the corrosive effect of unfettered power in America and it's military. Why do we tolerate this inhuman action on another country's society? America is by far the greatest contributor to the rise in terrorism in the world and if not somehow stopped the greatest threat to world peace. It keeps on invading country after country with it's MSM propaganda machine claiming it is spreading Democracy throughout the globe. Thank you America !
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Dec 13, 2019 | discussion.theguardian.com
It's almost a century since Smedley Butler wrote his incisive pamphlet War is a Racket.If you've never read it, it takes about 15-20 minutes to do so. It will astound, anger and depress you that the only thing that's changed is the number or zeroes on the eye waterering profits. Oh, and the players. What is it exactly that makes the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia untouchable? (Answers on a postcard C/O Beelzebub.)
Smedley Butler knew of what he lectured about, being the most decorated officer in the history of the Marine Corps.
A brief insight into this insightful all American action man man Hollywood seems to have overlooked:
"I spent thirty-three years and four months in active military service as a member of this country's most agile military force, the Marine Corps. I served in all commissioned ranks from Second Lieutenant to Major-General. And during that period, I spent most of my time being a high class muscle-man for Big Business, for Wall Street and for the Bankers. In short, I was a racketeer, a gangster for capitalism.
"I helped make Mexico, especially Tampico, safe for American oil interests in 1914. I helped make Haiti and Cuba a decent place for the National City Bank boys to collect revenues in.
I helped in the raping of half a dozen Central American republics for the benefits of Wall Street."The record of racketeering is long. I helped purify Nicaragua for the international banking house of Brown Brothers in 1909-1912. I brought light to the Dominican Republic for American sugar interests in 1916. In China I helped to see to it that Standard Oil went its way unmolested.
"During those years, I had, as the boys in the back room would say, a swell racket. Looking back on it, I feel that I could have given Al Capone a few hints. The best he could do was to operate his racket in three districts. I operated on three continents."
There's been a century of endless war and profits since then with this century shaping up nicely for the racketeers, whose finest day might well have been September 11th, 2001.
Anyway, here's a link to a pdf file of War is a Racket if you're interested.
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Dec 13, 2019 | discussion.theguardian.com
SolentBound , 10 Dec 2019 15:05
A few days ago, veterans' group VoteVets endorsed Pete Buttigieg. It has previously supported Tulsi Gabbard. Details:New York Times, "Liberal Veterans' Group Endorses Pete Buttigieg in 2020 Race": https://www.nytimes.com/2019/12/04/us/politics/pete-buttigieg-votevets-endorsement.html
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Dec 13, 2019 | discussion.theguardian.com
Freedom4Wessex , 10 Dec 2019 14:44
And this is where we must listen to the wisdom of Trump.."As of a couple of months ago, we have spent $7 trillion in the Middle East. Seven trillion dollars. What a mistake. But it is what is," Trump said Monday at a White House meeting on with officials and lawmakers on infrastructure. "We're trying to build roads and bridges and fix bridges that are falling down, and we have a hard time getting the money. It's crazy."
"Think about it: As of a couple of months ago, $7 trillion in the Middle East and the Middle East is far worse now than it was 17 years ago when they went in and not so intelligently, I have to say, went in. I'm being nice.'' 2/13/18 Newsweek
''..when they went in and not so intelligently, I have to say, went in. I'm being nice...''
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Dec 13, 2019 | discussion.theguardian.com
Richard Thorton , 10 Dec 2019 15:03
Any particular American war has no purpose, but the USA waging it does. The main points of what war does:1. Transfers wealth from social services to the military industrial complex. Americans don't have education, infrastructure, or healthcare, but they do have a generation of soldiers with PTSD, national debt, worldwide hatred, and an ever increasing sense of exceptionalism.
2. Traps Americans in a cycle of fear and persecution. Americans don't need a bogeyman, but our corporate overlords do, its how they monetize the populace. Find some disparate population of brown people who want self autonomy, send in the CIA to fuck them up, and when they retaliate tell Americans that people who live in a 3rd world land locked country several thousands of miles away are a threat to their very existence and way of life because they don't like God and Walmart.
CourgetteDream , 10 Dec 2019 14:36
Sadly the US uses the MIC to keep a large chunk of its population under control, as well as providing a convenient coverup of the actual numbers of people who are unemployable or would be unemployed if it were'nt for the taxpayer funding humungous spending in the so-called defence sector, which needs a a constant supply of conflict to keep going. The frankly moronic 'thank you for your service' soundbite drives me insane but it shows how much the American public has been brainwashed.jimbomatic -> Michael Knoth , 10 Dec 2019 14:36For years my home state of Washington had a New Deal Democrat Senator named Henry Jackson, AKA the Senator from Boeing.Rikyboy , 10 Dec 2019 14:11
He did good things for the state & was hugely popular here. One reason being that because he brought the Federal pork back home.
IMO the things Gen. Butler wrote about in the 1920s are still the modus operandi of US foreign policy.If the Afghanistan war ends, the USA will go to war with someone else. You cannot spend so much on military & not be at war. America must have an enemy. And, don’t forget, they always have “God on our side!”Mauryan , 10 Dec 2019 13:05The neocons in power during 2001 were hell bent on taking out Saddam Hussein. When 9/11 happened, they were looking for avenues to blame Iraq so that they could launch the war on that nation. Since things could not be put together, and all evidence pointed to Afghanistan, they took a detour in their war plan with a half hearted approach.In fact Afghanistan was never the problem - It was Pakistan that held Afghanistan on the string and managed all terror related activities. Everything related to 9/11 and beyond pointed directly at Pakistan. Whatever threat Bush and his cronies projected about Iraq was true in the case of Pakistan. The war was lost when they made Pakistan an ally on the war on terror. It is like allying with Al Capone to crack down on the mafia.
Pakistan bilked the gullible American war planners, protected its assets and deflected all the rage on to the barren lands of Afghanistan. They hid all key Al Qaeda operatives and handed off the ones that did not align with their strategic interests to the US, while getting reward for it. War in Iraq happened in a hurry because the Bush family had scores to settle in Iraq. Pressure was lifted on Afghanistan. This is when the war reached a dead end.
The Taliban knew time was on their hands and waited it out. Obama did understand the situation and tried to put Af-Pak together and tightened the grip on Pakistan. He got the troops out of Iraq. Pakistan is almost bankrupt now for its deep investment on terror infrastructure. The US has drained billions of dollars and lives in Afghanistan due to misdirected goals. I am surprised Bush and Cheney have not been sent to jail on lies to launch the Iraq war and botching the real war on terror.
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Dec 13, 2019 | www.theguardian.com
he American people have known that the war in Afghanistan was a lost cause for quite some time. According to the Pew Research Center, Americans' views of the war started to go south right around the end of 2011, until eventually a majority started seeing the writing on the wall about two years later.
That's why the Washington Post report this week on the so-called "Afghanistan Papers", detailing how US officials "deliberately mislead the public" on the war's progress, is almost sort of unremarkable. If the piece took away any shred of innocence left from this ghastly enterprise, it's that perhaps some of us thought our leaders, while failing miserably at building a nation thousands of miles away, were at least acting in good faith.
At the same time, the Post report is rage inducing, not just because of the sheer stupidity of American leaders continuing to fight a war they knew they could not win, but also how their unwillingness to take responsibility for a failed policy caused so much death, destruction and heartbreak, particularly among those American families who have admirably dedicated their lives to serving their country, and the countless number of Afghan civilians trapped in a cycle of endless war they have nothing to do with.
Of course, the "Afghanistan Papers" immediately recalled memories of the Pentagon variety leaked to the New York Times nearly a half century ago because they too were government documents outlining how numerous American administrations had lied to the public about Vietnam – another long, costly and unnecessary war with no military solution.
But there's one major difference: the war in Afghanistan doesn't have as direct an impact on the lives of everyday Americans as the Vietnam war did, when the military draft meant that everyone had to deal with the cold war proxy conflict in south-east Asia one way or another . Therefore, it's entirely possible, likely even, that this major and important report from the Post will drift into the wilderness just like the dozens of Trump-era stories that would have, for example , taken down any other US president in "normal times".
But there's one big question the Post report raises but does not address: why? Why did so many people – from government contractors and high-ranking military officers, to state department and National Security Council officials – feel the need to lie about how the war in Afghanistan was going?
The easy answer is that there's a long tradition in Washington, particularly among the foreign policy establishment, that self-reflection, taking responsibility and admitting failure is a big no-no. Heck, you can get convicted of lying to Congress about illegal arms sales, and cover up brutal atrocities and still get a job at the state department . Did you torture anyone? No problem .
While DC's culture of no culpability certainly plays a role in this case, the more compelling answer lies somewhere near the fact that once the American war machine kicks into gear, no amount of facts undermining its very existence is going to get in the way.
Indeed, the United States has so far doled out nearly one trillion dollars for the war in Afghanistan (the true cost of the war will be trillions more ) and everyone's on the take: from defense industry executives, lobbyists and US political campaign coffers to Afghan government officials and poppy farmers to anyone and anything in between.
What's more is that this military-industrial-congressional complex is largely insulated from public accountability, so what's the incentive to change course? The Pentagon's entire budget operates in much the same way: unprecedented amounts in unnecessary appropriations resulting in hundreds of billions of dollars in waste, fraud and abuse. Yet Congress continues to throw more and more money at the defense department every year without ever requiring it to account for how it spends the money. In fact, the war in Afghanistan is small potatoes by comparison.
The bottom line is that the Afghanistan Papers clearly show that a lot of people were killed, injured and subject to years, if not lifetimes, of psychological trauma and financial hardship because a bunch of men – yes, mostly men – in Washington didn't want to admit publicly what they knew privately all along. If we don't start holding these people to account – and it's not just about Afghanistan – the DC foreign policy establishment will continue to act with impunity, meaning that it's probably more likely than not that in 50 years there'll be another batch of "papers" revealing once again that we've failed to learn obvious lessons from the past.
Ben Armbruster is the managing editor of ResponsibleStatecraft.org , the news and analysis publishing platform of the Quincy Institute
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Dec 13, 2019 | discussion.theguardian.com
Since you bring up the issue of educating schoolgirls, it's worth remembering that when the U.S. connived to drag the Soviet Union into its own Afghanistan conflict, one of the tactics we used to inflame the mujahedeen was to remind them that, under Afghanistan's communist government, girls were being educated as a matter of policy.
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Dec 13, 2019 | discussion.theguardian.com
Why did so many people -- from government contractors and high-ranking military officers, to state department and National Security Council officials -- feel the need to lie about how the war in Afghanistan was going?This is because it's easy cash cow for the old boys club by sending working class kids to be killed in a far off land.
The pentagon with the full cooperation of MSM will sell it as we are defending our ways of life by fighting a country 10,000 kms away. This show the poor literacy, poor analytical thinking of US population constantly brain washed by MSM, holy men, clergy, other neo con organisations like National rifle club etc.
i been to Cambodia a few years ago.Heisham , 10 Dec 2019 14:10I never knew USA dropped 2.7 millions tons of bombs and now so many left unexploded and its same in Vietnam, Cambodia as neutral,
but i met so many injured kids etc from the bombs,.the total MADNESS OF USA IS NAZI SM AT ITS BEST,.NO SHAME OR COMPASSION FOR THE VICTIMS.
I cannot comprehend the money it cost USA,. AN ALSO PROFITS FOR SOME,.
With the exceptions of two attacks on American soil-Pearl Harbor and 911- the American people and for the most part their legislative representatives in Congress- will always remain cluless what the United States Government does overseas.This country runs on its own drum beats. The ordinary man on the street needs to take care of his economic needs. The Big Boys always take care of themselves. That includes the military establishment, that is always entitled to an absurd amounts of monies, fueled by an empire building machinery, pushed by the elites that control the fate of economic might, and political orchestra that feeds its ego and prestige.
Time and again, our American sociopaths in power have a strangle hold on us, regardless of the destruction and animosity they heap on distant peoples and lands the world over in the name of national security and the democratic spiel, as they like to tell us ....
Richard Nixon, John Kennedy, Lyndon Johnson- Vietnam and the South East Asian countries of Laos , Cambodia, are an example .
Years later, the establishment manufactures blatant cover-ups with lies upon lies to accuse on record, as general Powell eloquently presented at the United Nations: That Iraq has weapons of mass destruction and needs to be held accountable.And now, this report on Afghanistan with all this pathological violence.Is it reasonable to conclude that our democracy and its pathological actors in government and big business will always purchase it by demagoguery and self vested interest, because the ordinary man whose vote should count will never have the ultimate say when it comes to war and destruction!
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Apr 15, 2018 | off-guardian.org
In regard to our suggestion, the latest move against Damascus was predominantly a UK project, a link was sent to us today to an article by Thierry Meyssan on Voltairenet that's certainly interesting.
Published March 20 it puts forward the idea the Skripal affair was a false flag intended to be the launch pad for a wholesale diplomatic attack on Russia that Meyssan suggests would initiate a "new cold war."
While it's possible to question this terminology (many would suggest we already have a "new cold war" and are on the verge of it becoming hot), his narrative offers a valid interpretation of recent events, and indeed looks more persuasive today that when it was written.
What Meyssan suggests is as follows:
Back in March a projected coup was planned between the UK government and the neocons in Washington to create an irresistible drive to a) launch a full blown assault on Damascus and b) get Russia removed from the UN Security Council.The means was to be first the Skripal incident and immediately thereafter a large scale false flag chemical weapon attack on Ghouta.
Rex Tillerson, then US Secretary of State, was involved in this plan.
However by some means (Meyssan doesn't say how) the Syrian and Russian intelligence services became aware of the plan, and realised it was not the Pentagon behind it, but "some other agency."
The Russians immediately alerted the media to a possible false flag.
At the same time, bypassing diplomatic channels (because he was concerned to avoid others who were siding with the "plotters"), Russian Chief of Staff, General Valeri Gerasimov contacted his American counterpart General Joseph Dunford to inform him of his fears of a game-changing intel-sponsored event in Syria. Dunford in turn informed Defense Secretary Jim Mattis, who told Trump.
Since this apparent plot was going on without the knowledge of the White House & Pentagon, Trump then told Mike Pompeo, the head of the CIA, to investigate.
As a result Trump became convinced Tillerson was involved and soon after, fired him.
This, in essence, is Meyssan's story. He cites no source for the claims about back-channel communications, and we can't verify them even slightly. But we all know Russia did indeed warn of a pending false flag in Syria several times throughout March, and developments since the time of Meyssan's writing lend credence to the broad thrust of interpretation.
The orchestrated & hysterical response of the UK state machine to the Skripal event doesn't just hint at agenda rollout, it shouts it. The idea this was indeed the first act of a make or break plan is certainly more than believable. Indeed we all heard the suggestion about removing Russia from the UNSC repeated in the media at the height of the hysteria.
Whether Meyssan is right or wrong, we absolutely did just see an orchestrated, high level operation unfold, apparently designed to discredit Russia finally and forever.
It suggests new levels of idiot-insanity going on. Not only is such a plan amateurish in conception (kicking Russia off the UNSC, even if achievable, is not going to suddenly neutralise their political and military power), it would seem to have been doubly so in execution.
The Skripal story is a farce. But the apparent attempts to go forward with the "chemical attack" when all rationale for it was gone and when Douma itself was about to fall, shows stupidity beyond comprehension. If this was the UK, as the Russians claim, rather than rescuing themselves they simply added another embarrassing failure to the list, and dug themselves even deeper into easily-exposed crime.
The entire situation must be a warning, and not just the usual cliché about the US being a danger to world peace.
It's not "the US", it's an international grouping of ideologues and other cranks, focused as much, maybe even more, in the UK as in America. If Meyssan is right these people are highly placed, but operating subversively within their own governments. Of course we have always known these thing are true to some extent, but this latest event seems to be taking this subversion to a new level.
Seventeen years ago a small group of highly placed individuals in the US government may have engineered or at very least allowed 9/11 to happen for their own geopolitical ends. We'd be naive to consider a second such event to be impossible.
It also seems clear those enacting this plan initially had little idea how dangerous it really was, and were to some extent astounded by the Russian reaction, and the horror expressed by the more sane elements in international government. This is also significant.
It's a cliché in some alt media now to say the elites want WW3 and to talk about "population reduction" or some other meme. But, while it's certainly true there is a strong eugenicist de-population cult in the upper echelons, it's highly improbable any of them would choose a thermonuclear war as a viable method.
The real danger isn't that a group of ubermenschen or Bond-villains want to incinerate humanity for vague and unspecified reasons, it's that the deep heart of the Russophobic cabal is too dogma-driven and infested with idiots to understand the real world results of their plans.
We can be sure they won't have learned from this and won't be deterred from more of the same or worse in future. And if their next remedial scheme doesn't get stymied by circumstance or nifty footwork, no one will be more surprised than they are when it kicks of WW3.
But they do have some opposition within the state machine, and always have. There were people in the US and UK intelligence agencies who didn't want to lie about WMDs, and there are people today in the UK FCO who off-record told Craig Murray about the lies being forced on them regarding the Skripal case. These are people with enough smarts to want to avoid real confrontation with Russia, however prepared they are to play the public word games.
I think it's important we address this more nuanced reality rather than opting for the security of familiar memes.
Press Conference of Alexander Shulgin, Russian Representative to the OPCW
Streamed live on 16 Apr 2018
It comes with interpretation in English.Cassandra ,
Pt. 2: WHY WOULD ASSAD DO IT?
The French govt also argues that the use of CW in East-Ghouta was both in a tactical and a strategical sense a (sort of) military stroke of genius but I'll spare you the BS except for one argument:The „strategic" aspect was that Assad wanted to punish the civilians in „rebel-held" areas and by creating „terreur et panic" they achieved their aim of surrender.
„Because the war is not over for Assad, he wants to demonstrate thru these ruthless attacks that resistance is futile "
This is bollocks of course because the Russians and the SAA are winning and have painstakingly negotiated with the „rebels" and arranged for them to be evacuated in buses to Idlib. (Can anyone imagine the US-military doing such a thing after 7yrs of war?)
AND President Assad knows very well that the civilians in rebel-held areas were captives, treated like slaves, starved for food (sold by the synthetic "rebels" at exorbitant prices) and brutally executed if they refused to live under Sharia-law or supported Assad. So there was absolutely no need to „punish" them for anything.
Coincidentally, high-ranking former British military officers totally disagree with the French "assessment"
but the French stick to their surreal script .
„Given the operational situation in Eastern-Ghouta on April 7, we estimate with high-confidence that the responsibility [for the non-existent CW-attack] can be attributed to the Syrian Regime". (Sound familiar?)
And finally they put in this kind of „disclaimer" when they say „Les services francaises are not in the possession of any information which would support the thesis, that these armed groups in East-Ghouta have endeavored to acquire CW for themselves or that they were already available to them."
(Now that is a BIG Lie even the MSM has reported that the "rebels" DID use CW ( i.e. see Carla del Ponte, Seymour Hersh and Scott Ritter on this)
„Furthermore we regard a manipulation of the released pictures as implausible, because the groups present in Ghouta had no access to the means necessary to exercise a communication-manoeuvre of this magnitude" (!)(this ridiculous claim does not even deserve a comment their "PR" has been highly effective since it was directed and organized by MI6 see voltairenet for more)
The biggest lie comes at the end when they claim that Assad has not declared all his CW to the OPCW, has kept a CLANDESTINE CW-programm all the time (since 2013), has intensified the use of CW continually and that the Russians are in on this.
And then follow the (by now familiar) highly-manipulative phrases which are supposed to be imprinted on our brains now:
- "Undoubtedly a chemical attack was launched against civilians on April 7 in Douma"
- "THERE IS NO OTHER PLAUSIBLE SCENARIO then the action of the SAA (CW-attack) as part of a major offensive to retake East-Ghouta"
- "Russia has undeniably actively supported these operations and the clandestine policy of the SARG for the use of CW"
As Sergei Lavrov recently said to the BBC "the proof is (apparently) in the punishment" .. it is crystal clear that neither the Briitsh nor the French gov't is interested in a thorough, forensic investigation (whether in Salisburgy or in Douma) and the fact they have acted as prosecutor, judge, jury and executioner BEFORE any impartial investigation took place is proof enough of their duplicity
What I find extremely puzzling is this: The Russians now say they have "irrefutable evidence" that Britain has instigated a false flag Douma (and obviously in Salisbury as well) . SO WHY don't they show it to us???? Why not publish the findings of the Swiss lab? Is this some weird diplomatic code of conduct they adhere to?
Cassandra ,
President MACRON recently stated that he has „proof" that CW were used in Douma and that it was the Syrian Army. Now the French govt has released the „evaluation nationale" but it seems no-one is paying attention to it.After reading the document carefully one can only reach one conclusion:
There is NO PROOF whatsover in this evaulation and it is obviously addressed to an audience considered to be incapable of critical thought. The format of the document is rather revealing because it contains no offical ID from a French „service" or ministry (just „Republique Francaise") and the authors are unknown (so no official takes personal responsibility for its content, like the phony „assessment" on CW released by the WH in 2017)
//assets.documentcloud.org/documents/3553049/Syria-Chemical-Weapons-Report-White-House.pdf
In order to find out who committed a crime, forensic evidence is extremely important, as we all know from detective thrillers and court-room dramas. But in this case, there is NO FORENSIC EVIDENCE (no criminal investigation by a CSI-unit). There are only unverified pics and videos posted on YouTube by the White Helmets (WH).
It is impossible to verify WHERE these pics/vids were taken and also WHEN because the metadata have been tempered with. The WH of course have NO CREDIBILITY whatsoever, being a cover for the massive „strategic information" (incessantly demonizing Assad) created by MI6, who also ran the massive PR for the artificial „rebels" in Syria. (See voltairenet.org for more on this).
And yet this is the basis for the „assessment" of the French govt. They write that „French experts have analyzed the symptoms (visible in the pics and vids) which can be described as follows (respiratory distress, asphyxiation, cyanosis, skin-burns, excessive salivation, etc.) Taken together, these symptoms are characteristic für a CW-attack, especially for suffocating-agents. The use of asthma-sprays supports the thesis that such agents were used."
So instead of a forensic examination and autopsy, all we get is an interpretation of symptoms to fit the frame of the Assad-gasses-his-own-people horror-narrative. To this, they add statements from anonymous people working (in Douma) for medical NGOs like UOSSM (created in France in 2011, PR-front group) and SAMS (US directed front group) who claim that about a hundred people „stormed" their health facilities in Douma and at least 40 died as a result of the CW-attack.
They use medical staff of course as „CREDIBILITY-ENHANCERS" because in general people tend to trust doctors, nurses and paramedics, hence the „White Helmets" (and the faux „nurse" telling the heart-wrenchning, invented tale of the incubator-babies in Iraq in 1990)
I asked a friend who works for one of the biggest chemical companies in Germany (BASF) about the symptoms and he said they are consistent with a chlorine-exposure but that does NOT mean that it could ONLY have been chlorine. Very similar symptoms occur when people have been exposed to SMOKE-INHALATION (German: Rauchgasvergiftung)
And now it gets really interesting because a video has been released by Russian and Syrian TV stations in which two medical students who work for the emergency department of the Douma hospital, say that the people shown in the WH-video had indeed been exposed to SMOKE-INHALATION.
A house in Douma had been hit by an airstrike which caused a fire in the lower floors and the partial collapse of the upper floors. So these people had breathing difficulties and were taken to the emergency dept of the hospital where they were given first aid. Suddenly some men appeared and shouted „this was a gas-attack!". They then began to douse the patients with cold water (from a hose), which caused panic (children screamed of course). These „dramatic" scenes were filmed then the strangers disappeared as quickly as they had arrived.
I cannot verify if these medical students told the truth, but given the political context, I have much more reason to believe them than the White Helmets or the French DGSE.
Just one more thing, the brochure from BASF about the dangers of chlorine contains one sentence that caught my eye:
„Wasser verstärkt die oxidative und ätzende Wirkung von Chlor" (WATER exacerbates the corrosive effect of chlorine (because hydrochlorid acid is formed through the moisture) So why would medical experts then hose down these alleged „chlorine" victims? Of course they would not. So this too, seem to confirm that the whole scene was staged.
Mulga Mumblebrain ,
This is NOT a 'French' report. It is an Israeli Zionist pile of black propaganda, no doubt dictated by the CRIF, the de facto government of the slave state formerly known as 'France'.Doing a little more tunnelling into the Rabbit hole. A Bill Clinton reference to Karl Rove led to some interesting events surrounding the recently pardoned Scooter Libby.
- http://bfy.tw/AKAh PARTICIPATE CLICK IT
- http://letthemconfectsweeterlies.blogspot.se/2018/04/whats-empire-war-machine-ever-done-for_17.html
- http://letthemconfectsweeterlies.blogspot.se/2018/04/whats-empire-war-machine-ever-done-for.html
@KarlRove https://bit.ly/2HFtLlh opposing Military Industrial Complex isn't equal2 Putin Apologism. War(s) Crimes of aggression started for false reasons With no proper Investigative & War reporting from corporate media how 2 hold http://bfy.tw/AKAh #warmongerstoaccount
5:26 PM – 17 Apr 2018https://theduran.com/british-intelligence-services-are-the-masters-of-propaganda-and-false-flags/
Great Article on the Duran.Old Pepper,
The criminal group led by the red clown and the old Mare with the skewed muzzle continues the provocations. On Monday, the British representative in the OPCW accused the Russians of non-admission of OPCW experts in Duma. At the same time, the OPCW experts while in Damascus were expecting a solution of the Security Department of the UN, because controlled by the Britons the bandits were instructed to fire at the place where the white helmets organized the performance with a "chemical attack". At the same time, the United States began to yell that Russian do not allow the OPCW experts to the Duma, seeking to eliminate traces of the "chemical attack". This gang HIGHLY LIKELY thinks we're all idiots.The world is already clear that no poisoning of the Tablets was not, as there was no chemical attack by Assad. Clown and Mare managed to negotiate with the Russians and they did not respond to the shelling of Syria. Seeing that the Russian did not respond, the bandits completely insolen. And now they can arrange another chemical provocation and hit in Syria already on the Russians. And is not the fact that the Russian will not answer. This is war. I do not want because of a bunch of idiots, teasing the Russian bear, to a slaughter in which no one will survive.
Watching the Commons Statement Yesterday from Theresa May and reflecting overnight I revisited some interactive Dada.
- https://steemit.com/dumberanddada/@tonefreqhz/so-whats-the-industrial-military-complex-ever-done-for-us-interactivedada-karlrove-actorsinhistory-dumberanddouma
- https://twitter.com/RogerGLewis/status/986157095945953280
We are watching Karl Rove's actors in history. What is in the grey space and what do we have between our Ears?
Kaiama,
https://www.independent.co.uk/voices/syria-chemical-attack-gas-douma-robert-fisk-ghouta-damascus-a8307726.html
A little ray of sunshine ATL.Goldmember,
The funniest part of Meyssan's story is that Trump asked DCI Pompeo to investigate the false flag. What a nube.Think it through. They didn't say cabal, they said agency. DoS is not an agency, it's a department. 'Ideologues and cranks?' 'Highly placed, but operating subversively within their own governments?' You are describing CIA.
https://ratical.org/ratville/JFK/ST/
That small group of highly placed individuals who did 911? That was CIA and their moles in key departments: Brennan, Blee, Cofer Black, Wilshire, Bikowsky, Bowman. The deep heart of the Russophobic cabal is not some secret society, it's a longstanding CIA program. These programs look international because CIA uses eyes-only intelligence liaisons to conceal the dirty work they delegate to other countries' agents.
The opposition within CIA is also institutionally chartered. CIA has a routine: dewy-eyed boy scout analysts secretly decry the insanity of the operations people. Then when the shit hits the fan, CIA publishes the analysis and uses it to blame somebody else. That's how they blamed Vietnam on the Pentagon, with their tongue-in-cheek Pentagon Papers. And that's how they blamed Tillerson for their very own CIA plan and conspiracy for war.
milosevic,
This is a very promising thesis. I hope you can expand on it. Another angle might be Nixon/Watergate/WaPo. Or Reagan/IranContra/North. Of course, JFK/Vietnam/Oswald goes without saying.Here's a lecture given to FSB (KGB) students by a Russian professor. He says the world is governed by a "Conceptual Power" that exists above elected governments and that this template has been in place since 1350 B.C.. Very interesting at the very least:Alan,
Another article by Mr Meyssan http://www.voltairenet.org/article200375.html refers to the British regime " is elaborated by an elite gathered around the monarch, outside of any form of popular control " The idea of a deep state seems too convenient. In every sphere the regime exploits the population for it's own requirements, if indeed the regime adheres to a nationality. Cold war, hot war are regime terms, all that matters is knowing who not to trust.Re BZ (British Zyklon?) the following lengthy clip from Saker's "Curious Incident" discussion reflects OffG's raison d'etre: that Facts Really ought to be Sacred. The MSM have abandoned this principle, as have the Leaders of F, UK and US regimes among others in the Western world. This is a huge reversal of human progress, and extremely dangerous for the world because the West now has runaway Technology without Ethics. BTL Saker:vot tak on April 16, 2018 · at 1:09 am UTC 14.04.2018
Embassy Press Officer comments on the findings of the Swiss experts regarding the Salisbury incident
https://www.rusemb.org.uk/fnapr/6486
"Q. Is there any new information regarding the findings of experts from Switzerland in connection with the Salisbury poisoning?
A. According to information from the Swiss Federal Institute for NBC-protection in Spiez, its experts received samples collected in Salisbury by the OPCW specialists and finished testing them on 27 March.
The experts of the Institute discovered traces of toxic chemical called "BZ" and its precursors. It is a Schedule 2 substance under the Chemical Weapons Convention.
"BZ" is a chemical agent, which is used to temporary incapacitate people. The desired psychotoxic effect is reached in 30-60 minutes after application of the agent and lasts up to four days. According to the information the Russian Federation possesses, this agent was used in the armed forces of the USA, United Kingdom and several others NATO member states. No stocks of such substance ever existed either in the Soviet Union or in the Russian Federation.
In addition, the Swiss specialists discovered strong concentration of traces of the nerve agent of A-234 type in its initial states as well as its decomposition products.In view of the experts, such concentration of the A-234 agent would result in inevitable fatal outcome of its administration. Moreover, considering its high volatility, the detection of this substance in its initial state (pure form and high concentration) is extremely suspicious as the samples have been taken several weeks since the poisoning.
It looks highly likely that the "BZ" nerve agent was used in Salisbury. The fact that Yulia Skripal and Detective Sergeant Nick Bailey have already been discharged from hospital, and Sergei Skripal is on his way to recovery, only supports such conclusion.
All this information was not mentioned in the final OPCW report at all. Considering the above, we have numerous serious questions to all interested parties, including the OPCW."
Sushi on April 16, 2018 · at 3:04 am UTCThat statement on the part of RF embassy is good to see as it confirms my own supposition as recorded in Part X.
It is always nice to go out on a limb and then discover the rest of the world supports the finding rather than sawing off the limb 🙂
But I believe the big take-away from this event is the fact that the state is no longer held in check by the MSM. This means that the ordinary citizen is paying for an entity which is actively acting to subvert the interests of the citizenry. This is very dangerous.
These [truther] articles each get about 10,000 page views. This is a drop in the bucket in comparison to the total voting population of the UK, or France, or FRG or US or CA. If you believe this information is valuable then you should share it. You do not have to agree with all that I have written. It is quite possible I have made errors, drawn incorrect conclusions from the evidence etc, etc.
The key issue is that the MSM is not engaged in a review of an incident which, on any degree of review fails on the merits and is quickly exposed as false, deceptive and grounds for vilification of another state which I believe to be innocent of the allegations made against it. If I could find evidence of RF involvement I would gladly write that. But I cannot locate any such evidence. This event is likely to be used to further justify illegal use of force in Syria. If the public comes to the belief that "Bad Vlad" is pulling all the strings then they will accept the march toward global war. The problem is that the person really pulling all the strings is located at Number 10. If bad things happen they have a taxpayer financed bunker to retreat to. The ordinary citizen is not even assured of a working NHS. _So if you find this series of value then address it with your family and other contacts._ Cheers!WJ,
https://mobile.twitter.com/caitoz/status/985683664032874496
Link to story cited in prior commentWJ,
US now explicitly commits itself to stay in Syria for purpose of ..Iran. https://medium.com/@caityjohnstone/nikki-haley-seems-to-be-saying-us-will-remain-in-syria-as-long-as-iran-existsThere is a very powerful deep state in the UK. I think its leadership is hidden deep in the Privy Council and enforced by MI5/MI6. It runs a hidden economy financed through crime – fraud against UK taxpayers, foreign countries etc, It controls the judiciary when need be. This speech by Gerald James although old gives some idea;http://zersetzen.wikispaces.com/file/view/Gerald+Reaveley+James.pdf
The next link shows the involvement in crime:
Excellent post Catte. Thanks. There is certainly serious dissension within the ranks of the U.S. establishment or we would not be seeing the various fits and stops and starts that have characterized both Trump's appointments, and his subsequent removal of various appointed advisors, as well as his erratic foreign policy actions since he entered office. Trump himself was never "the problem" for the collective U.S. deep state, it was Trump's stated goal of "getting along with Russia" that has prompted close to open warfare between factions of the U.S. ruling class and institutional structures. What is amazing to behold is watching almost the entirety of the leadership of the most powerful Western nations on earth morph before our eyes into a group of slapstick carnival clowns selling snake oil and war as if they were some sort of magic elixir sure to prolong their much cherished Western hegemony. Recent events have pulled the mask off of the facade of "Western democracy" to reveal the grinning death mask of a dying elite power structure, delusional, paranoid and grandiose to the bitter end.flaxgirl ,
Fascinating article butSeventeen years ago a small group of highly placed individuals in the US government may have engineered or at very least allowed 9/11 to happen for their own geopolitical ends
???
May have? Allowed?
How many articles has OffG published on 9/11 that show unequivocally that it was an inside job? Seventeen years later with the vision of hindsight for those of us who did swallow the lies we can see how utterly silly we were. We can see so clearly how steel frame skyscrapers do not collapse symmetrically due to fires, how a band of men armed with boxcutters cannot negotiate the most restricted airspace in the world without an effective stand down – provided so very conveniently by 21 drills occurring on the morning of 9/11, some of which exactly matched the alleged real life events.
No further investigation needs to be conducted to know that 9/11 was an inside job – only to sort out the guilty and exactly what happened. In fact, all you need to know that 9/11 was an inside job is the undisputed 2.25 seconds of free fall acceleration in the collapse of WTC-7. That tiny piece of information is all you need. For free fall, the 82 steel support columns must have given way at virtually the same time and for that to have happened only controlled demolition could have been the cause and controlled demolition can only mean inside job.Catte,
We've successfully proved the official story is a lie, but we haven't uncovered what actually happened beyond there being foreknowledge and pre-planning of some kind. Who did the planning, how many people knew how much how long before it happened, we do NOT know.
Do we?
Let's be as rigorous about the sceptical argument as we are about the official story.flaxgirl ,
Catte, we do know for absolute certain that WTC-7 came down by controlled demolition, not by fire – it's a matter of science – and that fact means inside job, however much it was also an outside job. It's fine to be rigorous but if the facts are staring you right in the face that's rigour enough. I simply do not understand reluctance to call things out when they're in your face. It's not as if a court hearing is necessarily going to give you a better answer, is it, but hopefully there's going to be one soon where the truth will be revealed, at least as much as necessary.10 April – Lawyers and Victims' Families File Petition for Federal Grand Jury Investigation
According to the 52-page petition, which is accompanied by 57 exhibits, federal statute requires the U.S. Department of Justice to relay citizen reports of federal crimes to a special grand jury. The unprosecuted crime alleged to have taken place on 9/11 is THE BOMBING OF A PLACE OF PUBLIC USE OR A GOVERNMENT FACILITY -- as prohibited under the federal bombing statute or 18 U.S.C. § 2332f -- as well as a conspiracy to commit, or the aiding and abetting of, said offense.
I think Catte was saying we don't know the people who were involved, etc. but she accepts that the official story is a lie.
flaxgirl ,
We don't know who exactly but we know for absolute certain that rogue elements within government were involved. We definitely know it was an inside job, whatever outside involvement there was.Mulga Mumblebrain ,
How do you explain the 'five dancing Israelis' filming the attack as it happened, from Liberty Park in New Jersey?Google Talpiot Program ,
3 of the 5 appeared on an Israeli TV show afterwards where they said they were there to "document the event".
http://abcnews.go.com/2020/story?id=123885&page=1Google Talpiot Program ,
"Not excluding it, jut saying it's not an inevitable conclusion they were involved at all, and certainly no indication there were at the center of anything."
No one is saying they are at the centre of anything. That they were in a position to film, were reportedly celebrating, their story changed multiple times in interviews with law and enforcement and that they were possibly Israeli intelligence all adds up to making it an interesting detail.
Especially when all the other evidence of 9/11 is investigated and puts the dancing Israelis in context.Mulga Mumblebrain ,
LUDICROUS! They knew of the attack, before it happened. Others filming the atrocity were NOT wildly celebrating the deaths of thousands. They were attempting to pose as 'Arabs' to defame them. One told one of the arresting police that 'Your enemy are the Palestinians'. The police found traces of explosives in their van. One or more failed lie-detector tests before they were simply released and allowed to go home to Israel, where they appeared on TV, one admitting to being MOSSAD.Admin ,
Steady on. The source quoted above doesn't say anything about wild celebration, it just says the five men were looking happy and smiling. That's a bit weird of itself but don't exaggerate it into something else. Thats just replacing memes with other memes. Maybe they were involved, but there are many other possibilities, including them simply watching the event with no direct connection at all.What significance do you see in the traces of explosives? Are you suggesting these guys are the ones who wired the WTCs for demolition, and that they had brought the RDX/thermite there in that van, which they didn't ditch but continued to drive around in?
Five guys with no known specialist knowledge, wiring three massive towers for demolition from one small van? You don't think it was likely a bigger more professional outfit that would do that? One – say – with permits to enter and renovate the towers/enter the lift shafts?
Mulga Mumblebrain ,
Your diversionary tactics are interesting. They were described as 'dancing, jumping and giving each other 'high-fives'. Obviously they were overcome with grief. The presence of explosive traces plainly has nothing to do so with the controlled demolition. It just seems odd, and suspicious. No-one at any time suggested that these five did the placing of the controlled demolition charges. Of course it was others, probably Israeli Death Force sappers. And they were NOT 'just watching'-they were filming it, and from the first aircraft strike. Pretty prescient of them.Mulga Mumblebrain ,
9/11 irrefutably, I would say, was a MOSSAD operation, with US sayanim, and Sabbat Goy involvement, the US side centered on that Zionist Israel First cabal, the 'neo-conservatives'. Christopher Bollyn does an excellent job of outlining the Zionist ' Clash of Civilizations' and 'War on (Islam) Terror' projects, the latter, in particular, an endeavour of Netanyahu's for decades. Everything that flowed from that event, the genocides in Iraq, Afghanistan, Libya, and the destruction inflicted on those unlucky lands, the crucifixion of Syria, the regular, ritual, massacres in Gaza, are all creations of the Zionist elite, and follow closely the strategy outlined in the Oded Yinon Plan of 1982, which was reiterated by Netanyahu in the 'A Clean Break' manifesto.Zionist control easily explains May's involvement, as she is a groveling toady of the Netanyahu regime and the Holy State that sits above mere 'International Law'. Apparently, when Netanyahu visited Putin in Sochi a year or so ago, and made certain demands on Russia in regard to Syria, and Putin rebuffed him, so great was Netanyahu's distress at this insubordination by a mere goy that he lost self-control and went a little hysterical. Hence the renewed determination to keep the vivisection of Syria going, and prepare for Holy War on Lebanon and Iran. Of course Bibi's path is that of the Masada Complex, he being a wannabe zealot 'hero', and he seems oblivious to the reality that unending Israeli aggression will only bring about Israel's destruction, in the manner that it has inflicted ruination on its neighbours for 70 years.
bevin,
"..Let's be as rigorous about the sceptical argument as we are about the official story."Absolutely agree.
It is quite reasonable for someone to be convinced that, to use a popular argument on this thread, Corbyn is an MI 6 agent but if there is no evidence of this cited not only is it impossible to insist on the 'irrefutable' nature of the assertion but to do so is to discredit oneself, the discussion in question and, fairly quickly, the blog in its entirety.
It is one of life's little ironies that off guardian, which insists that we weigh evidence rigorously where claims by the state are concerned, is becoming something of a refuge for assertions based on evidence just as sketchy and circumstantial as those put forward by the likes of Freedland and the BBC.
So 9/11 might have been a Mossad operation, just as Putin might have ordered the attack in Salisbury and the White helmets could be well meaning humanitarians discovering gas attacks.
Let us see the evidence before we agree that something is irrefutable, even when it is something as clear cut as the fact that Corbyn (already revealed to be a Czech spy, having once had tea with one) has had tea with an MI 6 agent and is therefore, connecting the dots, completely unreliable and no more to be supported than, say, Boris Johnson. The proof being that he did not oppose, we are told the Magnitsky Act, sponsored by his fellow agent (and PLP member) Ian Austin.
At any rate the Israeli Embassy can now call off their campaign against Corbyn who is revealed to be almost as big a friend of Israel as Blair- who even Roman Polanski knew was a CI Agent.
It is one of life's little ironies that off guardian, which insists that we weigh evidence rigorously where claims by the state are concerned, is becoming something of a refuge for assertions based on evidence just as sketchy and circumstantial as those put forward by the likes of Freedland and the BBC.
Excuse me? Since when have we been guilty of that?
In Hasbara College-but he flunked out.flaxgirl ,
There is nothing elaborate whatsoever in claiming WTC-7 came down by classic, controlled demolition, aka, an implosion. It's irrelevant how substandard its material, how much fire was in it, or how much damage it suffered. The manner of its collapse tells all. Pre- and during- explosions, kink in middle at start, beautiful symmetry, near and partial free fall, complete dismemberment of steel frame and molten metal are all unique characteristics of controlled demolition while there is not even a lick of flame to be seen in videos of the collapse. WTC-7's collapse by "fire" is the greatest case of the Emperor's New Clothes the world has ever seen.I've done an Occam's Razor exercise on the collapse of WTC-7 and offered $5,000 to those who support the official story to produce an equivalent exercise favouring the "fire" hypothesis. No one has been able to respond.
http://occamsrazorterrorevents.weebly.com/911.htmlBigB ,
Bevin: if this comment is aimed in part at me, you are deliberately misrepresenting my assertions. No one on this thread, makes the accusation that Jeremy is an MI6 agent except you. As you say, there is no evidence for this and personally, I do not believe he is. What I have empirically and objectively shown (previously with links) is that he can be co-opted by the Cabinet Office and JIC to conduit faulty intelligence fed to him. That does NOT make him part of the intelligence apparatus, only ancillary to it. To this end, it was interesting to note his actions this weekend: commenting on Syria. For this he sought, but did not get an intelligence briefing as a Privy Councillor. This was quite clear on the Marr show: he talked about "other parties" that may have perpetrated the Douma provocation but he said "I don't know, I don't know" quite a few times. Corbyn "unbriefed" wants an OPCW investigation and a UN mandate to act: which is perfectly reasonable and legal. And probably clears up any false assertion that he is in the full-time employ of MI6?Re: the Magnitsky ammendment. Not only did Corbyn "not oppose" this: he actively promoted it at every opportunity. As I have tried to make clear we already have "Unexplained Wealth Orders" which are analoguous to Magnitsky sanctions. We do not need another Magnitsky ammendment. This was the government position before 6th March. I do not claim that Jeremy is pushing this Act because he IS an MI6 agent: but I can quite clearly show he is pushing it FOR an MI6 agent. Thank if you do not conflate and impute meaning for me.
And no, I have not produced "evidence" that Browder is an agent for SIS: but if he is not, he might as well be? Or perhaps you think him an innocent human rights activist as he styles himself. What is irrefutable, empirical, and objective is that this one man is the source of much of the character assassination of Putin (from his "Enemy No1") and Jeremy is pushing his agenda. Why: I do not know – naivety? Beyond that, I leave the speculation to you.
If Ian Austin is an agent, he would be a Mossad agent but I make no such claim.
As for the Israeli Embassy: I have covered that elsewhere in depth. No, they will not call off their campaign. Yes, they already have a hold, and they are not far off gaining a veto control of the Labour disciplinary process: whereby anyone can be suspended on false accusations of anti-semitism: a position Jeremy has backed himself into by his strategy of appeasement.
All in all: I would say my assertions are grounded in empiricism, and I have not claimed anything I cannot back up. So facts are sacred: even if that means you do not like them?
Mulga Mumblebrain ,
I suggest immersing yourself in Christopher Bollyn's excellent videos regarding Israeli planning for just such an operation, to be undertaken to provide the 'New Pearl Harbor' that the fanatic Zionist 'neo-conservatives' declared presciently would be needed to get the USA to do Israel's dirty work in destroying the Moslem countries of the MENA. The evidence of Israeli and US sayanim involvement is huge, most circumstantial, but other parts, like the 'five dancing Israelis' seen filming the atrocity in real time, are rather more convincing.BigB ,
I read one of Bollyn's books, can't remember the title. I take on a lot of his points: but I personally frame such events as transnational, or better still: supra-national. To say it was this or that country alone is not how I view it: the perpetraitors were ultimately working for a "higher cause"! Caitlin Johnstone just did a piece about this: the ultimate beneficiaries form a globalised superclass that is totally amoral and has no allegiance to any particular cause or country. Zinoviev termed this the Westernised "supra-society". Certainly not every individual: but at the corrupted core – all Western Intelligence agencies serve a cause that transcends the national interest. National security is a line they feed us: the UK as a whole benefits little from our involvement in Syria, and less still, from being embroiled in a Cold War with Russia on the grounds of national defence. It's all a con!Mulga Mumblebrain ,
The Zionist elite support other states and their elites only in so far as they serve Israel's interests, or rather the interests of the Israeli and Diaspora elites. These interests are not those of much of Jewry, or, of course, of any goyim but the collaborative type like May, Micron, Cheney et al. The Zionist elite most certainly do possess global ambitions rooted in Talmudic doctrine.Mulga Mumblebrain ,
Please don't misrepresent me. I have stated over and over again that the culprits are the Zionist elites in Israel and the Diaspora, NOT Jews as a whole. Many Jews oppose the nefarious activities of the Zionist elites, and many others are passive, just like all other communities. But in the matter of 9/11 proposing that the Zionists not be mentioned is quite bizarre. In my comments immediately above (the last seven or eight) there are eight 'Zionists' and one 'Jewry' and that was in the context of asserting that not all Jews support Zionist crimes or benefit from them.Bollyn is very reliable on 9/11, in my view.mog ,
@bevinI am sad to see you write that. I have not seen anyone here claiming Corbyn to be an MI6 agent, and it reads as inflationary misrepresentation to say that people have.
The Labour bureaucracy is simply overpowered/ outmaneuvered by a very well organised, well connected and well resourced psywar operation, – one that has at least some links to Israel and zionist sympathies.
Too many on the Corbyn Left cannot engage with this for fear of being branded racist.
Do you refute the accusation of Corbyn's appeasement?
Evidence for Mossad involvement in 9/11 ?
There is a heap of evidence, arguably no conclusive evidence, but not far off:
'First, Bergen, NJ residents saw five people on a white van filming the attacks and visibly celebrating. They had set up their cameras before the first plane hit. Police arrested them. All were Israelis (now referred to as the "dancing Israelis"). Bomb-sniffing dogs reacted as if they had detected explosives, although officers were unable to find anything. The FBI seized the van for further testing. All five were later released at the instigation of Israeli & American Jewish leaders, some in the US Government. Details are still classified. This incident quickly disappeared from the mainstream media, following a brief mention in the New York Times three days after the attacks, that was not followed up.
A second van was stopped on the approaches to the George Washington Bridge. As CBS's Dan Rather said in his live report: "Two suspects are in FBI custody after a truckload of explosives were discovered around the George Washington Bridge. That bridge links New York to New Jersey over the Hudson River. Whether the discovery of those explosives had anything to do with other events today is unclear, but the FBI, has two suspects in hand, said the truckload of explosives, enough explosives were in the truck to do great damage to the George Washington Bridge " Those suspects –also Israelis -- and the incident then seem to have disappeared from the public record and mainstream media "examinations" <sic.> of 9/11, just like discussions of the first van, the secondary explosions at ground level within WTC-1 and WTC-2, and the precipitous collapse into its own footprint of WTC-7.'
http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article28438.htm
I think that Kevin Ryan has done some of the best work in trying to identify legitimate suspects for 9/11, and proposes a 'private intelligence network' which spans several countries (e.g. Saudi Arabia, UAE ).
I think there is a strong case made by Sabrosky and others that 'The Big Wedding' ' wedded Neocon philosophy with 500 years of Atlanticism'.
I keep banging the drum that seeks to sound out the need for the Left to come to terms with this history. I contend that they will not 'get anywhere' in the 21st century unless or until they do.
mog ,
@AdminDoes this network include the US/UK or any NATO countries? Yes.
absolutely agreed. the more nuanced reality is where Karl ROVE delivered us..("We are empire now we create new realities..") which is why the adults in Moscow have so far deflected these egregious false flags generated by the MI6 Britprop WhiteHelmets®.con atrocity troupe.Because they KNOW whats going on.
Thierry Meysson wrote one of the very first books on false flag 911, the event beginning WW3 (911. The big LIE) He is a voice highly regarded. The ugly intentions of the anglozionist hegamon, loudly expressed as they slapped the Patriot Act into homeland 'Law' – to smash the middle East by all and any means (Strategy of Tension [NATO:GLADIO] YINON and 'Full Spectrum Dominance' methods/R2P, P2OG, IIO) ushered in on the LIE of 911 casus belli; was not lost on Russian and Chinese intelligence ; nor on anyone listening.
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Jul 09, 2018 | www.moonofalabama.org
Daniel , Jul 8, 2018 3:35:44 PM | 57
Exciting new product intro from Max Blumenthal: Maddow's Tears™, a new formula that produces soothing, cooling moisture in politically convenient circumstances.Daniel , Jul 8, 2018 4:25:49 PM | 58Interesting case of honesty from The Guardian:"I am at a loss to see what motive the Kremlin might have to commit murders on foreign soil during the buildup, let alone the enactment, of a sporting event that is of mammoth chauvinist significance to Russia."
"The most obvious motive for these attacks would surely be from someone out to embarrass the Russian president, Vladimir Putin – someone from his enemies, rather than from his friends or employees. But once again we have no clue."
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www.truthdig.com
Special Counsel Robert Mueller has finally released his conclusions of the investigation into Russia's role in the US Presidential Election 2016. The investigation did not establish that members of the Trump campaign conspired or coordinated with Russians, the press reported.
But there is a curious detail: most people charged have no connection to Russia, as in Manafort's case. The former Trump campaign manager has been accused of money laundry and illegal foreign lobbying for Ukraine.
Thus, the Mueller investigation findings are leading to Kiev, not Russia. Moreover, Ukraine did admit to interfering in the 2016 US election helping the Democratic candidate, Hillary Clinton.
In this regard, there are fair questions to raise: why American citizens are indicted and sentenced with less charges while the evidence of a foreign conspiracy is omitted? Where are fair debates over the issue? Why there were no special committee hearings to determine the truth?
It is clear: a new investigation is coming. The US prosecutors need to interrogate Ukrainian politicians and members of the Clinton campaign as well as to probe the activity of Ukrainian lobbyists in Washington.
Thus, the audio recording made public in the Ukrainian media was one piece of evidence of Ukraine's interference. According to it, a person with a voice similar to the voice of the head of Ukraine's National Anti-Corruption Bureau (NABU), Artem Sytnyk, admitted that he had supported Hillary Clinton in the 2016 US election.
His office was responsible for publicly disclosing the contents of the Ukrainian "black ledger", which implicated Paul Manafort, to the media. The document contained a list of secret payments made by Ukraine's Party of Regions to Manafort.
Earlier, the county administrative court of Kyiv had pledged the director of the NABU Artem Sytnyk, and a member of the Ukrainian Parliament Sergey Leshchenko guilty of publicizing the pre-trial investigation materials concerning Paul Manafort and election interference. The information was spread illegally and inflicted damage on the foreign policy of Ukraine.
Translation:
Admit unlawful acts of the director of the NABU A. Sytnyk and the Ukrainian MP S. Leshchenko concerning the disclosure and distribution of the information about D. Trump's campaign chairman P. Manafort and the presence of P.Manafort's name and signatures in the lists of "The Party of Regions' black ledgers" in the materials of the pre-trial investigation, which was the result of interference in the electoral processes of the United States of America in 2016 and harmed the interests of Ukraine.
Eventually, a slew of incriminating information forced Paul Manafort to resign as Donald Trump's campaign chairman in August 2016, just in the middle of election campaign. Serhiy Leshchenko, the Ukrainian MP, intended to share his gloat with his Facebook followers by posting a message stressing that "after such a blow Trump would not recover".
Translation:
"The Party of Regions' black ledgers" saved the world. Manafort, who was fed from Yanukovich's hands, leaves with dishonor. Guess, after such a blow Trump will not recover.
P.S. We can clearly see the reaction of the Ukrainian politicians involved in "Yanukovich's black ledgers". Political culture – you've either got it or you haven't".
Another confirmation of the Ukrainian officials' overt support of Hillary Clinton was the anti-Trump publications on social media. However, as soon as the Republican had won, the Ukrainian politicians, in particular, the Minister of Internal Affairs of Ukraine Arsen Avakov and Ukrainian MP Oleg Lyashko began to remove massively their anti-Trump narratives from their social media pages.
Certainly, the US President did not forgive the Ukrainian leadership actions. On his Twitter page, Donald Trump criticized the Ukrainian efforts to "sabotage" his campaign.
Moreover, in August 2017, it became clear that on the election day Petro Poroshenko sent Hillary Clinton a telegram, in which he congratulated her on the victory in the elections even before the announcement of the voting results. The then Minister for Foreign Affairs of Ukraine Pavel Klimkin personally delivered it. The president himself did not comment on this at all. His assistants strongly rejected all the suspicions of illegal actions during the election campaign. However, all these facts speak for themselves.
Despite this, Washington does not refuse financial assistance and cooperation with Ukraine. The intervention in the US Presidential Campaign 2016 and the leverages issues undoubtedly overshadow the current position of Petro Poroshenko. Moreover, the growing scandal related to accusations against our diplomat gives us reason to doubt the trustworthiness of the head of state and his future plans as a presidential candidate for the second term.
Facebook Twitter Reddit Pinterest WhatsApp vKontakte Email Filed under: latest , Ukraine , United States Tagged with: 2016 presidential election , Celia Schmidt , Donald trump , Hillary Clinton , Petro Poroshenko , russia , ukraine can you spare $1.00 a month to support independent mediaOffGuardian does not accept advertising or sponsored content. We have no large financial backers. We are not funded by any government or NGO. Donations from our readers is our only means of income. Even the smallest amount of support is hugely appreciated.
Gmason ,
Why is ok to expose Manafort's corruption to take down Trump, but not ok to expose Hunter Biden's? That is inconsistent and hypocritical.Robbobbobin ,
Perhaps loads of nation states, as well as busy international bodies like the UN, more or less continually interfere in the affairs of other states and some of the time those ongoing programs of continual interference are congruent with elections being held in the interfered-with states and on some of those occasions those elections provide an exceptional opportunity that's just too good to pass up?summitflyer ,
I should send this information to Chrystia Freeland, our illustrious foreign affairs minister for casual reading .Would love to see her reaction upon reading it .Paul ,
There was one man – backed by a very powerful organisation who worked tirelessly to prevent Trump becoming President. That was Christopher Steele ...Jen ,
Paul Manafort was working as Donald Trump's campaign manager until he had to resign halfway through the campaign when Ukrainians and Ukrainian Americans linked to the Democratic National Committee and Hillary Rodham Clinton's election campaign released information that Manafort had done work for former Ukrainian President Viktor Yanukovych and his party The Party of Regions, whose main support base was in the Russian-speaking eastern part of Ukraine.The MSM has played up the notion that Yanukovych was supported by or was drawing close to Vladimir Putin and Russia, and that he rejected the EU / Ukraine Association Agreement in late 2013. So by bringing up Manafort's past connection with Yanukovych, the Democrats were trying to tie the Trump campaign to Moscow.
Ben Trovata ,
It's no mystery;the Russians made a better offer! One that included continuing to supply Ukraine gas ( even they were woefully behind in their payments)! As far as I can tell, this was almost totally ignored in corporate medIa.( I learned it from David Pear in a BTL comment.)summitflyer ,
Yes that is what I heard and read also at the time .That was before the coup .
Mistaron ,
Russia had also arranged a $3 billion loan to Yanukovych govt.Jen ,
The issue I was alluding to is not whether the Yanukovych government really was drawing closer to the Russian government and its offer to Ukraine of joining a competing Eurasian Customs Union – the issue was that the Yanukovych government was made out by Western media to be subservient to Russia by supposedly rejecting the EU / Ukraine association agreement.The Yanukovych government had actually asked for more time to study the EU / Ukraine AA and its fine print. Moscow had apparently tipped off Yanukovych's government that complying with the AA would have meant (among other things) a complete overhaul of Ukraine's entire railway-line network to conform with EU railway gauge standards. This in spite of the fact that some EU member nations like Finland and Spain don't have EU-compliant railway track gauges themselves (Finland uses Russian gauge as Ukraine does) – but then, they joined the EU over 20 years ago. Imagine the billions of euros required to replace the entire railway-line network and railway carriage stock to conform to EU standards!
There was also no guarantee in the EU / Ukraine AA that full EU membership and its attendant benefits would accrue to Ukraine if the country complied with the agreement.
It was probably never Yanukovych's intention not to join the EU but instead to be a member of both the EU and the Eurasian Customs Union. How that would have worked out, I don't wish to guess – I can only imagine a lot of juggling would be involved if that had transpired the way I think Yanukovych might have wished.
Ben Trovata ,
Thanx,for above .btw,it was Ukraine that refused that two-direction trade action.It's presumed( by me ) that the War Party in Washington D.C. would not have this.Oddly,the R.F. was okay with it,and,as mentioned above,Ukraine owed the R.F. a lot of money for what had been keeping them warm all winter!Savorywill ,
I think the gist is that Ukrainian support for Hillary was behind the disclosure of Manafort's financial misdealing in Ukraine, to embarrass the Trump campaign as Manafort was the Trump campaign manager at that time. In addition, Hillary was far more pugnacious to Russia than Trump, and her assistant, Victoria Nuland seems to have more or less orchestrated the coup against the sitting president, who wanted to accept Russian help, rather getting funds from the IMF (or something like that). So, it makes sense the the Ukraine powers that be wanted Hillary to win.Bob In Portland ,
If you look at Manafort's history, he seems to work for sleazy dictators.who were either put into power by the CIA or taken out of power by the CIA. I would suggest that his ultimate employer was the CIA.After Yanukovich was ousted in a US-backed coup in Ukraine Manafort stuck around there and helped the people who ousted. Just to refresh anyone's memory William Barr worked for the CIA in the seventies until he got his JD. He was named Attorney General by President Bush (the first) during congressional and court investigations of Iran-contra, which was a CIA operation to illegally support the contras attempt to overthrow the Nicaraguan government while illegally arming both Iraq and Iran, allegedly in exchange for releasing hostages in Beruit .
The interagency team investigating the kidnappings in Beruit was on Pan Am 103 and perished returning to the US.
Robert Swan Mueller III has never himself been specifically identified as being a CIA employee. However, his uncle, Richard Bissell, was an officer high in the CIA. His wife, Ann Cabell Standish, was the granddaughter of Charles Cabell, Deputy Director of the CIA at the time of the Bay of Pigs fiasco, who was fired by JFK along with the above-mentioned Bissell and Allen Dulles. Ann Mueller's granduncle, Earle Cabell, the mayor of Dallas at the time of President Kennedy's assassination there, was revealed to have been a CIA asset.
Curiously, Mueller's career has been marked with prosecuting cases that touch on CIA covert activities. He prosecuted John Gotti, who was on trial for distribution of cocaine which has been identified as having arrived in Mena, Arkansas. He prosecuted Noriega, who was the CIA's point man in Panama, where the CIA laundered money, moved cocaine and moved weapons for the contras. Mueller prosecuted BCCI (the international bank which laundered mob and intelligence money). Mueller became the Director of the FBI a week before 9/11.
Clone ,
Australia gave something like $50 million to the Clinton racket prior to the election. There was no choice. The next president of the most exceptionally useless nation was scooping up money from everywhere Hillary and Bill are rotten to the core but heck slipping them $50M under the table was seen as a nice way to stay on their good side.Petro 'the pig' Poroshenko and his mate Manafort lavished cash and black ops media favours on Hillary to buy her support.
The crimes are (1) Hillary selling her prospective presidency, and (2) Petro 'the pig' Poroshenko conspiring with the Clinton's to assault the democratic process.
They will end up dragging 'the pig' around the streets of Kiev behind a truck with his guts hanging out. Filthy stinking creature he is.
Graham Hooper ,
John Key the Then PM of NZ Gave them a Big Donation to the Clinton Foundation Pre Elections an Investment in Future Favours of Meetings ,Trade,5 Eyes,Military Sharing and Service to Protect Each Other.bevin ,
The Italian government, defeated in the last elections, also made an enormous 'donation' to the Clinton Foundation.Chris Williams ,
Clone – and of course these crimes are ones that need to be listed against the Donbass bloodshed and the downing of MH17, which the all the governments with victims including Australia have now gone silent on, knowing that it was a Ukrainian operation.Michael Cromer ,
Hillary Clinton has actually been 'Bad Mouthing' Assange this week – Beggars belief.
Let us not forget Tony Blair – Teflon Tony aka T B. Liar – How is he able to walk free amongst law abiding citizens?Michael McNulty ,
He is free but he can't walk amongst law-abiding citizens. The last time I heard of somebody saying he was making a citizens arrest of Blair it was a young waiter, serving Blair's family in the closed-off upstairs of a restaurant with his bodyguards around. That was maybe seven years ago but I forget where. So he won't even sit amongst diners on a family night out. I suspect others do tell him he should be in prison.Actions connected with Kiev may well have influenced US voters, as a key part of the anti-Russian disinfo networks was "Stop Fake" based in Kiev. That was only the latest in a whole campaign of propaganda to distort the views of Americans about Russia, and about anyone who wanted to improve relations with Russia. You can only say it didn't influence voters because Trump won – but if Russia's knowledge about Clinton had gained more attention he'd probably have won even more convincingly!As the photo for the article nicely indicates war criminals help each other out. By hook or by crook as they say. By the way did Poroshenko ever sell Roshen chocolate as he promised in his last election campaign?dhfabian ,
OK. How did Ukraine interfere with the election? We see another string of allegations that show what? How did anything done by Ukraine have an impact on the 2016 election outcome? (I would have expected some focus on the role of the Clintons' business interests in Ukraine on the anti-Russian allegations, in view of conflicts between Russia and Ukraine.) As for whatever happened in Ukrainian social media, it had no influence on US voting choices. There was no surge of voters switching parties. We weren't inundated with foreign propaganda. Americans just can't concede that when their candidate of choice loses, it might not be due to some "outside factor."Go back to the election results. Both candidates were opposed by much of their own voting bases, for some of the same reasons. Roughly half of all registered voters rejected both Clinton and Trump. They either voted third party or withheld their votes.In the end, Clinton did get more votes, but Trump got the most electoral votes. All we can say for certain is that a good chunk of the population forgot what they learned in school about the electoral college process.
Alfred (Cairns) ,
You are saying that Ukraine's so-called government – which was the outcome of a US-orchestrated putsch – did not succeed in influencing the voting in the USA. I am quite happy with that. However, they did try to influence the US election and that is another matter entirely.It's probably money, US and IMF money for which Manafort got a kickback.He must have operated like that in the Philippines and the Congo to be so sure that he did not have to register. Even though Manafort was always helping the Republicans only in election campaigns, the Ukrainians would have been anxious to keep at the $$$teet; so for them Clinton – no change – was more attractive.
Francis Lee ,
For the purpose of analysis it might be useful to start with US interference in Ukraine rather than the other way around. The role of US NGOs was one of the key factors in this process. The National Endowment for Democracy (NED) which was operating quite openly in Ukraine prior to the coup, is funded by the US government, so strictly speaking it is a GO not an NGO. Also involved was Human Rights Watch another American NGO.On the ground in Kiev during the run up and during the Maidan events, Geoffrey Pyatt, US Ambassador to Ukraine and his neo-con sidekick Victoria Nuland, Assistant Secretary of State for East European and Eurasian Affairs, strolled around Independence Square in Kiev offering solace, cookies and support to the insurrectionists. Subsequent to this Victoria 'f*** the EU' Nuland gave a talk at the press club in Washington openly stating that the US had funded the whole Ukrainian imbroglio – $5 million was apparently the going rate for this particular 'colour revolution'. There is also talk that Soros was involved.
The fact that Poroshenko, owed the US and the EU, in the overturning of a democratically elected government Ukraine is not in dispute. And the fact that Porky made this perfectly clear with his support for Hilary confirms this.
The degree to which the Ukrainian government meddled in the US election is difficult to gauge, but what seems clear is that such meddling had no immediate or long term effect on the outcome as Trump was duly elected.
Jen ,
Victoria Nuland is married to Robert Kagan. I'll let Wikipedia tell folks all they need to know about Kagan; I'm too busy holding my nose to stop breathing in the toxic fumes the couple emits.Jen ,
The Ukrainians released information about Donald Trump's campaign manager Paul Manafort having done work for past Ukrainian President Viktor Yanukovych (perceived by the West to have been close to Moscow while he was leader) with the implication that Trump was being supported by the Russian government. The information was released in mid-2016. Had it been released closer to the November elections, it could have had a greater impact on Trump's chances of becoming President and the Electoral College could have decided differently.Savorywill ,
Wouldn't have made any difference. So much so-called 'news' is anything but, most people probably don't know what to believe. I think Trump's election was more a protest vote as much as anything, People were just sick of the status quo, seeing the world deteriorating around them. And then, there were voters like me, who detested what Hillary had done in Libya, most particularly. Destroyed a functioning country with all of the socialist benefits Bernie Sanders could only dream about, turning the country into a raging hell-hole with constant civil wars 8 years later. Unforgivable, her role in that disaster. I was so relieved that she got defeated, actually, and Trump did campaign on not militarily interfering with other countries and so far, touch wood, he hasn't started any new wars.
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Nov 29, 2019 | turcopolier.typepad.com
On Wednesday, November 20th, Russia's Tass news agency headlined "Joe Biden's son and his partners received $16.5 million from Burisma - Ukrainian MP", and reported:
The Ukrainian Office of the Prosecutor General has drawn up an indictment against the owner of the Burisma Holdings energy company, ex-Ecology Minister Nikolai Zlochevsky, that contains information that the son of former US Vice President Joe Biden, Hunter, as a Burisma board member along with his partners, received $16.5 million for their services, Ukrainian Verkhovna Rada MP from the ruling Servant of the People party Alexander Dubinsky told a press conference on Wednesday, citing the investigation's materials. According to him, the money came from duplicitous criminal activity.
Another Rada member, Andreii Derkach, had earlier posted, to Facebook, on November 11th, what he alleges to be photos of bank statements and other financial records documenting the flows of money from Ukraine into the partnership that Joe Biden's son Hunter Biden and his friend the Yale college roommate of John Kerry's stepson Christopher Hines, Devon Archer, had set up.
The partnership, Rosemont Seneca Boa, is associated with their Rosemont Seneca Partners LLC.
Derkach headlined "THE BILLION DOLLARS CORRUPTION: HOW THE TOP-OFFICIALS OF UKRAINE AND THE USA HAVE BEEN STEALING THE PUBLIC MONEY". The Ukrainian documents were shown, along with English translations of them. For example, from the NABU or National Anti-Corruption Bureau of Ukraine:
The data on the veiled transfer of funds for lobbying activities personally to J. Biden were obtained during the investigation. Money in the amount of over USD 900 thousand was transferred to the aforesaid Rosemont Seneca Partners LLC, the resident company, with an indication of 'Remuneration for consulting services' as payment details.The person was identified and interviewed as a witness in the course of the investigation, who has been personally engaged in holding transactions for laundering and legitimization of funds in favor of M. Zlochevsky and the Bidens. Investigators possess original copies of the payment instruments and engineering means, whereby the said bargains were performed.
Through making use of the political and economic leverages over new government authorities of Ukraine and intimidating them with the issue of granting financial assistance to Ukraine, Joe Biden has actively promoted the closing of the criminal cases against M. Zlochevsky and Burisma Group corporate executives.
Another document:
According to the data from the Financial Intelligence Unit of Latvia, Wirelogic Technology AS and Digitex Organization LLP paid from July 2012 to December 2015 to Burisma Holdings Limited (Cyprus) account established with AS PrivatBank amounts of USD 14,665,982 + EUR 366,015 and USD 1,964,375 accordingly 'as payments under the loan agreement.'Consequently, the part of the aforesaid funds was charged off in favor of Mr. Alan Apter (EUR 302,885), Mr. Aleksander Kwasniewski (EUR 1,150,000), Mr, Devon Archer and Mr. Hunter Biden [no amounts specified for either].
A letter is shown addressed to Derkach from "The Prosecutor Office of Ukraine," the "General Prosecutor Office of Ukraine," and signed by the Prosecutor General Ruslan Ryaboshapka, dated 30 October 2019. It said:
As a result of the pre-trial investigation on 02.09.2019, the investigator decided to close the above mentioned criminal proceedings on the basis of paragraph 2 of Part 1 of Art. 284 of the CPC of Ukraine in connection with the lack of corpus delicti [evidence of a crime]. There are no grounds for re-entering information on the facts stated in your application" for "Pre-trial Investigations.
The Burisma cases would not go to trial.
Among the photos that Derkach showed in his article are a "CLIENT STATEMENT for the Period May 1-31 2015" from "Morgan Stanley Private Wealth Management" showing, for example, that on "5/13," "Funds Transferred" by "WIRED FUNDS SENT" "BENE. ACCT. ROBERT [Hunter] BIDEN" were "15,000.00".
Derkach says:
Shokin [the man Joe Biden had fired] has repeatedly called upon the NABU director Sitnik in the criminal proceedings on Burisma case, but always got the run-arounds.
and asks:
Why was the NABU in such a hurry to close the cases of Burisma, Zlochevskiy and Biden, and for whom did they collect personal data on Shokin?
Before noting that:
the moment when Shokin demanded from NABU to investigate facts of international corruption coincided with the arrival of US Vice President Joe Biden to Ukraine. And $ 1 billion of loan guarantees that the United States had to provide Ukraine depended on Biden.
He shows a time-line indicating that the turning-point to close down the investigation was "Biden's visit to Kyiv" occurring "December 7-8, 2015." On "June 3, 2016," was the "Signing by the Government of the United States and Ukraine of loan guarantee agreement [U.S. taxpayers to take any loss] worth $1 billion."
Also on November 11th, Ukraine's Interfax news agency headlined "MP Derkach says Biden Jr. received Burisma payments via mediators", and reported that:
Starting from May 2014 to October 2015 Burisma company transferred to Rosemont company $4.817 million, and the latter transferred a payment amounted to $871,000 to the account of Hunter Biden, son of former U.S. Vice President Joe Biden, reported MP Andriy Derkach in a video blog on Facebook."This is the official statement from Morgan Stanley. Morgan Stanley is one of the biggest bank holdings in the USA. Here you can see a cash flow of Rosemont Seneca Boa company owned by Devon Archer, for a year and a half (from May 2014 to October 2016). According to the bank statement, starting from May 2014 to October 2015 Burisma company transferred to Rosemont company $4.817 million, and the latter transferred a payment amounted to $871,000 to the account of Biden," said Derkach adding an official statement from Morgan Stanley.
He noted that in order to help the investigation, he made public new documents on international corruption, which were transferred to him by investigative journalists in 11 criminal proceedings.
Derkach reminded that in total, according to his data from the report of Financial Intelligence Unit of Latvia, in favor of two shell-offshore companies, as well as Hunter Biden with partners, the Burisma company paid no less than $16.5 mln.
Although virtually all of the press says that Mr. Zlochevsky owns Burisma, both of the detailed investigations that have been done of the matter indicate that Zlochevsky sold majority-ownership of the company in 2011 to a Ukrainian billionaire, Ihor Kolomoysky.
Whereas Zlochevsky was allied with Ukraine's democratically elected President, Viktor Yanukovych, who was elected in 2010, Yanukovych became ousted in a February 2014 U.S. Obama-Administration coup and replaced by fascist rulers, who included Kolomoysky.
Therefore, Zlochevsky was the person whom the U.S. Government wanted to be investigated for alleged crimes by Burisma, and Kolomoysky isn't even being mentioned as an owner, much less as the controlling owner, of the firm. But Hunter Biden's actual boss at Burisma was Kolomoysky, not Zlochevsky, who is, instead, perhaps a paid decoy of Kolomoysky.
Kolomoysky is also the chief political benefactor of Ukraine's current President, Volodymyr Zelenskiy. Consequently, Kolomoysky had supported both the overthrow of Yanukovych and the recent election of Zelensky.
For Kolomoysky, instead of Zlochevsky, to be targeted in corruption investigations that would be supported by Kolomoysky's agent Zelensky, would be unlikely, unless America's current President, Donald Trump, were to abandon entirely his predecessor's, Ukraine-policy, and were to require Zelensky to do likewise, and Zelensky then were to obey that command from the U.S. White House.
Those things are, as of yet, not expected to happen.
On November 20th, the U.S.-allied 'news'-agency, Reuters, headlined with the anodyne "Ukraine widens probe against Burisma founder to embezzlement of state funds" and buried in that 486-word article - and provided no further information regarding - the stunning 15-word statement (the real news in the article), that:
The investigation [by Ukraine's Government, of Zlochevsky] is effectively on hold, however, because the Ukrainian authorities cannot determine Zlochevsky's whereabouts."
Reasonable presumptions would be that Zlochevsky had received advance notice that he was going to be targeted in yet another 'investigation' into alleged Burisma corruption and had fled Ukraine, much as he had done when Yanukovych was ousted in 2014.
Consequently, thus far, U.S. President Trump has been adhering to Barack Obama's Ukraine policy (which targeted the pro-Yanukovych Zlochevsky, instead of the anti-Yanukovych Kolomoysky). However, with the recent firing of Obama's Ambassador to Ukraine, Marie Yovanovitch, that could change.
Facebook Twitter Reddit Pinterest WhatsApp vKontakte Email Filed under: latest , Other Media , Ukraine , United States Tagged with: burisma , Eric Zuesse , Hunter Biden , Joe Biden , Kolomoyskyi , ukraine , US presidential election 2020 , Victor Yanukovych can you spare $1.00 a month to support independent media
Seamus Padraig ,
Although virtually all of the press says that Mr. Zlochevsky owns Burisma, both of the detailed investigations that have been done of the matter indicate that Zlochevsky sold majority-ownership of the company in 2011 to a Ukrainian billionaire, Ihor Kolomoysky.
That's interesting. I didn't know that. Kolomoisky's a slippery bastard. Now it appears he's changing sides yet again, at least if this latest report from the NYT is to be believed:
"Mr. Kolomoisky, widely seen as Ukraine's most powerful figure outside government, given his role as the patron of the recently elected President Volodymyr Zelensky, has experienced a remarkable change of heart: It is time, he said, for Ukraine to give up on the West and turn back toward Russia."
It'll be interesting to see if Kolomoisky's latest treachery helps to hasten Biden's downfall!
Seamus Padraig ,
Wouldn't it be poetic justice if the Clintonoids' destruction of Ukraine ends destroying them in return? I would laugh my ass off!RobG ,
Corruption..?Less than six hours after Bojo's disastrous performance on LBC Radio this morning ( here ) we have a 'terrorist attack' in London. There needs to be a modern-day Nuremberg Trials.
George Cornell ,
When Miss Vicki F*TheEU Nuland was scheming with the American ambassador to insert the American stooge "Yats" as she called him, into the leadership of the Ukraine, there was talk about how all the Ukraine gold was being moved to the US for "safekeeping". Does anyone know what happened to their gold reserves?paul ,
It's in safe hands now, having been flown out to the US, along with the 140 tons of Libyan gold and the Iraqi gold and the Venezuelan gold and the gold from the basement of WTC 7. So we can all sleep easy now. Any country taking out IMF loans has to hand over its gold to Uncle Sam.Just as well. Can't be too careful when there are all these standard issue Mark 1 Foaming-At- The-Mouth-Radical-Moslem-Terrorists lurking around London Bridge, as supplied by Central Casting. Luckily they are all on the MI5 payroll so our splendid spook chaps can keep an eye on them.
paul ,
They have lost their oil/ coal/ steel/ gas/ metallurgy/ chemicals/ engineering/ motor vehicle/ shipbuilding/ aircraft/ locomotives/ armaments/ spacecraft/ agricultural machinery industries, and ten million of their population, so they might as well lose their gold as well.George Cornell ,
So what possible expertise or wisdom was Hunt Rhymeswith Biden giving time the board of Burisma? I posed this in an NYT blog and got the reply that the 100k/month was for "the respectability" Rhymeswith would bring to the board. 'Struth!. It's Saturday Night Live every night in Washington.George Cornell ,
https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-7736135/amp/AP-Interview-Ex-Polish-president-defends-Biden-Burisma.htmlHere it is more officially. Hunter was hired to "boost the reputation of Burisma", as only cokehead sex addicted dishonorably discharged rejects from the Navy can.
King Herod running a babysitting service would make more sense.
This is surely a type of Will Rogers effect.
George Cornell ,
And just for one more whack at what should be a dead horse, most will have noted that former Polish President Krasniewski, handpicked for the interview in the Daily Mail linked above, is the same Krasniewski who is mentioned in the article above as receiving 1.15 million euros and a few other millions in loose change from Burisma.He says earnestly that Biden Jr. never abused his position on the Burisma board. But says little about what surely is a sham contract with Biden Jr. – as to what Biden's, and his own deliverables might have been. No mention by the Mail about his conflict of interest, who seem to be after just allowing Krasy to defend the indefensible, viz. the more appalling of the two Bidens.
No wonder poor Poland stays in NATO and spends money on American arms at the expense of pressing social needs, with leaders like Krasy.
MichaelK ,
Trump's rubbing his tiny hands together with glee at the thought of Joe Biden running against him in next year's election! Biden's the 'perfect' candidate and Trump will wipe the floor with him. Apparently Ohama has raised questions about Biden's 'gualities' as a candidate, that's probably because he's up to his turkey neck in the corrupt swamp of Ukrainian's dire politics along with his pin-head son, Hunter; or 'Hunt' as I prefer to call him.Perhaps the Democrats have decided to sit the next election out, because they sense that none of the sanctioned candidates stand a chance against Trump. Perhaps this is why the billionaire Bloomberg has thrown his golden crown into the ring. The Battle of the Billionaires should be a 'democratic' spectacle worth watching, from a safe distance.
paul ,
Apart from Afghanistan, Ukraine is probably the most corrupt country in the world. It makes Nigeria look like a model of good governance. The income per head there is less than Egypt. It is a failed state, a total basket case. It is a CIA/ NATO playground to aggressively confront Russia.Tens of billions have been poured into this poor and egregiously corrupt country by the EU, IMF, and CIA Front Groups like the National Endowment For Democracy to prop up the Fascist Coup Regime that was installed there in 2014. Surprisingly enough, all this has promptly evaporated into private foreign bank accounts. There is nothing to show for it. Ukraine, just like Iraq before it, has been a happy hunting ground for corrupt US politicians and their junkie offspring. Hence the howls of outrage when Trump threatens their pork barrel by threatening to scale back US involvement in Ukraine.
The only future Ukraine has is an impoverished depopulated backwater, like the Baltics. A source of cheap labour and cheap prostitutes for the EU – the only thing Ukraine produces the EU wants.
Grafter ,
Corrupt individuals of one fascist regime (Ukraine) handing out billions to their partners of another corrupt fascist regime (America). "Consultancy fees" for what exactly ? Anyway nothing to see here it's all perfectly normal "business". Move along now.Vierotchka ,
Ihor Kolomoysky is the hand in the Volodymy Zelensky puppet.lundiel ,
I was wondering if they would ever get round to investigating Hunter Biden's activities. Let's hope this forces them to do so.LeRuscino ,
The Dems have gone into full self-immolation mode & handed Trump 2020 on a plate ! Hilarious to watch the "Pavlov's Dogs" who were trained to hate Trump, like good little sheep, see their fantasies go up in smoke. Don't think for one minute (even second) that I support Trump but I do hate Sheep as their naivety is responsible for 99% of the World's woes.wardropper ,
One self-immolator handing the election to another self-immolator. Let's face it, nobody wants to be President of the United States any more. It's just too much hard work serving the real owners of the White House. We've reached the "Caligula" stage of the fall of the American empire. It's terminal.
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Nov 26, 2019 off-guardian.org/
... ... ...
What was inescapable during the hearing was the absence of parliamentary courtesy or simply personal gracious conduct on the part of Chair of the Committee who was consistently intrusive as he overstepped his role with arbitrary, prejudicial violations of Roberts Rules of Order.
Schiff routinely ruled Points of Order to be out of order with an inflated sense of magisterial presence. His demeanor proved to be classless and boorish as if he had been granted special dispensation from the House of Representative's Code of Conduct to treat his colleagues with disdain and contempt.
Schiff routinely refused to 'recognize ' a Member, liberally gavelled his authority to cut off debate and at times, badgered Republican witnesses and further treated Republican Members, who are his peers, as second class citizens in what was once regarded as a collegial body.
Once the dust settles, the House Ethics Committee may ultimately weigh in on Schiff's character and the manner in which he conducted the Committee's business.
Facebook Twitter Reddit Pinterest WhatsApp vKontakte Email Filed under: latest , Ukraine , United States Tagged with: Adam Schiff , Donald trump , impeachment , Renee Parsons , ukraine , victoria nuland can you spare $1.00 a month to support independent mediaOffGuardian does not accept advertising or sponsored content. We have no large financial backers. We are not funded by any government or NGO. Donations from our readers is our only means of income. Even the smallest amount of support is hugely appreciated.
ttshasta ,
The Ukraine fiasco should be blown wide open for all to see I hope. I even started emailing my "lefty" NYT reading friends photos of Azov Battalion, Right Sector, and C14 militias and asking why Trump should be sending Javelin anti tank missiles to these folks.I also forwarded Eva Bartlett's October pice on her Crimea visit describing 200 new kindergartens and new airports and bridges to my friends who think I'm crazy for saying Crimea has been part of Russia since 1784 and voted 90+% to rejoin Russia. Max Blumenthal's Grayzone reports 4 million have left Ukraine, an exodus like Venezuela's. Adam Schiff had a $1000/$2500 per plate fundraiser at Ukrainian Igor Pasternaks home in D.C. Is Pasternak a weapons dealer, I'm not sure? Who is involved in Ukraine: Manafort, Biden, Obama's Hochstein, CIA's Woolsey, US Favarov, Crowdstrike, Firtash, John Kerry, and on and on.
Ukraine seems a center for weapons trafficking, embezzlement, money laundering, and hacking. 3 billion in IMF loans with no strings, where did it go, USAID money where did it go? How many weapons purchased by Qatar & co. ended up in Syria via Ukraine?
I do not like and did not vote for Orange Jesus, but it seems the Biden, Kerry, Obama, Clinton apparatus has more to answer for regarding Ukraine. Adam Schiff drives me crazy with his misleading and witness coaching; he did propose repealing Citizens United though, of which I approve if it is not a diversion tactic.
- law fare pro impeachment: https://www.emptywheel.net
- law fare pro Trump: https://brassballs.blog
https://www.zerohedge.com/geopolitical/plundering-ukraine-corrupt-american-democrats
http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/52621.htmand this guy?? https://www.youtube.com/user/georgwebb/playlists
Like anyone expects an Amerikastani to tell the truth about anything, ever, for any reason. Amerikastanis are genetically incapable of it.Ken ,
Friends! Bread and circus, all of this! The monsters who rule over us must be having quite a laugh, all the way to the bank.Berlin beerman ,
The fact that there are citizens who watch this and then believe that their President actually committed an impeachable offense in the process is past comic. Its sad because it implies one of two things.1. The masses who watch and believe are as evil as the woman they tried to elect to the White House.
and/or
2. The masses are complete idiots .the fact that Mr.Trump may actually be trying to help their sorry asses – by trying to put the American people ahead of corporate interests – is one thing these haters have no clue about. Instead they prefer to sit, watch and partake in their elected fools waste time and money on infighting and stupidity – ironically all the attributes they dislike in their President.
Its rather poetic.
Jack_Garbo ,
Not at all. Obama has impeccable (unimpeachable?) manners but he's a worse war criminal than Bush, and he'll never be tried. As I said, look up impeachable offenses. Trump is (sadly) innocent, the inquiry is a failed charade. Once out of office, he's eminently indictable, but that won't happen either. His crimes are not relevant.Guy ,
All this crap about impeachment , he said she said , and lets not forget it's all Russia's fault which leads me to as ,what are they drawing our attention away from .Could it be the whole Epstein affair , nothing to see here folks .Move along ..all guilty as sin of course .Vexarb ,
Seattle's multi-talented Amy Walker tried to do Trump and failed. I bet she cannot do Hilary either. Their saurian corporate world of primal GREED & cold blooded FASCISM is too primitive for her. But she can and did create Eunice. Here is Amy Walker's wickedly affectionate sketch, the most delicately incisive probing of Yankee psyche since Gatsby -- and much more positive, in its well brought up, well educated, well intentioned and naively earnest simplicity of mind.vexarb ,
As in the Shaker hymn, Simple Gifts: https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=3UgpfSp2t6k
https://www.youtube.com/embed/fYi9Vr8bHJY?version=3&rel=1&fs=1&autohide=2&showsearch=0&showinfo=1&iv_load_policy=1&wmode=transparent
Vexarb ,
PPPPS And finally, Eunice's simpleminded and muddleheaded search for authentic being is absorbed and overlayed by the mawkish bloated U$ culture typified by this POTU$A election.https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8GoRIQ9cwG8
But Eunice is blithely unaware of all this; the machinations of Obomba, Killary and Trumpety-trump are beneath her dignity and above her head.
There is an article of the Mawkish Culture of the U$A in today's Saker Vineyard; but the creation of Eunice shows that mawkish culture has fine, sensitive, deep penetrating roots.
" Yanukovych when he refused to join the EU " Yanukovych did not refuse to join the European Union. The Ukraine was not then, and is not now, in a position to join the European Union. What Yanukovych did was decide to not proceed with an association agreement which the European Union and the Ukraine had been negotiating.Vexarb ,
Short list by Asdlkks above: "[Trump] The guy who sucked up to AIPAC and Zionists, who first day in office goes to the CIA, then makes torture Queen director of the CIA, and former director of the CIA his Secretary of State replacing Big Oil tycoon, who has stuffed every regulatory agency with swamp creatures more swampy than Obama or any other President could manage, who INCREASED military operations in the ME including making the rules of engagement such it is even easier to slaughter civilians, who ran on a big military buildup including a buildup of nuclear weapons far greater than Obama's "modernization" who has pledged now to greatly increase the distribution of military equipment to police departments than has been occurring for decades already, " plus Trump's association with 911 coverup Mayor Giuliani.Admittedly not a heinous crimesheet by POTU$A standards.
Listening to Elise Stefanik, was reminded of George Galloway's famous stoush with the U.S Senate back in 2005.
But as for Adam Schiff?
He is obviously a lettuce leaf short of a salad, a jam sandwich without the jam, and a person who quite obviously needs to speak to someone wearing a white coat.
And with both being deluded Russophobes, I'm certain he and Fiona Hill would make a great team.
How much longer is This Crap going for??Yarkob ,
as long as they need to constantly use the phrase "under the shadow of impeachment" throughout the 2020 election cyclewardropper ,
I give it about 17 years before western civilization implodes under the sheer gravitational force of the crap with which it has surrounded itself for many decades.George Mc ,
And just think that, as the mass of population sinks deeper into poverty, how much money is being thrown at this, as you say, Crap? And I am aware that This Crap is, if I may switch metaphors, only the tip of the iceberg. How many gazillions are being thrown at destabilising various societies, grinding out relentless propaganda, piling into bloated military juggernauts, glutinous showbiz, sporting and royal festivals etc. (shepherd's crook approaches)Martin Usher ,
My guess is that the committee will produce a report which won't be used to impeach the President but will form a central plank of next year's election campaign. The Republicans are desperate to have actual impeachment proceedings, they know that the Senate would not convict Satan himself if that person was one of them and the resulting noise will draw attention away from some looming issues in the economy and the world which may well break in Q1 next year.I know there are a lot of people who will support Trump no matter what and who are quick to point out the failings in other politicians. There's plenty of crap to go round, however while Trump has been fiddling Rome has been burning -- remember, what might be good for industry lobbyists or could be construed as "God's Work" may not be actually good policies and there signs that things might not be as wonderful as they'd like. Three that spring to mind are the relentless money printing by the Fed, inflationary at best, the likelihood that the heartland will experience significant job reductions in key industries that can't be papered over and the fact that the tariffs and sanctions put on China don't seem to have had any significant effect -- on the Chinese, that is (US companies, that's a different take). This isn't all Trump's fault, the problems have been brewing up for a lot longer than his Presidency, but the complete lack of action or even recognition that there are problems (China trade excepted) combined with a crass and very ham-fisted approach to foreign policy is exacerbating things.
US of A twinned with Ukraine a marriage made in heaven. I'm at a loss to say who has the finest democracy.As Rhys said below "I can fuck your wife anytime I want, but you fuck my wife and you're fucked, dude." . No wonder Victoria Nuland's name has been passed over in this shit show.
I was asked by a Russian today, "Which country has the best democracy?". To which I replied "First you have to define what exactly a democracy is." And they said, "It's what you have in the West."
To which I could only remark, "I wish I had your innocence."
George Mc ,
"Which country has the best democracy? .It's what you have in the West."Kind of answered his own question there. Wrongly of course.
George Cornell ,
Thanks for the summary. I did not watch, preferring to gaze at the peacock feathers in my duster. The Dems are making Trump look less odious, no small feat.
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The Guardian
A group of Russian MPs have formally requested prosecutors to investigate former Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev for treason over the breakup of the Soviet Union, a lawmaker said on Thursday.
Ivan Nikitchuk, a Communist party deputy, said recent events and the Ukraine crisis in particular have led five MPs, including two from the ruling United Russia party, to ask the prosecutor general, Yury Chaika, to examine Gorbachev, 83.
"We asked to prosecute him and those who helped him destroy the Soviet Union for treason of national interests," said Nikitchuk, adding that Soviet citizens in 1991 were against the country's breakup.
Seeking to create a more open and prosperous Soviet Union through glasnost and perestroika, Gorbachev ended up unleashing forces that swept away the country he had sought to preserve and himself from power.
"The consequences of that destruction can be felt today in the conflicts that we have seen," said Nikitchuk.
He added that this included not only Ukraine but other former Soviet countries over the past two decades.
In February, a popular pro-Western uprising in Ukraine ousted pro-Moscow president Viktor Yanukovych, who has since taken refuge in Russia .
The Kremlin responded by sending troops to Ukraine's Russian-speaking peninsula of Crimea and annexing it as part of Russia last month.
"What is happening in Ukraine can happen in Russia, too," said Nikitchuk. "This pushed us to write to the prosecutor general, so that professional lawyers rather than historians can investigate the events of 1991."
He added that lawmakers were also concerned about internal enemies stirring unrest.
"The fifth column in our country has been formed and works in the open, funded by foreign money," he said.
In a landmark speech marking Russia's takeover of Crimea, President Vladimir Putin called Russians disagreeing with his policies, such as his decision to occupy Crimea, a fifth column.
There have been previous attempts by the Communist party to have Gorbachev prosecuted but these have led nowhere.
Nikitchuk said he hoped that the current political climate makes for a more favourable moment and that prosecutors would launch the investigation this time.
Unlike the previous cases, the current request is backed by lawmakers from the ruling party, United Russia.
Gorbachev said the lawmakers' initiative was "poorly thought out and groundless from a historical point of view".
"Such calls only show that some lawmakers want publicity," he told the Interfax news agency. A spokeswoman at the prosecutor's office declined to comment.
The Soviet Union officially ceased to exist in December 1991 after Russia, Belarus and Ukraine signed the Belavezha accords dissolving the USSR. Gorbachev resigned two weeks later.
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Dec 28, 2017 | www.youtube.com
Our Hidden History , 4 days ago (edited)
Elizabeth Ferrari , 4 days agoThat Harding tells Mate to meet Alexi Navalny, who is a far right nationalist and most certainly a tool of US intelligence (something like Russia's Richard Spencer) was all I needed to hear to understand where Luke is coming from.
He's little more than an intelligence asset himself if his idea of speaking to "Russians" is to go and speak to a bunch of people who most certainly have their own ties back to the western intelligence agencies. That's not how you're going to get the truth about Russia. He's all appeals to authority - Steele's most of all, even name dropping Kerry. To finally land on "oh well if you would read my whole book" is just getting to the silly season.
Also "well this is the kind of person Putin is" is a terrible argument. This isn't about either Putin or Trump really, its about the long history of US-Russia relations and all that has occurred. Also, the ubiquitous throwing around of accusations of the murder of journalists in Russia is a straw man argument, especially when it is just thrown in as some sort of moral shielding for a shabby argument.
Few in the US know about these cases or what occurred, or of the many forces inside of Russia that might be involved in murdering journalists just as in Mexico or Turkey. But these cases are not explained - blame is merely assigned to Putin himself. Of course if someone here discusses he death of Michael Hastings, they're a "conspiracy theorist", but if the crime involves a Russian were to assign the blame to Vladimir Putin and, no further explanation is required.
Esen B. , 3 days agoThis interview is a wonderful illustration of everything that is horribly wrong with corporate media. I hope it goes viral.
Lemmy Motorhead , 3 days agoHe is far right, he is calling "cockroaches" Central Asian/ex-USSR workers coming to Moscow and in general his tone is quite ultra-nationalistic.
Esen B. , 3 days agoVery well put! Everything that is labeled as "conspiracy theory" when aimed towards the West, is "respectable journalism" when aimed at Russia.
Esen B. , 3 days ago (edited)That is the video about fire arm legalization "cockroaches ", even if you are not Russian speaking it's pretty graphic to understand the idea https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Q8ILxqIEEMg
trdi , 3 days ago (edited)And FYI - Central Asian workers do the low-wage jobs in Moscow, pretty like Mexicans or Puerto Ricans in US. Yet, that "future president" is trying to gain some popularity by labeling and demonizing them. Sounds familiar a bit?
Sendan , 3 days ago"definitelly ddissagree with that assertation about Alexei he's had nationalist views but he's definitely not far right and calling him a tool of US intelligence is pretty bs this is the exact same assertation that the Russian state media says about him."
I disagree that there is any evidence of Navalny being tool of US intelligence, but you are wrong for not recognizing that Navalny is ultranationalist. His public statements are indefensible. He is a Russian ultra nationalist, far right and a racist. Statements about cockroaches, worse than rats, bullets being too good etc - there is no way to misunderstand that.
MrChibiluffy , 3 days agoNavalny is a corrupt ex-politician just like his mentor that was caught red-handed taking a bribe from a German businessman "all on camera" at a restaurant. Most of corrupt politicians and businessmen that get caught by the Russian government always cry that they are politically repressed and the government is evil.
Navalnys brother was the owner of a small transport company that Navalny helped secure contracts with government enterprises '' anywhere in the world that would be a conflict of interest" but that's not why he is in jail! His brother is in jail for swindling the postal service company for transportation costs.
Yarrski , 3 days agoI know he said that i agree he has those views but that was in 2010.
Mohamed Elmaazi , 2 days ago@trdi I am a Russian. And I remember the early Navalny who made me sick to my stomach with absolutely disgusting, RACIST, anti-immigration commentaries. The guy is basically a NEO-NAZI who has toned down his nationalist diatribes in the past 10 or so years. Has he really reformed? I doubt it.
Nikita Gusarov , 2 days agoThis is a solid comment mate. Well thought out, with solid reasoning. How refreshing.
MrChibiluffy , 2 days agoMrChibiluffy, Navalny became relatively popular in Russia precisely at that time, especially during the White Ribbon protests in 2011/2012. I remember it very well myself.
I am Russian and I lived in Moscow at that time and he was the darling of the Russian opposition. He publicly defined his views and established himself back then and hasn't altered his position to this day.
What's more important is that around 2015 or so he made an alliance with the far-right and specifically Diomushkin who is a neo-nazi activist. I understand that people change their views, it's just that he hasn't.
annalivia1308 , 1 day agoNikita Gusarov it still feels like the best chance for some form of populist opposition atm. Even though they just rejected him he has a movement. Would you rather vote for Sobchak?
Ind Aus , 1 day agoYes. The US are looking to repeat Ukraine's regime change.
artemis12061966 , 1 day agoLets not forget that one reason many voted for Trump was his rhetoric about improving the peace-threatening antagonism towards Russia, especially in order to help resolve the situation in Syria. It's not like it was secret he was trying to hide. He only moderated his views somewhat when the Democrat-engineered anti-Russian smear campaign took off and there was a concerted effort to tie him to Russia.
Is it crime surround yourself with people that will help you fullfill your pledges?
RipTheJackR , 9 hours agoOr the death of Gary Webb, prosecution of whistleblowers.....like Private Manning...
Gabriel Olsen , 3 hours agoOur Hidden History... beautiful. Very well put mate :)
Luca Clemente , 4 days ago (edited)Yep, when he talked about murdering journalists, I paused the video and told my girlfriend about the murder of Michael Hastings. Oh an PS the USA puts journalists in Guantanamo. We play real baseball.
TheJagjr4450 , 3 days agoAaron Mate is a brilliant interviewer. He keeps a calm demeanor, but does not let his guest get away with any untruths or non sequiturs. This one of the many reasons I love The Real News. I encourage anyone who appreciates solid journalism to donate to The Real News.
dzedo53 , 4 days agoGREAT follow up questions Aaron... Harding did not expect to get a real reporter... he obfuscates and diverts to other issues because he can not EVER provide any evidence... Going to Moscow will not tell you anything about whether or not the DNC server was hacked.
Noah , 14 hours agoPutin is a bad guy. Therefore he colluded with Trump back in 1987 to help Trump win the election in 2016. Why is that so hard to see?? LOL.
jodi houts , 4 days agoLuke Harding is a complete and total idiot. He kept qualifying his arguments with "I've been to Moscow... I don't know if you know this, but I've been to Moscow..." and even at one point, "Some of my friends have been murdered." LOL, sure, whatever you say, Luke! Like you're so big time and such an all star journalist who isn't just trying to capitalize on the wild goose chase that is psychologically trapping leftists into delusions and wishful thinking.
KAREN Nichols , 4 days agoThank you Aaron Matè for calling out the bullshit. The dem party is dead until they take care of their own espionage and corruption.
david ackerman , 4 days agoThank you for "holding his feet to the fire"...I wish more media was more skeptical as well. Good work!
shadex08 , 4 days agoNSA monitors every communication over the internet. if the Russians hacked the DNC, there would be proof, and it would not take years to uncover. Look at the numbers: Clinton spent 2 billion, Russian "agents" spent 200k to "influence" the election. Great job Aaron for holding this opportunist's feet to the fire. Oh he's a story teller all right. You know a synonym of storyteller? LIAR!!!!
95percent air , 4 days agoGreat job Aaron, your work here makes me feel even better about my contribution to the real news.
Mal c.H , 4 days agoWow Aaron Matte NICE JOB. I'm only half through, I hope you don't make him cry. Do u make him cry? Did I hear this guy say he's ultimately a storyteller? Lol.
jodi houts , 4 days agoIt may seem like Trump has an alarming amount of associations with Russia, because he does.. that's how rich oligarchs work. But it's all just SPECULATION still. Why publish a book on this without a smoking gun to prove anything? Collusion isn't even a legal term, it's vague enough for people to make it mean whatever they want it to mean. People investigating and reporting on this are operating under confirmation bias. Aaron, you're always appropriately critical and you're always asking the right questions. You seem to be one of the few sane people left in media. Trump is a disgrace but there still is no smoking gun.
Fixel Heimer , 4 days agoAs he gets deeper in the weeds of speculation he starts attacking Aaron's credibility.
Hugh Mungus , 4 days agoOmg a bunch of unproven conspiracy crap.. Hes making so many factual wrong statements I don't know where to start here.. How would anyone in the years before his candidacy have thought Trump would gain any political relevance. I mean even the pro Hillary media thought until the end, their massive trump coverage would only help to get him NOT elected, but the opposite was the case. This guy is a complete joke as are his theses. Actually reminding me of the guardian's so called report about Russian Hacking in the Brexit referendum. Look here if you want to have a laugh http://www.moonofalabama.org/2017/12/how-097-changed-the-fate-of-britain-not.html
Katie B , 4 days agoHis logic seems to be: Putin does things we don't like -> Trump getting elected is something we don't like -> Putin got Trump elected.
Antman4656 , 4 days agoCollusion Rejectionist! Ha Ha. Funniest interview ever. Well done Aaron. The Real News taking a stand for truth. So what's in the book if there's no evidence? Guardian journalism? Stop questioning the official narrative, oh and have you heard of Estonia. :)) ps that smiley face was not an admission of my working for the Kremlin.
maskedavenger777 , 4 days ago (edited)Best interview ever. Aaron held him to his theories and asked what evidence or proof he had and he didn't come up with one spec of evidence only hearsay and disputed theories. What a sad indictment this is on America. 1 year on a sensationalized story and still nothing concrete. What a joke and proof of gullibility to anyone who believes this corporate media Narritive. I guess at least they don't have to cover policies like the tax theft or net neutrality. This is why we need The Real news.
I'd rather have American business making business deals with Russia for things like hotels, rather than business deals with the Pentagon to aim more weapons at the Russians. When haven't we been doing business with Russians? We might as well investigate Cargill, Pepsi, McDonald's, John Deere, Ford, and most of our wheat farmers.
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Nov 23, 2019 | www.theguardian.com
Victims' tsar to query Force's decision not to act over Prince Andrew claims
The Met has said that its investigators reviewed all 'available evidence' in relation to disputed claims that a 17-year-old was 'forced to have sex with Prince Andrew'. Photograph: Kirsty O'Connor/PA The Victims' Commissioner is demanding that the Metropolitan Police explain its decision not to pursue a full investigation into claims a teenager was trafficked to the UK to have sex with Prince Andrew .
The Observer understands that Dame Vera Baird QC, a former solicitor general and chair of the Board of the Association of Police and Crime Commissioners, has taken a close interest in the allegations, first examined by Scotland Yard in 2015.
Baird, who has focused on protecting victims of sexual and domestic abuse throughout her career, is currently observing election purdah and cannot speak to the media.
However, prior to the election she made her views known to a victims' rights campaigner , telling him that she would be requesting a meeting with the Met once purdah was over.
"Before the election was called I spoke at length with the Victims' Commissioner and we both find it extraordinary that this matter was not proceeded with," Harry Fletcher said.
The Met has said that its investigators reviewed all "available evidence" after receiving a complaint relating to claims that were made in court documents. It was alleged that in 2001 a 17-year-old, now known to be Virginia Roberts, was "forced to have sex with Prince Andrew", purportedly at the London home of socialite Ghislaine Maxwell, the one-time girlfriend of the late disgraced financier Jeffrey Epstein . His victims are now bringing claims for damages against his estate.
It is understood that lawyers for Roberts also independently contacted the force in 2016. But the Met chose not to pursue a full investigation.
Channel 4 News reported in August that "the Met Police has refused to answer detailed questions about the allegations and whether they ever spoke to Epstein, his friend Ghislaine Maxwell, Prince Andrew or anyone from the royal household".
How seriously the Met took the claims is expected to form a key part of a BBC Panorama investigation into the Epstein scandal which will include an interview with Roberts and is due to be broadcast in December.
The Duke of York denies having sex with Roberts. In his Newsnight television interview he said he did not recall having ever met her.
But a photo of him with his arm around Roberts's waist has been widely circulated. There are claims the photo is fake. The duke says he cannot remember a picture being taken when he was in Maxwell's house.
It is believed that lawyers for Virginia Roberts Giuffre, above, contacted the Metropolitan police in 2016."You would expect the Crown Prosecution Service to have provided pre-investigative advice in this matter," said Fletcher, an adviser to Plaid Cymru and several victims' charities. "It needs to be confirmed whether this happened."
A spokeswoman for the CPS said its lawyers have "confirmed that we cannot comment on any input into investigations where persons have not been charged".
In a statement the Met confirmed that it had received an allegation of "non-recent" trafficking for sexual exploitation. "Having closely examined the available evidence, the decision was made that this would not progress to a full investigation," the Met said. Given the heightened interest in the case, the Met confirmed it had revisited the decision and concluded that it was the correct one. "Therefore no further action is being taken," it said.
But speculation about what went on at Maxwell's home is unlikely to die down. Lawyers bringing civil claims against the Epstein estate are looking to subpoena the duke, obliging him to provide testimony under oath as a witness. The duke has confirmed that he would be prepared to help law enforcement agencies but has given no commitment to cooperate with any civil actions.
The duke's decision to step down from public duties last week came after a raft of companies and charities sought to distance themselves from him following his disastrous interview. It is thought that both the Queen and Prince Charles were instrumental in forcing the duke to stand down. Prince Charles is reportedly returning to the UK on Monday after a royal tour, when he is expected to hold crisis talks with his brother.
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Oct 30, 2019 | off-guardian.org
As the Quantum field oversees the disintegration of institutions no longer in service to the public, the Democratic party continues to lose their marbles, perpetuating their own simulated bubble as if they alone are the nation's most trusted purveyors of truth.
Since the Mueller Report failed to deliver on the dubious Russiagate accusations, the party of Thomas Jefferson continues to remain in search of another ethical pretense to justify continued partisan turmoil. In an effort to discredit and/or distract attention from the Barr-Durham and IG investigations, the Dems have come up with an implausible piece of political theatre known as Ukrainegate which has morphed into an impeachment inquiry.
The Inspector General's Report, which may soon be ready for release, will address the presentation of fabricated FBI evidence to the FISA Court for permission to initiate a surveillance campaign on Trump Administration personnel. In addition, the Department of Justice has confirmed that Special Investigator John Durham's probe into the origin of the FBI's counter intelligence investigation during the 2016 election has moved from an administrative review into the criminal prosecution realm. Durham will now be able to actively pursue candidates for possible prosecution.
The defensive assault from the Democrat hierarchy and its corporate media cohorts can be expected to reach a fevered pitch of manic proportions as both investigations threatened not only their political future in 2020 but perhaps their very existence.
NBC s uggests that the Barr investigation is a ' mysterious ' review " amid concerns about whether the probe has any legal or factual basis " while the NY Times continues to cast doubt that the investigation has a legitimate basis implying that AG Barr is attempting to " deliver a political victory for President Trump." The Times misleads its readers with:
Trump has repeatedly attacked the Russia investigation, portraying it as a hoax and illegal even months after the special counsel closed it."
when in fact, it was the Russiagate collusion allegations that Trump referred to as a hoax, rather than the Mueller investigation per se.
Sen. Mark Warner (D-Va), minority leader of the Senate Intel Committee suggested that Attorney General William Barr " owes the Committee an explanation " since the committee is completing a " three-year bipartisan investigation " that has " found nothing to justify " Barr's expanded effort.
The Senator's gauntlet will be ever so fascinating as the public reads exactly how the Intel Committee spent three years and came up with " nothing " as compared to what Durham and the IG reports have to say.
On the House side, prime-time whiners Reps. Adam Schiff (D-Calif) and Jerrold Nadler (D-NY) commented that news of the Durham investigation moving towards criminal liability " raised profound concerns that Barr has lost his independence and become a vehicle for political revenge " and that " the Rule of Law will suffer irreparable damage ."
Since Barr has issued no determination of blame other than to assure a full, fair and rigorous investigation, it is curious that the Dems are in premature meltdown as if they expect indictments even though the investigations are not yet complete.
There is, however, one small inconvenient glitch that challenges the Democratic version of reality that does not fit their partisan spin. The news that former FBI General Counsel James Baker is actively cooperating with the BD investigation ought to send ripples through the ranks. Baker has already stated that it was a 'small group' within the agency who led the counterintelligence inquiry into the Trump campaign; notably former FBI Director James Comey and former Deputy Director Andrew McCabe.
Baker's cooperation was not totally unexpected since he also cooperated with the Inspector General's FISA abuse investigation which is awaiting public release.
As FBI General Counsel, Baker had a role in reviewing the FISA applications before they were submitted to the FISA court and currently remains under criminal investigation for making unauthorized leaks to the media.
As the agency's chief legal officer, Baker had to be a first-hand participant and privy to every strategy discussion and decision (real or contemplated). It was his job to identify potential legal implications that might negatively affect the agency or boomerang back on the FBI. In other words, Baker is in a unique position to know who knew what and when did they know it.
His 'cooperation' can be generally attributed to being more concerned with saving his own butt rather than the Constitution.
In any case, the information he is able to provide will be key for getting to the true origins of Russiagate and the FISA scandal. Baker's collaboration may augur others facing possible prosecution to step up since 'cooperation' usually comes with the gift of a lesser charge.
With a special focus on senior Obama era intel officials Durham has reportedly already interviewed up to two dozen former and current FBI employees as well as officials in the office of the Director of National Intelligence.
From the number of interviews conducted to date it can be surmised that Durham has been accumulating all the necessary facts and evidence as he works his way up the chain of command, prior to concentrating on top officials who may be central to the investigation.
It has also been reported that Durham expects to interview current and former intelligence officials including CIA analysts, former CIA Director John Brennan and former Director of National Intelligence James Clapper regarding Russian efforts to interfere in the 2016 election.
In a recent CNN interview , when asked if he was concerned about any wrongdoing on the part of intel officials, Clapper nervously responded:
I don't know. I don't think there was any wrongdoing. It is disconcerting to know that we are being investigated for having done our duty and done what we were told to do by the President."
One wonders if Clapper might be a candidate for 'cooperating' along with Baker.
As CIA Director, Brennan made no secret of his efforts to nail the Trump Administration. In the summer of 2016, he formed an inter-agency taskforce to investigate what was being reported as Russian collusion within the Trump campaign. He boasted to Rachel Maddow that he brought NSA and FBI officials together with the CIA to ' connect the dots ."
With the addition of James Clapper's DNI, three reports were released: October, 2016, December, 2016 and January, 2017 all disseminating the Russian-Trump collusion theory which the Mueller Report later found to be unproven.
Since 1947 when the CIA was first authorized by President Harry Truman who belatedly regretted his approval, the agency has been operating as if they report to no one and that they never owe the public or Congress any explanation of their behaviour or activity or how they spend the money.
Since those days it has been a weak-minded Congress, intimidated and/or compromised Members who have allowed intel to run their own show as if they are immune to the Constitution and the Rule of Law. Since 1947, there has been no functioning Congress willing to provide true accountability or meaningful oversight on the intel community.
Renee Parsons has been a member of the ACLU's Florida State Board of Directors and president of the ACLU Treasure Coast Chapter. She has been an elected public official in Colorado, an environmental lobbyist with Friends of the Earth and staff member of the US House of Representatives in Washington DC. She can be found on Twitter @reneedove31
Martin UsherI don't think the Democratic leadership wanted a formal impeachment, they would prefer that Trump just faded away quietly before the 2020 election and were in the process of collecting information to reinforce this. They got cornered into formalizing the investigation by Trump's defense team baiting them as part of their overall strategy. It really doesn't change anything.JoergWhichever way you slice and/or dice it Trump is fundamentally incompetent, he's unable to fulfill the duties of the office of the President. He also refuses to distinguish between private interests and public service. His cabinet, a rag tag body of industry insiders and special interests, are busy trying to ride roughshod over opposition, established policy and even public opinion to grab as much as possible before the whole house of cards collapses. Its a mess, and its a mess that's quite obviously damaging US interests. Many constituency groups will have gone along with the program because they thought they could control things or benefit from them but as its become increasingly obvious Trump's unable to deliver they've been systematically alienated.
The DNC is playing this with a relatively weak field of potential candidates for 2020. Much as I personally like a Sanders or Warren they're just not going to fly in a Presidential contest -- as we found from the Obama presidency the ship of state just doesn't turn on a dime, you're not going to undo decades or generations of entrenched neoconservatism and a politically divided country overnight by some kind of Second Coming pronouncements. My concern is that if we don't get our collective acts together we're going to end up with a President Romney after 2020 -- a much more reasonable choice considering the last four years but also one that's guaranteed to change nothing. We need the journey but its only going to start with a few steps.
( and as for Trump/collusion we've spent the last three years confusing money with nation states. Trump's a businessman in a business that's notorious for laundering money from dubious sources (this doesn't mean he's involved, of course)(legal disclaimer!). I daresay that if Russia really wanted to sink Trump they could easily do so but why would they bother when he's doing such a great job unaided?)
Please make sure You see the Interview-Video "MICHAEL FLYNN CASE UNRAVELS. US-UK DEEP STATE ENTRAPMENT PLAN" on https://youtube.com/channel/UCdeMVChrumySxV9N1w0Au-w – it's a must-see!Jonathan JarvisSomething much deeper going on?Simon Hodgeshttp://thesaker.is/the-terrorists-among-us11-azov-battalion-and-american-congressional-support/
Latest in series of articles by the author re USA – Ukraine connections
"American Ukrainian nationalists don't like democracy. They don't understand the concept of it and don't care to learn. But they do understand nationalist fascism where only the top of society matters. They are behind the actors of the Intelligence coup going on in the US today .This is the mentality and politics the Diaspora is pushing into American politics today. Hillary Clinton and the DNC is surrounded with this infection which even includes political advisors.
Rest assured they all the related Diasporas are in a fight for their political lives. If Donald Trump wins, their ability to infect American politics might be broken. Many of the leadership will be investigated for attempting to overthrow the government of the United States."
"My thoughts on all this are that many of us have become distracted and failed to examine the timeline of events since 9/11. We look at news and conflict in isolation and move on to the next without seeing what is now a clear pattern."Gezzah PottsIn terms of the Middle East you need to go back further than the fortuitous event of 9/11 – at least to 1997 and the founding of the Project for the New American Century which was essentially the first explicit formalisation of the agenda for an imperialist Neoliberal and Neoconservative globalist new world order deployed through the media constructed conflicts of 'good' and 'evil' around the world and with it the call for the 'democratisation' of the Middle East under the alibi of humanitarian interventionism against broadly socialist governments, which since the fall of communism were constructed by Neoliberal fundamentalists as being patently heretical and ideologically illegitimate forms of government. If it is economically illogical to elect a socialist failed form of government then one can only assume that the election must have been rigged.
I started looking at this all a few years ago when I asked myself the question 14 years after the invasion of Iraq: where was the liberal outrage at what had subsequently taken place in the ME? The answer was that from the Invasion of Iraq onward in addition to fully embracing the economics of Neoliberalism as the end of economic history, the progressive 'left' quietly assimilated and reduplicated the fundamentalist illiberal political philosophy of the Neocons. The progressive 'left' both in the UK and US have subsequently become the far Neocon 'right' in all but name and their party hosts of Labour in the UK and the Democrats in the US remain blissfully unaware of all of this. How else can we explain why they would welcome 'Woke' Bill Kristol into their ranks? Once one accepts this hypothesis, then an awful lot falls into place in order to explain the 'Progressive' open support for regime change and the almost total lack of any properly liberal objections to what has taken place ever since.
One key point here is that the Neocons have nothing to do with conservatism or the right. What is striking and most informative about the history of Neo-conservatism is that it does not have its roots in conservatism at all, but grew out of disillusioned US left wing intellectuals who were Marxist, anti-Stalinist Trotskyites. This is important because at the heart of Neo-conservatism is something that appeals strongly to the die hard revolutionaries of the left who hold a strong proclivity for violence, conflict and struggle. If one looks at the type of people in the Labour party who gravitated to the 'progressive' Neoliberal imperialist camp they all exhibit similar personality traits of sociopathic control freaks with sanctimonious Messiah complexes such as Blair. These extremist, illiberal fundamentalists love violence and revolution and the bloodier the better. In Libya or Syria is did not matter that Gadaffi or Assad headed socialist governments, the Neo-colonised progressives would back any form of apparent conflict and bloody revolution in any notional struggle between any identifiable form of 'authority' or 'oppression' with any identifiable form of 'resistance' even if those leading the 'resistance' were head chopping, misogynist, jihadist terrorists. It makes no difference to the fundamentalist revolutionary mindset.
The original left wing who gradually morphed in the Neoconservatives took 30-40 years to make the transition for the 1960s to 1990s. The Labour party Blairites made the same journey from 1990 to 2003. Christopher Hitchens made the same journey in his own personal microcosm.
When is this nausea inducing confected pile of crap going to end? Does anyone else think that Adam Schiff has a screw or three loose, and should be residing in an institution? And imagine if somehow Mike Pence became Prez. Now that would be something to scare the bejesus out of you.Tim JenkinsAdam Schiff should be shot for Treason, of the highest order, along with many others, including HRC, Brennan & Clapper ; and it should be a public execution, like in Saudi Arabia. This is war on the minds of the masses, that Schiff for brains cares nothing for.vexarbAs for Chuck Schumer, he can have a life sentence, as long as he manages to shut his utterly unfunny dumb vulgar cousin Amy up & keep her out of the public eye, forever
Gezzah, life may seem bad right now: but imagine if, you were Amy Schumer's Husband and father of her child. Talk about obnoxious and utterly nauseating 🙂 , with you Gezzah, all the way.
"When is this nausea inducing confected pile of crap going to end?"
Pepe sends more news from the real world:vexarbhttps://thesaker.is/the-age-of-anger-exploding-in-serial-geysers/
"The presidential election in Argentina was a game-changer and a graphic lesson. It pitted the people versus neoliberalism. The people won – with new President Alberto Fernandez and former President Cristina Fernández de Kirchner (CFK) as his VP.
Neoliberalism was represented by a PR marketing product, Mauricio Macri [a Micron look-alike]: former millionaire playboy, president of football legends Boca Juniors, obsessed with spending cuts, who was unanimously sold by Western MSM as a New Age paradigm.
Well, the paradigm will soon be ejected, leaving behind the usual New Age wasteland: $250 billion in foreign debt, less than $50 billion in reserves; inflation at 55 percent; 35.4 percent of Argentine homes can't make it); and (incredible as it may seem in an agriculturally self-sufficient nation) a food emergency."
And from Yemen:vexarbMeanwhile, in the real world, the Denmark's Ukronazi-friendly regime has been brought to heel by Germany's common sense:AntonymSome big natural gas news very significant for Russia, Germany and the Ukraine. The Danish pipeline sector has been stalled for a while now by anti-Russia, pro-Ukrainian forces within the Scandiwegian NATZO-friendly regimes. But it appears that Nordstream 2 _will_ get completed and that Ukraine's gas transit chokehold on the EU will come to an end when Russia's Nordstream 2 comes online for Europe.
-- -- -- -
Permit for the Nord Stream 2 project is reluctantly granted by the Danish Energy Agency. Nord Stream 2 AG has been granted a permit to construct natural gas pipelines on the Danish continental shelf.
The permit is granted pursuant to the Continental Shelf Act and in accordance with Denmark's obligations under the UN Convention on the Law of the Sea. Denmark has been put under obligation to allow the construction of transit pipelines with respect to resources and the environment.
Gas is the second most firm green energy source after nuclear. Denmark manages only due to their undersea cables to Norway's hydro mountains.RobGIn another field has far more common sense than neighbors Germany or Sweden: immigration / integration.
In my humble opinion, the Trump stuff is all total nonsense.Wilmers31Donald Trump was a property speculator in New York (amongst other places) and was heavily involved with the Mafia. Likewise, Trump was heavily involved with Jeffery Epstein.
There's so much dirt on Trump that they could get him with the snap of fingers; but of course that's not what they really want. Trump is pure theatre; a ploy to divert the masses. 'RussiaGate', 'UkraineGate' are all utter rollocks.
Trump and Obama, and all the rest going back to the assassination of Kennedy, are just puppets.
American/ deep state policy doesn't change a jot with any of them.
America is always presentation over substance, wrapper over content, and shoot the messenger if you don't like the message. In the meantime the adults in this world outside the US have to hold it all together. Why was for instance Hillary Clinton not in the dock for saying 'Assad must go'?? It was meddling in the highest order.phree
I guess this just goes to show you that a person can be a member of the ACLU, even a leader apparently, and still be highly biased in favor of Trump.George CornellJust because a witness is "cooperating" with an investigation does not entail that the witnesses testimony or evidence will favor any particular side.
And implying that Clapper's comments somehow shows guilt when he clearly says he knows of no wrongdoing is pretty over the top.
I've read a lot of what's out there about the start of the initial Russia investigation, and it does seem that some of the FBI personnel leading it (McCabe particularly) were anti-Trump.
Isn't the bigger question whether the investigation was justified based on the reports from the Australians that Trump was getting political dirt on Hillary from Russia? Is the FBI just supposed to ignore those reports? Really?
Love the Clapper claim (the same Clapper who lied to Congress) says he was just doing his duty in Russiagate. As GBS said, " when a scoundrel is doing something of which he is ashamed, he always says he is doing his duty".markThe Spook Organisations and the Dirty Cops are a greater threat to our way of life than any foreign army or terrorist group (most of which they created in the first place and which they directly control.) They are a law unto themselves and completely free of any genuine oversight or control.Tim JenkinsThis applies equally to the US and UK. "We lie, we cheat, we steal", as Pompeo helpfully explains. They also murder people, at home and abroad. JFK, David Kelly, Diana, Epstein. They plant bombs and blow people up. Many of the "terrorist atrocities" from Northern Ireland to the present day, were false flag spook operations. The same applies with Gladio on the continent and the plethora of recent false flags.
There is also a long and inglorious history of interference in domestic politics from the Zinoviev Letter onwards. Plots to stage a military coup against the Wilson government of the 60s and 70s, with Mountbatten as its figurehead. The more recent Skripal Hoax. The contrived Syrian Gas Attack Hoaxes and the White Helmets. They would not hesitate to do the same to Corbyn if they deemed it necessary.
The CIA and FBI conspired with the UK and Ukrainian governments to prevent the election of Trump, and then to sabotage and smear his administration once he had been elected. The UK played a major part in this through MI6 and Steele. This is highly dangerous for this country, irrespective of your view of Trump.
Trump has repaid the favour by meddling in Brexit and interfering in UK politics. It is not in his nature to turn the other cheek. We have spook organisations claiming for themselves a right of veto over election results and foreign policy. These people are poor servants and terrible masters. We see Schumer warning against crossing the spook organisations, begging the obvious question – who runs this country, you or the spooks?
The Democrats, the Deep State, the MSM, and the Deranged Left were willing to support these conspiracies and hoaxes, and even suspend disbelief, for the greater good. The ends justify the means. All that matters is getting rid of Trump. Anything goes. The corrosive erosion of trust, credibility and integrity in all the institutions of the state is probably irreparable. The legislature and the political process in general. The judiciary. The spooks and police. About 9% of Americans now believe the MSM.
The irony in all this is that it very much serves Trump's interests. He is extremely vulnerable, having failed to keep any of his promises. Building The Wall, Draining The Swamp, Bringing The Troops Home. Sorting out health care. Building "incredible, fantastic" infrastructure.
All the Democrats had to do was highlight these failures, find a suitable candidate, and put forward some sensible policies, and they were home and dry. Instead, they provided an endless series of diversions and distractions from Trump's failures by charging down every rabbit hole they could find, Russiagate, Ukrainegate, Impeachment. It couldn't work out better for Trump if he was paying them.
Expect to see the Orange Man in the White House for another 4 years. And another even more virulent outbreak of Trump Derangement Syndrome.
Enigmatic and brilliant synopsis, m8, lol: & surely BigB could only agree. And you never even mentioned HQ.Intel. inside.Israel, today & their illegal trespass of WhatsApp, via corporate 'subsidiaries' with 'plausible' denial of liability of spying on everything-everything & any body, that could possibly threaten corporate fascist computerised dictatorship: distributing backdoors, like Promis & Prism, liberally & worldwide, the Maxwells legacy . . . (yet)DungroaninNo need to even discuss, until Western societies ALL get a grip on the depths of depravity that lie within the actions and "The History of the National Security State" you have to admit, that Julian Assange could not have picked a better book to firmly grip and signal with, than GORE Vidal's, when being manhandled out of the Ecuadorian Embassy, by Spooks who would sell their own mother, let alone nation, in their utter technological ignorance and adherence to anachronistic doctrines & mentality !
Glad you mentioned 'good ole' cousin ChuckS.' >>> Lol, just for a laugh and a sense of perspective: yes, he is related to Amy Queen of Vulgarity & hideous societal distraction. What a family of wimps & morons: the 'Schumers' being perfect fodder for ridicule & intelligent humour, naturally . . . on a positive note, mark, think yourself lucky that you are not married to or the father of Amy Schumer's child 🙂
Catching up Off-G. Excellent.Chris RogersLarry C Johnson is at the vanguard on the debacle and is miles ahead on it. Check his output at sst. Here is a short speech outlining the conspiracy.
https://turcopolier.typepad.com/sic_semper_tyrannis/2019/10/my-speech-on-the-deep-state-plot-by-larry-c-johnson.htmlTwo more pieces there – it is moving fast now.
The most important thing for us and deliciously so now the election is happening is the BLOWBACK. Our DS lying murdering arses are going to get new ones drilled by Trump and BoBos bromance exploding in full technicolor.
Think May's dementia tax and Strong and Stable were bad?
Lol. This is going to be a FUN month of early xmases.
Dungroanin,DungroaninSST is essential reading for anyone concerned with US overseas policy and the corruption of the USA itself in the service of the security state, so, many thanks for posting this link.
By sharing we disrupt the msm messages. Bernard at MoonofAlabama is also worth a daily visitation – priceless analysis on multiple subjects.lundielSince those days it has been a weak-minded Congress, intimidated and/or compromised Members who have allowed intel to run their own show as if they are immune to the Constitution and the Rule of Law. Since 1947, there has been no functioning Congress willing to provide true accountability or meaningful oversight on the intel community.
Pretty much a carbon copy of our own oversight. We hear even less about our security services than Americans do of theirs. I'd have thought that events like the spy in the holdall, the spies caught by farmers in Libya, the Skripal's, and the whole over-the-top reaction to the domestic terrorism threat and consequent successful pleas for extra funding, the obvious danger of creating terrorists by security services, the policy of giving asylum to foreign terrorists of countries we don't like and the whole concept of the 5 eyes and GCHQ needs more than ministerial oversight, a committee of yes men/women and an intelligence services commissioner.
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Nov 09, 2019 | off-guardian.org
George Mc
Gore Vidal was always one of the most quotable commentators. Some example (probably paraphrased):
- "Any order that has successfully demonized the word 'liberal' has effectively stifled all opposition to itself."
- "America is the only country in the world that believes in socialism for the rich and private enterprise for the poor."
- "'Conspiracy theory' has become a code for 'unspeakable truth'."
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Sep 19, 2019 | off-guardian.org
The constipated tedium that follows each call, denial and condemnation after another round of fake news and its giddying effects has become daily fare. Entire episodes with the sanctimonious and the solemn are being created to show up the citizen journalist, the blogger, the self-opinionated masturbator of news, in the hope that some high priest set will reclaim the ground.
That ground, supposedly, is "truth", a truly big word merely assumed by its advocates.
None of this is to deny that there is something dreary and depressing about accounts that are fabricated. But this is an age old matter, and one that centres on the old question: Should you trust what is ever published?
The facility to use language is as much a means of expression as deception. According to George Steiner, humanity's Babel dilemma – having a multiplicity of languages that seek to confuse rather than clarify – had as much to do with the need to deceive than anything else. Learn the language, learn the deception.
The modern attempt to evade such deceptions is conventional as much as it is flawed. It questions the very media that was meant to disseminate accounts at speed and attributes traditional monopolies of truth to a Fourth Estate long in tooth and very much on its sick bed. The New York Times , the Washington Post and the Financial Times have looked rather haggish at points.
There is a charmingly naïve assumption here: that the old press houses were somehow incapable of deception and censorship. The influence of media moguls; the cuts and modifications of the editorial boards and government censors, are all historically distant in such arguments.
All that is Fake is new because – and here an element of snobbery creeps in – it is generated by the vox pops brigade.
That viral freight helped along by social media is being treated as the problem, the medium as dissimulated message. The Four Corners episode which aired on Australia's national network on Monday is one such example, shrill in its concerns that the fake in news is undermining to democracy and its institutions.
Its list of interviewed subjects supply us a Who's Who of sceptics and critics about modern journalism and the dark steed called Fake News.
Claire Wardle, Executive director of First Draft, is one who earns her crust attacking this wave and engaged in the process she regards as "verification training for journalists". Her organisation supplies "Training and resources for journalists in an age of disinformation."
In her interview with Four Corners, she suggests how:
we need to worry about fake news. People dismiss it as frivolous. It's not. I think it's the biggest crisis that we face as humankind because it is dividing us. And as we're divided we're going to get to a point where democracy is no longer functioning."
Such a considerable overegging of that pudding is supplemented by other comments.
Veteran journalist John Carlin makes no secret of his aversion to social media platforms, and their means of getting the message through an intemperate scream rather than a sober debate.
"What social media does is give more weight and more value to the people who shout loudest."
But years before the clans of shouters got into the social media bubble, the Murdoch empire, through such trusty emissaries as The Sun , were happy pushing voters with reactionary prods and embellished accounts.
Behind such comments on the fakery of social media news is a paternalistic sneer, one directed against the great unwashed. Sometimes, the sneer targets a specific group, the abominations, the gullible freaks, the marginalised.
Phil Howard, director of the Computational Propaganda Project at Oxford, suggested in February last year that the condition for consuming and gorging the fake in news coverage is limited.
There is an upside to all of this. It appears that only one part of the political spectrum – the far right – is really the target for extremist, sensational and conspiratorial content. Over social media, moderates and centrists tend not to be as susceptible."
That is all fine, if you treat terms such as "moderate" and "centrists" as fundamentally immutable and immune to the witch's brew of conspiracy. All groups are susceptible, and the artery busting fury at WikiLeaks in exposing the underbelly of the Clinton campaign machine in 2016 all suggested that groups of any political persuasion are very happy to entertain dark pulls and urges.
Julian Assange, the celebrated truth sayer one day; pilloried Russian agent the next.
Technological reach has also given birth to a vibrant form of citizen journalism, the very sort frowned upon by conventional, often regulated networks.
In 2014, Time noted that "the growth of social media, facilitated by technological advances that allow Internet access even in a war zone, has made detailed, ground-level information on the war available online".
Such journalism is praised as fresh and fair when it seems to shed good light on a position; dark, bought and compromised when it does not. The term "fake" is as much tactical as anything else.
But press traditionalists remain wary: the global cutting back of the press corps has led to an increasing reliance on freelancing, leading to such fears as those of John Owen at City University in London:
news organisations can't contract out their duty of care and moral responsibility if they choose to air or publish freelancers."
The battle over what is the fake and authentic in news easily dovetails into regulations of control and limitations on expression. It emboldens the censor and the police version of history. Laws criminalising it have been passed in countries as diverse as Malaysia, France, Germany and Russia.
Some of this is being done with the connivance of the Fourth Estate, keen to accommodate the interests of state. Much information and content, as a result, is being inadvertently blocked .
Singapore's own effort, the Protection from Online Falsehoods and Manipulation Act 2019 , ostensibly targets electronic communications of false statements of facts, the use of online accounts to facilitate such communication and "enable measures to be taken to enhance transparency of online political advertisements, and for related matters."
It reads like a gentle, sanitised effort, but its implications are beastly, permitting ministerial determinations on what, exactly, fake news might be.
Such laws, it follows, tend to be used with impunity, targeting any revelations and disclosures that might embarrass the state and its bumbling officials.
Sandra González-Bailón of the Annenberg School for Communication does make a sensible and cautionary point on such efforts.
The risk of governments regulating social media is that they will regulate something that we don't fully understand."
Nor, for that matter, do they.
While the authenticity verifiers marshalled across platoons of fact checkers might well be thinking they are doing us a service, nothing ever replaces the sceptical reader who covers multiple sources to identify an account and question it.
Never just read lines, but between them; never just accept news, but monitor its content and those who produce it. To the informed sceptic go the spoils of enlightenment.
eddie
But of course; think-tanks and churnalists justifying their pay-packet with the same old regurgitated topics, year in, year out.. MSM / alt media; 5-eyes non-events..DoctortrinateThe "nothing to see here, move on" mantra is spot on regarding this dreary scenario, as if the five-eyes nightmare is of any importance to the other 90% of the Planet.. It isn't..
from seed to feed but how much do we need – how much is greed, overfeed, does it mislead in it's speed .to a stampede of the disagreed .is that the deed, for the masses concede, or do I misread ?BigBVerum ipsum factumSteve Hayes"Truth itself is constructed". Giambattista Vico.
There is only the one Gramscian Hegemony: and that is the hegemony of language over humanity. Which is invisibilised by the construction of Truth. Apparent truth. Contingent half-truth. The paradox to which is that if all news is fake news: this invites us into the Liar's Paradox.
This is not a mere linguistic paradox – as Nagurjuna demonstrated in the Madhyamika – the more you try to make a language true (concretise and axiomatise it) the more tautological, inconsistent, and self-contradictory it becomes. Godel and Tarski similarly showed the inherent limitations of any self-referential language system. And yet consensus reality is shared by all those who think that language maintains a one to one correspondence from concept to reality with no confession of doubt or inconsistency (signified=signifier with 100% correspondence and no 'remainder' of indeterminacy).
Which is demonstrably and experientially false. A dog is not a dog. A 'dog' (signified concept) is an entry point into the psychology of a self-referential sign system (semiotics, semiology) that exists only inside the head of the conceiver. The ignored deficiency of which gives language a preferential veridical status it neither warrants or deserves. Which ultimately means that conceptual reality and veridical reality are two separated things. One true and real separated by language. Separated by the differentiation of an inside and an outside of a non-existent thing (an individuated self). A thing that therefore only takes its existence from language.
Which is the Zen paradox: if reality is nodual – which it is – why do we continue to believe in a perspective paradox that is patently false? Duality is not reality. It can be clearly seen concepts do not match reality: on a one to one somatosensorial experiential or direct perceptive basis. I am not referencing a little standard deviation of reality and duality that can be easily rectified. Every pillar of our meta-constructivism of a shared paradoxical dualistic imaginary (consensus simulation 'reality' or apparency-based community) is a 'fallacy of misplaced concreteness'. Or an ontology of apparency replacing the real. No self. No projected duality.
Which brings me to the paradox of Fake news. Which reduces to various communities of speech and conception vying to make the more plausible and believable set of half truths/half lies. A battle of control of the right to verificationism of opinions – or stories about reality – concretised for a non-existent duality.
With the ones that have access to the levers to the major media having more control to shape the narrative. "Those who tell the stories rule society" said some Greek dude. All the time that 'society' is reduced to a dualist narrative constructivism: this will remain true. The narrative is the foundation of a society of control. If the voice in the head – the inner narrative – is held to be 'real' then it can be controlled. Not just controlled, it is already a self-deception if it is believed or believable. If it is anything like some of the chatter I have to listen to: it's all bollocks anyway.
There is no trivialisation in this. The whole ethos and etiology of suffering is a constructed and concretised fake narrative. Samsara is a fake news semantic. That's it. Belief in a separate self is the equiprimordial foundation of all fake news. Fake news is the propogation and prolongation of a fake self. Everyone knows this statement alone is valid.
Yes, it is all rather dense and impenetrable: but the bottom line is that what we think and what we are is not the same. Things appear in language that have no veridical correspondence in reality. Mind is an obvious example: as in the Bodhidharma saying "Show me your mind and I will pacify it for you". No mind. No person. No self. No individual. No space. No time. No coming. No going. No birth. No death. No Being. No non-Being. Sunyatvada.
We take invented and abstract terms, differentiate them, concretise them, then argue about who has the best artificial paradigm. Where there is merit in this: there is greater merit in exposing the whole process as the Samsaric semanticised Lie. Then perhaps we can live in peace without creating spurious factions of self and other. No self. No other. No lies. Simples.
Facebook has claimed it is a publisher in legal proceedings. It made the claim to justify its censorship of Laura Loomer. As a publisher, it does have the right to not publish.wardropperHowever, as a publisher, it is responsible for all its content, leaving Facebook open to countless law suits, which would inevitably bankrupt it – precisely why it has always claimed it is not a publisher, but merely the provider of a platform.
This dilemma confronts all the social media platforms: if they want legal immunity, they have to be platforms, which means they cannot censor; if they want to censor (as the corporate and political elite want them to), they have to be publishers, making them responsible for all their content, which would destroy their business model. I wonder how they will solve this dilemma?
I suppose the answer is to ensure that our highest Court is not corrupt. Then it can simply point to the yawning abyss between claiming you're a publisher sometimes and claiming you are not a publisher at other times, and make it illegal to claim that you both are, and are not, a publisher.Brian SteereThis sort of solution used to be called "common sense", and all our grandmothers and grandfathers had it. Now it has achieved the ridiculous status of being debatable. The ignorant fool is now our most revered role model, and we citizens of western society really ought to be ashamed of that, or, even better, fix it.
Fake news is false witness and false wits work to mask over truth and so cannot be a true with-ness or workability – and the attempt to make them work is the assertion and demand of denial presented as the sustainability of internalised identity structure.neverbeforeAs such 'fake or false communication' represents a sense of separation and disconnecting conflict as derivative 'realities' that operate a weaponised defence set in fear and pain of loss – condensed and focused in a tyrannous mind-framing given power of fear.
That false witness may be seen as absurd or unsubstantiated or the lie of the intent to deny and corrupt truth, is not effective – excepting we see within ourselves and release allegiance. Because pointing out the errors of another will be interpreted as attack, and countered in like kind. Extending a true witness is to the willingness and freedom of others to see or hear and not a weaponising of 'truth' to the frame of the lie.
A mind set in attack is not looking or listening or open to communicate. All that is seen and heard under such a mind is serving the intent to survive upon the denial of the other. All that is said, shared or given is for the survival or sustainability of the self in its polarised identification.
Regardless the forms this may take, an underlying polarisation of the mind set against communication for its own 'survival', operates through the fear of pain of loss associated WITH communication, relationship and the opening and growing of trust.
Polarising corruption of conflicted communication sets fences, walls and tipping points of territory of possession and control that itself then operates a tipping point into insanity, unworkability, dysfunction, degradation, destruction as a denial of life brought unto death. There is an intention and act of stealing that reveals a true basis for having and being – the truth of possessing life is invisible to a mind in things and forces.
Fake news is itself the bait to engage reaction within the frame its sets. The mind of the personality does not primarily work through rationalisations, but through trust of its internalised structure – that has externalised reflection in social and cultural mores and institutions. Looking within needs to be the always awake corollary to looking 'out' in relational endeavour – or else we run on surfaces that deny – and so are then denied or undermined by – depth.
Internalised structure of conditioning beliefs and definitions, usurp and deny living communication of the heart of wholeness, or seeing and hearing truly. The first Call to correcting our sense of self, reality and world is a transparency to Self in place of mind-control-reaction. Unless self-honesty has a foundation from which to extend, then lies, passing off as the true of you, go forth and multiply – to return in their kind and measure – for such is the nature and fruit of idea given acceptance and allegiance in act.
What could possibly deliver us unto evil but a lie given power of identification as true – and persisted in?
If a polarised 'identity politics' rises to awareness as a tyrannous means of divide and rule, then learning to read our own identifications of reaction is the key to releasing OUR part in giving power to self-destructive masking illusion of protection from hate and fear as externalised powers set in opposition to Life. Forcefully expressed or clearly embodied communication is not inherently coercive or hateful – excepting to an identity set by hateful coercion as possession and control.Communication is love in action, and not merely words or ideas wrapped around the same attempt to mask in the forms of acceptability with respect to our current spheres of significance. The desire to exist and to be known to exist is inherent to (our) existence – and yet the fixation in the FORM of its expression makes a mind-control or dis-possession that is simply NOT in our Right Mind – and therefore calls ONLY to restore alignment. Persisting in the attempt to GET RID of or overcome or escape dissonance in symptom works the effective denial of Cause – and therefore of the healing or undoing of effects and symptoms arising from a forcefully asserted mistaken identity.
It is impossible to ..
Continued on
https://willingness-to-listen.blogspot.com/2019/09/fake-news-is-false-witness-and-false.html
I would like to establish some commonality to this discussion of propaganda and how it is used to differentiate the masses in the world.Brian SteereUnderstanding that the government and those in the class: elite-wealth-greedy and their interrelated monopoly powered corporations, think tanks, charities and NGOs are constantly conspiring to find ways to deny human rights and to deny the rise to power of democratic forms of governments.
If you are not in the class:wealth-elite-greed (Class:<= WEG); you will not be allowed to understand how fewer than 500,000 class:wealth-elite-greed (Class:<= WEG) members are deployed and how they are taught in private schools and by social networks that they are better than and masses and they must learn to work behind the scenes to find ways to control the masses in the world (8 billion people). Additionally, will you not be allowed to understand the policies governments engage in on behalf of the Class:<WEG to make the 8 billion fully dependent on the whims and needs of the 500,000 (16:1 control ratio?). Human survival exist at the please of Class:<=WEG.
There is always running in the background, a subversive negotiation between governments and class:wealth-elite-greed (Class:<= WEG) persons. (Class:<=WEG) persons depend on people container governments to maintain, and to protect the needs, wants, elite status, wealth and greedy aspirations of the members of the Class:<=WEG. The idea in these behind the scenes negotiations is to find ways to make and keep the masses highly dependent upon government policy, Class:<=WEG owned productive economic activity (jobs) and media propagated propaganda is used to mold the minds of the young and to guide the development of personality and psychology that the masses are allowed to believe and must accept (<= government knows best). But what is behind this government knows best dictate is tjat Class:<=WEG interest are directing the government to provide the jobs that will make the Class:<=WEG richer. Nothing government does is for the benefit of the masses, sometimes things the government does, indirectly benefits the masses.
Negotiations between the members of Class:<=WEG and government happen because the politicians need to get reelected, and the politicians are dependent upon the Class:<= WEG to invest in projects that allow the the leader to claim success but in fact jobs at factories and in large corporate establishments produce dependence on government and Class:<=WEG; and it is these dependencies that enable the Class:<=WEG persons to control the masses.
The Class:<=WEG folks want government to help them block, new members into Class <=WEG. Person Control ratio: 1 Class:<= WEG member/16000 controlled, ruled, governed persons.
The nation state system (NSS) has been very successful: it imposes divide and conquer
strategies. First you divide the masses into containerized groups, then you control
the information available to each of the containers, the controlled information differentiates the persons locked in the containers. If you tell the people in the red group that the people in the blue group are dangerous and need to be eliminated, and you train the Red group people to kill the blue group people, and then start a war, the blue group will not know what hit them.The NSS stuffs its allocation of members of the masses into a controlled environment.
In that controlled environment information is controlled, icons are put along the walls,
highways, and in text books and mass circulated media. Because human cognition and
decision making capacities depends on its systems of past reference (knowledge, morality,
logic, evaluations (evidence/vs/faith), and a myriad of other things, the propaganda that
permeates the container actually molds the trapped human into a person acceptable to the
nation state. The classic explanation: J born to Jewish parents in NYC, S born to Shia
Parents in Iran are exchange to the non genetic parents. 24 years later, J will hate S and
S will hate J, neither can speak the language of the other and both see the world in a
different light then their genetic parents. The container environments controlled by rule
of law and use of force were different: Icons, propaganda, morality, and institutional
experiences produced the results as directed by the Class:<= WEG persons.The Nation State Container (NSC) can be used to polarize the people in one group against
the people in the other. When the scope of events that constitute the news is limited
and that allowed to be known in each NSC is selected to be different and even selected to
oppose the view allowed to the people trapped in the other container polarization takes
place.So fake news is really just tailored propaganda..explicitly designed for those in one of the
nation state people containers.We should all begine to talk about the containment of people within a nation state as a people management tool used by the class:wealth-elite-greed group to control by polarization the masses. That tool has made it possible for the Class:<=WEG to use propaganda to develop most of the wars and to keep separated the humanity that constitute the masses.
Did you intent your post to be in response to mine?vexarbIdentification is not JUST passive inheritance but actively acquired.
Propaganda is the weaponisation and marketisation of language – as distinct from its function AS communication.
The collective idea of the 'world' is not fixed, immutable or imposed.
I sense you want to make a structural container into and by which to explain your world. But it is your world – and others have their own structural filters and rules to 'explain' or justify their world.
If people can so easily be manipulated – as in some sense seems so – how and why?
I sketch the inner terrain of the mind that is shared by alliance no less than by polarised opposition – as a reflective opportunity to check your 'world' with who you recognise and accept yourself to be – instead of running on acquired and inherited conditioning.
The identification in fear – masked or packaged so as to seem protective against fear – is the 'containment'. Un-owned and unresolved conflict, divides and is ruled over by narrative control. If you can listen instead in the heart, then you have a basis on which to discern the meanings that you learn and teach or demonstrate, propagate or propagandize.
Truth has no need to deceive or coerce another in order to find reinforcement and sustainability – for its is that which sustains being. That does not mean I cant engage in communicating as I feel truly moved – but that is teaching who I am to a like quality in others. Teaching victimhood, grievance and revenge as an identity in righteousness and power is to emulate the very thing you seek to eradicate.
The build up of conditioned enmity that you illustrate may be protected from healing by propagandists who fear the peace would be a loss of identity – and yet for all that, you are living your choices within the conditions that you meet and by your choices, may change your perspective to significant release of hate and fear that may play into the agenda of others but is fully dumped in your life as your experience.
Much of our slavery is from an exclusive identification in the body – and to a world of bodies in which power asserts itself OVER bodies and is appeased and manipulated by strategies of deceit. I spoke to fantasy enacted upon the body above.
When we give creative power to that which is but an effect or symptom and not a true cause, we become the puppet of our own definitions.
How much freedom from conditioned thinking are you willing to accept, embrace and integrate? What IS narrative identity – and its corresponding continuity, control or desperation for sustainability in its own terms?
I live one step at a time.
Published in 1918, after the Anglo Zio Capitalist oil grab known as WW1. Written by one of the few Englishmen who opposed the Empire's grab of the Afrikaaner Free Republics (Boer War 1899-1902).falcemartelloThe Century of Resource Wars has bred The Century of Lies: "The Free Press, by Hilaire Belloc.
Synopsis
These things appeared first of all in England, because England was the only province of Europe wherein the old Latin tradition ran side by side with the novel effects of Protestantism.
It was the defection of the English Crown, the immense booty rapidly obtained by a few adventurers, like the Cecils and Russells, and a still smaller number of old families, like the Howards, which put England, with all its profound traditions and with all its organic inheritance of the great European thing, upon the side of the Northern Germanies. It was
inevitable, therefore, that in England the fruits should first appear, for here only was there deep soil.That fruit upon which our modern observation has been most fixed was Capitalism."
Qui tacet consentir videtur Silence betokens consent.vexarb
Post Scriptum:The Orwellian dystopian reality of language and who controls the narrative. Old Vico and Gramsci principles.
Docius in Fundem: The elites are running scared and tempest fugit.@Hammer&Sickle. Tempus fugit, OK; but what does Docius in Fundem mean -- the Bottom Line?falcemartelloOld neapolitan latin expression. Last but not least. Literal meaning one could say bottom line. But in Naples it always reference to last but not least. They being the elites are having difficulty controlling the narrative hence the bogus news bogus academia bogus statutes bogus economy and bogus society. Western paradigm is nigh as a neapolitan i can only say "Ben venga la caduta di Roma Due".andyoldlabour
But I digress the largest wealth gap since the Gilded age but hell whats a few million lives worth this day and age.Fake news? Was the Skripal/Salisbury farce a cover up for something far more sinister and deadly?andyoldlabourWho has heard of the Gosport NHS Trust scandal, where at least 450 patients were found to have been killed by over prescribed medication?
The story broke in March/April 2018 at the same time as the so called poisoning of three people (and later death of one woman) by the most deadly nerve agent known to man, yet was quickly brushed under the carpet by the press as we were being force fed "news" for weeks and months on end about a clearly fabricated incident.
Nobody I have spoken to has heard of the Gosport cover up and doesn't believe me when I tell them of the numbers of patients involved.https://www.mirror.co.uk/news/uk-news/thousands-died-nhs-due-gosport-12783501
https://www.carersuk.org/forum/news-and-campaigns/latest-caring-news/gosport-hospital-deaths-33516
RopeResearchRopeResearchIndeed, I have been thinking exactly that. I suffer from a long time medical condition and have to use a sophisticated piece of medical equipment every day.
Until 3 months ago, that equipment was totally under my control as it had been for the past 17 years and it worked fine. 3 months ago I was informed that I would have to have a replacement, and then informed that the "specialists/technicians" at the hospital would be able to monitor me and make reqired chasnges via the cloud.
It is patently obvious to me that since this latest piece of kit was foist on me, my health has declined and it is definitely not doing the job that the old kit was doing.
I am worried, but don't know who to talk to or trust.Snowden said, we are all under surveillance. So, I imagine, with having a remotely controlled medical device, it would be wise to recite the national anthem every morning.Stephen MorrellSome people with chronic medical conditions, also suffer from 'social isolation'. If you're in this situation, increasing social interaction is a very good step to take.
For decades, the fourth estate has been sinking and shrinking ever further into an untruthful, but sponsored, and fact-scarce irrelevance, into a much-deserved abyss. The monopoly under which everyone has been deceived and manipulated is gone, and with each new exposure of its ruling class narratives as the dreary lies they are, or of its being so wedded to a mythical worldview that only the most seriously credulous, demented or cocooned can accept, the more the corporate media lashes out at those who point out that that media emperor has no clothes. The parallels with the decline of the US empire are striking, with the latter similarly lashing out at anyone who questions its 'exceptionalism', 'manifest destiny' and 'monopoly' on war making against 'aggression' and for 'peace'. Like the decaying US empire, the declining corporate media are 'projecting'.Seamus PadraigThe corporate media's main problem in trying to recover its lost 'authority' is that the help it enlists is severely compromised by the same profoundly reactionary capitalist ideology as its own. The Integrity Initiative (the UK's version of Project Mockingbird), Bellincat, and various 'fact checkers' are some of the more egregious examples. It's obviously projecting its own longtime MO of fake news onto online sources of actual facts and information, those that the rulers ('sponsors') wish the 'great unwashed' never to see. While Wikileaks has exposed them for their gross entrainment with imperialism, the corporate media's labelling the online fifth estate as 'fake news' is also fuelled by their own fear of being held to account, moreover in real time.
The speed of communications is such that ruling class narratives can be exposed so quickly while still topical that more often than not they fail to gain traction. Russiagate is the great example of corporate media fake news, where despite three years of relentless fact-free scaremongering and speculation, this classic piece of fake news never became an issue in any political survey of ordinary people. No longer must the public wait 50 years for a historian to dig up and expose the truth when it no longer matters. And it's now possible to hold a discussion laced with terms that used to be confined to history books, like: 'false flag attack', 'the military industrial (and congressional) complex', 'imperialism', 'ruling class', 'capitalism', 'proxy war', 'regime change', 'colour revolution', and so on.
There's no getting around the fact that the fifth estate is acquiring a critical mass that the fourth estate can't compete with. We're now seeing the emergence of excellent journalism that for years the fourth estate has refused to provide. While the 'reputable' titans like NYT, WP, BBC, Guardian et al. are failing, sites like offGuardian, The Grayzone, Consortium News, MintPress News, Global Research, Moon of Alabama, Black Agenda Report (with honourable mentions to RT and Sputnik), among a host of others, are going from strength to strength -- because they're providing much of the real 'fake news' everyone needs.
Ash"It appears that only one part of the political spectrum – the far right – is really the target for extremist, sensational and conspiratorial content. Over social media, moderates and centrists tend not to be as susceptible."
And what about the far left?
" news organisations can't contract out their duty of care and moral responsibility if they choose to air or publish freelancers."
Does that include 'Bellingcat'?
They studiously pretend there's no such thing as the left.RopeResearchAntidote?AdminA suggestion to include, in every new article in alternative media, a section titled 'Did you know?'.
This section shows at least one fact of criminality committed by the americans. The usefulness of such would be to increase awareness of why the empire does not deserve the political and economic power/clout it has now. Also it serves to replace (or at least explain) what would be labelled anti-americanism sentiments with Facts. Straight forward F.A.C.T.S.Here is an example:
Did you know?
My Lai was just one of many massacres committed by America in Vietnam.
The industrial-scale slaughter was equivalent to a "My Lai each month"
So, you try to vote and the software tells you you've already done so?FrankSpeakerThe only reason for that would be if someone who shared your IP had previously voted. That's technically possible if you have a dynamic IP – most private homes do – but it seems quite unlikely it would happen routinely.
Does anyone else reading this get this problem?
In our new age of Inverted Totalitarianism (Wolin), the shrill accusations of something being labelled as 'fake news' by the Establishment should instead be taken as a strong assurance of it being quite the opposite; the truth.Gary Weglarz
Mossedegh is a communist – he had to go; Arbenz is a communist – he had to go; a "magic bullet" proves Oswald was a lone assassin; North Vietnam attacked the U.S. in the "Gulf of Tonkin" forcing us to unleash our American war machine; JRK, MalcolmX, MLK and RFK were all assassinated within five years of each other with no U.S. government involvement whatsoever; "We are not secretly bombing Cambodia and Laos;" Allende is a communist – he had to go; there are no death squads in Latin America and we're not training and arming those death squads that, well, don't exist; – this is just a brief tour of some of the highlights U.S. foreign and domestic policy of the freaking 1950's and 1960's! The reporting on all of it was "fake news." The news media lied about these events at the time, and they have done nothing to correct those lies in the present. The entire "purpose" of corporate sponsored MSM is to "lie to us" – duh.George McIT'S ALL FAKE NEWS! Every freaking word that comes out of the State and its mouthpiece the Western corporate media on any matter of importance is complete propaganda. Bank on it.
The White Helmets, when they aren't murdering civilians and harvesting and selling human organs, are a "humanitarian organization," much respected in the West and worthy of their own fawning documentary. You can't make this stuff up – well – that's not true – they are literally "making this stuff up" all the time – out of whole cloth complete lies become our "reality" through endless repetition on endless Western media outlets.
The best one can say is that at least some decades ago the media didn't simply routinely treat us all like brain dead idiots the way they do today. From "Russiagate" to the "Skripnals" to the latest CIA sponsored "color revolution" happening coincidentally right where we happen to want one to happen – Western propaganda and the MSM that report it have devolved into completely surreal slapstick black-comedy and Western populations have become so dumbed down that only a relative few seem to notice.
Just saw this great quote from Gore Vidal on a Jimmy Dore episode that sums up our predicament here in the U.S. quite nicely:
"The corporate grip on opinion in the United States is one of the wonders of the world. No first world country has ever managed to eliminate so entirely from its media all objectivity, much less dissent."
Gore Vidal was always one of the most quotable commentators. Some example (probably paraphrased):Fair dinkum"Any order that has successfully demonized the word 'liberal' has effectively stifled all opposition to itself."
"America is the only country in the world that believes in socialism for the rich and private enterprise for the poor."
"'Conspiracy theory' has become a code for 'unspeakable truth'."
The ABC were thoroughly gelded under John (we'll follow the empires to war) Howard's regime.
They are now a PR unit for the Corparasites.Gezzah PottsNahh, they have an AGENDA to feed you, and you better eat it up and like it.
Mostly now I don't watch or listen to ABC or SBS here in Oz anymore. Made an exception with the Houthis attack on the Abqaiq refinery. And yep, the coverage was so predictable. All in lock step with the narrative they want us to swallow: The West = Good Guys, Iran = Evil Guys.MASTER OF UNIVEClaire Wardle is just another apparatchik of the Anglo Zionist Empire. Remember doing some research on First Draft when it came to prominence a while back.
The more blatantly obvious they become in their dissemination of imperialist propaganda, the more people will hit the off button, stop buying newspapers, and just stop listening. And that'll be really good news indeed.You don't get that everyone is online Internet reading the tripe hashed out whether it is legitimate or not. Most of the discourse is repetitious to a point of being drivel on most days.Gezzah Potts
Internet is only interesting when something is brewing for investigation. Most of the drivel offered up is mere repetitious propaganda and everyone realizes it but continues to read it anyways. Internet today is events driven. Bombast from the twittersphere is dying out and being replaced by geopolitical & macroeconomic risks inflicted & telegraphed mostly via the USA & Israel week-to-week.Do you honestly think Zombies on Internet are going to all of a sudden wake the hell up and realize they are being programmed daily with programmed drivel to make them comfortable at their desktops?
Zombies on the Internet are not being programmed to critically think about all the advertisements that are being bombarded with second by second or how algos are reading their keystrokes and choices for webpages & consumer products.
Jeff Bezos is not going to educate the Internet Zombies on the finer points of marketing and the CIA is not going to let people know they run information operations either.
None in the tech world care.
Politicians follow directives of corporate sectors to control & mollify consumers everywhere.
They are not benevolent and the people they serve have monetary objectives alone. Control of populations is for the benefit of banks and the financial predator class miscreants that serve banks. Governments are corporations that serve banks.If you turn the Internet off you would have to be off-grid and completely not tuned in to contemporary life of Orwellian newspeak in order to distance yourself from the propagandizers pushing Imperialism & dogmatism.
They sure as hell don't want people to believe in themselves as opposed to believing in the tripe they feed you.
MOU
Thanks for your reply MOU. No, I've never used Twitter, Facebook, Instagram, or whatever social media there is. None. And yes, I see every single day, 7 days a week, 365 days of the year, people staring at their phones or laptops. Completely zombified; as you say. I get your point about digital mediums, tho was talking about the more traditional media like TV News or Newspapers.bevin" fake news I think it's the biggest crisis that we face as humankind because it is dividing us. "She's harking back to the good old days when Australia's youth merrily joined up to fight "evil" in the Dardanelles because only a tiny minority, with no voice in the media, dissented from the propaganda. the ruling class doesn't like it when people laugh at their ludicrous lies. Such as the Skripal or Russiagate nonsenses, both of which are only credited by people who have neither the time or inclination to pay attention.
Them and the intellectuals/political class who have sold their souls, whose existence they deny, and other orifices for a few years of prosperity and the comfort that comes from siding with power.
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Nov 08, 2019 | off-guardian.org
Assange lawyers' links to US govt & Bill Browder raises questions The network of lawyers in conflicting roles in Browder, Assange and US government cases raises questions about Julian Assange's defense. Editor
A US government lawyer in the Assange extradition case just wrote a London Times oped promoting the Browder Magnitsky hoax. Ben Brandon is one of five lawyers in a London network whose spokes link to convicted tax fraudster William Browder, the U.S. government, and to both sides of the extradition case against whistleblower publisher Julian Assange.
Here is how the British legal system works. Lawyers are either solicitors who work with clients or barristers who go to court in cases assigned by the solicitors. To share costs, barristers operate in chambers , which provide office space, including conference rooms and dining halls, clerks who receive and assign cases from solicitors, and other support staff. London has 210 chambers. There are not "partners" sharing profits, but members operate fraternally with each other.
Browder is key in the U.S. demonization of Russia. Assange has exposed U.S. war crimes. For lawyers associated in the British legal system to take both sides on that conflict would appear to be an egregious conflict of interest. But it fits with the U.S.-UK support of the Browder-Magnitsky hoax and their cooperation in the attack on Assange.
The law firm and chambers involved in the Browder-Assange stories are Mishcon de Reya, Matrix Chambers and Doughty Street Chambers.
Ben Brandon of Mishcon de Reya and Alex Bailin of Matrix Chambers co-authored an opinion article in The Times of London October 24, 2019 in which they repeated William Browder's fabrications about the death of his accountant Sergei Magnitsky.
The article aimed to promote the Magnitsky Act which builds a political wall against Russia. It is based on the fake claim that Magnitsky, the accountant who handled Browder's tax evasion in Russia, was really a lawyer who exposed a government scam.
Except that is not true, there is no evidence for it, and the lies are documented here . But the Act has prevented the Russians from collecting about $100 million Browder owes in back taxes and illicit stock buys.
Brandon's and Bailin's connections are notable. Law firms, at least in the U.S., tend to stake out their commitments. Lawyers who represent unions do not represent companies fighting unions. It appears to be different in Britain, where legal chambers have members on either side of some cases.
Bailin is a member of Matrix Chambers, which was founded by the wife of Tony Blair, the former neocon Labor British Prime Minister. He is solidly in the Browder camp. He represented Leonid Nevzlin, a major partner of Browder collaborator Mikhail Khodorkovsky, who according to filings with FARA (the Foreign Agents Registration Act), paid $385,000 for Congress to adopt the Magnitsky Act which has been used by the U.S. as a weapon against the Russian government.
Nevzlin's suit was for $50 billion against Russia for money allegedly lost by the nationalization of Yukos Oil. Yukos was obtained by Khodorkovsky in the mid-90s in one of then Russian President Boris Yeltsin's rigged auctions. Khodorkovsky's bank Menatep ran the auction.
He paid $309 million for a controlling 78 percent of the state company. Months later, Yukos traded on the Russian stock exchange at a market capitalization of $6 billion. Not surprising, after Yeltsin departed, the state wanted the stolen assets back.
To add insult to injury, Khodorkovsky laundered profits from Yukos through transfer-pricing and other scams.
Transfer pricing is when you sell products to a shell company at a fake low price, and the shell sells them on the world market at the real price, giving you the rake-off. It cheats tax authorities and minority shareholders. See how Khodorkovsky and Browder did this with Russian company Avisma, which Khodorkovsky also got through a rigged auction.
The Times oped co-author, Brandon of Mishcon de Reya, has a startling connection. The day after an extradition request targeting Julian Assange was signed by the UK home secretary , Brandon representing the U.S. government, formally opened the extradition case.
Now look at another Assange link. Mark Summers , who is representing Julian Assange is, along with Bailin, a member of Matrix Chambers.
But while he is Assange's lawyer, Summers is acting for Assange's persecutor, the U.S. government, in a major extradition case involving executives of Credit Suisse in 2013 making fake loans and getting kickbacks from Mozambique government officials.
Does Assange, or those who care about his interests, know he is part of chambers working for the U.S. government?
And where do you put this factoid? Alex Bailin is representing Andrew Pearse, one of the Credit Suisse bankers that the U.S. government, represented by Summers, is seeking to extradite!
But there's chambers where two members are each supporting both Browder and Assange.
Geoffrey Robertson is founder of Doughty Street Chambers. He is also a longtime Browder / Magnitsky story promoter. He has pitched implementation of a Magnitsky Act in Australia and has served Browder in UK court.
In 2017 British legal actions surrounding an inquest into the death of Alexander Perepilichnyy, he represented Browder, who claimed that the Russian, who died of a heart attack, was somehow a victim of Russian President Putin. Perepilichnyy had lost money in investments he was handling for clients and had to get out of town.
Needing support, he decamped to London and gave Browder documents relating to his client's questionable bank transfers. He died after a jog, Browder claimed he was poisoned by a rare botanical substance, obviously ordered by Putin, but forensic tests found that untrue. Robertson accused local police of a cover-up.
He is a legal advisor to Assange and is regularly interviewed by international media about the case.
Jennifer Robinson of Doughty Street Chambers also has a Browder connection. She is acting for Paul Radu a journalist and official of the Organized Crime and Corruption Reporting Project (OCCRP) which is being sued by an Azerbaijan MP. OCCRP is a Browder collaborator.
Browder admits in a deposition that OCCRP prepared documents he would give to the U.S. Justice Department to accuse the son of a Russian railway official of getting $1.9 million of $230 million defrauded from the Russian Treasury. The case was settled when the U.S. couldn't prove the charge, and the target declined to spend more millions of dollars in his defense. OCCRP got the first Magnitsky Human Rights award , set up for Browder's partners and acolytes.
Robinson is also the longest-serving member of Assange's legal team. She acted for Assange in the Swedish extradition proceedings and in relation to Ecuador's request to the Inter-American Court of Human Rights Advisory Opinion proceedings on the right to asylum.
Why did Assange or his advisors choose lawyers associated with the interests of the U.S. government and Browder? Or how could those lawyers be so ignorant about the facts of Browder's massive tax evasion and his Magnitsky story fabrications?
It raises questions about how they are handling the Assange defense.
The individuals cited were asked to respond to points made about them, but none did.
Here is my audio interview on this issue on Fault Lines, "The Avisma Scandal + The Link Between Browder & Assange." The Browder-Assange part starts 13:20 minutes in. Filed under: Assange Arrest , latest , Russia , United States Tagged with: Bill Browder , julian assange , Lucy Komisar , russia , Sergei Magnitsky , Wikileakscan you spare $1.00 a month to support independent media
The Telegraph reports on a 2015 private dinner in the home of Doughty Street 's Geoffrey Robertson at which the Magnitsky myth and sanctions against Russia are pitched to then-Labour-Party-leader Ed Miliband, and Doughty Street lawyer Amal Clooney and co.:universalRevealed: Ed Miliband's dinner with George and Amal Clooney
Today we find aforementioned Browder/Magnitsky touts Alex Bailin, QC (Matrix lawyer and "legal writer for The Guardian, The Times and The Lawyer – co-writer of the bogus FT Magnitsky column with Ben Brandon), and Geoffrey Robertson, QC (Doughty Street's eminence grise), both on the Advisory Board of Amal Clooney's " TrialWatch " (part of the Clooney " Foundation for Justice "): TrialWatch® Advisory Board
The tentacles of the deep state (no longer secret now) are clamping on our life so tightly that one would honestly wish that one of those extraterrestrial rocks would smash into this planet causing total annhilation –just in order to get rid of these psychopathic mongrels ruling over us.markI am not sure, though, fantasy could solve problems!
We have a corrupt and politicised "justice" system used for the purposes of intimidation and political persecution. Some people still believe in fairy stories like the Rule of Law and an independent judiciary.JenWhat we are seeing now is no different from the Lula case in Brazil or any one of a thousand similar cases in authoritarian regimes. Upset the Deep State and you face selected targeted application of the law and the destruction of your life and future.
Unfortunately what we don't get in Lucy Komisar's article, perhaps because of the peculiar quirks of the legal system in Britain that may include a great deal of secrecy about how aspects of it operate, is how Julian Assange came to have such a dubious legal representation with its various connections to Bill Browder and Mikhail Khodorkovsky. Who recommended Mishcon de Reya and other barristers to Assange and Wikileaks, and who is going to foot these barristers' bills? Are there no other barristers specialising in human rights cases in Britain who can take on Assange's case or was the case awarded to certain chambers in some kind of bidding arrangement or some other competitive arrangement?R HeybroekBTW it's not unusual for law firms in Britain and Australia to have clients whose interests may be opposed, ie a law firm can represent both a company and a trade union whose members may be employed by that company. What usually happens is that different teams of lawyers work for the two sides and the work of one team is separated from the other team by internal firewalls. The firewalls include physical separations: the teams may even work on different floors so as not to share copiers or other office equipment and lawyers in opposing teams may be discouraged from socialising with each other during lunch and coffee breaks. Sounds bizarre but this does happen.
With respect, you can't judge British law by US standards. Barristers are briefed by solicitors, not individual clients, and associate primarily in areas of competence, e.g. criminal, corporate or tax law. In their specialization, they generally follow the 'cab rank' principle and accept briefs from prosecution or defence as they arise. It's a strength of the system, not a problem.RobGWhatever I may think of some of the barristers in Matrix or Doughty, it would be foolish to assume that everyone in a chambers shares the same political views or attitudes. They do not. They argue like cats and dogs, usually with considerable professional respect.
I see nothing dubious about the range of experience of Assange's legal team. If his solicitor thinks a barrister has a conflict of interest, he will withdraw the brief. I'd suggest you direct your enquiries to the instructing solicitor.
Julian Assange was a dead man walking from the time he was taken (totally illegally) from the Ecuadorian embassy. Just about all the Wikileaks team are now totally corrupted; and as this article points out, most of Assange's legal team are also corrupted. The alleged mental deterioration of Assange, combined with harsh (and totally unnecessary) prison conditions, might account for some of this.JenBut surely it's odd that at the same time he is representing Julian Assange against the US government, Mark Summers is also acting for the United States government in another case in which three British-based Credit Suisse bankers are fighting extradition to the US on charges of security fraud and money laundering?MLSAn important subsidiary question becomes, why aren't any of his high profile champions asking these questions? John Pilger? Craig Murray? They all bang on about stuff like 'torture' but never point out that his lawyers totally fail to address this pretty darn crucial issue. Craig Murray says 'Julian has great lawyers'. Really? If we step back and think for a minute, does it honestly look that way?Betrayed planetThey can't even get him out of solitary or into a lower security prison. Shit, they can't even get his mail delivered adequately or uphold his right to get regular legal visitation! And yet no one, not even his parents, are complaining about these failures! And who is running Wikileaks these days? Do we have any way of being sure they aren't just a co-opted shell?
To be fair Pilger is one of the few real supporters of Julian along with a handful of musicians. His lone voice is not enough. I saw a clip of Pilger crying after the recent spectacle of a so called hearing. The presiding judge, The Honorary Upyourbottom should have been in the dock for perjury, fraud, lying before a court and crimes against humanity.LawStudentI'm a 2nd year law student and I can confirm that questions about the conduct of Assange's defence are legion in my school. MNynpeople talking about the inexplicable lapses. Just s fee usdyes often discussed: Why didn't the defense take up the judge's offer of bail application? To say 'well they would lose' is counter to the basics of jurisprudence.L TookWhy is there no complaint being lodged about his detention in a maximum security facility when he's on remand – not serving a sentence – pending an extradition hearing? Why don't his lawyers lodge an appeal to the ECHR based on the testimony of the UN observers? Why are his lawyers keeping such low media profiles?
It's generally agreed something is very 'off' about this.
I think his lawyers stated that they were never offered a bail application, even though the judge claimed they had refused one. But I'm not sure; I had heard previous to this event that the lawyers would not ask because if they lost (the appeal?) Assange could be further punished for the loss. Is this accurate?MaryDIt may be relevant that one of Assange's barristers also represents the corporate psyop Extinction Rebellion!nottheonly1NorthernAssange lawyers' links to US govt & Bill Browder raises questions. The network of lawyers in conflicting roles in Browder, Assange and US government cases raises questions about Julian Assange's defense.
Assange lawyers' links to US govt & Bill Browder raises only one question: What the?
I know it's not comedy, because people get seriously hurt and killed as a result of the transformation of a more or less democratic government into a well organized criminal organization. Who better to run the courts, than the mob? Mob 'Law' enforcement included. So, organized crime owns everything. The big club. The biggest profits are made with stuff that was bought to blow up something. Or somebody. One could ask: 'With links like these, who needs enemies?' Anybody interfering into, or compromising the Mob execution of the owners' plan, will be taken care of. Laws are written to owners' demands and are quickly as needed in show trials.
The eloquence in describing what is happening right now – and in all other show trials – is comforting.
As it is more like 'a gang of lawyers in revolving door roles in organized crime by Browder and US regime et al versus Julian Assange, providing Defense for Julian Assange in his case against the same people and the same regime.
I forgot where, but I have heard of such things before.
The World will have to understand that, without the immediate release of Julian Assange, no more rule of law exists on Earth. And to whomever has not connected the Assange affair with 'pre-emptive incarceration', might for a little longer enjoy playing outdoor chess on the deck of a sinking cruise ship.
Oh, and yes, the qualifier "six ways to/from Sunday" should also be mentioned as an exemplary business practice by the Mob regime. Actually, the Mob merged with the regime, with the regime belonging to the owners' club.
Good to see another article on this, seen several people raising concerns about these associations in independent media over the last few months, though it's no doubt one of those things that will never be 'officially' addressed. Many people with more knowledge than I have questioned the wisdom of certain decisions his legal team have made (or not, as the case may be) in recent proceedings. Craig Murray's account of Julian's recent court appearance reads like something you'd expect from a country with 'the people's democratic republic' in the name.NorthernOn a tangentially related note, anybody reading this who has the impetus to write to Julian in support;
The 'writetoJulian' website which appears at to the top of Google's search results for those who google how to go about such a thing, is either accidentally or deliberately (one can probably guess which) mis-advising its readers of the requirements. The website advises several times NOT to include Julian's prisoner number on any correspondence sent to him, but I know from direct knowledge of communicating with the incarcerated that without the prisoner number your correspondence will be destroyed and neither you nor the receiver will be notified. I hate to think how many well meaning messages of support for Julian have been 'legally' destroyed without him seeing them as a result of this.
Ah, in a limited sliver of good news; The aforementioned website seem to have cottoned on to their mistake after several people bringing it to their attention. They now advise you should include his number on all correspondence.Betrayed planetMr Julian Assange
Prisoner #: A9379AY
HMP Belmarsh
Western Way
London SE28 0EB
UKI have long suspected that Julian is not getting proper legal council. That his lawyers have not yet been able to get a proper hearing whilst he is left to rot in a maximum security prison is suspect in the extreme. The obvious Nazi style behaviour of the unlawful and fascist U.K. government and its lick spittle judiciary are apparent to all with absolutely no fight back from the excuse of a media nor indeed 99.9 percent of its compliant increasingly dumbed down and wilfully ignorant population.nottheonly1What is obvious now to anyone with half an eye open is that the U.K. is now a rogue state where law and justice are meaningless, where bribery and corruption are common place. That Julian Assange is slowly dying in front of the whole world, will die without some kind of major intervention is a stain on every single aware English resident. Mind you with a population seemingly set to vote back in the same filthy vermin that have turned the country into the complete shithole it has become, it's hardly surprising.
Does anybody know if Gareth Pierce is still involved in his case?For quite some time now, an odd possibility offers itself – theoretically. Julian Assange is not the messenger. He is the message.Petra LiveraniAs a messenger, he is somewhat ineffective. He has not been able to convince people that the need for an uprising against lawlessness exists. That any form of government cannot work when the judiciary is corrupt and that there is no justice in a society ruled over by a regime.
As a message however, he is in the eyes of masses of people. Probably a majority of humans on Earth know who Julian Assange is. How many know who he is, where he came from and what it was exactly he did, before he published videos showing how well the 'Support our Troops' deserve was used up in the way it was intended, can only be a guess. Or a dedicated team of statisticians to hold polls in every country.
So, the published material, that was also leaked by a whistle blower, was proof of how deserving those soldiers were of our support – showing them killing innocent human beings and 'our Troops' having the greatest times of their lives doing it.
The message is simply: Look, if we can do this to Assange, what do you think we will do to you from Monday to Sunday – if you get any ideas?
No matter where you are. No matter who you are.
The only antidote to this insanity is the Truth and it be given its day(s) in court. 'Justice Mondays'.
I wonder if Alexander Perepilichnyy's death happened any which way – if indeed he was even a real person – there's only two photos of him as far as I can tell and the feeling of reality about his is not strong – as the Japan Times says, "What we know of Perepilichnyy is slight." Could he have just conveniently been invented and disappeared somehow? The story of him spending his last night with his 22 year-old mistress (the good old 22) in Paris, complaining about his dinner, vomiting and then having his wife the next day in London prepare his favourite food, sorrel soup, for lunch then going out jogging somehow doesn't ring true and we see a typical anomaly of faked stories, different versions:Rhys JaggarThe Guardian: "was found outside his Surrey home"
The Atlantic: "He collapsed on Granville Road, within 100 meters of the house he was renting"
Japan Times: "Then, 50 meters from his home, he staggered into the road and died."
Wikipedia: "[he] was found dead on the road by a neighbour" with a reference to a BBC story makes no mention of neighbour
BBC story: "[he] has been found dead near his home in Weybridge. had collapsed on a road early on the evening"Collapsed on a road? Wouldn't you give the name of the road in a suburban area?
Same story in UK sports reporting corrupt industries raking in cash for unprincipled wordsmitheryDiggerUKThe defence team around Julian seems to be unfathomable at many levels. My main concern has been over the unproved allegations of chemical torture made during his incarceration in Bellmarsh Prison. Why has his defence team not asked for an independent medical assessment? Why have concerns not been raised with prison visitors who are allowed to investigate independently? https://www.imb.org.uk/independent-monitoring-boards/Rhys JaggarCraig Murray who saw Julian on his last court appearance wrote of his condition . https://www.craigmurray.org.uk/archives/2019/10/assange-in-court/ is it as a result of drugs used during interrogations, or is it down to mental trauma after what he has been through. Either way, his defense team and close friends need to up their game.
This article is not the first time that concerns have been raised in a worrying manner about the defence team around Julian _
It is a standard Uk tactic to have someone try to beat you up then publicly say what a friend of yours they are. Happened to me four times: I called the lot of them out on it, something which gets them on their faux high horses very quicklyHarry StotleAmazing isn't it, the way the legal system goes into hyperdrive pursuing those who expose war crimes while nonchantly turning a blind eye to those who commit them (no matter how high the body count). Harder to find a more glaring example of the way hypocrisy defines the elite's relationship with things like morality, fairness or decency, not least because no western politician has ever been held to account for the havoc they have unleashed (in any court prosecuting war crimes).Rhys JaggarEllen DeGeneres hi-fiving with George Bush. British MPs pretending a courageous whistle blower is not being tortured to death just a few miles from parliament.
The one MP who did stand up for Assange has just been kicked out of Labour by the NEC. They should at least have the courage to make public the names of those who voted for Chris Williamson's expulsion. https://labour.org.uk/about/how-we-work/national-executive-committee/whos-on-the-nec/
Needless to say the MSM has fully sided with the criminals: first denigrating Julian Assange, then mocking his plight – this gave way to lies, and now silence.
The importance of Craig Murray's analysis of the way the law has been used to destroy a journalist cannot be overtstated.
https://www.craigmurray.org.uk/archives/2019/10/assange-in-court/Put simply can anyone expect justice in Britain if their actions conflict with the ethos of the gangsters who control Britain's economic, media and military interests?
We are actually approaching apartheid South Africa in that regard, namely contempt for legal due process. Not quite had the Met coppers beating Assange over the head like SA cops did to Steve Biko, but we are slowly getting there
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www.zerohedge.com
For those readers who care more about Donald Trump, Obama's legacy or the Republican/Democrat parties rather than the Rule of Law and what remains of the US Constitution, the following scenario should be a Giant Wake up Call.
As the result of an anonymous "whistleblower" Complaint filed against President Trump on August 12, the House Intel Committee conducted a series of closed door hearings that violated Sixth Amendment protections while relying on an anonymous WB.
Right away, those hearings morphed into an impeachment inquiry that took on the spectacle of a clumsy kerfuffle not to be taken seriously – except they were.
There is an essential Ukraine backstory which began with the US initiating the overthrow of its democratically elected President Yanukovych in 2014.
Fast forward to Russiagate followed by Ukrainegate and an impeachment inquiry with Trump telling newly elected Ukraine President Zelensky in their now infamous July 25th conversation:
I would like you to find out what happened with this whole situation in Ukraine; they say Crowdstrike. The server they say, Ukraine has it<."
In a nutshell, possession of the CrowdStrike server is crucial to revealing the Democratic hierarchy's role in initiating Russiagate as the Democrats are having a major snit-fit that now threatens the constitutional foundation of the country.
On October 31st the House voted to initiate a formal impeachment inquiry based on still mysterious Whistleblower's allegations. At the time, there was still no confirmation of who the shadowy Whistleblower was or whether a Whistleblower even existed.
It is a fact that most whistleblowers bring the transgression proudly forward into the public light for the specific purpose of exposing the deeds that deserve to be exposed. At great personal cost, they then provide a credible case for why this offense is illegal or a violation of the public trust and deserves to be made public.
This alleged WB, however, defies the traditional definition of a WB who most often experiences the wrong-doing first hand and from a personal vantage while revealing said wrong-doing as a function within an agency of their employment.
This WB's identity has been protected from public disclosure by TPTB, shrouded in mystery and suspicion as if fearful of public scrutiny or that his 'truth' would crumble under interrogation and not be greeted with unanimity. What is clear is that this WB had no direct experience but only second-hand knowledge of events which is defined as 'hear say' evidence. While inadmissible in a Court of law, why should 'hear say' be allowed when the subject is as profound as impeachment of a President?
Real-life CIA whistleblower Jon Kiriakou who served 22 months in prison, suggested this " whistleblower is not a whistleblower but a anonymous CIA analyst within the Democratic House staff ." When was the last time a real whistleblower was 'protected' by the government from public exposure.
There has been no explanation as to why this informant's identity is necessarily been kept secret – and not just from the public but from Members of Congress especially as Republican Members have been unable to question him.
There has been no further information regarding a second "Whistleblower" who allegedly came forward to corroborate the first WB although why it is necessary to corroborate that which has already been publicly revealed remains questionable.
In a once unimaginable example of CIA–Democratic collusion, it turns out that the identity of the alleged WB is not such a secret after all.
Far from the public eyes of Americans, there has been a coordinated effort to stifle any exposure of his identity; presumably to prevent any revelation of the underpinnings of exactly how this convoluted scheme of malfeasance was organized. And as his name and political history within the Obama Administration and Democratic party are publicly scrutinized, it makes perfect sense why the TPTB would prefer to prevent public hearings or keep the WB's identity under wraps.
His identity should have been public knowledge weeks ago and yet it took Real Clear Investigations , an alt-news website to publicly reveal what has been well known within the DC bubble for some weeks.
The answer to the title question is that this WB is instead a very well connected partisan lackey and CIA operative.
The alleged WB is said to be a 33 year old CIA analyst by the name of Eric Ciaramella who was an Obama White House holdover at the National Security Council until mid 2017.
Consequently, he has deep partisan ties to former VP Joe Biden, former CIA Director John Brennan and former National Security Advisor Susan Rice as well as the DNC establishment. And here's where it get especially interesting; Ciaramella specializes in Russia and Ukraine, is fluent in both languages, ran the Ukraine desk at the Obama NSC and had close association with Ukrainian DNC hyper-activist Alexandra Chalupa.
Ciaramella's bio reads like a litany of the political turmoil that has consumed the nation for the last three years as it is reported that he had a role in initiating the Trump-Russia collusion conspiracy while at the Obama White House and worked with Biden who was the Obama point-person on Ukraine issues in 2015 and 2016 when $3 billion USAID funding was being embezzled.
Clearly, Ciaramella has a wealth of information to share regarding the Biden Quid pro Quo scandal which is currently being muzzled by the corporate media.
With Ciaramella's identity revealed, a former NSC staffer who was present during the Trump-Zelensky July 25th conversation testified that he saw nothing illegal in the talk. Tim Morrison told the House Intel Committee that " I want to be clear, I was not concerned that anything illegal was discussed" and that the transcript of the call which was declassified and released by the White House " accurately and completely reflects the substance of the call."
As a result, Ciaramella is now refusing to publicly testify before the House or Senate Intel Committees.
More recently, Mark Zaid, attorney for Ciaramella has said that his client would accept written questions from Republicans on the House Intel Committee and that his client " wants to be as bipartisan as possible throughout this process while remaining anonymous ."
Seriously? He's got to be kidding.
Did the reality of being required to testify in public just recently dawn on Ciaramella or was he not expecting that his every word and utterance would be scrutinized before the entire world? Is he so unfamiliar with the Sixth Amendment that he believes a Defendant's right to confront his accuser should not apply to him or in a Presidential impeachment inquiry?
Did he actually believe he could make anonymous impeachment accusations against the President of the US without a ripple or without having to directly face questions from House and Senate Republicans? Who did he think would protect him from public scrutiny?
Given Ciaramella's extensive partisan history since 2015 and his national security experience with Susan Rice in the Obama White House, it will be interesting if he receives a mention in the IG report on the abuse of FISA warrants and whether Ciaramella's name has moved to the top of the Durham interviewee list.
Stephen Morrell
These inquiries always spiral out of the control of their instigators, and this one is becoming positively delicious.Seamus PadraigRegarding the transcript of Trump's call, please tell me: what law/statute did he break? In order for there to be a high crime or misdemeanor, there must first be some kind of crime or misdemeanor.TomYou cannot be serious! How about EXTORTION? As in holding up the money from Ukraine until they agreed to look into his prime political opponent in the upcoming election (Biden). That's a crime.JudyJOr perhaps they will call it BRIBERY. That's a crime also.
See:
The Actual Laws Trump Has Broken, Just With the Ukraine and China Affairs, Could Land Him 10 Years in Prison
October 10 2019
https://theintercept.com/2019/10/10/trump-crimes-law/Or moving on, how about receiving money from foreign interests in the form of forbidden EMOLUMENTS, through, at a minimum, his Washington hotel or the foreign visitors spending heavily at his gold courses? These venues generate revenue for the Trump organization, which he never divested himself from.
And then there are the campaign finance crimes. See:
https://www.citizensforethics.org/a-campaign-to-defraud-2/Take your hands off of your ears and remove the wool from your eyes.
TomTomYou mention "Bribery", and you mention "receiving money from foreign interests" both in the context of Trump. I'm sorry but from where I stand there are far stronger suggestions of that in the context of Biden and the undenied international connections of his son. You appear to be taking the position that however serious the inferred misdemeanours (let me use the term 'corruption') of Biden are, he does whatever he does – unlike Trump, of course – to "put the health of the country first" (your words @ 8.41) and are by definition not deserving of investigation. He's all heart, isn't he? Foolish of me not to see this.
Biden isn't VP any longer. The Republicans had complete control of Congress AND the presidency for 2016/2017. If they wanted to investigate Biden, that would have been your best the time to do it. So why do you supposed they didn't investigate Biden then? Might it be that while Biden may have taken advantage of his political position, as so many politicians do, what he did was not judged to be illegal. Personally, I don't give a rat's arse about Biden one way or another.Seamus PadraigThe attempts by you and others in your camp and Trump himself to muddy the impeachment investigation and direct attention elsewhere are so transparent as to be almost ludicrous.
You need to focus on what is most import to the USA and the people of this country – the clear and present danger that President Trump represents!
Here's the full transcript of the call with Zelensky. Now tell me: where's the "bribery" and "extortion" there? Trump just asked Zelensky a favor–that's all.TomYou never watched any mafia movies have you? Did you know that people have been convicted of murder and sent to death row when they never even found the body? It's called circumstantial evidence. The same legal concept applies to Trump's conversations. Trump thought he was being slick by not explicitly mentioning that the Ukraine president HAD to do this favor for him to get the allocation released to him. 'Hey, I need ya to do me a favor first'Martin UsherBut just as with circumstantial evidence, a direct request is not necessary. An implied one will do just as well. You are way out of your league trying to play lawyer here!
I daresay they can get him on Emoluments and exceeding Constitutional authority. Impeachment isn't like a criminal trial, its really about whether the official went against their oath to "protect and defend the Constitution". This is the bit that President Trump doesn't quite understand; everyone who's part of government swears an oath to protect and defend the Constitution (so do naturalized citizens, BTW) and its this that they're loyal to, not an individual. The individual only holds power because the Constitution gives it to them -- temporarily. (At the time of the founding of the US this was a bit of a novelty, the idea that you owe fealty to an abstract concept rather than an individual, and many people even in this country still don't get it.)Martin UsherUltimately, though -- as we found with Clinton in the 90s -- its going to come down to "Because We Can". Personally I'd rather not bother, I'd just collect the information, put it out there and let the electorate decide what's best for the country, but I'm not running the show.
This really didn't turn into an impeachment enquiry until the issue was forced by media partisanship. President Trump has already crossed numerous boundaries that would get a normal President into trouble and Ukraine was just another straw for the camel to carry. Next year is an election year and its starting to look like the Democrats could field an actual donkey and still win the Presidency.Tim JenkinsWhat's probably more damning than the whistleblower's original complaint is the testimony of Marie Yovanaovitch, the US ambassador to Ukraine who had the rug pulled out from under her earlier this year. I don't want to comment on her role in that country or the US's role in bringing 'freedom and democracy' (aka "total chaos and economic ruin"), its more about the way that ill informed tweets and media punditry by Fox News commentators such as Sean Hannity are undermining the work of the State Department. Some might say this is a good thing but I personally believe that all this screwing around, both with foreign relations and the economy, is doing the US demonstrable harm and probably needs to have a stop put to it sooner rather later. This is not reality TV, this is serious stuff.
Those who've read my posts on this site will know that I've never been a fan of Russiagate or interested in a renewed Cold War, its a road to nowhere. This is why I don't see the 'hand ofPutin' everywhere, he's not the contemporary Illuminati and probably doesn't smoke (so no smoke filled rooms). However, if I wanted to play international zero sum I would suggest that all Putin (and Xi) needs to do to 'win' is to do nothing, just stand well back because the inevitable meltdown is going to get really messy.
Bravo Renée: I loved this article, not least because I loathe Adam Schiff with a vengeance, as does anybody with the slightest degree of scientific & analytical know how: yet you managed to avoid any partisan accusations and mentioning his name: which would have been impossible in my caseMichaelKQuality journalism Renée and the head of the House Intelligence Committee should be immediately investigated, prosecuted and may I add, Not thrown in Prison, but Shot at Dawn, for TREASON USA
Something I used to write regularly in the Guardian, before they banned me, was
Never in the field of Human Conflict, has so much been owed by so few to so manyThe USA is a deeply divided country. Split from the top to the bottom. The 'liberal' coastal cities on collision course with the rest of the country.markThe Democratic leadership have accepted that their real chances of winning the next presidential election are small, unless the economy goes into a sharp decline and the voters turn against Trump in their millions. This isn't happening. So Trump stands a really good chance of winning in 2020. Just a year from now.
The party top wants another 'conservative' and 'safe' candidate like Clinton so they can keep control of the party and banish the 'dangerous left' once more. Only the party activists don't want another 'Clinton' candidate that'll lead them towards another defeat.
So, if the chances of defeating Trump democratically at the coming election are looking 'problematic' and increasingly remote; the alternative is to remove him from office by impeachment where the Law is used instead of the voting system, which is far harder to control these days.
This process, removing political leaders using the Law, because they are corrupt, has been used in several countries recently, for example in Brazil, where Lula was imprisoned and unable to stand for election after a questionable trial.
Now, it's the turn of the USA. Whether the millions of Trump supporters will simply sit back and watch this kind of 'legal coup' unfold, is another story.
I think the reason for impeachment is not a substitute for an elusive electoral victory on the part of the democrats. It is actually far worse than that. It is a case of "either we get him, or he gets us." "Either we walk over him, or he walks over us." They are simply trying to save their skins.George CornellThe Clinton/ Biden clans and their minions are now looking at serious jail time in a winner-takes-all, high stakes, no-holds-barred, take-no-prisoners zero sum game. The Deep State, the Spooks, the Dirty Cops, Wall Street, MIC, Hollywood and the MSM, and the Democrat establishment, tried to rig the election to prevent Trump winning.
Having failed to achieve this, they tried to sabotage and delegitimise his administration by the Russiagate hoax, planting spies in the White House, and corrupt and politicised investigations and prosecutions of senior officials, using perjured and fabricated "evidence" from dubious foreign sources (Steele, Dearlove, MI6, Ukraine.)
This is now a busted flush. Russiagate has been comprehensively debunked, however much the MSM tries to pretend otherwise. Their criminality and corruption is being steadily and methodically exposed for all the world to see.
Trump knows that impeachment would be just the beginning, not the end. They would not be content to remove him from office, Nixon style. They want him broken, to make an example of him. They want him in jail, bankrupt, his businesses broken up and his assets confiscated, his children and his friends in jail with him. They won't settle for anything less than this.
The somewhat pathetic "Ukrainegate" saga is a smokescreen that his been thrown up in desperation at short notice to try to snatch victory from defeat. It is becoming less and less credible as more facts emerge. It seems to be based on little more than second or third hand gossip from rabidly anti Trump sources, and is rapidly being discredited. No matter how much the MSM tries to big this up, it will run its course leaving the anti Trump conspiracy even more nakedly exposed.
Trump and Barr have only to keep up the pressure to turn the tables.
Not that anyone should have any sympathy for Trump and his cronies. They all belong in jail, as do the anti Trump faction. Ideally, they should all go to jail. It's a pity they can't all lose.
If you think it's all dirty and down in the gutter now, you ain't seen nothing yet.
Let dog eat dog.
As your namesake Twain said, the more I see of people, the more I like of dogs. This is more akin to cannibalism? I agree that we are just seeing the opening warmup acts now. But more like unscripted unrehearsed professional wrestling every day.nwwoodsJail time? DC political elites? Not gone happen.Tim JenkinsMK Ultra good comment, upon which I could expand, but I don't want to give the game away, because I reckon Trump's planning, timing and strategy is unstoppable, after he wins the next election.phreeAll will see and pretend that they knew all along what he was doing & going to do. I should add, I'm on record @TheGuardian, stating that he would definitely win in 2016, well in advance and nobody believed me, though it was easy to see & calculate, with sound analysis of the key factors. It was obvious and I switched off, long before the announcement,
that he'd won, when they were still predicting HRC, knowing I was right, on that night.I will tell you this much: It would be very silly of him to 'fire' the FED, before the elections 😉
I have to disagree with Kiriakou and the author on this one. I'm a lawyer and I've been involved in whistleblower cases on both sides. MANY whistleblowers do not want to go public. I'd say at least 50% in my experience. And most whistleblowers have personal interests in addition to wanting to protect the public interest -- they are looking for a pay day.NorthernPlus, these attacks on this whistleblower for bias or lack of first hand knowledge really miss the point: His claims have been almost entirely verified. There clearly was a quid pro quo (not that one is necessary) as admitted by Mulvaney (before he tried to walk it back) and Sondland, and testified about by others involved with Ukraine at the time. Since many National Security people were aghast at these actions (including that die hard liberal Bolton), and Guliani says everything he was doing was on behalf of his private client, there is no reason to think that this was a matter of national security policy.
Indeed, the memo of Trump's phone call demonstrates the quid pro quo to any reasonable person -- it certainly would be enough to indict a gangster. Do me a "favor" if you want me to sell you missiles? That's not enough? Really? Especially when in order to buy the missiles you need the military assistance money Trump was blocking.
Bbbbut what about the Bidens some whimper. Investigate them through proper channels, not by blackmail through a back channel.
So, save your hair pulling for a whistleblower who's claims turn out to be false.
Your moral condemnation is evidently selective.markBbbut what about the quid pro quo you whimper? Why don't you find some ordinary Ukrainian citizens and ask them which was the greater evil; being thrust into civil war by rampaging mobs of US sponsored neo-nazis, or the neo-nazi's not getting paid on time? Go re-asses your moral compass you fascist sympathizer.
The real scandal over Ukraine lies in Biden threatening to withhold $1 billion from the country unless the prosecutor investigating Biden Junior was sacked – something he openly and publicly bragged about.TomBiden wasn't alone. Much of the rest of Europe was making the same call because the prosecutor himself was corrupt. And why didn't the Republicans take this up when they had full control of Congress during 2016/2017? I bet you can't come up with any kind of sensible answer!Tim JenkinsUse your real name or you are talking BOLLOCKS !nwwoodsThat's all very nice but this individual is a spy, not a "whistleblower".TomDoesn't matter. Is the information correct? That's what you SHOULD be focusing on but then you won't like how that further sullies the already awful reputation of your deity Trump.markSchumer's concern for the welfare of whistleblowers may appear somewhat belated and unconvincing, given his previous pronouncements about Snowden, Assange and Manning, but I suppose we should all welcome a sinner come to repentance (or whatever the kosher equivalent is.)Seamus PadraigDungroaninChuck is now the ' shomer ' (guardian) of wistleblowers.
Was he part of the 'taskforce' or is he part of the diversion from that taskforce or indeed the conspiracy against Ukraine by Obama/Clinton nazi promoting Nuland & co?Petra LiveraniThe report is – if not a whitewash – going to ruin as many trousers and underwear as any explosive diarrhetic fart!
From Barry's stupid peace prize – to our stupid DS outlaws.
Especially if the tories carry on as they have started this election – with masterful pratfalls, foot-in-mouths and devious lying, cheating and hiding.
A change is coming!
Tim JenkinsWhen is a Whistleblower, not a Whistleblower?
When they've been employed by the CIA I'd say very, very rarely.
Real-life CIA whistleblower Jon Kiriakou who served 22 months in prison
Did he now? 22 months in prison and sentenced on 22 October. They love their 22s. Just as Chelsea had 22 charges laid against her, was 22 at the time of her leaking and spent 22 hours a day in prison for some of her alleged 7 year sentence.
His Wikipedia story does not sound in the least compelling. He allegedly disclosed the torture of Abu Zubaydah, accused of being an aide to Osama bin Laden. So if bin Laden was an agent how real is Zubaydah?
On December 10, 2007, Kiriakou gave an interview to ABC News[16] in which he described his participation in the capture of Abu Zubaydah, who was accused of having been an aide to Al-Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden. Kiriakou said that he did not witness Zubaydah's interrogation, but had been told by CIA associates that it had taken only a single brief instance of waterboarding to extract answers:
He was able to withstand the waterboarding for quite some time. And by that I mean probably 30, 35 seconds and a short time afterwards, in the next day or so, he told his interrogator that Allah had visited him in his cell during the night and told him to cooperate.[17]
Following the interview, Kiriakou's accounts of Abu Zubaydah's waterboarding were widely repeated and paraphrased,[Note 1][6] and he became a regular guest expert on news and public affairs shows on the topics of interrogation and counter-terrorism.
In 2009, however, it was reported that Abu Zubaydah had been waterboarded at least 83 times,[18] and that little or no useful additional information may have been gained by "harsh methods" of interrogation.[19][20] Kiriakou had been under the mistaken belief that Zubaydah was waterboarded only once, and even that single instance he had described as a form of torture while expressing reservations about whether the value of the information obtained was worth the damage done to the United States' reputation.[citation needed]
Kiriakou has said that he chose not to blow the whistle on torture through internal channels because he believed he "wouldn't have gotten anywhere" because his superiors and the congressional intelligence committees were already aware of it.[21]
OMG! Does the theatre ever stop?
"OMG! Does the theatre ever stop?"markyep, it does actually: when you finally suss out what Bill Binney was telling you all about; about 6 years before you profess to have taken an interest in the events leading up to and including those that occurred on the 11th sept. 2001 and of course, the missing D.o.D $$$TRILLIONS$$$ and what they spent the money on >>>
Like "Parallel Platforms" !
What's a mere missing $21 trillion between friends? Probably just fallen down the back of the sofa. Along with the 140 tons of Libyan gold and the 1,500 tons of German gold and the Ukrainian gold and the gold from WTC 7 and the Venezuelan gold .. There's a perfectly simple explanation for everything if you look hard enough.markChina is the biggest gold producer in the world, with over 400 tons a year, none of which is ever seen outside the country. There has been speculation that their holdings are over 10,000 tons, but nobody really knows. This follows the historical pattern over thousands of years, China exporting silk, spices, quality ceramics and tea, and taking silver bullion in payment. Europe was drained of silver until the looting of the New World. Some people believe that America has 8,300 tons, a figure unchanged since 1971. But then again some people believe in fairies and Father Christmas.George CornellDemocrats?. You just stand back and watch them implode. It's painful to watch some days I'll tell ya
Debbie does the Dems. Wasserperson Schultz , where are you when your party needs some deep corruption?
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Nov 08, 2019 | www.theguardian.com
After washing out at LSE, Hayek never held a permanent appointment that was not paid for by corporate sponsors. Even his conservative colleagues at the University of Chicago – the global epicentre of libertarian dissent in the 1950s – regarded Hayek as a reactionary mouthpiece, a "stock rightwing man" with a "stock rightwing sponsor", as one put it. As late as 1972, a friend could visit Hayek, now in Salzburg, only to find an elderly man prostrate with self-pity, believing his life's work was in vain. No one cared what he had written!
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OffGuardian
JFK, 9/11, the Fed, rigged elections, suppressed cancer cures and the greatest conspiracies of our time EditorIn today's world, the phrase "conspiracy theory" is pejorative and has a negative connotation. To many people, a conspiracy theory is an irrational, over-imaginative idea endorsed by people looking for attention and not supported by the mainstream media or government.
History shows, though, that there have been many times when governments or individuals have participated in conspiracies. It would be naïve to think that intelligence agencies, militaries, government officials, and politicians don't sometimes cooperate in covert, secretive ways. Following are five instances when it's been proven that the government engaged in a conspiracy.
THE GULF OF TONKIN RESOLUTIONOn August 4, 1964, Captain John J. Herrick, the commander of the USS Maddox, a US Navy vessel that was on an intelligence-gathering mission in the Gulf of Tonkin, reported to the White House and Pentagon that North Vietnamese patrol boats had fired torpedoes at his ship, and, so, the Maddox had fired back.
Two days later, Secretary of Defense Robert McNamara testified to the Congress that he was certain that the Maddox had been attacked. On August 7, the Gulf of Tonkin Resolution was passed, the Congressional act that allowed President Johnson free reign to commence war; Johnson immediately ordered air strikes on North Vietnam and the Vietnam War -- which would eventually kill fifty-eight thousand Americans and two million Asians -- was underway.
Since then, it has been shown and proven that no North Vietnamese boats ever fired on the Maddox, and that McNamara had been untruthful when he testified before Congress. According to the official publication of the Naval Institute,
once-classified documents and tapes released in the past several years, combined with previously uncovered facts, make clear that high government officials distorted facts and deceived the American public about events that led to full US involvement in the Vietnam War."
In the weeks prior to the Gulf of Tonkin incident, South Vietnamese ships had been attacking posts in North Vietnam in conjunction with the CIA's Operation 34A. According to many inside sources, the Johnson administration wanted a full-scale war in Vietnam and through Operation 34A was trying to provoke North Vietnam into an attack that would give Johnson an excuse to go to war. But when McNamara was asked by the Congress on August 7 if these South Vietnam attacks had anything to do with the US military and CIA, McNamara lied and said no.
Within hours after reporting that the Maddox had been attacked, Captain Herrick was retracting his statements and reporting to the White House and Pentagon that "in all likelihood" an over-eager sonar man had been mistaken and that the sonar sounds and images that he originally thought were enemy torpedoes were actually just the beat of the Maddox's own propellers.
Herrick reported that there was a good probability that there had been no attack on the Maddox, and suggested "complete reevaluation before any action is taken."
McNamara saw these new, updated reports and discussed them with President Johnson early in the afternoon of August 4. Even though this was so, on the evening of August 4, President Johnson went on national television and announced to the American public that North Vietnam had engaged in "unprovoked aggression" and, so, the US military was retaliating.
A few days after the Gulf of Tonkin Resolution, Johnson remarked, "Hell, those damn stupid sailors were just shooting at flying fish."
Recently, new documents related to the Gulf of Tonkin incident have been declassified and according to Robert Hanyok, a historian for the National Security Agency, these documents show that the NSA deliberately "distorted intelligence" andand "altered documents" to make it appear that an attack had occurred on August 4.
When President Lyndon Johnson misrepresented to the American public and said he knew that North Vietnam had attacked a US ship, and when Defense Secretary Robert McNamara lied to the Congress and said he was sure that the Maddox had been attacked and that the CIA had nothing to do with South Vietnam aggression, and when NSA officials falsified information to make it appear that there had been an attack on the Maddox, that was a government conspiracy.
OPERATION NORTHWOODSIn 1962, the most powerful and highest ranking military officials of the US government, the Joint Chiefs of Staff, felt strongly that the communist leader Fidel Castro had to be removed from power and, so, came up with a plan to justify an American invasion of Cuba.
The plan, entitled Operations Northwoods, was presented to Secretary of Defense Robert McNamara on March 13, 1962, and was signed by the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, Lyman L. Lemnitzer.
Operations Northwoods was a proposal for a false flag operation, a plan in which a military organizes an attack against its own country and then frames and blames the attack on another country for the purpose of the purpose of initiating hostilities and declaring war on that country.
The proposal was originally labeled Top Secret but was made public on November 18, 1997, by the John F. Kennedy Assassination Records Review Board. The complete Operation Northwoods paper was published online by the National Security Archive on April 30, 2001, and this once-secret government document can now be read by anyone.
The actions that General Lemnitzer and the other chiefs wanted to d to take under Operations Northwoods are shocking. According to the plan, CIA and military personnel and hired provocateurs would commit various violent acts and these acts would be blamed on Castro to "create the necessary impression of Cuban rashness and irresponsibility" and "put the United States in the apparent position of suffering defensible grievances."
One of the most ambitious plans of Operation Northwoods was to blow up a plane in midflight. The strategy was to fill a civilian airplane with CIA and military personnel who were registered under fake ID's; an exact duplicate plane -- an empty military drone aircraft -- would take off at the same exact time.
The plane of fake passengers would land at a military base but the empty drone plane would fly over Cuba and crash in the ocean, supposedly a victim of Cuban missiles. "Casualty lists in US newspapers" and conducting "fake funerals for mock-victims" would cause "a helpful wave of national indignation" in America.
The Operation Northwoods proposal also states: "We could blow up a US ship and blame Cuba." Whether the ship was to be empty or full of US soldiers is unclear. The document also says: "Hijacking attempts against US civil air and surface craft should be encouraged."
Some of the recommendations of Operation Northwoods would have surely led to serious injuries and even deaths of Cuban and American civilians. The plan suggests:
We could sink a boatload of Cubans on route to Florida (real or simulated)."
And:
We could foster attempts on lives of anti-Castro Cubans in the United States even to the extent of wounding in instances to be widely publicized We could explode a few bombs in carefully chosen spots."
Lemnitzer and the chiefs wanted many of these staged terrorist attacks to be directed at the Guantanamo Bay United States Naval Base in Cuba. The plans were:
"Start riots near the entrance to the base" "lob mortar shells from outside the base to inside the base" "blow up ammunition inside the base; start fires" "burn aircraft on airbase (sabotage)" "sabotage ship in harbor; large fires -- napalm."When Secretary of Defense McNamara was presented with the Operation Northwoods plan, he either stopped and rejected the plan himself or passed it on to President Kennedy and JFK then rejected it. But if Kennedy and McNamara had agreed with the plan, then the Joint Chiefs of Staff wanted to begin enacting Operation Northwoods "right away, within a few months."
Even though Operation Northwoods was never initiated, when the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff and the other highest-ranking military officials of the United States Government planned to organize violent attacks on Americans and anti-Castro Cuban citizens, knowing those attacks could severely injure and kill those citizens, and when they planned to blame those attacks on Cuba and then use that as an excuse to invade Cuba, that was a government conspiracy.
FBI AND THE MAFIAIn March 1965, the FBI had the house of New England organized crime boss Raymond Patriarca wiretapped and overheard two mobsters, Joseph Barboza and Vincent Flemmi, asking Patriarca for permission to kill another gangster, Edward Deegan. Two days later, Deegan's blood-soaked body was found dead in a Boston alley.
Within days, an official FBI report confirmed that Joseph Barboza and three other mobsters were the murderers. Instead of those men going to prison for murder, though, three years later a man named Joseph Salvati was brought to trial for the murder of Edward Deegan. At that trial Joseph Barboza testified and lied that Salvati was one of the murderers. On the basis of Barboza's testimony, Joseph Salvati was convicted of murder and sentenced to life in prison.
At that time, in the mid 1960s, the FBI was being pressured more and more to do something to stop organized crime. The bureau began using members of the mafia -- criminals and murderers -- to inform against fellow mafia members. Joseph Barboza was one of these FBI-protected, paid informants. The FBI didn't want Barboza to go to prison for the murder of Deegan because they wanted him to continue infiltrating the mafia and testifying against other mafia members.
The bureau, apparently, did want a conviction in the Deegan murder case, though, and, so, let Barboza lie under oath and let a man they knew to be innocent, Joseph Salvati, go to prison.
The Witness Protection Program was first created for Joseph Barboza, and Barboza was the first mafia informant to be protected under the program. After helping to convict a number of mobsters, Barboza was sent off to live in California. While under the Witness Protection Program, Barboza committed at least one more murder, and probably more.
On trial for a murder in California, FBI officials showed up for Joseph Barboza's trial and testified on his behalf, helping Barboza to get a light sentence.
Joseph Salvati ended up serving thirty years in prison for a murder that he was innocent of. During that thirty-year period, lawyers for Salvati requested documents from the FBI that would have proved Salvati's innocence, but the bureau refused to release them.
Finally, in 1997, other evidence came forth suggesting Salvati's innocence and the governor of Massachusetts, William Weld, granted Salvati's release. A few years later, the FBI was ordered to release all its reports on the case; hundreds of documents showed the FBI knew that Barboza was a murderer, that he had murdered Edward Deegan, and that Joseph Salvati had had nothing to do with the crime.
Salvati was exonerated in a court of law, and was eventually awarded millions of dollars in a civil lawsuit against the government. (Three other defendants were also exonerated. At the 1968 trial, Joseph Barboza had testified that three other men -- men who were also not guilty -- had participated in Deegan's murder. These three innocent men were, with Salvati, also sent to prison.)
Perhaps the most shocking thing that the FBI documents showed, though, was that FBI Director J. Edgar Hoover himself knew Salvati was innocent and that Barboza had killed Deegan.
Hoover was working closely, almost daily, with the agents handling Joseph Barboza, and it was probably Hoover directing the operation. The congressional committee that investigated the case was the House Committee on Government Reform and Congressman Dan Burton was the chairman.
When asked by CBS's 60 Minutes journalist Mike Wallace "Did J. Edgar Hoover know all this? " Burton replied:
"Yes . . . It's one of the greatest failures in the history of American justice J. Edgar Hoover knew Salvati was innocent. He knew it and his name should not be emblazoned on the FBI headquarters. We should change the name of that building."
Congressman Burton claimed there was evidence that there were more cases when the FBI did the same sorts of things they did in the Joseph Salvati case; when Burton and his committee requested the files on these cases, the Attorney General and the White House refused to release them.
When FBI Director J. Edgar Hoover and top FBI officials let a known murderer lie and perjure himself in a courtroom, when they let four men they knew to be innocent suffer in the hell of a prison cell for thirty years, and when they deliberately covered that up for decades, that was a government conspiracy.
THE MANHATTAN PROJECTIn 1939, Albert Einstein and two other European physicists sent a letter to President Franklin Roosevelt informing Roosevelt that the German government was working on developing the science that could lead to the creation of a nuclear bomb. FDR immediately formed a committee to look into the idea of the US government making an atomic bomb.
In 1942, the Manhattan Project, the United States program to build a nuclear bomb, headed by General Leslie R. Groves of the US Army Corps of Engineers, was formed.
The program existed from 1942–1946, spent two billion dollars, had plants and factories in thirty cities, and employed 130,000 workers. But virtually no one knew about it. The Manhattan Project is considered the "Greatest Secret Ever Kept."
The US government wanted to keep the Project a secret lest Germany or one of America's other enemies found out about it and built -- more quickly -- a larger, better bomb. In the early 1940s, when American scientists began working on splitting atoms and nuclear fission, US government officials asked the scientists to not publish any reports on the work in scientific journals. The work was kept quiet.
In 1943, when newspapers began reporting on the large Manhattan Project construction going on in a few states, the newly formed United States Government Office of Censorship asked newspapers and broadcasters to avoid discussing "atom smashing, atomic energy, atomic fission . . . the use for military purposes of radium or radioactive materials" or anything else that could expose the project. The press kept mum. The government didn't talk about the Manhattan Project, the press didn't report on it, and the public knew nothing about it.
Not even the 130,000 Manhattan Project laborers knew they were building an atom bomb.
In 1945, a Life magazine article wrote that before Japan was attacked with a-bombs, "probably no more than a few dozen men in the entire country knew the full meaning of the Manhattan Project, and perhaps only a thousand others even were aware that work on atoms was involved."
The workers were told they were doing an important job for the government, but weren't told what the job was, and didn't understand the full import of the mysterious, daily tasks they were doing. The laborers were warned that disclosing the Project's secrets was punishable by ten years in prison, and a hefty financial fine.
Whole towns and cities were built where thousands of Manhattan Project workers lived and worked but these thousands didn't know they were helping to build nuclear bombs.
The Manhattan Project finally became known to the public on August 6, 1945, when President Harry Truman announced that America had dropped a nuclear bomb on Hiroshima, Japan.
Truman, himself, had not been informed of the Manhattan Project until late April 1945.
When the government kept the purpose of the Manhattan Project a secret from the press, from the public, from America's enemies, from Harry Truman, and even from the 130,000 laborers who worked for the Manhattan Project, that was a government conspiracy.
THE CHURCH COMMITTEE INVESTIGATIONIn the early 1970s, after the Watergate affair and investigative reports by the New York Times, it became apparent that the CIA and other US intelligence agencies might be engaging in inappropriate and illegal activities. In 1975, the Church Committee, named after the Committee's chairman Senator Frank Church, was formed to investigate abuses by the CIA, NSA, FBI, and IRS.
The Church Committee reports are said to constitute the most extensive investigations of intelligence activities ever made available to the public. Many disturbing facts were revealed. According to the final report of the Committee, US intelligence agencies had been engaging in "unlawful or improper conduct" and "intelligence excesses, at home and abroad" since the administration of President Franklin Roosevelt.
The report added that "intelligence agencies have undermined the Constitutional rights of citizens" and "checks and balances designed by the framers of the Constitution to assure accountability have not been applied."
One of the most well-known revelations of the Committee was the CIA's so-called "Family Jewels," a report that detailed the CIA's misdeeds dating back to Dwight Eisenhower's presidency. The committee also reported on the NSA's SHAMROCK and MINARET programs; under these programs the NSA had been intercepting, opening, and reading the telegrams and mail of thousands of private citizens.
The Church Committee also discovered and exposed the FBI's COINTELPRO program, the bureau's program to covertly destroy and disrupt any groups or individuals that J. Edgar Hoover felt were bad for America. Some of the movements and groups that the FBI tried to discredit and destroy were the Civil Rights movement, the anti-Vietnam War movement, the Southern Christian Leadership Conference, and individuals such as Martin Luther King Jr.
The most alarming thing that the Church Committee found, though, was that the CIA had an assassination program. It was revealed that the CIA assassinated or had tried to assassinate Dinh Diem of Vietnam, Raphael Trujillo of the Dominican Republic, General Rene Schneider of Chile, Fidel Castro, Patrice Lumumba of the Congo, and other political leaders throughout the world.
The Committee learned about the different ways the CIA had developed to kill and assassinate people: inflicting cancer, inflicting heart attacks, making murders look like suicides, car accidents, boating accidents, and shootings. At one point, CIA Director William Colby presented to the Committee a special "heart attack gun" that the CIA had created. The gun was able to shoot a small poison-laden dart into its victim. The dart was so small as to be undetectable; the victim's death from the poison would appear to be a heart attack, so no foul play would be suspected.
In response to the Church Committee report, in 1976 President Gerald Ford signed Executive Order 11,905, which forbade employees of the US government from engaging in or conspiring to engage in political assassinations.
In that same year, the Senate approved Senate Resolution 400, which established the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence, the committee responsible for providing vigilant oversight over the intelligence agencies.
Many former CIA employee-whistleblowers and other people, though, claim that US intelligence agencies are still acting in improper ways. In 2008, it was revealed that the CIA had hired Blackwater, a private company made up of ex-Navy Seals, to track down and assassinate suspected terrorists.
Later in the 2000s, when the Congress formed a committee to investigate if CIA waterboarding and other methods of interrogation constituted torture, congressmen complained that they couldn't get to the bottom of the matter because CIA officials and the CIA director were lying to the congressional committee.
Forty-five years after the revelations of the Church Committee, it seems US intelligence agencies are still engaging in covert and improper conduct.
When US intelligence agencies and the CIA plot to influence the affairs of foreign nations, when the CIA plots assassinations and assassinates foreign leaders and political dissidents, when the CIA develops new ways to kill and assassinate and interrogate and torture, and when the CIA keeps all that from Congress, the press, and the public, that's a government conspiracy.
*
If these five instances of government engaging in conspiracies have been proven to be true -- and they have been -- isn't it logical to assume that government agencies may have engaged in other conspiracies? It is the very nature of intelligence agencies and militaries to act in secretive, conspiratorial ways.
The phrase "conspiracy theory" shouldn't have a negative connotation. Politics always plays out with backroom handshakes. It is the suggestion of American Conspiracies and Cover-Ups that government agencies and officials and the special interests that influence them are often engaging in conspiratorial actions, and that conspiracies have been behind some of the most iconic and important events of American history.
A conspiracy theorist was regaling a friend with one conspiracy theory after another. Finally, the friend interrupted and said, "I bet I know what would happen if God Himself appeared out of the sky right now, looked down at us, and said, 'There is no conspiracy.' I bet you would look up and say, 'So the conspiracy goes higher than we thought.'"
Perhaps if the Almighty appeared to inform us that politicians and governments and government officials don't act in secretive, covert, conspiratorial ways, then we could accept that.
But when the evidence indicates otherwise .
Theories questioning if multiple people might have shot at JFK, or if interior bombs brought down the World Trade Center, or if somebody was able to rig the 2000 and 2004 presidential elections can make for dramatic, sensational storytelling.
But it is not the purpose of American Conspiracies and Cover-Ups to be sensational; the purpose of this book is to talk about "conspiracy realities" that can hopefully give us a deeper and more meaningful understanding of politics.
If elements in the intelligence agencies participated in assassinating President Kennedy, then how can the intelligence agencies be better controlled? If elements in the government allowed or caused 9/11 to happen to give us an excuse to go to war in the Middle East, then how much of the War on Terror is disinformation and propaganda?
If presidential elections can be rigged, then how can we have fairer, uncorrupted elections? If secretive influences behind the scenes, a Deep State, are controlling our social, political, and financial systems for their own selfish purposes, then it would benefit us to expose who and what these secretive influences are.
American Conspiracies and Cover-Ups may give us a glimpse into the way that government and politics work.
Or don't work.
This is an extract from American Conspiracies and Cover-Ups , by Douglas Cirignano published by Simon&Schuster . It can be purchased in hard copy, digital and audio-book form through Amazon and other booksellers.
Dungroanin
It is revelatory how the DS minions work here btl.Tim JenkinsYou are seen like rabbits in the lights you are.
Yoyoyo, that's why they have names like 'Crispy', before we burn them to a crisp: and they just can't believe what they are seeing & reading: left dumbfounded & speechless,Dungroanin
every darn time 🙂 LouisP. needs back up from NormP. , coz' LouisP. has lost the plot & will to contest anything constructively & factually, simply because the DS suckers are ALL out of Ammo. It's great fun when all yer' ducks are in a row and all you have to do is pull the trigger. 😉On a more constructive & positive note, regarding Assange & Flynn, i thought the X22 Report was not bad yesterday: at least he sees how the Deep State specifically operating within GCHQ & the CIA, desperately need Julian Assange entirely 'unavailable' for comment.
Now, all we have to do is re-educate Legally, the minds of the masses, who got wholly suckered by the Deep state controlled & censored MSM: because in courts of Law, we cannot lose in the longterm ! Just be patient and always remember to ridicule the sheeple that relied upon the WAPO & NYT, (like LouisP. did) and of course, do have extra good fun ridiculing The Guardian readers, above all else 🙂 We must change Media & Communications Law, more urgently than any thing else, FIRST ! But, High Tide has been and left 'hasbeens' exposed & lying on the beeches, naked, like driftwood, ready to burn 😉
I posted comment on this on the other DS articleTheThinker
https://www.oscr.org.uk/media/3771/2019-10-31-statecraft-s33-report-pdf.pdfIoS / II busted as not charities.
Another of interest regarding JE And the MSM sitting on informationwardropperhttps://mobile.twitter.com/JamesOKeefeIII/status/1191716801178034180
' the purpose of this book is to talk about "conspiracy realities" that can hopefully give us a deeper and more meaningful understanding of politics.'US love all aroundFrankly, I don't want "a deeper and more meaningful understanding of politics".
I want the criminal conspiracy realities to stop and for those guilty of carrying them out to be brought to justice.Martin UsherHijacking attempts against US civil air and surface craft should be encouraged.
"Encouraged?
Tha's lovely! and more lovely, this "Operations Northwoods" was planned by highest ranking military officials of the US government.
I recently re-read a biography called "A Man Called Intrepid" about the life and work of a relatively low key Canadian, William Stephenson. This fellow pretty much wrote the book on the use of intelligence and dirty tricks in warfare. He worked closely with Churchill and Roosevelt, acting as a private go-between back before the US was involved in WW2 (and was heavily non-interventionist). He organized a huge black operation, an operation that was initially based in New York. The book is worth reading because once read it takes little interpolation to get from where they were in the 1940s to where we are today.AntonymStephenson didn't invent dirty tricks, of course, but he understood their value and the role of propaganda. His role is very much like Edison's in invention -- Thomas Edison didn't so much invent machines as invent industrial scale research and development, he industrialized the process and so vastly increased its scope and power.
Japan Mil. Inc. was pretty early in the false flag incident business: 1931 with their Mukden incident; their start of their invasion of Manchuria, as North Eastern China was called than (wonder why?): https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mukden_IncidentAntonymThey didn't even damage their own railway track: more like the real deal compared to 9/11.George McThey lied about the terrorists, they lied about the planes (including 265 dead in plane crashes), they lied about the building collapses and yet you believe they didn't lie about the 2,735 who allegedly died in the buildings when they could so easily fake it as the evidence shows. Who's more a nutjob – me or you?
"So 9/11 is still too recent to call out as an inside conspiracy, is it? Only 18 years old so it can't be called out."mark9/11 will never be called out as far as the mainstream media is concerned. Can you imagine the effect if they did? The entire edifice of "The West" would collapse and the Islamic world would explode in deservedly righteous fury. The case is similar, though on a much smaller scale, with that of Tony Blair. He was exposed as a liar and should have been tried as a war criminal. But there was no way that was going to happen since it would necessarily lead to the Western governments throwing up their hands and admitting that they were conscienceless manipulative bastards. In short, the game would be up. On the one hand, 9/11 and Blair's bullshit serve the ruling class interests and, on the other hand – and more importantly – the abandonment of 9/11 and Blair would mean the wrecking of the whole scam. (I am aware that Blair is much more expendable than the official narrative of 9/11 so it is feasible that he will "go down" later but not until sufficient distance is established between him and the powers that be).
When they can't do anything else, they'll offer up Shady Wahabia as a convenient whipping boy, to divert attention from Kosherstan. This is their fall back position. Offer up the Shadies as the Lee Harvey Oswald of the operation.Hugh O'NeillBigB. Your naïveté is almost touching: you claim archives as truth, despite all that we know about the CIA deliberately creating false archives. Just as Orwell said: Who controls the present controls the past, controls the future. Watergate burglar Hunt admitted under oath that he had altered records to show that JFK had ordered the assassination of Diem: he did so so as to tarnish his reputation amongst Catholics. I also recall that your beloved scholar Zelikow was taken to task for doing much the same thing in the JFK archives.BigBYour logic is bizarre: you think Lemnitzer was part of the assassination plot. But if that were so, then how did he get away with it? Might it not require huge swathes of the military, CIA and State departments and the entire MSM to be complicit.
Iy would seem that you are flogging a dead horse on this website where we esteem the principled scholarship of decent men like Douglass, Talbot, Curtin and many many more. Do yourself and the rest of us a favour. Try and think more logically/ Which part of Eisenhower's Valedictory did you not understand?
I know I am flogging a dead horse: which is why I gave up. The DNSA archive revived my interest. You and I could have sorted this years ago with a comparative reading of Stern and Douglass side by side. The offer is still open.Hugh O'NeillThe CIA did not fabricate the ExComm tapes. Let us make that perfectly clear. That is a non-argument. They probably did not even know about them. They were never meant to be made public. That RKF was the chief hawk for Cuban invasion is clear and negates the narrative construction that they were against the Unspeakable. They were part of it. End of.
This allows me to reach exactly the same conclusion that Lemnitzer and Dulles were involved. Without the whole fabricated 'turning to peace' constructivism and an overlay about the Unspeakable. There is hardly anything that distinguishes the Unspeakable in my eyes. Apart from rhetorical speech-acts and narrative constructivism. The facts posted and Stern's books speak for themselves. You do not even address the fact that Stern is selectively mis-presented. You cannot read about the ExComm version then come up with another alternative version without critical scrutiny. Not without serious criticism of the narrative made. To repeat: if RFK was the chief hawk and not the JCOS – so who were the Unspeakable.
"The [ExComm] tapes, however, contradict the book [Thirteen Days] in several fundamental ways and tell a very different story -- one that is much more complex, interesting, and subtle. Indeed, it is no exaggeration to say that the tapes actually expose Thirteen Days as not just selective or slanted history, which is the common affliction of personal diaries and memoirs, but rather as the capstone of an effort to embellish, if not manipulate, the history of the missile crisis to Robert Kennedy's perceived advantage."
"As noted earlier, Robert Kennedy was one of the most unwaveringly hawkish participants in the ExComm meetings. On October 16, the first day of the meetings, RFK suggested using the American naval base at Guantánamo to stage an incident that would justify military intervention: "You know, sink the Maine again or something."[14] He also suggested that "we should just get into it [attack Cuba] and get it over with and take our losses." On the final day of crisis meetings, October 27, RFK strenuously opposed any linkage between the Soviet missiles in Cuba and the U.S. missiles in Turkey"
" It's not just television "documentaries" that perpetuate this kind of fiction. Just this year, David Talbot, author of Brothers: The Hidden History of the Kennedy Years, declared that President Kennedy's "only key support [for a non-military solution] in the increasingly tense Cabinet Room meetings came from his brother Bobby and Defense Secretary Robert McNamara."[22] Talbot claimed that RFK "matured from a knee-jerk hawk to a wise and restrained diplomat" during the ExComm meetings.[23] In fact, Robert Kennedy, along with McNamara, consistently opposed any terms involving the U.S. missiles in Turkey well into the final hours of "Black Saturday," so-called because if a deal failed to materialize, a superpower clash seemed imminent and unavoidable. Talbot's account attempts to legitimize the myths in Thirteen Days."
"Of course, Kennedy never abandoned his commitment, even after the missile crisis, to undermine the Cuban regime and get rid of Fidel Castro."
That is enough to substantiate my claim that Douglass and Talbot based their accounts on fabrication. Curtin merely repeats these claims. But I am flogging a dead horse if people will not re-appraise their metaphysicla truth-claims in the light of hard evidence. Believe what you want. Don't let facts get in the way.
https://www.washingtondecoded.com/site/2007/10/cmc-45th.html
Your take on events might be accurate but you rather miss the point; the original article simply contends that JFK was murdered by the state in a coup d'etat, which is still denied to this day. Whether he deserved to die (presumably you think so) is immaterial. By my simple logic, he couldn't have been all bad if the really really bad guys murdered him. Furthermore, such logic is also consistent with JFK's political views before his Presidency e.g. his support for post colonial leaders like Lumumba, Sukarno etc. and his views on peace e.g. "war will continue until that distant day when the conscientious objector is revered as the warrior is today. Blessed are the peace makers. May you find some in your tortured illogical mind.BigBThe original article claims Northwoods was never implemented: which is only partially true. It was rejected because it was overt. Covert operations – Operation Mongoose – where carried out until 1963. They were run by the Kennedy regime as the highest priority. As I have now provided several archives to back up.AntonymWe can easily establish the facts without resort to comments about my tortured illogical mind. The actual Kennedy's have nothing to do with this. It is the invented Kennedy's that are constructions of the imagination in comtemporary minds. That is illogical, Hugh. For everything anyone contends about the imaginary Kennedy's – there is a primary historic record – that prevents the invention.
It still needs contextualising: but out and out fabrications – such as Douglass and Talbot put forward are easily refuted. Or not. The legend lives on and the facts do not. Not on this site anyway.
Quite an effort to blame the Kennedy brothers over the other power brothers, not even mentioned: John Foster Dulles US secretary of State and Allan Dulles boss and co-creator of the CIA. They had already organized coups in Iran and Guatemala, so the intent and experience were there: no need for newbie JFK. This "Cuban project" was commissioned in March 1960; JFK only became president in January 1961.
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Oct 30, 2019 | OffGuardian
As the Quantum field oversees the disintegration of institutions no longer in service to the public, the Democratic party continues to lose their marbles, perpetuating their own simulated bubble as if they alone are the nation's most trusted purveyors of truth.
Since the Mueller Report failed to deliver on the dubious Russiagate accusations, the party of Thomas Jefferson continues to remain in search of another ethical pretense to justify continued partisan turmoil. In an effort to discredit and/or distract attention from the Barr-Durham and IG investigations, the Dems have come up with an implausible piece of political theatre known as Ukrainegate which has morphed into an impeachment inquiry.
The Inspector General's Report, which may soon be ready for release, will address the presentation of fabricated FBI evidence to the FISA Court for permission to initiate a surveillance campaign on Trump Administration personnel. In addition, the Department of Justice has confirmed that Special Investigator John Durham's probe into the origin of the FBI's counter intelligence investigation during the 2016 election has moved from an administrative review into the criminal prosecution realm. Durham will now be able to actively pursue candidates for possible prosecution.
The defensive assault from the Democrat hierarchy and its corporate media cohorts can be expected to reach a fevered pitch of manic proportions as both investigations threatened not only their political future in 2020 but perhaps their very existence.
NBC s uggests that the Barr investigation is a ' mysterious ' review " amid concerns about whether the probe has any legal or factual basis " while the NY Times continues to cast doubt that the investigation has a legitimate basis implying that AG Barr is attempting to " deliver a political victory for President Trump." The Times misleads its readers with:
Trump has repeatedly attacked the Russia investigation, portraying it as a hoax and illegal even months after the special counsel closed it."
when in fact, it was the Russiagate collusion allegations that Trump referred to as a hoax, rather than the Mueller investigation per se.
Sen. Mark Warner (D-Va), minority leader of the Senate Intel Committee suggested that Attorney General William Barr " owes the Committee an explanation " since the committee is completing a " three-year bipartisan investigation " that has " found nothing to justify " Barr's expanded effort.
The Senator's gauntlet will be ever so fascinating as the public reads exactly how the Intel Committee spent three years and came up with " nothing " as compared to what Durham and the IG reports have to say.
On the House side, prime-time whiners Reps. Adam Schiff (D-Calif) and Jerrold Nadler (D-NY) commented that news of the Durham investigation moving towards criminal liability " raised profound concerns that Barr has lost his independence and become a vehicle for political revenge " and that " the Rule of Law will suffer irreparable damage ."
Since Barr has issued no determination of blame other than to assure a full, fair and rigorous investigation, it is curious that the Dems are in premature meltdown as if they expect indictments even though the investigations are not yet complete.
There is, however, one small inconvenient glitch that challenges the Democratic version of reality that does not fit their partisan spin. The news that former FBI General Counsel James Baker is actively cooperating with the BD investigation ought to send ripples through the ranks. Baker has already stated that it was a 'small group' within the agency who led the counterintelligence inquiry into the Trump campaign; notably former FBI Director James Comey and former Deputy Director Andrew McCabe.
Baker's cooperation was not totally unexpected since he also cooperated with the Inspector General's FISA abuse investigation which is awaiting public release.
As FBI General Counsel, Baker had a role in reviewing the FISA applications before they were submitted to the FISA court and currently remains under criminal investigation for making unauthorized leaks to the media.
As the agency's chief legal officer, Baker had to be a first-hand participant and privy to every strategy discussion and decision (real or contemplated). It was his job to identify potential legal implications that might negatively affect the agency or boomerang back on the FBI. In other words, Baker is in a unique position to know who knew what and when did they know it.
His 'cooperation' can be generally attributed to being more concerned with saving his own butt rather than the Constitution.
In any case, the information he is able to provide will be key for getting to the true origins of Russiagate and the FISA scandal. Baker's collaboration may augur others facing possible prosecution to step up since 'cooperation' usually comes with the gift of a lesser charge.
With a special focus on senior Obama era intel officials Durham has reportedly already interviewed up to two dozen former and current FBI employees as well as officials in the office of the Director of National Intelligence.
From the number of interviews conducted to date it can be surmised that Durham has been accumulating all the necessary facts and evidence as he works his way up the chain of command, prior to concentrating on top officials who may be central to the investigation.
It has also been reported that Durham expects to interview current and former intelligence officials including CIA analysts, former CIA Director John Brennan and former Director of National Intelligence James Clapper regarding Russian efforts to interfere in the 2016 election.
In a recent CNN interview , when asked if he was concerned about any wrongdoing on the part of intel officials, Clapper nervously responded:
I don't know. I don't think there was any wrongdoing. It is disconcerting to know that we are being investigated for having done our duty and done what we were told to do by the President."
One wonders if Clapper might be a candidate for 'cooperating' along with Baker.
As CIA Director, Brennan made no secret of his efforts to nail the Trump Administration. In the summer of 2016, he formed an inter-agency taskforce to investigate what was being reported as Russian collusion within the Trump campaign. He boasted to Rachel Maddow that he brought NSA and FBI officials together with the CIA to ' connect the dots ."
With the addition of James Clapper's DNI, three reports were released: October, 2016, December, 2016 and January, 2017 all disseminating the Russian-Trump collusion theory which the Mueller Report later found to be unproven.
Since 1947 when the CIA was first authorized by President Harry Truman who belatedly regretted his approval, the agency has been operating as if they report to no one and that they never owe the public or Congress any explanation of their behaviour or activity or how they spend the money.
Since those days it has been a weak-minded Congress, intimidated and/or compromised Members who have allowed intel to run their own show as if they are immune to the Constitution and the Rule of Law. Since 1947, there has been no functioning Congress willing to provide true accountability or meaningful oversight on the intel community.
Renee Parsons has been a member of the ACLU's Florida State Board of Directors and president of the ACLU Treasure Coast Chapter. She has been an elected public official in Colorado, an environmental lobbyist with Friends of the Earth and staff member of the US House of Representatives in Washington DC. She can be found on Twitter @reneedove31
vexarb
From a realist who deals with the real world, Syrian President Dr.Assad on why Trump is the best POTU$A:vexarb"As for Trump, you might ask me a question and I give you an answer that might sound strange. I say that he is the best American President, not because his policies are good, but because he is the most transparent president. All American presidents perpetrate all kinds of political atrocities and all crimes and yet still win the Nobel Prize and project themselves as defenders of human rights and noble and unique American values, or Western values in general. The reality is that they are a group of criminals who represent the interests of American lobbies, i.e. the large oil and arms companies, and others. Trump talks transparently, saying that what we want is oil. We want money. This is the reality of American policy. What more do we need than a transparent opponent?"
Adds realist Dr.Assad: "I said before whatever the Americans say has no credibility, whether they say it to an enemy or a friend, the result is the same – it is unreliable. That is why we do not waste our time on things like this. "Martin Usher[Note: by "the Americans" Dr.Assad means the United $tates. A figure of speech, taking the whole to denote the part.]
I don't think the Democratic leadership wanted a formal impeachment, they would prefer that Trump just faded away quietly before the 2020 election and were in the process of collecting information to reinforce this. They got cornered into formalizing the investigation by Trump's defense team baiting them as part of their overall strategy. It really doesn't change anything.JoergWhichever way you slice and/or dice it Trump is fundamentally incompetent, he's unable to fulfill the duties of the office of the President. He also refuses to distinguish between private interests and public service. His cabinet, a rag tag body of industry insiders and special interests, are busy trying to ride roughshod over opposition, established policy and even public opinion to grab as much as possible before the whole house of cards collapses. Its a mess, and its a mess that's quite obviously damaging US interests. Many constituency groups will have gone along with the program because they thought they could control things or benefit from them but as its become increasingly obvious Trump's unable to deliver they've been systematically alienated.
The DNC is playing this with a relatively weak field of potential candidates for 2020. Much as I personally like a Sanders or Warren they're just not going to fly in a Presidential contest -- as we found from the Obama presidency the ship of state just doesn't turn on a dime, you're not going to undo decades or generations of entrenched neoconservatism and a politically divided country overnight by some kind of Second Coming pronouncements. My concern is that if we don't get our collective acts together we're going to end up with a President Romney after 2020 -- a much more reasonable choice considering the last four years but also one that's guaranteed to change nothing. We need the journey but its only going to start with a few steps.
( and as for Trump/collusion we've spent the last three years confusing money with nation states. Trump's a businessman in a business that's notorious for laundering money from dubious sources (this doesn't mean he's involved, of course)(legal disclaimer!). I daresay that if Russia really wanted to sink Trump they could easily do so but why would they bother when he's doing such a great job unaided?)
Please make sure You see the Interview-Video "MICHAEL FLYNN CASE UNRAVELS. US-UK DEEP STATE ENTRAPMENT PLAN" on https://youtube.com/channel/UCdeMVChrumySxV9N1w0Au-w – it's a must-see!Tim JenkinsInteresting updates, Joerg: however, it was obvious from the beginning that the interference in the US 2016 elections were Deep State gamers, from GCHQ-Ukro-Italian secret services, which was why they manufactured the Skripal Affair as Russians, Warning & Distraction, to cover their own backsides in the media: the same Skripal that worked on the Bum Steele Dossier, writing complete & utter fiction about Trump, that Comey then used as basis for his attempt with McCabe to enact Treason U$A, on wholly false trumped up charges, which were then transposed to the Russiagate-Hoax, Mueller &&& (yawn), . Still, it's good that Sid Powell has confirmed that they have Mifsud's phone . . . Get Mifsud, Now !? Strange how such USUK Agents become untraceable, when we simple folk would be harangued to hell, even with the odd ex-judicial killing, if we prove inconvenient to their narrative.JoergMore importantly for me was the "Putin sends a clear Message to Macron and the EU" TDC, (Top dead centre) in your link: it was a (month old) pretty good longterm objective analysis of how the alliance between Russia & China was designed to be and has become truly rock-solid, moving forwards: and it's well discussed & documented what a moron ManuMacroni has been on the world stage >>> great translation of Putin's statement of intent and clear talk to Macron, who is exposed for the meaningless Deep State puppet he is >>> even, Putin had no need to mention the Gilets Jaunes, representing a degree of vision, trust & commitment far beyond that of the failing FUKUS empires: a vision that FUKUS cannot even financially entertain, in their present economic state of financial & moral depravity & bankruptcy.
Austerity my ass, let's keep raising national debt and keep funding bum wars & terrorism, for the MIC & National Security State, until society burns. How utterly shameful
It should be now very clear to all that the Russian-Chinese alliance is far more than just military, in every sense: together, the world's largest economy will plough on regardless of what Macron or any other arrogant manipulative untrustworthy Westerner has to say! And frankly, after NATZO's broken promises in Eastern Europe, (which I have personally observed here in Bulgaria since 2004, fully expected & awaited, I might add) and the events in the Ukraine and the self-destructive EU sanctions based on media lies & manipulations & omissions, I really do believe Putin has handled this all extremely wisely & astutely playing the long game, like the Chinese & avoiding incredible provocation, media wise. One day, however long it takes, the average ignorant Westerner will come to understand that they have been deceived & lied to, from the beginning, especially by their secret services; & have been lapdogs in the arms of US Deep State Corporate Fascist NATZO CIA & GCHQ morons, in "The History of the National Security State" and, that Julian Assange needs to be set FREE asap : and given the Seth Rich murder, which kinda' benefited Trump and his Fake News declarations, my guess is that Trump will not want Assange charged, in the end: but, we'll see ! ? Because first the British have to sort out the arrogant bastards in GCHQ, also in the Media and their own new 'attorney general' who will investigate secret services role in Deep State Corporate Deeds & prosecute people like Judge Arbuthnot, for not recusing herself >>> BoJo's job, actually, but who cares ? >>> drain UK Swampland. ? Myopic Corbyn seems to have missed the bus & significance on the Affair Assange, completely, which is somewhat inexplicable, given the Guardian Moderators infiltration by the British Military 77th Brigade, and their bias against Corbyn. At least, that appears to be Trump's agenda and the longer Assange remains 'Censored', the worse that societies throughout Europe will become, until we all address Communications & Media Law, with wholly wise, tech. savvy intelligent and independent JUDGES, not compromised by the HillBilly Clinton/Epstein Clan of NATZO CIA/GCHQ operatives. (maybe I'm not clarifying in the best way, but hopefully you get the drift?). Only a week or so ago, the Bulgarian President was complaining about appalling standards of journalism, too, with an obvious agenda from abroad, also in terms of ownership. (Not widely reported!) And, I'm sure you are aware of the incredible bias & censorship in the German MSM, just like Professor Dan Ganser & myself. 😉 R.i.P Udo Ulfkotte >>> when Secret Services dictate the News, not much point in listening to a word they have to say >>> HANG 'EM HIGH ! out to dry, in Public Eye ! They are FASCISTS ! The worst kind !
I don't say this lightly . . . after over 40 years studying their collective behaviours, in relation to the reality on the ground.@Tim JenkinsJoerg
Yes, You are right.
But let's look at the bigger picture.
23 Trillions(!) of $$ are missing in the Pentagon.
To that see the great James Corbett's video "Fitt's Trillions" – https://www.corbettreport.com/?s=fitts-trillions .So 23 trillion $ are missing – and the congress decided not to follow that up.
Before that on 911 already 3 trillion $ (if I remember this right) were missing in the Pentagon. And surprise, surprise: On 911 the Pentagon building exploded exactly there where those accountants were placed, who tried to find out where all that money (3 trillion $) went. All accountants died. After that no one started again to find out where the money went.
Where did the stolen gold from under the Twin Towers go to? Mueller (than state attorney of NY) obviously did want to research that.The US is already ruled by a mighty super-syndicate – or possibly by two or three of them. So mighty they could put the classical Mafia directly into kindergarten.
And with that much money stolen they can buy in the USA but also in Europe (and, yes, Germany) all politicians, judges and journalists. And those who don't comply, get fired by their (also bought) boss. Or they get murdered ("suicide"), or their career gets destroyed.There are no classical politics anymore like, let's say, 50 years ago. Here in the west it is only the super-syndicates' power that rules.
By the way: In the end-time of the Roman Empire there were also no more free judges. They had to follow the orders of the local criminal gang – or they got killed. And I also believe that the fall of this impressive "Indus Valley Civilisation" (2000 B.C.) was caused by overwhelming and destructive power of Mafia/Syndicates. In the end the citizens of the Indus Valley civilisation simply fled the area – obviously to south India. So the Tamils may very well be the descendants of the old Indus people.Sorry, I meant this Corbett video: https://www.corbettreport.com/?s=Pentagon+trillions+skidmoreTim JenkinsWith you all the way, Joerg: ironic you should mention the Tamils. I spent time alone in Jaffna, in the aftermath of genocide.Simon HodgesI'd better not start here & now on Sin-dication and the Chicago Mercantile Exchange. Suffice to say, if one wishes to speculate on the weather & commodities, with insider knowledge of what the D.o.D. did/do with electronics like HAARP, one would not be a particularly intelligent or moral person, scientifically speaking. And said person, would never wish to discuss the contents of WTC 7 and that Pentagon Wing. 😉
Ta, for the linkS :). Look forward to hearing more from you.
Viele Grüsse,
TimSorry post below was posted to wrong article.Jonathan JarvisSomething much deeper going on?Simon Hodgeshttp://thesaker.is/the-terrorists-among-us11-azov-battalion-and-american-congressional-support/
Latest in series of articles by the author re USA – Ukraine connections
"American Ukrainian nationalists don't like democracy. They don't understand the concept of it and don't care to learn. But they do understand nationalist fascism where only the top of society matters. They are behind the actors of the Intelligence coup going on in the US today .This is the mentality and politics the Diaspora is pushing into American politics today. Hillary Clinton and the DNC is surrounded with this infection which even includes political advisors.
Rest assured they all the related Diasporas are in a fight for their political lives. If Donald Trump wins, their ability to infect American politics might be broken. Many of the leadership will be investigated for attempting to overthrow the government of the United States."
"My thoughts on all this are that many of us have become distracted and failed to examine the timeline of events since 9/11. We look at news and conflict in isolation and move on to the next without seeing what is now a clear pattern."Gezzah PottsIn terms of the Middle East you need to go back further than the fortuitous event of 9/11 – at least to 1997 and the founding of the Project for the New American Century which was essentially the first explicit formalisation of the agenda for an imperialist Neoliberal and Neoconservative globalist new world order deployed through the media constructed conflicts of 'good' and 'evil' around the world and with it the call for the 'democratisation' of the Middle East under the alibi of humanitarian interventionism against broadly socialist governments, which since the fall of communism were constructed by Neoliberal fundamentalists as being patently heretical and ideologically illegitimate forms of government. If it is economically illogical to elect a socialist failed form of government then one can only assume that the election must have been rigged.
I started looking at this all a few years ago when I asked myself the question 14 years after the invasion of Iraq: where was the liberal outrage at what had subsequently taken place in the ME? The answer was that from the Invasion of Iraq onward in addition to fully embracing the economics of Neoliberalism as the end of economic history, the progressive 'left' quietly assimilated and reduplicated the fundamentalist illiberal political philosophy of the Neocons. The progressive 'left' both in the UK and US have subsequently become the far Neocon 'right' in all but name and their party hosts of Labour in the UK and the Democrats in the US remain blissfully unaware of all of this. How else can we explain why they would welcome 'Woke' Bill Kristol into their ranks? Once one accepts this hypothesis, then an awful lot falls into place in order to explain the 'Progressive' open support for regime change and the almost total lack of any properly liberal objections to what has taken place ever since.
One key point here is that the Neocons have nothing to do with conservatism or the right. What is striking and most informative about the history of Neo-conservatism is that it does not have its roots in conservatism at all, but grew out of disillusioned US left wing intellectuals who were Marxist, anti-Stalinist Trotskyites. This is important because at the heart of Neo-conservatism is something that appeals strongly to the die hard revolutionaries of the left who hold a strong proclivity for violence, conflict and struggle. If one looks at the type of people in the Labour party who gravitated to the 'progressive' Neoliberal imperialist camp they all exhibit similar personality traits of sociopathic control freaks with sanctimonious Messiah complexes such as Blair. These extremist, illiberal fundamentalists love violence and revolution and the bloodier the better. In Libya or Syria is did not matter that Gadaffi or Assad headed socialist governments, the Neo-colonised progressives would back any form of apparent conflict and bloody revolution in any notional struggle between any identifiable form of 'authority' or 'oppression' with any identifiable form of 'resistance' even if those leading the 'resistance' were head chopping, misogynist, jihadist terrorists. It makes no difference to the fundamentalist revolutionary mindset.
The original left wing who gradually morphed in the Neoconservatives took 30-40 years to make the transition for the 1960s to 1990s. The Labour party Blairites made the same journey from 1990 to 2003. Christopher Hitchens made the same journey in his own personal microcosm.
When is this nausea inducing confected pile of crap going to end? Does anyone else think that Adam Schiff has a screw or three loose, and should be residing in an institution? And imagine if somehow Mike Pence became Prez. Now that would be something to scare the bejesus out of you.Tim JenkinsAdam Schiff should be shot for Treason, of the highest order, along with many others, including HRC, Brennan & Clapper ; and it should be a public execution, like in Saudi Arabia. This is war on the minds of the masses, that Schiff for brains cares nothing for.Gezzah Potts
As for Chuck Schumer, he can have a life sentence, as long as he manages to shut his utterly unfunny dumb vulgar cousin Amy up & keep her out of the public eye, forever 🙂
Gezzah, life may seem bad right now: but imagine if,
you were Amy Schumer's Husband and father of her child 😉
Talk about obnoxious and utterly nauseating 🙂 , with you Gezzah, all the way."When is this nausea inducing confected pile of crap going to end?"
I'm almost seriously thinking of buying a one way ticket to the Marquesas Islands Right in the middle of the Pacific Ocean, nowhere near anywhere; such is the mad bad state of the World.vexarb
Need to start up a Go Fund Me page tho!
As I almost (94.6% of the time) boycott the presstitute filth masquerading as journalists (cough) so, I 99% of the time boycott anything coming out of Hollywood, including alleged 'comedians'.
How are things in Bulgaria? What are the Fascist Stormtroopers up to, aka NATZO who all those you named have intimate connections with.
Listening to a gorgeous Russian band called: iamthemorning. Check them out – food for the soul. Enjoy your arvo..Pepe sends more news from the real world:vexarbhttps://thesaker.is/the-age-of-anger-exploding-in-serial-geysers/
"The presidential election in Argentina was a game-changer and a graphic lesson. It pitted the people versus neoliberalism. The people won – with new President Alberto Fernandez and former President Cristina Fernández de Kirchner (CFK) as his VP.
Neoliberalism was represented by a PR marketing product, Mauricio Macri [a Micron look-alike]: former millionaire playboy, president of football legends Boca Juniors, obsessed with spending cuts, who was unanimously sold by Western MSM as a New Age paradigm.
Well, the paradigm will soon be ejected, leaving behind the usual New Age wasteland: $250 billion in foreign debt, less than $50 billion in reserves; inflation at 55 percent; 35.4 percent of Argentine homes can't make it); and (incredible as it may seem in an agriculturally self-sufficient nation) a food emergency."
And from Yemen:vexarbMeanwhile, in the real world, the Denmark's Ukronazi-friendly regime has been brought to heel by Germany's common sense:AntonymSome big natural gas news very significant for Russia, Germany and the Ukraine. The Danish pipeline sector has been stalled for a while now by anti-Russia, pro-Ukrainian forces within the Scandiwegian NATZO-friendly regimes. But it appears that Nordstream 2 _will_ get completed and that Ukraine's gas transit chokehold on the EU will come to an end when Russia's Nordstream 2 comes online for Europe.
-- -- -- -Permit for the Nord Stream 2 project is reluctantly granted by the Danish Energy Agency. Nord Stream 2 AG has been granted a permit to construct natural gas pipelines on the Danish continental shelf.
The permit is granted pursuant to the Continental Shelf Act and in accordance with Denmark's obligations under the UN Convention on the Law of the Sea. Denmark has been put under obligation to allow the construction of transit pipelines with respect to resources and the environment.
Gas is the second most firm green energy source after nuclear. Denmark manages only due to their undersea cables to Norway's hydro mountains.RobGIn another field has far more common sense than neighbors Germany or Sweden: immigration / integration.
In my humble opinion, the Trump stuff is all total nonsense.Wilmers31Donald Trump was a property speculator in New York (amongst other places) and was heavily involved with the Mafia. Likewise, Trump was heavily involved with Jeffery Epstein.
There's so much dirt on Trump that they could get him with the snap of fingers; but of course that's not what they really want. Trump is pure theatre; a ploy to divert the masses. 'RussiaGate', 'UkraineGate' are all utter rollocks.
Trump and Obama, and all the rest going back to the assassination of Kennedy, are just puppets.
American/ deep state policy doesn't change a jot with any of them.
America is always presentation over substance, wrapper over content, and shoot the messenger if you don't like the message.Antonym
In the meantime the adults in this world outside the US have to hold it all together.
Why was for instance Hillary Clinton not in the dock for saying 'Assad must go'?? It was meddling in the highest order.Pretty humble for an opinion 😀phreeI guess this just goes to show you that a person can be a member of the ACLU, even a leader apparently, and still be highly biased in favor of Trump.George CornellJust because a witness is "cooperating" with an investigation does not entail that the witnesses testimony or evidence will favor any particular side.
And implying that Clapper's comments somehow shows guilt when he clearly says he knows of no wrongdoing is pretty over the top.
I've read a lot of what's out there about the start of the initial Russia investigation, and it does seem that some of the FBI personnel leading it (McCabe particularly) were anti-Trump.
Isn't the bigger question whether the investigation was justified based on the reports from the Australians that Trump was getting political dirt on Hillary from Russia? Is the FBI just supposed to ignore those reports? Really?
Love the Clapper claim (the same Clapper who lied to Congress) says he was just doing his duty in Russiagate. As GBS said, " when a scoundrel is doing something of which he is ashamed, he always says he is doing his duty".markThe Spook Organisations and the Dirty Cops are a greater threat to our way of life than any foreign army or terrorist group (most of which they created in the first place and which they directly control.)Tim Jenkins
They are a law unto themselves and completely free of any genuine oversight or control.
This applies equally to the US and UK.
"We lie, we cheat, we steal", as Pompeo helpfully explains.
They also murder people, at home and abroad. JFK, David Kelly, Diana, Epstein.
They plant bombs and blow people up.
Many of the "terrorist atrocities" from Northern Ireland to the present day, were false flag spook operations. The same applies with Gladio on the continent and the plethora of recent false flags.
There is also a long and inglorious history of interference in domestic politics from the Zinoviev Letter onwards. Plots to stage a military coup against the Wilson government of the 60s and 70s, with Mountbatten as its figurehead.
The more recent Skripal Hoax.
The contrived Syrian Gas Attack Hoaxes and the White Helmets.
They would not hesitate to do the same to Corbyn if they deemed it necessary.
The CIA and FBI conspired with the UK and Ukrainian governments to prevent the election of Trump, and then to sabotage and smear his administration once he had been elected. The UK played a major part in this through MI6 and Steele.
This is highly dangerous for this country, irrespective of your view of Trump.
Trump has repaid the favour by meddling in Brexit and interfering in UK politics. It is not in his nature to turn the other cheek.
We have spook organisations claiming for themselves a right of veto over election results and foreign policy. These people are poor servants and terrible masters.
We see Schumer warning against crossing the spook organisations, begging the obvious question – who runs this country, you or the spooks?
The Democrats, the Deep State, the MSM, and the Deranged Left were willing to support these conspiracies and hoaxes, and even suspend disbelief, for the greater good. The ends justify the means. All that matters is getting rid of Trump. Anything goes.
The corrosive erosion of trust, credibility and integrity in all the institutions of the state is probably irreparable. The legislature and the political process in general. The judiciary. The spooks and police. About 9% of Americans now believe the MSM.The irony in all this is that it very much serves Trump's interests.
He is extremely vulnerable, having failed to keep any of his promises.
Building The Wall, Draining The Swamp, Bringing The Troops Home. Sorting out health care. Building "incredible, fantastic" infrastructure.
All the Democrats had to do was highlight these failures, find a suitable candidate, and put forward some sensible policies, and they were home and dry.
Instead, they provided an endless series of diversions and distractions from Trump's failures by charging down every rabbit hole they could find, Russiagate, Ukrainegate, Impeachment. It couldn't work out better for Trump if he was paying them.Expect to see the Orange Man in the White House for another 4 years.
And another even more virulent outbreak of Trump Derangement Syndrome.Enigmatic and brilliant synopsis, m8, lol: & surely BigB could only agree 🙂mark
and you never even mentioned HQ.Intel.inside.Israel, today & their illegal trespass of WhatsApp, via corporate 'subsidiaries' with 'plausible' denial of liability of spying on
everything-everything & any body, that could possibly threaten corporate fascist computerised dictatorship: distributing backdoors, like Promis & Prism, liberally & worldwide, the Maxwells legacy . . . (yet) 🙂No need to even discuss, until Western societies ALL get a grip on the depths of depravity that lie within the actions and "The History of the National Security State" you have to admit, that Julian Assange could not have picked a better book to firmly grip and signal with, than GORE Vidal's, when being manhandled out of the Ecuadorian Embassy, by Spooks who would sell their own mother, let alone nation, in their utter technological ignorance and adherence to anachronistic doctrines & mentality !
Glad you mentioned 'good ole' cousin ChuckS.' >>> Lol, just for a laugh and a sense of perspective: yes, he is related to Amy Queen of Vulgarity & hideous societal distraction.
What a family of wimps & morons: the 'Schumers' being perfect fodder for ridicule & intelligent humour, naturally . . . on a positive note, mark, think yourself lucky that you are not married to or the father of Amy Schumer's child 🙂I think I'd prefer the female rhinoceros in Moscow Zoo, even if Putin has been blackmailing me with the photos ever since.Tim JenkinsWell, (ahem), you certainly got me all thorny & horny, more than AmyS. ever could, in her wildest dreams, or Chucks, (shucks) 🙂 talk about suckers . . . now, do tell, what was the female Rhino's name ? ! 🙂AntonymWho cares about some BlackRhinoMail, today ?
They'll be dead and extinct, in no time with a legacy 😉
for passionate lovers of Black holes & eternal energy 🙂Is that the best money can buy these days in the US? I guess most of the 1% reside in the Caribbean these days, while Washington D.C. is stuffed with semi-stiffs.DungroaninCatching up Off-G. Excellent.Chris RogersLarry C Johnson is at the vanguard on the debacle and is miles ahead on it.
Check his output at sst. Here is a short speech outlining the conspiracy.
https://turcopolier.typepad.com/sic_semper_tyrannis/2019/10/my-speech-on-the-deep-state-plot-by-larry-c-johnson.htmlTwo more pieces there – it is moving fast now.
The most important thing for us and deliciously so now the election is happening is the BLOWBACK. Our DS lying murdering arses are going to get new ones drilled by Trump and BoBos bromance exploding in full technicolor.
Think May's dementia tax and Strong and Stable were bad?
Lol. This is going to be a FUN month of early xmases.
Dungroanin,Dungroanin
SST is essential reading for anyone concerned with US overseas policy and the corruption of the USA itself in the service of the security state, so, many thanks for posting this link.By sharing we disrupt the msm messages.lundiel
Bernard at MoonofAlabama is also worth a daily visitation – priceless analysis on multiple subjects.Since those days it has been a weak-minded Congress, intimidated and/or compromised Members who have allowed intel to run their own show as if they are immune to the Constitution and the Rule of Law. Since 1947, there has been no functioning Congress willing to provide true accountability or meaningful oversight on the intel community.
Pretty much a carbon copy of our own oversight. We hear even less about our security services than Americans do of theirs. I'd have thought that events like the spy in the holdall, the spies caught by farmers in Libya, the Skripal's, and the whole over-the-top reaction to the domestic terrorism threat and consequent successful pleas for extra funding, the obvious danger of creating terrorists by security services, the policy of giving asylum to foreign terrorists of countries we don't like and the whole concept of the 5 eyes and GCHQ needs more than ministerial oversight, a committee of yes men/women and an intelligence services commissioner.
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Nov 04, 2019 | crookedtimber.org
likbez
Hidari 11.04.19 at 11:22 am @30
Three more pieces on the philosophy which apparently does not exist, or, if it does exist, can't be defined.The denial of its own existence is one of the key features of neoliberalism and neoliberal apologetics. Somewhat similar to the NSA which is the past was called "No Such Agency" : -)
The other name for neoliberalism is "Casino Capitalism" which stresses that neoliberalism glorifies stock market, promotes "financialization" of the economy and creates powerful incentives for financial speculation and luring the public into excessive risk-taking ("Greed is good") only to be fleeced by the Wall Street sharks. This is an integral part of the redistribution of the wealth up plan. The USA 401K plans in this sense were a masterstroke as they are heavily tilted toward stock funds.
Along with the articles that you mentioned, The Guardian in the past published several educational article of above average quality that might be interesting to this audience.
Among them:
- Neoliberalism: the idea that swallowed the world by Stephen Metcalf 18 Aug 2017
- Neoliberalism – the ideology at the root of all our problems by George Monbiot 15 Apr 2016
- Neoliberalism has brought out the worst in us by Paul Verhaeghe 29 Sep 2014
- The fatal flaw of neoliberalism it's bad economics News by Dani Rodrik 14 Nov 2017
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Oct 06, 2019 | off-guardian.org
WATCH: Udo Ulfkotte – Bought Journalists Terje Maloy
Subtitled and transcribed by Terje Maloy
https://www.youtube.com/embed/3ZLgW3hgRBY
In 2014, the German journalist and writer Udo Ulfkotte published a book that created a big stir, describing how the journalistic profession is thoroughly corrupt and infiltrated by intelligence services.
Although eagerly anticipated by many, the English translation of the book, Bought Journalists , does not seem to be forthcoming anytime soon.
[We covered that story at the time – Ed.]
So I have made English subtitles and transcribed this still very relevant 2015-lecture for those that are curious about Ulfkotte's work. It covers many of the subjects described in the book.
Udo Ulfkotte died of a heart attack in January 2017, in all likelihood part of the severe medical complications he got from his exposure to German-made chemical weapons supplied to Saddam Hussein during the Iran-Iraq War in the 1980s.
Transcription[Only the first 49 minutes are translated; the second half of the lecture deals mostly with more local issues]
Introducer Oliver: I am very proud to have such a brave man amongst us: Udo Ulfkotte
Udo Ulfkotte: Thanks Thanks for the invitation Thanks to Oliver. I heard to my great surprise from Oliver that he didn't know someone from the intelligence services (VVS) would be present. I wish him a warm welcome. I don't mean that as a joke, I heard this in advance, and got to know that Oliver didn't know. If he wants – if it is a man – he can wave. If not? no? [laughter from the audience]
I'm fine with that. You can write down everything, or record it; no problem.
To the lecture. We are talking about media. we are talking about truth. I don't want to sell you books or such things. Each one of us asks himself: Why do things develop like they do, even though the majority, or a lot of people shake their heads.
The majority of people in Germany don't want nuclear weapons on our territory. But we have nuclear weapons here. The majority don't want foreign interventions by German soldiers. But we do.
What media narrates and the politicians say, and what the majority of the population believes – seems often obviously to be two different things.
I can tell you this myself, from many years experience. I will start with very personal judgments, to tell you what my experiences with 'The Lying Media' were – I mean exactly that with the word 'lying'.
I was born in a fairly poor family. I am a single child. I grew up on the eastern edge of the Ruhr-area. I studied Law, Political Science and Islamic Studies. Already in my student years, I had contact with the German Foreign Intelligence, BND. We will get back to that later.
From 1986 to 2003, I worked for a major German newspaper, Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung (FAZ), amongst other things as a war reporter. I spent a lot of time in Eastern and African countries.
Now to the subject of lying media. When I was sent to the Iran-Iraq war for the first time, the first time was from 1980 to July 1986, I was sent to this war to report for FAZ. The Iraqis were then 'the good guys'.
I was bit afraid. I didn't have any experience as a war reporter. Then I arrived in Baghdad. I was fairly quickly sent along in a bus by the Iraqi army, the bus was full of loud, experienced war reporters, from such prestigious media as the BBC, several foreign TV-stations and newspapers, and me, poor newbie, who was sent to the front for the first time without any kind of preparation. The first thing I saw was that they all carried along cans of petrol. And I at once got bad consciousness, because I thought: "oops, if the bus gets stuck far from a petrol station, then everyone chips in with a bit of diesel'. I decided to in the future also carry a can before I went anywhere, because it obviously was part of it.
We drove for hours through the desert, towards the Iraqi border. Approx. 20-30 kilometers from the border, there really was nothing. First of all no war. There were armored vehicles and tanks, burned-out long ago. The journalist left the bus, splashed the contents of the cans on the vehicles. We had Iraqi soldiers with us as an escort, with machine guns, in uniform. You have to imagine: tanks in a desert, burned out long ago, now put on fire. Clouds of smoke. And there the journalists assemble their cameras.
It was my first experience with media, truth in reporting.
While I was wondering what the hell I was going to report for my newspaper, they all lined up and started: Behind them were flames and plumes of smoke, and all the time the Iraqis were running in front of camera with their machine guns, casually, but with war in their gaze. And the reporters were ducking all the time while talking.
So I gathered courage and asked one of the reporters: 'I understand one thing, they are great pictures, but why are they ducking all the time? '
'Quite simply because there are machine guns on the audio track, and it looks very good at home.'
That was several decades ago. It was in the beginning of my contact with war. I was thinking, the whole way back:'Young man, you didn't see a war. You were in a place with a campfire. What are you going to tell?'
I returned to Baghdad. There weren't any mobile phones then. We waited in Hotel Rashid and other hotels where foreigners stayed, sometimes for hours for an international telephone line. I first contacted my mother, not my newspaper. I was in despair, didn't know what to do, and wanted to get advice from an elder person.
Then my mother shouted over the phone: 'My boy, you are alive!' I thought: 'How so? Is everything OK?'
'My boy, we thought ' 'What's the matter, mother?' 'We saw on TV what happened around you' TV had already sent lurid stories, and I tried to calm my mother down, it didn't happen like that. She thought I had lost my mind from all the things that had happened in the war – she saw it with her own eyes!
I'll finish, because I am not here to make satire today. I just want to say that this was my first experience with truth in journalism and war reporting.
That is, I was very shocked by the first contact, it was entirely different from what I had experienced. But it wasn't an exceptional case.
In the beginning, I mentioned that I am from a fairly poor family. I had to work hard for everything. I was a single child, my father died when I was young. It didn't matter further on. But, I had a job, I had a degree, a goal in life.
I now had the choice: Should I declare that the whole thing was nonsense, these reports? I was nothing, a newbie straight out of uni, in my first job. Or if I wanted to make money, to continue, look further. I chose the second option. I continued, and that for many years.
Over these years, I gained lots of experience. When one comes from university to a big German newspaper – everything I say doesn't only apply to FAZ, you can take other German or European media. I had contact with other European journalists, from reputable media outlets. I later worked in other media. I can tell you: What I am about to tell you, I really discovered everywhere.
What did I experience? If you, as a reporter, work either in state media financed by forced license fees, or in the big private media companies, then you can't write what you want yourself, what you feel like. There are certain guidelines.
Roughly speaking: everyone knows that you won't, for example in the Springer-newspapers – Bild, die Welt – get published articles extremely critical of Israel. They stand no chance there, because one has to sign a statement that one is pro-Israel, that one won't question the existence of the state of Israel or Israeli points of view, etc.
There are some sort of guidelines in all the big media companies. But that isn't all: I learned very fast that if one doesn't – I don't mean this negatively – want to be stuck in the lower rungs of editors, if one wants to rise; for me this rise was that I was allowed to travel with the Chancellor, ministers, the president and politicians, in planes owned by the state; then one has to keep to certain subjects. I learned that fast.
That is, if one gets to follow a politician – and this hasn't changed to this day – I soon realized that when I followed the president or Chancellor Helmut Kohl etc, one of course isn't invited because your name is Udo Ulfkotte, but because you belong to the newspaper Frankfurter Allgemeine.
Then a certain type of reporting is expected. Which one? Forget my newspaper, this applies in general. At the start of the trip, the journalist gets a memo – today it is electronic – in his hand. If you are traveling abroad, it is info about the country, or the speeches that will be held. This file contains roughly what will happen during this trip. In addition there are short conversations, briefings with the politician's press manager. He then explains to you how one views this trip. Naturally, you should see it the same way. No one says it in that way. But is is approximately what one would have reported.
All the time you no one tells you to write it this or that way but you know quite exactly that if you DON'T write it this or that way,then you won't get invited next time. Your media outlet will be invited, but they say 'we don't want him along'. Then you are out.
Naturally you want to be invited. Of course it is wonderful to travel abroad and you can behave like a pig, no one cares. You can buy what you want, because you know that when you return, you won't be checked. You can bring what you want. I had colleagues who went along on a trip to the US.
They brought with them – it was an air force plane – a Harley Davidson, in parts. They sold it when they were back in Germany, and of course earned on it. Anyway, just like the carpet-affair with that development minister, this is of course not a single instance. No one talks about it.
You get invited if you have a certain way of seeing things. Which way to see things? Where and how is this view of the world formed? I very often get asked: 'Where are these people behind the curtain who pulls the wires, so that everything gets told in a fairly similar way?'
In the big media in Germany – just look yourself – who sit in the large transatlantic think-tanks and foundations,the foundation The Atlantic Bridge, all these organizations, and how is one influenced there? I can tell from my own experience.
We mustn't talk only theoretically. I was invited by the think-tank The German Marshall Fund of the United States as a fellow. I was to visit the United States for six weeks. It was fully paid. During these six weeks I could this think-tank has very close connections to the CIA to this day, they acquired contacts in the CIA for me and they got me access to American politicians, to everyone I wanted. Above all, they showered me with gifts.
Already before the journey with German Marshall Fund, I experienced plenty of bought journalism. This hasn't to do with a particular media outlet. You see, I was invited and didn't particularly reflect over it, by billionaires, for example sultan Quabboos of Oman on the Arabian peninsula.
When sultan Qabboos invited, and a poor boy like me could travel to a country with few inhabitants but immense wealth, where the head of state had the largest yachts in the world, his own symphony orchestra which plays for him when he wants – by the way he bought a pub close to Garmisch-Patenkirchen, because he is a Muslim believer, and someone might see him if he drank in his own country, so he rather travels there. The place he bought every day fly in fresh lamb from Ireland and Scotland with his private jet. He is also the head of an environmental foundation.
But this is a digression. If such a person, who is so incredibly rich, invites someone like me, then I arrive first class. I had never traveled first class before. We arrive, and a driver is waiting for me. He carries your suitcase or backpack. You have a suite in the hotel. And from the very start, you are showered with gifts. You get a platinum or gold coin. A hand-weaved carpet or whatever.
I interviewed the sultan, several times. He asked me what I wanted. I answered among other things a diving course. I wanted to learn how to dive. He flew in a PADI-approved instructor from Greece. I was there for two weeks and got my first diving certificate. On later occasions, the sultan flew me in several times, and the diving instructor. I got a certificate as rescue diver, all paid for by the sultan. You see, when one is attended to in such a way, then you know that you are bought. For a certain type of journalism. In the sultan's country, there is no freedom of the press.
There are no human rights. It is illegal to import many writings, because the sultan does not wish so. There are reports about human rights violations, but my eyes are blind. I reported, like all German media when they report about the Sultanate of Oman, to this day, only positive things. The great sultan, who is wonderful. The fantastic country of the fairy tale prince, overshadowing everything else – because I was bought.
Apart from Oman, many others have bought me. They also bought colleagues. I got many invitations through the travel section in my big newspaper. 5-star. The reportage never mentioned that I was bought, by country A or B or C. Yemenia, the Yemeni state airline, invited me to such a trip.
I didn't report about the dirt and dilapidation in the country, because I was influenced by this treatment, I only reported positively, because I wanted to come back. The Yemenis asked me when I had returned to Frankfurt what I wished In jest, I said "your large prawns, from the Red Sea, from the Indian Ocean, they were spectacular.", from the seaport of Mocha (Mocha-coffee is named after it). Two days later, Yemenia flew in a buffet for the editorial office, with prawns and more.
Of course we were bought. We were bought in several ways. In your situation: when you buy a car or something else, you trust consumer tests. Look closer. How well is the car tested? I know of no colleagues, no journalists, who do testing of cars, that aren't bribed – maybe they do exist.
They get unlimited access to a car from the big car manufacturers, with free petrol and everything else. I had a work car in my newspaper, if not, I might have exploited this. I had a BMW or Mercedes in the newspaper. But there are, outside the paper, many colleagues who only have this kind of vehicle all year round. They are invited to South Africa, Malaysia, USA, to the grandest travels, when a new car is presented.
Why? So that they will write positively about the car. But it doesn't say in these reports "Advertisement from bought journalists".
But that is the reality. You should also know – since we are on the subjects of tests – who owns which test magazines? Who owns the magazine Eco-test? It is owned by the Social Democrats. More than a hundred magazines belong to the Social Democrats. It isn't about only one party, but many editorial rooms have political allegiance. Behind them are party political interests.
I mentioned the sultan of Oman and the diving course, and I have mentioned German Marshall Fund. Back to the US and the German Marshall Fund. There one told me, they knew exactly, 'hello, you were on a diving course in Oman ' The CIA knew very precisely. And the CIA also gave me something: The diving gear. I received the diving gear in the United States, and I received in the US, during my 6-week stay there, an invitation from the state of Oklahoma, from the governor. I went there. It was a small ceremony, and I received an honorary citizenship.
I am now honorary citizen of an American state. And in this certificate, it is written that I will only cover the US positively. I accepted this honorary citizenship and was quite proud of it. I proudly told about it to a colleague who worked in the US. He said 'ha, I already have 31 of these honorary citizenships!'
I don't tell about this to be witty, today I am ashamed, really.
I was greedy. I accepted many advantages that a regular citizen at my age in my occupation doesn't have, and shouldn't have. But I perceived it – and that is no excuse – as entirely normal, because my colleagues around me all did the same. But this isn't normal. When journalists are invited to think-tanks in the US, like German Marshall Fund, Atlantic Bridge, it is to 'bring them in line', for in a friendly way to make them complicit, naturally to buy them, to grease them with money.
This has quite a few aspects that one normally doesn't talk about. When I for the first time was in Southern Africa, in the 80s, Apartheid still existed in South Africa, segregated areas for blacks and whites. We didn't have any problems with this in my newspaper, we received fully paid journeys from the Apartheid regime to do propaganda work.
I was invited by the South-African gold industry, coal industry, tourist board. In the first invitation, this trip was to Namibia – I arrived tired to the hotel room in Windhoek and a dark woman lay in my bed. I at once left the room, went down to the reception and said 'excuse me, but the room is already occupied' [laughter from the audience]
Without any fuss I got another room.
Next day at the breakfast table, this was a journalist trip, my colleagues asked me 'how was yours?' Only then I understood what had happened. Until then, I had believed it was a silly coincidence.
With this I want to describe which methods are used, maybe to film journalists in such situations, buy, make dependent. Quite simply to win them over to your side with the most brutal methods, so that they are 'brought in line'.
This doesn't happen to every journalist. It would be a conspiracy theory if I said that behind every journalist, someone pulls the wires.
No. Not everyone has influence over the masses. When you – I don't mean this negatively – write about folk costume societies or if you work with agriculture or politics, why should anyone from the upper political spheres have an interest in controlling the reporting? As far as I know, this doesn't happen at all.
But if you work in one of the big media, and want up in this world, if you want to travel with politicians, heads of state, with CEOs, who also travel on these planes, then it happens. Then you are regularly bought, you are regularly observed.
I said earlier that I already during my study days had contact with the intelligence services.
I will quickly explain this to you, because it is very important for this lecture.
I studied law, Political Science and Islamology, among other places in Freiburg. At the very beginning of my study, just before end of the term, a professor approached me. Professors were then still authority figures.
He came with a brochure, and asked me: 'Mr. Ulfkotte, what are your plans for this vacation?'
I couldn't very well say that I first planned to work a bit at a building site, for then to grab my backpack and see the ocean for the first time in my life, to Italy, 'la dolce vita', flirting with girls, lie on the beach and be a young person.
I wondered how I would break it to him. He then came with a brochure [Ulfkotte imitating professor]: 'I have something for you a seminar, Introduction to Conflict Studies, two weeks in Bonn I am sure you would want to participate!'
I wondered how I would tell this elderly gentleman that I wanted to flirt with girls on the beach. Then he said 'you will get 20 Marks per day as support, paid train journey, money for books 150 Marks You will naturally get board and lodging.' He didn't stop telling me what I would receive.
It buzzed around in my head that I had to achieve everything myself, work hard. I thought 'You have always wanted to participate in a seminar on Introduction to Conflict Studies!'
So I went to Bonn from Freiburg, and I saw other students who had this urge to participate in this seminar. There were also girls one could flirt with, about twenty people. The whole thing was very strange, because we sat in a room like this one, there were desks and a lectern, and there sat some older men and a woman, they always wrote something down. They asked us about things; What we thought of East Germany, we had to do role play.
The whole thing was a bit strange, but it was well paid. We didn't reflect any further. It was very strange that in this house, in Ubierstraße 88 in Bonn, we weren't allowed to go to the second floor. There was a chain over the stairs, it was taboo.
We were allowed to go to the basement, there were constantly replenished supplies of new books that we were allowed to get for free. Ebay didn't exist then, but we could still sell them used. Anyway, it was curious, but at the end of the fortnight, we were allowed to go up these stairs, where we got an invitation to a continuation course in Conflict Studies.
After four such seminars, that is, after two years, someone asked me 'you have probably wondered what we are doing here'.
He explained that a recruitment board from the intelligence services had participated. But I had no idea that the seminar Introduction to Conflict Studies was arranged by the defense forces and run by the foreign intelligence service BND, to have a closer look at potential candidates among the students, not to commit them. They only asked if they, after four such seminars, possibly could contact me later, in my occupation.
They gave me a lot of money. My mother has always taught me to be polite. So I said 'please do', and they came to me. I was then working in the newspaper FAZ from 1986, straight after my studies.
Then the intelligence services came fairly soon to me. Why am I telling you this? The newspaper knew very soon. It is also written in my reference, therefore I can say it loud and clear. I had very close contact with the intelligence service BND.
Two persons from BND came regularly to the paper, to a visiting room. And there were occasions when the report not only was given, but also that BND had written articles, largely ready to go, that were published in the newspaper under my byline.
I highlight certain things to explain them. But if I had said here: 'There are media that are influenced by BND', you could rightly say that 'these are conspiracy theories, can you document it?'
I CAN document it. I can say, this and that article, with my byline in the paper, is written by the intelligence services, because what is written there, I couldn't have known. I couldn't have known what existed in some cave or other in Libya, what secret thing were there, what was being built there. This was all things that BND wanted published. It wasn't like this only in FAZ.
It was like this also in other media. I told about it. If we had rule of law, there would now be an investigation commission. Because the political parties would stand up, regardless of if they are on the left, in the center or right, and say: What this Ulfkotte fella says and claims he can document, this should be investigated. Did this occur in other places? Or is it still ongoing?'
I can tell you: Yes it still exists. I know colleagues who still have this close contact. One can probably show this fairly well until a few years ago. But I would find it wonderful if this investigation commission existed.
But it will obviously not happen, because no one has an interest in doing so. Because then the public would realize how closely integrated politics, media, and the secret services are in this country.
That is, one often sees in reporting, whether it is from the local paper, regional papers, TV-channels, national tabloids and so-called serious papers.
Put them side by side, and you will discover that more than 90% looks almost identical. A lot of subjects and news, that are not being reported at all, or they are – I claim reported very one-sided. One can only explain this if one knows the structures in the background, how media is surrounded, bought and 'brought onboard' by politics and the intelligence services; Where politics and intelligence services form a single unity. There is an intelligence coordinator by the Chancellor.
I can tell you, that under the former coordinator Bernd Schmidbauer, under Kohl, I walked in and out of the Chancellery and received stacks of secret and confidential documents, which I shouldn't have received.
They were so many that we in the newspaper had own archive cabinets for them. Not only did I receive these documents,but Schmidbauer should have been in jail if we had rule of law. Or there should have been a parliamentary commission or an investigation, because he wasn't allowed
For example if I couldn't bring along the documents if the case was too hot, there was another trick. They locked me in a room. In this room were the documents, which I could look through. I could record it all on tape, photograph them or write them down. When I was done, I could call on the intercom, so they could lock me out. There were thousands of these tricks. Anonymous documents that I and my colleagues needed could be placed in my mail box.
These are of course illegal things. BUT, you ONLY get them if you 'toe the line' with politics.
If I had written that Chancellor Helmut Kohl is stupid, a big idiot, or about what Schmidbauer did, I would of course not have received more. That is, if you today, in newspapers, read about 'soon to be revealed exposures, we will publish a big story based on material based on intelligence', then none of these media have dug a tunnel under the security services and somehow got hold of something secret. It is rather that they work so well with intelligence services, with the military counterespionage, the foreign intelligence, police intelligence etc, that if they have got hold of internal documents, it is because they cooperate so well that they received them as a reward for well performed service.
You see, in this way one is in the end bought. One is bought to such a degree that at one point one can't exit this system anymore.
If I describe how you are supplied with prostitutes, bribed with cars, money; I tried to write down everything I received in gifts, everything I was bribed with. I stopped doing so several years ago, more than a decade ago.
It doesn't make it any better, but today I regret everything. But I know that it goes this way with many journalists.
It would make me very happy if journalists stood up and said they won't participate in this any longer, and that they think this is wrong.
But I see no possibility, because media corporations in any case are doing badly. Where should a journalist find work the next day? It isn't so that tens of thousands of employers are waiting for you. It is the other way round. Tens of thousands of journalists are looking for work or commissions.
That is, from pure desperation one is happy to be bribed. If a newsroom stands behind or not an article that in reality is advertising, doesn't matter, one goes along. I know some, even respected journalists, who want to leave this system.
But imagine if you are working in one of the state channels, that you stand up and tell what you have received. How will that be received by your colleagues? That you have political ulterior motives etc.
September 30 [2015], a few days ago, Chancellor Merkel invited all the directors in the state channels to her in the Chancellery. I will claim that she talked with them about how one should report the Chancellors politics. Who of you [in the audience] heard about this incident? 3-4-5? So a small minority. But this is reality. Merkel started already 6 years ago, at the beginning of the financial crisis, to invite chief editors ..she invited chief editors in the large media corporations, with the express wish that media should embellish reality, in a political way. This could have been only claims, one could believe me or not.
But a couple of journalists were there, they told about it. Therefore I repeat: Merkel invited the chief editors several times, and told them she didn't want the population to be truthfully and openly informed about the problems out there. For example, the background for the financial crisis. If the citizens knew how things were, they would run to the bank and withdraw their money. So beautifying everything; everything is under control; your savings are safe; just smile and hold hands – everything will be fine.
In such a way it should be reported. Ladies and gentlemen, what I just said can be documented. These are facts, not a conspiracy theory.
I formulated it a bit satirically, but I ask myself when I see how things are in this country: Is this the democracy described in the Constitution? Freedom of speech? Freedom of the press?
Where one has to be afraid if one doesn't agree with the ruling political correctness, if one doesn't want to get in trouble. Is this the republic our parents and grandparents fought for, that they built?
I claim that we more and more – as citizens – are cowards 'toeing the line', who don't open our mouths.
It is so nice to have plurality and diversity of opinions.
But it is at once clamped down on, today fairly openly.
Of my experiences with journalism, I can in general say that I have quit all media I have to pay for, for the reasons mentioned. Then the question arises, 'but which pay-media can I trust?'
Naturally there are ones I support. They are definitely political, I'll add. But they are all fairly small. And they won't be big anytime soon. But I have quit all big media that I used to subscribe to, Der Spiegel, Frankfurter Allgemeine, etc. I would like to not having to pay the TV-license fee, without being arrested because I won't pay fines. But maybe someone here in the audience can tell me how to do so without all these problems?
Either way, I don't want to financially support this kind of journalism. I can only give you the advice to get information from alternative, independent media and all the forums that exist.
I'm not advertising for any of them. Some of you probably know that I write for the publishing house Kopp. But there are so many portals. Every person is different in political viewpoint, culturally etc. The only thing uniting us, whether we are black or white, religious or non-religious, right or left, or whatever; we all want to know the truth. We want to know what really happens out there, and exactly in the burning political questions: asylum seekers, refugees, the financial crisis, bad infrastructure, one doesn't know how it will continue. Precisely with this background, is it even more important that people get to know the truth.
And it is to my great surprise that I conclude that we in media, as well as in politics, have a guiding line.
To throw more and more dust in the citizens' eyes to calm them down. What is the sense in this? One can have totally different opinions on the subject of refugees with good reasoning.
But facts are important for you as citizens to decide the future. That is, how many people will arrive? How will it affect my personal affluence? Or will it affect my affluence at all? Will the pensions shrink? etc. Then you can talk with people about this, quite openly. But to say that we should open all borders, and that this won't have any negative consequences, is very strange. What I now say isn't a plug for my books. I know that some of them are on the table in front.
I'm not saying this so that you will buy books. I am saying this for another reason that soon will be clear. I started to write books on certain subjects 18 years ago. They have sold millions. It is no longer about you buying my books. It is important that you hear the titles, then you will see a certain line throughout the last ten years. One can have different opinions about this line, but I have always tried to describe, based on my subjective experiences, formed over many years in the Middle East and Africa.
That there will be migration flows, from people from culture areas that are like; if one could compare a cultural area with an engine, that one fills petrol in a diesel engine then everyone knows what will happen, the engine is great, diesel is great, but if there too much petrol, then the engine starts to splutter and stop.
I have tried to make you aware of this, with drastic and less drastic words. What we can expect, and ever faster. The book titles are SOS Occident; Warning Civil War; No Black,Red, Yellow [the colors in the German flag], Holy War in Europe; Mecca Germany.
I just want to say, when politicians and media today claim no one could have predicted it, everything is a complete surprise; Ladies and Gentlemen, this is not at all surprising. The migration flows, for years warnings have been coming from international organizations, politicians, experts, exactly about what happened and it is predictable, if we had a map over North Africa and the Middle East..
If the West continues to destabilize countries like Libya, Tunisia, Egypt, Syria, country by country, Iraq when we toppled Saddam Hussein, Afghanistan. We as Europeans and Germans have spent tens of billions on a war where we allegedly defend peace and liberty, at the mountain range Hindu Kush [in Afghanistan]. And here, in front of our own door, we soon have Hindu Kush.
We have no stabilization in Afghanistan. Dozens of German soldiers have lost their lives for nothing. We have a more unstable situation than ever.
You can have your own opinions. I am only saying that these refugee flows didn't fall from the sky. It is predicable, that if I bomb and destabilize a country, that people – it is always so in history – it hasn't anything to do with the Middle East or North Africa. I have seen enough wars in Africa. Naturally they created refugee flows.
But all of us didn't want to see this. We haven't prepared. And now one is reacting in full panic, and what is most disconcerting with this, is when media and politicians, allegedly from deepest inner conviction, say: 'this was all a complete surprise!'
Are they drunk? What are they smoking? What sort of pills are they eating? That they behave this way?
End transcription
The transcription has been edited for clarity, and may differ from the spoken word. The subtitles and transcription are for the first 49 minutes of the lecture only. Subtitled and transcribed by Terje Maloy. This article is Creative Commons 4.0 for non-commercial purposes.
Terje Maloy ( Website ) is a Norwegian citizen, with roots north of the Arctic Circle. Nowadays, he spends a lot of time in Australia, working in the family business. He has particular interests in liberty, global justice, imperialism, history, media analysis and what Western governments really are up to. He runs a blog , mostly in Norwegian, but occasionally in English. He likes to write about general geopolitical matters, and Northern Europe in particular, presenting perspectives that otherwise barely are mentioned in the dominant media (i.e. most things that actually matter).Tim JenkinsFrom 1:18 minutes, Ulfkotte reveals without question, that the EU Political 'elite's' combined intelligence services work with & propagate . . .Wilmers31Terror, Terrorists & Terrorism / a conscious organised Politics of FEAR ! / Freedom of Movement, of fully armed IS Agents Provocateurs & with a Secret Services get out of jail free card, 'Hände Weg Nicht anfassen', it's 'Hammertime', "U Can't Touch this", we're armed state operatives travelling to Germany & Austria, " don't mess with my operation !" & all journalists' hands tied, too.
The suggestions & offers below to translate fully, what Ulfkotte declares publicly, make much sense. It is important to understand that even an 'Orban' must bow occasionally, to deep state Security State Dictators and the pressures they can exert in so many ways. Logic . . . or else one's life is made into hell, alive or an 'accidental' death: – and may I add, it is a curiously depressing feeling when you have so many court cases on the go, that when a Gemeinde/Municipality Clerk is smiling, celebrating and telling you, (representing yourself in court, with only independent translator & recorder), "You Won the Case, a superior judge has over-ruled " and the only reply possible is,
"Which case number ?"
life gets tedious & time consuming, demanding extreme patience. Given his illness, surely Ulfkotte and his wife, deserve/d extra credit & 'hot chocolate'. Makes a change to see & read some real journalism: congrats.@OffG
Excellent Professional Journalism on "Pseudo-Journalist State Actors & Terrorists". If you see a terrorist, guys, at best just reason with him or her :- better than calling
INTERPOL or Secret Services @theguardian, because you wouldn't want a member of the public, grassing you up to your boss, would you now ? ! Just tell the terrorist who he really works for . . . Those he resents ! Rather like Ulfkotte had to conclude, with final resignation. My condolences to his good wife.
Very good of you to not forget Ulfkotte. If I did not have sickness in the house, I would translate it. Maybe I can do one chapter and someone else can do another one? What's the publisher saying?jgiamIt's just a long unedited speech.Tim JenkinsYou wouldn't say that if you could speak German, my friend ! ?Plus ca change....From one hour 18 minutes onwards, Ulfkotte details EU-Inter-State Terror Co-operation, with returning IS Operatives on a Free Pass, fully armed and even Viktor Orban had to give in to the commands of letting Terrorists through Hungary into Germany & Austria.
But, don't let that revelation bother you, living under a Deep State 'Politic of Fear' in the West and long unedited speeches gets kinda' boring now, I know a bit like believing in some kinda' dumbfuk new pearl harbour, war on terror &&& all phoney propaganda fairy story telling, just like on the 11/9/2001, when the real target was WTC 7, to hide elitist immoral endeavours, corruption & the missing $$$TRILLIONS$$$ of tax payers money, 'mislaid' by the D.o.D. announced directly the day before by Rumsfeld, forgotten ? Before ramping the Surveillance States abilities in placing & employing "Parallel Platforms" on steroids, so that our secret services can now employ terror & deploy terrorists at will .., against us, see ?
I remember on a similar note a 60 Minutes piece just prior to Clinton's humanitarian bombing of Serbian civilian infrastructure (and long ago deleted, I'm sure) on a German free-lancer staging Kosovo atrocities in a Munich suburb, and having the German MSM eating it up and asking for more. (WWII guilt assuagement at work, no doubt).markEverybody who works in the MSM, without exception, are bought and paid for whores peddling lies on behalf of globalist corporate interests.mark
That is their job.
That is what they do.
They have long since forfeited all credibility and integrity.
They have lied to us endlessly for decades and generations, from the Bayonetted Belgian Babies and Human Bodies Turned Into Soap of WW1 to the Iraq Incubator Babies and Syrian Gas Attacks of more recent times.You can no longer take anything at face value.
The default position has to be that every single word they print and every single word that comes out of their lying mouths is untrue.
If they say it's snowing at the North Pole, you can't accept that without first going there and checking it out for yourself.
You can't accept anything that has not been independently verified.This applies across the board.
All of the accepted historical narrative, including things like the holocaust.
And current Global Warming "science."
We know we have been lied to again and again and again.
So what else have we been lied to without us realising it?Come to think of it, I need to apologise to sex workers.Seamus Padraig
I have known quite a few of them who have quite high ethical and moral standards, certainly compared to the MSM.
And they certainly do less damage.
Vert few working girls have blood on their hands like the MSM.
Compared to them, working girls are the salt of the earth and pillars of the community.OliverCompared to them, working girls are the salt of the earth and pillars of the community.
I heartily agree. Even if one disapproves morally of prostitution, how can it possibly be worse to sell your body than to sell your soul?
Quite. Checking things out for yourself is the way to go. Forget 'Peer Reviews', just as bent as the journalism Ulfkotte described. DIY.MortgageSo natural, all it seemsmapquest directionsPart II:
Bought SciencePart III:
Bought Health ServicesThe video you shared with great info. I really like the information you share. boxnovelGary WeglarzI knew we were in dangerous new territory regarding government censorship when after waiting several years for Ulfkotte's best selling book to finally be available in English – it suddenly, magically, disappeared completely – a vanishing act – and I couldn't get so much as a response from, much less an explanation from, the would be publisher. Udo's book came at a time when it could have made a difference countering the fact-free complete and total "fabrication of reality" by the U.S. and Western powers as they have waged a brutal and ongoing neocolonial war on the world's poor under the guise of "fighting terrorism."RamdanUdo's voice (in the form of his book) was silenced for a reason – that being that he spoke the truth about our utterly and completely corrupt Western fantasy world in which we in the West proclaim our – "respect international law" and "respect for human rights." His work, such as this interview and others he has done, pulled the curtain back on the big lie and exposed our oligarchs, politicians and the "journalists" they hire as simply a cadre of professional criminals whose carefully crafted lies are used to soak up the blood and to cover the bodies of the dead, all in order to hide all that mayhem from our eyes, to insure justice is an impossibility and to make sure we Western citizens sleep well at night, oblivious to our connection to the actual realities that are this daily regime of pillage and plunder that is our vaunted "neoliberal order."
After watching the first 20 min I couldn't help but remembering this tale:Ramdan"The philosopher Diogenes (of Sinope) was eating bread and lentils for supper. He was seen by the philosopher Aristippus, who lived comfortably by flattering the king. Said Aristippus, 'If you would learn to be subservient to the king you would not have to live on lentils.' To which Diogenes replied, 'Learn to live on lentils and you will not have to be subservient to the king"."
which is also the reason why such a large part of humanity lives in voluntary servitude to power structures, living the dream, the illusion of being free..
"English Translation of Udo Ulfkotte's "Bought Journalists" Suppressed?" at Global Research 2017!!Francis LeeJust rechecked Amazon. Journalists for Hire: How the CIA Buys the News by Udo Ulfkotte PH.D. The tag line reads.nottheonly1Hard cover – currently unavailable; paperback cover – currently unavailable; Kindle edition – ?
Book burning anyone?
No translation exists for this interview with Udo Ulfkotte on KenFM, the web site of Ken Jebsen. Ken Jebsen has been in the cross hairs of the CIA and German agencies for his reporting of the truth. He was smeared and defamed by the same people that Dr. Ulfkotte had written extensively about in his book 'Gekaufte Journalisten' ('Bought Journalists').nottheonly1The reason why I add this link to the interview lies in the fact that Udo Ulfkotte speaks about an important part of Middle Eastern and German history – a history that has been scrubbed from the U.S. and German populations. In the Iraq war against Iran – that the U.S. regime had pushed for in the same fashion the way they had pushed Nazi Germany to invade the U.S.S.R. – German chemical weapons were used under the supervision of the U.S. regime. The extend of the chemical weapons campaign was enormous and to the present day, Iranians are born with birth defects stemming from the used of German weapons of mass destruction.
Dr. Ulfkotte rightfully bemoans, that every year German heads of state are kneeling for the Jewish victims of National socialism – but not for the victims of German WMD's that were used against Iran. He stresses that the act of visual asking for forgiveness in the case of the Jewish victims becomes hypocrisy, when 40 years after the Nazis reigned, German WMD's were used against Iran. The German regime was in on the WMD attack on Iran. It was not something that happened because they had lost a couple of thousand containers with WMDs. They delivered the WMD's to Iraq under U.S. supervision.
Ponder that. And there has never been an apology towards Iran, or compensations. Nada. Nothing. Instead, the vile rhetoric and demagogery of every U.S. regime since has continued to paint Iran in the worst possible ways, most notably via incessant psychological projection – accusing Iran of the war crimes and crimes against humanity the U.S. and its Western vassal regimes are guilty of.
Here is the interview that was recorded shortly before Udo Ulfkotte's death:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bm_hWenGJKg
If enough people support the effort, I am willing to contact KenFM for the authorization to translate the interview and use it for subtitles to the video. However, I can't do that on my own.
Correction: the interview was recorded two years before his passing.Antonymnottheonly1the U.S. regime had pushed for in the same fashion the way they had pushed Nazi Germany to invade the U.S.S.R.So Roosevelt pushed Hitler to attack Stalin? Hitler didn't want to go East? Revisionism at it most motive free.
It would help if you would use your brain just once. 'Pushing' is synonymous for a variety of ways to instigate a desired outcome. Financing is just one way. And Roosevelt was in no way the benevolent knight history twisters like to present him. You are outing yourself again as an easliy duped sheep.AntonymBut then, with all the assaults by the unintelligence agencies, it does not come as a surprise when facts are twisted.
Lebensraum was first popularized in 1901 in Germany https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lebensraum Hitler's "Mein Kampf" ( 1925) build on that: he had no need for any American or other push, it was intended from the get go. The timing of operation Barbarossa was brilliant though: it shocked Stalin into a temporary limbo as he had his own aggressive plans.Casandra2This excellent article demonstrates how the Controlling Elite manipulates the Media and the Message for purposes of misdirecting attention and perception of their true intentions and objective of securing Global Ownership (aka New World Order).MASTER OF UNIVEThis approach has been assiduously applied, across the board, over many years, to the point were they now own and run everything required to subjugate the 'human race' to the horrors of their psychopathic inclinations. They are presently holding the global economy on hold until their AI population (social credit) control system/grid is in place before bringing the house down.
Needless to say, when this happens a disunited and frightened Global Population will be at their mercy.
If you wish to gain a full insight of what the Controlling Elite is about, and capable of, I recommend David Icke's latest publication 'Trigger'. I know he's been tagged a 'nutter' over the past thirty years, but I reckon this book represents the 'gold standard' in terms of generating awareness as a basis for launching a united global population counter-attack (given a great strategy) against forces that can only be defined as pure 'EVIL'.
Corporate Journalism is all about corporatism and the continuation of it. If the Intelligence Community needs greater fools for staffing purposes in the corporate hierarchy they look for anyone that can be compromised via inducements of whatever the greater fools want. Engaging in compromise allows both parties to have complicit & explicit understanding that corruption and falsehood are the tools of the trade. To all-of-a-sudden develop a conscience after decades of playing the part of a willing participant is understandable in light of the guilt complex one must develop after screwing everyone in the world out of the critical assessment we all need to obtain in order to make decisions regarding our futures.nottheonly1Bought & paid for corporate Journalists are controlled by the Intelligence Agencies and always have been since at least the Second World War. The CIA typically runs bribery & blackmail at the state & federal level so that when necessary they have instant useless eaters to offer up as political sacrifice when required via state run propaganda, & impression management.
Assuming that journalism is an ethical occupation is naïve and a fools' game even in the alternative news domain as all writers write from bias & a lack of real knowledge. Few writers are intellectually honest or even aware of their own limits as writers. The writer is a failure and not a hero borne in myth. Writers struggle to write & publish. Bought and paid for writers don't have a struggle in terms of writing because they are told what to write before they write as automatons for the Intelligence Community knowing that they sold their collective souls to the Prince of Darkness for whatever trinkets, bobbles, or bling they could get their greedy hands on at the time.
Developing a conscience late in life is too late.
May all that sell their souls to the Intel agencies understand that pond scum never had a conscience to begin with.
Once pond scum always pond scum.
MOU
What is not addressed in this talk is the addictive nature of this sort of public relation writing. Journalism is something different altogether. I know that, because I consider myself to be a journalist at heart – one that stopped doing it when the chalice was offered to me. The problem is that one is not part of the cabal one day to another.MASTER OF UNIVEIt is a longer process in which one is gradually introduced to ever more expensive rewards/bribes. Never too big to overwhelm – always just about what one would accept as 'motivation' to omit aspects of any issue. Of course, omission is a lie by any other name, but I can attest to the life style of a journalist that socializes with the leaders of all segments of society.
And I would also write a critique about a great restaurant – never paying a dime for a fantastic dinner. The point though is that I would not write a good critique for a nasty place for money. I have never written anything but the truth – for which I received sometimes as much as a bag full of the best rolls in the country.
Twisting the truth for any form of bribes is disgusting and attests of the lowest of any character.
Professional whoring is as old as the hills and twice as dusty. Being ethical is difficult stuff especially when money is involved. Money is always a prime motivator but vanity works wonders too. Corporatists will offer whatever inducements they can to get what they want.All mainstream media voices are selling a media package that is a corporatist lie in and of itself. Truth is less marketable than lies. Embellished news & journalistic hype is the norm.
If the devil offers inducements be sure to up the ante to outsmart the drunken sot.
MOU
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Nov 01, 2019 | off-guardian.org
As you may have figured out by now, Hillary Clinton, warped by her own self aggrandizement of entitlement, did Tulsi Gabbard and her Presidential campaign against interventionist wars a huge incidental favor.
While the Democrats continue to splinter and spiral out of control on the eve of what promises to be a transformative national election, the Grand Inquisitor seized an opportunity to allege that Gabbard (and Jill Stein) are " Russian assets " and " Putin puppets ".
Since Tulsi is a Major in the US Army Reserves and holds the highest security clearance available, the term 'asset,' which is associated with being an agent of a foreign power, carries a level of national security significance.
Believing herself untouchable and immune from any genuine criticism or objective analysis after having successfully evaded prosecution from the nation's top law enforcement agencies, HRC went off the deep end dragging the Democratic party further into the ditch.
She is a favorite of the Russians. That's assuming that Jill Stein will give it up which she might not because she is also a Russian asset."
Clinton's historic pronouncement came in the mistaken belief that publicly humiliating Gabbard would intimidate the Aloha Girl to silence and seek refuge on her surfboard – but that is not how it has played out.
An unexpected bonus proved once again that political strategy has never been Clinton's strong suit as her malicious comments have brought the anti-war alt left with the libertarian alt-right together in Gabbard's defense. With HRC's injudicious taunts, the glimmer of an emerging political realignment , one that has been at odds with both the Dem and Republican establishments, has surfaced – probably not exactly what HRC intended.
In response to having received a burst of unprecedented support, Gabbard is about to assure her place on the November debate stage and continues to solidify her credibility as a critic of a corrupt bipartisan political establishment and its endless wars.
If they falsely portray me as a traitor, they can do it to anyone. Don't be afraid. Join me in speaking truth to power to take back the Democrat Party and country from the corrupt elite."
It is noteworthy that HRCs accusation was to the only candidate who stands in direct opposition to the Queen Bee's history for the war machine and all of its bells and whistles. As if to call attention to the contradiction, the entire fiasco has acknowledged what was never meant to be acknowledged: that one little known Congresswoman from Hawaii would dare to publicly confront the omnipotent HRC with her own demons and malfeasance; thereby elevating the one candidacy that represents a threat to the military industrial complex and its globalist order.
It is no coincidence that the corporate media operates in lockstep as an offensive October 12th NY Times article was immediately followed by a CNN commentary as well as other media sycophants, all tagging Gabbard as a Russian asset.
Contrary to Journalism 101 on how professional media should conduct themselves, there has been no evidence, no facts, no supporting documentation as they characteristically rely on innuendo and disinformation.
At the last Dem debate and during the kerfuffle with Clinton, Tulsi has stepped up and showed herself to be a candidate the country has been waiting for. With a powerful inner grit, she did not hesitate to take the Times and CNN publicly to task and then in response called HRC out as a warmonger and dared her to enter the 2020 fray.
There lies a deep truth within Gabbard's response especially identifying Clinton as the " personification of the rot that has sickened the Democratic Party. "
During Clinton's term as Secretary of State which is little more than a Glorified Global Hustler for the US military industrial complex, the Democratic Party lost its soul, morphing as nefarious neocons in pursuit of raw political and economic power that emanates from a policy of unfettered regime change and interventionist wars.
As Democrats embraced the neocons with no objection to the unrestrained violence, increased military budgets, indiscriminate selling of weapons to bomb a civilian population, then why should the party's grassroots object to the Tuesday morning assassination list or drone attacks on civilians or creating war in four countries living in peace in 2008?
As the party faithful allow themselves to dismiss all the suffering, the death and destruction wrought by US-made weapons as if Amazon and Google toys were an acceptable trade, they lost their conscience and their connection to the basic essence of humanity's need for peace, love and compassion.
The latest example of the Party's devotion to war is their opposition to the withdrawal of US troops from Syria as they created the phony debate that the Kurds were worth more American blood or resources. The Dems have always been more pro-war than they have been given credit for with WWI, WWII, the Korean War and Vietnam all initiated and/or expanded under Democrat Presidents.
With no substantiation from the mindless meanderings of a seriously disoriented woman, it is now clear that Clinton's derangement syndrome of unresolved guilt and denial led the Democratic party to its irrational embrace of Russiagate as the justification for her 2016 loss.
In other words, it was Russiagate that protected HRC's fragile self-esteem from the necessary introspection as Americans were pitted against one another, dividing the nation in a deliberate disruption of civil society in a more acrimonious manner than any time since the 1860's. The country has paid a bitter, unnecessary price for a divisive strategy due to Clinton's refusal to personally accept responsibility for her own failings.
HRC's most egregious war crimes as Secretary of State include assigning Victoria Nuland to conduct the overthrow of a democratically elected President in Ukraine in 2014 and the ensuing violence and civil war in the Donbass as well as her joyous rapture cackling at the death of Libyan President Qaddafi in 2011. The now infamous video " We came, we saw, he died " showed her to be more than just your average war criminal but a Monster who experiences an aberrant thrill at death and destruction.
Since June, TPTB have done their darnedest to deny Tulsi a spot on the debate stage rigging the qualifying requirements as best they could. Making it near impossible for the polling firms, which rely on campaign season and their economic connection with the DNC to call the shots in a fair and equitable manner.
As the early primary states loom ahead, the last thing TPTB need is a powerful pro-peace voice resonating with the American public. The message seems clear: talk of peace is verboten and equates with being a Russia asset and anyone with pacifist tendencies will be publicly chastised and condemned for being a tool of the Kremlin.
None of that has stopped Tulsi Gabbard.
Renee Parsons has been a member of the ACLU's Florida State Board of Directors and president of the ACLU Treasure Coast Chapter. She has been an elected public official in Colorado, an environmental lobbyist with Friends of the Earth and staff member of the US House of Representatives in Washington DC. She can be found on Twitter @reneedove31
Ken Kenn
I am very impressed by Tulsi Gabbard. She's a bit too patriotic for me – but I'm a Brit so for a serving American it's understandable. It isn't the person that is dangerous- it is the insertion of the idea that Regime Change wars are counterproductive.IgorGabbard's message is relatively simple -that is: Instead of the US destroying countries it should be spending the Military Budget on rebuilding the US. Yes that sounds like an America First type of stance but it has a decent logic about it.
Wasteful wars and the idea that the US should install its version of Democracy across the Middle East has always been a doomed project and co-operation and an attempt at rebuilding these nations in order to attempt some kind of democracy and future prosperity is required – not bombing and bullying.
You could be outraged by Clinton's nasty rhetoric but let's face it. Clinton lost to someone she considered to be a Clown.
In actuality the DNC almost promoted Trump as person they could beat hands down.
It bit them on the arse as did the Brexit result in the UK.
Clinton has never got over losing to a chump and she is just covering her backside as to why she lost.
Hell hath no fury like a self appointed Candidate scorned. Like Johnson in the UK Clinton thought she had the right to rule. She didn't and doesn't. To quote some US Senator; " The people have spoken. The bastards!"
The objective is not to install American "democracy". Which does not exist anywhere, USA is officially a republic. Unofficially, it is an oligarchy. Elite super wealthy families and their corporations run the USA. All 45 Presidents have been related to those families. The President is actually elected by the Electoral College, not the popular vote. This was designed into the Constitution of USA, Inc.RamdanThe aim of regime change is to create chaos in MENA, by which a small ME state can profit without doing any visible dirty work.
https://www.rutherford.org/publications_resources/john_whiteheads_commentary/they_live_we_sleep_beware_the_growing_evil_in_our_midstfalcemartelloThe Democrats(oxymoron for il Partito Fascista Americano) are doing this for the simple reason knowing full well that most traditional old school democrats identify with Bernie Sanders. The whole notion of the WASP notion of left right paradigm is oxymoron in itself.JonAny political science follower or student would have to agree. What is the political left mean in the west????????? Has anyone ever read Marx and Engles ???????????? Social democrat WTF does that mean. Historical revisionist get labelled Nazi sympathisers. The constant lies and obfuscation with real facts. Like population stats death births . The Classic method being used at the moment is they no longer due c0up d'etats the good old fascistic way. The popular vote gets discredited by the judicial system. IE the recent elections of Argentina and Bolivia does not suit the IMF( the International Mafia Fund) henc e the European Union Funded election monitoring organisations are all openly stating that both elections were not KOSHER.
Look at the people in Venezuela and Bolivia that are demonstrating against the popular elected and voted for Governments. White upper middle class figli di putane. Plain and simple the western paradigm of fake democrazia and fake economy is dying the plutocratic and oligarchical class are just creating storms and fires just do deviate from good old fashion bread and butter issues.
Conclusion:
The pax-americana Democrats(RATS) know full well that Bernie will not lead the party Gabbard will not lead the party so here is there strategy and good old Chuckie Schuemer the anglo-zionist par excellance laid it out in 2015. They are hoping that old fashion conservative Republicans that are disgusted with the Orange one will vote for them and further reduce the number of voters. Just think of this. In this day and age with the largest wealth gap exceeding the Gilded age which individual would take a day off to line up to vote on a bitter grey November day. So these remarkable establishment shills in their great wisdom are running as Eisenhower Republican and hoping to steal votes from the Republicans and not win any votes from the new ever growing lower so called middle class.
POST SCRIPTUM: The irony and the complete paradox more war will give us peace and the rich getting richer will give us the sheeple wealth. Black is white and grey does not exist and left vs right. What a sad state of affairs.
Docius in fundem: The sad reality in our dying western paradigm of pax-americana is never in the history of the modern and post modern era we have more people graduating from tertiary education but we have created the most ignorant and pliant class of individuals ever.
She came, we saw, she lied.Hugh O'NeillRussian asset and Putin puppet, Jesus of Nazareth reportedly said: "Blessed are the Peace Makers". As we know, Trump receives maximum MSM contempt for anything approaching diplomacy and peace, and highest MSM approval when advocating war and destruction. Likewise, when a Presidential candidate dare breathe the word "Peace" then she is either ignored, ridiculed or accused of treachery – and that greatest of all crimes, being pro-Russian (ergo anti-American). It is timely perhaps to re-read President Kennedy's (largely unreported) Commencement Address to American University, 10th June 1963:Igor" What kind of peace do I mean? What kind of peace do we seek? Not a Pax Americana enforced on the world by American weapons of war. Not the peace of the grave or the security of the slave. I am talking about genuine peace, the kind of peace that makes life on earth worth living, the kind that enables men and nations to grow and to hope and to build a better life for their children–not merely peace for Americans but peace for all men and women–not merely peace in our time but peace for all time".
"I speak of peace because of the new face of war. Total war makes no sense in an age when great powers can maintain large and relatively invulnerable nuclear forces and refuse to surrender without resort to those forces. It makes no sense in an age when a single nuclear weapon contains almost ten times the explosive force delivered by all the allied air forces in the Second World War. It makes no sense in an age when the deadly poisons produced by a nuclear exchange would be carried by wind and water and soil and seed to the far corners of the globe and to generations yet unborn."
Lest we forget: Lee Harvey Oswald was sheep-dipped as a Russian-loving commie precisely so as to blame Russia for killing that commie/socialist/pacifist/drug-addled/free-lovin' Jack Kennedy. Somehow, their script didn't really make any sense. Script-writer Allen Dulles had written a turkey, but the show must go on, and on .
It won't be allowed. The People have no say in the matter. Politics is pure spectacle, to distract and entertain the masses, and to make them think that they have a voice. All 45 US Presidents have been interrelated through 200+ super wealth elite intertwined families. If Tulsi Gabbard is not related, then she is not getting into the White House. If she is related, she will get in and do nothing different from what the previous actors have always done.Chinese Asset?#Resist45 and Trump, Mr. #45, work for the same people. Keeping the nation dazed and confused, since January 2017. Congress does nothing useful, by design, concentrating on impeachment. The Media has plenty of Trump social media coverage to prevent ever having space to report on actual events (as if they would).
Please don't make the Republicans look better than they are. Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Ms. Hua Chunying said at a press briefing thatSeamus PadraigPence's speech made Thursday revealed his "sheer arrogance and hypocrisy, and was packed with political prejudice and lies"
So refreshing to hear it from a high level official! Ms Hua also accused Pence of using China as a prop to distract from the United States' failings. Now we know, the 'Russian asset' accusation is used to distract from the continuous and never-ending murderous operation of the US regime.
IgorSince Tulsi is a Major in the US Army Reserves and holds the highest security clearance available, the term 'asset,' which is associated with being an agent of a foreign power, carries a level of national security significance.
Alt-journalist Caity Johnstone has recently remarked upon how the Democrats and the media (but I repeat myself) have started to give the word 'asset' their own little proprietary meaning:
"Russian 'assets' are not formal relationships in the USIC [US Intelligence Community] sense of the word," CNN analyst and former FBI agent Asha Rangappa explained via Twitter. "If you are parroting Russian talking points and furthering their interests, you're a source who is too dumb to know you're being played to ask for money."
"It's important to point out here that a Russian 'asset' is not the same thing as a Russian 'agent'," tweeted virulent establishment narrative manager Caroline Orr. "An asset can be witting or unwitting; it's any person or org who can be used to advance Russia's interests. It's pretty clear that Tulsi satisfies that criteria."
"One doesn't have to be on the Kremlin's payroll to be a Russian asset. One doesn't even have to know they are a Russian asset to be a Russian asset. Have you not heard the term 'useful idiot' before?" tweeted writer Kara Calavera.
At this rate, pretty soon, we'll all have to check with RT first before we open our mouths in public, just to make sure we're not accidentally agreeing with the Russians!
The Dems have always been more pro-war than they have been given credit for with WWI, WWII, the Korean War and Vietnam all initiated and/or expanded under Democrat Presidents.
Ha, ha! That takes me back–all the way to 1976, to be exact–to when Bob Dole (then a candidate for Vice-President) described all the wars of the 20th century as " Democrat wars ".
"CNN analyst and former FBI agent Asha Rangappa explained via Twitter. "Hugh O'NeillSays the CNN paid asset.
Thanks once again to Renee for championing Tulsi. Yesterday my local paper here in NZ (The Otago Daily Times) in its "This Day in History" column, briefly referred to JFK and the peaceful resolution of the Cuban Missile Crisis. I wrote to the editor my appreciation:Gwyn"Although I am old enough to remember both the 1960 election and the 1963 assassination of President John F. Kennedy, I was blissfully unaware of the Cuban Missile Crisis in October 1962 (when I was almost 7 years old). My thanks to the ODT for marking this date which is the day in History when the world stepped back from the abyss of nuclear war and ended all life on Earth. Sadly, too many today live in blissful ignorance of the most dangerous moment in the History of Mankind.
As the old saying goes, those who forget the past are doomed to repeat it. Next time around, there may no longer be the politicians with the courage and intelligence of Kennedy and Khrushchev: both men had to out-manoeuvre their own military hawks, and each man knew the personal risks he faced in doing so. Khrushchev was replaced within a year and died in ignominy.
JFK's lived another year before his own untimely end. Though we may lament the execution of John F. Kennedy, he had not lived and died in vain, because we are still here despite the military. I cannot recommend highly enough two books: firstly, Bobby Kennedy's "13 Days> A Memoir of the Cuban Missile Crisis" and James Doulglass "JFK & The Unspeakable. Why he died & Why it Matters".
Tulsi has been the only candidate in a very long time to speak the unspeakable truth. Do not condemn her for whatever flaws some commenters below perceive. No-one is absolutely perfect in every way – not even Mary Poppins. But Tulsi is a breath of fresh air and has immense courage, eloquence, passion, integrity and charisma to bring out the best in people. The real enemy is within – in every sense.
I'm sure this link will be of interest to you, Hugh. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vasily_Arkhipov_(vice_admiral)Hugh O'NeillThanks, Gwyn. I knew this story already but it is worth rereading. The fact that some dimwitted USN ship started dropping depth charges without top authority shows that JFKs grip on his own military was tenuous. He had recently read Barbara Tuchman's "The guns of August" which showed how stupid acts by subordinates could have massive consequences. Once again, this demonstrates the treachery of the military. Recently, some British General stated publicly that if Corbyn were elected, there would be a coup. The military mind cannot cope with the concept of Democracy.Harry LawThe US needs an enemy to justify its massive defence bill and 800 bases worldwide. Who better to shill for the US than that fool Jens Stoltenberg [Sec General NATO] "NATO General Secretary Says $100 Billion in Additional Alliance Spending Not Enough for Defence". The US spent $649 billion in 2018, other members of NATO spent an additional $314 billion, whereas Russia who do not want to be an enemy spent just $61.4 billion". https://sputniknews.com/military/201910251077152221-nato-general-secretary-says-100-billion-in-additional-alliance-spending-not-enough-for-defence/AntonymStoltenberg would happily stop all social services in order to buy more missiles and gain a few brownie points from Trump. Stoltenberg along with the US Neocons are are sick SOB's.
Trump doesn't want US taxpayers to fund US mil in Europe, not unreasonable. Both Trump and Jabbard are opponents of the CIA – Wall street complex. Nationalists vs Globalists, but some people still believe the former are more dangerous than the latter.Wilmers31Amazon, Google or Apple have more power than North Korea, Iran or Xyz. China cannot be the CIA-Wall street bogey now as they make too much profit of it: Russia is much smaller fish margin wise (the Clinton's only managed a few dozen million$) so that makes the perfect fake enemy. On top Russia actually competes with oil and gas, which China can't.
Someone with more knowledge to the timeline needs to correlate the punishments for Russia (sanctions) to the oil price. I think they started sanctions when Russian oil and gas deliveries were getting cheaper but US needed 75$+ for the frackers. It was just eliminating a competitor, especially after they could not purchase the monopoly on Russian gas and oil through the monopoly company Yukos.Gary WeglarzThis is something I've been thinking a lot about lately, and this seems like a good post to share it on.BigBWatching trolls emerge to discredit and attack the lone U.S. candidate who publicly and vocally opposes America's regime change wars and even dares tell the American people that "we are supporting the terrorists – not fighting them" – is bad enough in MSM, but a sad and interesting comment on how completely engaged the State has become with attempting to "control" and "shape" discourse on progressive sites such as this.
My favorite of course is when one State troll debates another State troll in completely "fake" discourse, attempting to amplify their troll message. The other technique that is endlessly amusing is when a single troll posts something a well informed person with progressive values can quite agree with one day, followed the next by complete gibberish posing as "sophistication," followed the next day by talking points right out of the CIA & Pentagon, and then follows all that up with posting something sensible again. Just a bit "crazy-making" no?
It pays to remember ("The 4 D's: Deny / Disrupt / Degrade / Deceive") that come right out of the trolling manual. It should be a red-flag if these descriptors characterize someone's posts.
The saying that if it ("looks like a duck, walks like a duck and talks like a duck, well, it just might be a duck") – is one that is worth applying to our comment's sections discourse. Because if it "posts like a troll"- in the end it doesn't really matter if it "is" a troll (something we will never know), or is simply an uniformed but opinionated idiot – as that person is "doing the work of" the State sponsored trolls in either case.
I find it is always worth periodically reviewing what we know about these operations (thank you Edward Snowden) – as it helps us to better understand and prepares us to better deal with the State sponsored troll operations we now see routinely in all of our truly progressive comments sections on alternative media sites. What we now deal with here at OffG and elsewhere are daily routine attempts to take over, shape and control otherwise rational informed sincere discussion by readers. Sadly this is how some people make their living – existing in a continual state of existential "bad faith."
Gary:Gary WeglarzAnyone who stands for a perception managed 'business as usual' candidacy is authentic: anyone who tries to expose the vicious hypocrisy is an 'asset' or a 'troll'? Welcome to the postmodern anti-debate.
I'm trying to think of where I have come across a more cynical attempt to distort the truth and apologetically cover ethnic cleansing and cultural anti-Muslim genocide? And I cannot think of a better example. Anyone who attempts to expose Gabbard for her cultural links to actual Hindutva supremacism and real live fascism must be a paid state troll? What can I say: I am a peace troll exposing the Politics of Lies you appear to support. Tulsi Gabbard is a traitor to humanity.
What I laid out below is not trolling: it exposes just how much you have to invert the true values of liberation and freedom to get a 'peace candidate' from a Zionist fascist supporter. In brief synopsis: Modi tore up the Indian constitution; flooded Jammu and Kashmir with troops; invoked the 'Riot Act' to eject all journalists and TV crews; in order that his ethnic cleansing of the valley goes unseen. This is a crime against humanity: which also carries no small risk of nuclear war. Making this apparent is trolling?
In the perversion of the narrative script you propose: this is called "vocally opposing America's regime change wars". How; by apologising for not being able to attend the 'Howdy, Modi' because she was pre-commited to be lying somewhere else?
In contrast: Arundhati Roy stands accused as a traitor and having her rights and citizenship stripped for bringing attention to Modi's war crimes. What does Gabbard do? Pass the caviar and offer more lucrative trade deals for Modi's murderers? That is the difference between a real world candidate and a fake. Will Gabbard call out Modi; el-Sisi; Netanyahu or Adelson for that matter?
You know the scene that Milosevic likes to post: of Netanyahu being feted by Congress – which looks exactly like the Nuremberg Rallies Gabbard was there to listen to the ally and friend of the United States – that is the only democracy in the Middle East – denounce Iran. Afterward, she went on Fox News and glibly agreed Greta Van Susteren that the deal was akin to the infamous Munich Pact. Blithely nodding her head before engaging in some fantasy talking points about North Korean nukes hitting Hawaii: and the three month acquisition of the Iranian bomb which comes straight off of one of Nuttyyahoo's empty CD-roms. So can we drop the pretense please?
https://video.foxnews.com/v/4091784052001/#sp=show-clips
Adelson's 'Champion of Freedom' nails her real colours to the mast?
Then you invoke Sartre: did you know he was a communist? Who staid loyal to Stalin's Soviet Union for much longer than he really should have? What do you think he would have made of a candidate who dines with Hindutva fascist racist supremacists and offers them more trade on a pro rata basis of carrying out war crimes and crimes against humanity? Bad faith and authenticity: where do yo think they lie? Gabbard is an authentic candidate only in such a highly perception managed world as we have. Which is why we have such a highly perception managed world – because we highly perception manage it ourselves. No paid state trolls required: except in the imagination perhaps? Perhaps only those not suffering the illusion can see who she really is?
The only way to make this real is by censoring the right to criticism the illegitimate candidacy of those who are silent on Modi's open fascism and very probable silent, unseen ethnic cleansing. If it is silent and unseen then it is not happening. Then we have our perfect 'peace candidate'. Do you see how it works?
Let us shut down any chance of any open debate on that. Well done Gary. You and all the fawning sycophants on this page have the perfect peace candidate you deserve. By ignoring valid and authentic critical consciousness and suppressing the voice of freedom.
Gabbard needs to be exposed as a modified war candidate: and friend of the Gods of Money and their pet dictators. It is a cynical ploy to try and close down such real world exposure as 'trolling'. Trolling for peace maybe? Peace we may never now know.
My comments were not intended to be a defense of Gabbard. Though she is the only candidate I can remember in many years that is speaking some truth, any truth, about the amoral U.S. war machine, she of course has no chance whatsoever of winning and no one in their right mind would suggest otherwise. Yet I and others who are quite aware of this obvious reality find the undeniable fact she is "publicly speaking some truth" about that war machine a rather important addition to the theatre of the absurd political debate here in the U.S. So strange that support and recognition of this simple fact is so controversial to some.RobGNo, my comments were not some defense of Gabbard as an impure savior, but rather about the trolls and those who perhaps in their boundless narcissism simply do the work of the government trolls because they routinely "post like trolls." You know, ("The 4 D's: Deny / Disrupt / Degrade / Deceive"). Perhaps you missed that somehow?
I tire of so much smug narcissistic idiocy, and predictable attacks on any who might disagree, posing as – "commentary" or "discourse." Of course neither you nor Big B have commented a word on that topic- the actual topic of my post. Instead simply strawman attacks related to Tulsi. How strange. But then again: "You've obviously got it all sewn up :(" – eh Frank?
I really don't give a shit about what the totally corrupt US political system is doing.nonameforsureThey are all scum and vermin, who, in a sane world, would all be swept down the gutter.
In the Middle East we are on the verge of WW3. The Russians and the Chinese are not going to put up with the American Frankenstein any more. Do Americans realise what this will mean?
I doubt it, because many Americans don't have a brain cell between them (Clue: America will be totally destroyed in a WW3).
8 elements appeared on a website recently which the author suggested could be used to identify fake, false, or self agenda propaganda.. learn them.. apply them.Capricornia Man
Develop an international way to report in some standard way on the elements that appear in articles. Maybe date, time, place presented, element identified, together with a comment that fits each expression. In my opinion it is important to build the case that the same false narrative appears in your favorite fake media as well as everyone else's favorite fake media.You will be able to detect how these 8 elements develop fact that identify processes and activities of those in charge and how these elements will allow those seeking the truth to build a collaborative means to debunk fake. Example refer to paragraph 7 in a subject article by indicating "place" on "date" @ "time" "time" "title" and element number and then make a comment to explain why you marked the expression with a element number.
This kind of reference system allows to detect and compare both intra article fake news with inter publication fake news.. so maybe it will be discovered the news outlets and publishers and authors that hawk the same false or misleading propaganda in time to inform the public, moreover, if you can get the public to understand and to apply the element method of debunking propaganda; article by article, paragraph by paragraph, just the act of doing it, might wake them up.
1) EN establish the narrative :fake always try to establish the tuth
2) WR They wrong, we right : inconvenient facts are transformed to support the narrative
3) PF Cherry Pick the Facts : only report the facts that support the narrative
4) IS Ignore stuff : never include something that is contrary to the narrative
5) VB Blame the Victim : keep the victim on the defensive
6) MU Make up Stuff: false or non fact claims can be made up to fit the narrative
7) AC Attack and deny any form to all challengers: Persons who ask ?s are conspiracy terrorist.
8) RL Repeat the lies, repeat the lies, repeat the lies. People need help to remember the lieYour eight methods for creating fake news aptly describe the way the 'systemic anti-Semitism in the UK Labour Party' myth was promoted. Particularly methods 3,4 and 8.markWhen I complained to a broadcaster about its incompetent and biased 'coverage' of this non-issue, one of its chief defences was: 'that's what all the other news outlets are saying'.
The MSM wonder why they are regarded as mendacious and contemptible by thinking people who take the trouble to separate the facts from the spin.
A Brief Summary Of The War In Syria.Gezzah Potts2011. The Neocons activate a long standing plan that has been around for 20 years to destroy Syria. Syria is to be destroyed, like Iraq and Libya before it. Assad will be toppled within a few months and Syria smashed into a thousand pieces.
The Axis of Evil, the US and its NATO satraps, Shady Wahabia, Kosherstan and Sultan Erdogan, flood Syria with the necessary cannon fodder, hundreds of thousands of head choppers and throat slitters from a hundred countries, with a licence to murder, burn, rape, loot, steal and enslave to their hearts content. An alphabet soup of takfiri groups is created out of thin air, armed, trained, paid, transported and orchestrated with tens of billions of western taxpayers money. ISIS is just one of many.
The Syrian state, armed forces and people resist with unexpected courage and determination, and fight the proxy head choppers to a standstill. But they are under extreme pressure and have to concentrate their forces in the main battles in the west of the country. This leaves a vacuum that is filled by the phantom ISIS caliphate. This suits the Axis of Evil just fine. There is no problem with ISIS black flags flying over Damascus provided Syria is destroyed.
By 2015, the outcome is in the balance. Clinton and Sultan Erdogan have agreed to impose a no fly zone to turn the tide in favor of the head choppers. A series of Gas Attack Hoaxes and false flag atrocity claims are staged over a protracted period of time to justify Libya style intervention.
All bets are off as Putin overrides his advisors and dispatches Russian forces to intervene and prevent the destruction of the Syrian state. With the support of Iran and Hezbollah, the situation is transformed. Though the worst of the fighting is yet to come, the Neocon plot to destroy Syria is a busted flush. Syria is steadily liberated from terrorist occupation.
The main terrorist sponsors try to salvage something from this failure. Sultan Erdogan switches sides and takes the opportunity to attack the Kurds. Trump seizes the opportunity to scale back US involvement, generating much hysteria from all the Zionist shills in Washington. The Kurds seek some kind of accommodation with Damascus.
The war is now winding down. It will take some time before all the terrorist areas are liberated and occupying US and Turkish forces have to withdraw. But the outcome is now inevitable.
Chalk up another failure for the Neocons.
Funny you mentioned Arundhati Roy as I almost bought her book today: Capitalism A Ghost Story, in a Left bookshop here, however ended up getting Culture & Imperialism by Edward Said and a second hand copy of Pedadogy Of The Oppressed which I've, um, never read. Time to broaden the mind, as have hardly read any books for years except articles on the Internet. Will pick up Arundhati's book next time. Have a good dayeddieThe Dems morphed into neocons when her willy-waving husband sold out and destroyed the Democratic Party of LBJ's Great Society.Rhys JaggarTulsi being a member of the establishment which she lambasts is quite a paradox, but can be seen from one's own moral perspective. During the VietNam war era, '63-75, many who opposed the fiasco took a stronger stance: prison as a conscientious objector, moving to Canada, undesirable discharges, very vocal public protests & arrests. Many lives and futures ruined, my own included, to actively stop the illegal & profit driven Invasion ..
Tulsi has shown a lot of class, truth to the darkest Power, and long may she have this platform..
Next they will try saying that because she is not a mother she has no place being President. If I had a vote in the US, I would vote for any man, woman, black/white/Hisoanic/Asian/any other ethnicity, straight/gay/indeterminate who:1. Pledged to cut the US military budget in half, sign up to existing OPCW conventions on chemical+biological weapons and demanded that Israel did likewise.
2. Removed the right for dual citizen US-Israeli zionists to hold public US office (tell em to decide whether they are primarily aligned to Israel or not) and neutered the election-rigging AIPAC monstrosity at source.
3. Called out the global warming hoax as the biggest scam of the 21st century.
4. Enforced the concept that polluters pay to clean up their polluting, particularly in extractive industries, agriculture, mining and packaging.
5. Promoted the restoration of mutually owned local finance, particularly in providing mortgages.
6. Confronted the self-serving victim gravy train, in particular making the terms 'man' and 'woman' beyond the rights of anyone to take legal action.
7. vowed to shut down 25% of US overseas military bases in a first term and a further tranche in a second term.Just for starters.
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Oct 20, 2019 | off-guardian.org
He stated:
There is no such thing at this date of the world's history, in America, as an independent press There is not ONE of you who dares to write your honest opinions, and if you did you know beforehand that it would never appear in print!
I am paid weekly for keeping my honest opinion out of the paper I am connected with The business of journalists is to destroy the truth, to lie outright, to pervert, to vilify, to fawn at the feet of mammon, and to sell his country and his race for his daily bread We are the tools of rich men behind the scenes.
We are jumping jacks, they pull the strings and we dance. Our talents, our possibilities and our lives are all the property of other men. We are intellectual prostitutes!"
We only need go back a few short years to see the utter magnitude of what Swinton was talking about. Remember the illegal and immoral USA invasion and occupation of Iraq? Most of the 'levers of empire' were pushed to accommodate that bit of lying, disinformation and half truths.
This writer remembers when Phil Donahue had his nightly news/talk show on MSNBC. By February of 2003 or thereabouts, Jeff Cohen, Phil's producer, recalls how he was told to have TWO pro invasion guests on for every anti invasion guest. Remember, at that time General Electric Corp. owned MSNBC. Yet, that was not enough to satisfy the empire. On February 23 the Donahue show was cancelled, although the ratings were pretty good.
You see, by that time, late February, the machine was all ready for the attack. It just needed a few more morsels of propaganda to sink into both the Congress and of course the consumers Sorry, I mean the citizenry.
This writer was extremely agitated by the high level of Pro invasion info coming over the embedded mainstream print and electronic media. One slight consolation was when C-Span actually 'did the correct thing' and showed a Canadian news channel's coverage of the impending doom.
Of course, when the die was cast and Rumsfeld's famous Shock and Awe campaign began, the three major news talk channels, CNN, MSNBC and FOX, were all over us with cheerleading.
FOX was so off the radar that no critique is needed. However, CNN and MSNBC, trying to look like 'Neutral Journalism 101', could not contain their peanut gallery mindsets, the one that John Swinton referred to in his famous speech.
You had Aaron Brown, Lester Holt and little Katie Couric (of flagship station NBC, owned by GE), along with Brian Williams (later to be outed, for but awhile, for his phony news stories in Iraq) all right there celebrating the 'Liberators of Iraq'.
They all wore their flag buttons on their lapels, and little Katie was filmed strolling through the halls of NBC shouting 'Marines Rock!' Of course, Lester Holt did the 'right (wing) thing' and now is a respected anchor so much so that good ole Lester moderates presidential debates.
Swinton's use of the phrase 'Intellectual prostitutes' rang true then.
Now we come to a recent bit of disgrace. Ellen Degeneres, the highly celebrated and successful daytime talk show hostess and proud gay woman, was seen sitting with Junior Bush at a Dallas Cowboys game, in the exclusive owner's box area.
She has had Junior on her show to talk about his painting, has visited him at his ranch, and considers him a 'Nice guy'. Junior has, on record as president, never did squat to help with the AIDs pandemic, and allowed his far right evangelical beliefs to keep him from ever speaking favorably about gay rights etc.
Yet, this openly gay woman, who must have felt alarmed by our illegal invasion (OR DID SHE?), must have had friends who were enraged by that invasion at the time.
All the many alternative news blips must have gotten to her eyes and ears, telling her that the Bush/Cheney gang were WAR CRIMINALS! Yet Ms. DeGeneres continues to satisfy the lie which tells us to take a pass on the dastardly things done by the war criminals in the White House.
As the war criminal Mr. Obama stated, when in 2008 many of his own party wanted to have hearings on the pre-emptive attack and occupation of Iraq, that it was time to 'Move forward'. Forward he did by increasing the number of drone murderous assaults by Tenfold!
Now that he is out of office, Barack, the 'Hope and Change' king, just purchased a home for $8.1 million. Tell that to the suckers who fell for his rhetoric in the Afro American communities.
Anyone but the foolish people who still support Mr. Trump realize that he is as much of a populist as the man he emulates with his body gestures: Il Duce!
Nothing ever changes when the majority of working stiffs suck in the foul air that comes from the mouths of the empire's minions, whether they be presidents, congress people or (so called) journalists and talk show hosts. It is time for those of good conscience to boycott the lot of them!
Philip A Farruggio is a son and grandson of Brooklyn , NYC longshoremen. He has been a free lance columnist since 2001, with over 400 of his works posted on sites like Global Research, Greanville Post, OffGuardian, Consortium News, Information Clearing House, Nation of Change, World News Trust, Op Ed News, Dissident Voice, , Activist Post, Sleuth Journal, Truthout and many others. His blog can be read in full on World News Trust , whereupon he writes a great deal on the need to cut military spending drastically and send the savings back to save our cities. Philip has an internet interview show, 'It's the Empire... Stupid' with producer Chuck Gregory.
Pretty good article. Pity you had to spoil it with the Trump populist Mussolini comparison at the end. Don't get me wrong I am no Trump fan but are you saying that much of the stuff written about him is not propaganda? So when it comes to Trump the media are ..even handed? honest? ..unbiased? (LOL). P.S. How many wars did Bush try and stop? How many wars did Obama stop? Is stopping wars now "populism"? Even I can see that the highest levels of the US government have been compromised by the intelligence agencies and corrupt partisan actors. Need I remind you that it was a "populist" who called out the FAKE NEWS?DoctortrinateThe News Today, as slipshod as you like – but how far is it different from those diligent yesterdays. Broadcasts, built upon a complex Fabrication, to deceive it's willing dependants into accepting falsifications as an authentic constant of everyday reality.MASTER OF UNIVESo, until the demoi discard the pleasure of blissful ignorance, for the painful truth whatever the spin, however its dressed, the story will continue, trapped in it's own invention, lost in a pernicious labyrinth where every redundant turn forgets the last.
Corporatism is Fascism, and Fascists that tow the party line are always utilized for purposes of impression management much like props on a TV program are. Dubya is a corporatist whore just as daytime talk show hosts are too. Assuming that corporatist whores should have integrity is naïve in the extreme.wardropperIf you watch television you are an automaton without enough reason to be able to turn the television off given that you have been programmed to mindlessly adhere to whatever the television coughs up daily.
If you watch mindless Fascists entertaining mass murderers like George W. Bush at ballgames that host the Military Industrial Complex for halftime shows you are _Functionally Retarded_ and likely skimmed over this article whilst locked in a trance state of ignorance & a lack of education.FUCK America & American television.
It's a bankrupt Corporation that is $22 trillion in debt that it will never pay back, suckers!
MOU
hollyPlastic" Mr. Obama stated, when in 2008 many of his own party wanted to have hearings on the pre-emptive attack and occupation of Iraq, that it was time to 'Move forward' "And I will never, ever, forget Nancy Pelosi's dismissive shrug when many of that same party were calling for Bush's impeachment on account of that illegal invasion:
"Impeachment is off the table." Decent Americans no longer have a representative in the US government. As Swinton clearly implies, those who hire today's journalists bear practically all the responsibility for this.A glaring example of how much the West loves freedom is shown in this UN briefing on Torture, this week.milosevicSpoiler: the room is basically empty.
https://www.rt.com/news/471016-assange-torture-violations-un/This serves a good demonstration of how stupid Hong Kong protesters are in believing that there is a 'West/UK/US' supporting their quest for 'Democracy' and 'Freedom'.
you mean Hollywood movies aren't an accurate source of information about world politics and history???hollyPlasticLook and you'll see that according to the Controlled Corporate Mass Media, there are, in this period of history, three pillars that are supporting Western civilisation:mark
- Pillar One: Peroxide. Look how very blonde people are getting on mainstream media. You can't miss it. Good investment to buy shares in Peroxide factories.
- Piller Two: White Skin. Whether it's using Photoshop or Skin Whitening Products, people are looking very white in their photos, these days.
- Pillar three: Piercing Blue Eyes. That must be using photoshop, because there aren't eyes that are so blue in real life like you see nowadays in the photos.
And
The Blonde is getting blonder. Even, black is now turning blonde. The White is getting whiter. The Blue is getting bluer.
Other pillars of Western Civilisation are somewhat behind the scene and include the proliferation/sales of weapons of mass destruction, breaking international laws, as well as, the withdrawal from treaties which restrict the deployment of nuclear missiles.
Ah, but everybody knows Bombing Brown People and Torturing Brown People is good for them. We only do it for their benefit. And this in no way contradicts Our Values and Our Rules Based Order. All these benighted natives and lesser breeds are jolly grateful for all our lofty sermons and pious lectures about human rights.milosevicindeed, it's the white man's burden .padreI find it very interesting, how people need to worship something!It seems to me that they aren't able to admit, that there are things that are not clear to them!For instance, we know very little about the universe, so we declare God made it!hollyPlasticThere is a poignant remark made on these pages which goes something like this:hollyPlasticWhen surviving depends on believing, the mind works wonders
I think the implications of 'believing' in order to survive are profound. People need to believe in order to fit in, in order to get a job, in order to get a promotion, in order to get married, in order to get enough food to feed their offspring, and in order to 'look' free.
Not to forget, by believing in Jesus, you give your proxy support to plunder every inch of the Earth, and kill as many brown-skin people as possible.
Tim JenkinsI describe this situation we face as mind control warfare
It is indeed. Thanks for the valuable thoughts!
Mammon avoids questioning & analysing incredible endless lies by 'Schiff for brains'. When actually, just like Norman Bates in Psycho, Adam Schiff is actually the "whistleblower", with bent whistle all he needs is a wig and a rocking chair 🙂Tim JenkinsCorrection: an electric rocking chair, lolGezzah PottsJayzus . Adam fecken Schiff. Complete wackjob extraordinaire, tho in Washington DC he has s(ch)tiff competition. Someone the Liberal bourgie professional types here in Aussie regard with dewy eyed fondness and admiration for leading the . Resistance. Gag. Can things get anymore surreal? Do you sometimes feel like you've dropped acid by mistake such is the bizarre happenings, um, happening. Do you think the Mad Hatter would be perplexed at the state of our World? I know I bloody ambobHey man, there's nothing wrong with the way the British regime treats its sick people .vexarbhttps://www.disabilitynewsservice.com/months-of-pip-distress-hastened-my-brothers-death/
. is there?
Bob, nothing wrong at all -- if you worship St.Margaret of Muck, patron saint of the AZC.Pyewacket"There's no such thing as a social conscience".
Eugenics mate, it's been back in fashion here for the past decade. But instead of dying in a death camp, you die on the street, or your own home, if you have one.vexarbAOO, you mean Trump's Time to Bring Them Back might be genuine? I give him credit because I understand his problem: he has to face his Jewish daughter and her Likudnik husband.vexarb"It is easier to rule an Empire than to manage a family" -- Montaigne
ps Not only face but live with. Trump's sincerity is in the same awkward family position as Cher in "Moonstruck" when she and her boyfriend meet her father and his girlfriend at the Opera, and she says to her father:mark"I'm not sure whether I saw you".
The only 2 reputable journalists who tried to cover Iraq honestly were Donahue and Chris Hedges. Needless to say, both were immediately sacked. Needless to say, all the cheerleading whores with blood on their hands prospered greatly and are still in situ peddling new lies.GraftUnfortunately Donahue is not on the working mans side he just didn't want a war and Chris Hedges is controlled opposition that's why he has his own tv show and lost a tonne of support for his outright lies about LeninmarkI don't agree with either of them on different issues but I wouldn't question their integrity.Ramdan"But the more fundamental problem is that Americans are too nice. That may seem like a paradox, since we are a country that blithely bombs the world and then weeps with self-pity and affronted dignity when the little people we just stomped on fail to forgive us for tearing out their fingernails. In fact, our niceness is itself a symptom of the moral obliviousness that permits us to enact atrocities in the first place. Niceness is not friendliness, not hospitality, not charity and not goodness. Niceness is the blank grin on the face of the psychopath: it is the public enactment of all the forms of love and kindness without the troublesome burden of loving anyone or treating people with kindness.markThis is what an Ellen DeGeneres is really getting at when she brags about being friends with those who have "different beliefs." It is not a matter of actual emotional attachment to any system of values, and it's certainly not a matter of transcending minor political squabbles to form some approximation of a community. [ ]
Rather, she is saying that it is more personally and professionally convenient just to be nice to whatever person happens to be in the same grandstand for the same spectacle of large men grievously injuring each other. It is not that there are disparate values to be bridged in order to form a diverse and tolerant society. Instead, it is hankering after the ease of a society in which there is no necessity to form a core of values beyond the practical calculation of personal and social advantage."Dubya rehabilitated himself by slagging off the Orange Man. So he's now a jolly decent chap and all round good egg. Certainly outweighs a little thing like a couple of million dead sand niggers.GraftAs jimmy Bore said on his show liberals love Bush nowadays but they still fucking hate Ralph Nader, because he gave us ..Bush! Mind officially blownRamdanThis is an interesting (as for debate) assessment of the motives and the way we (mis)construct reality ."in the interests of survival" but "survival" of what?
"survival" of a mind construct as in "I don't like this but I NEED to do it to survive, to STAY ALIVE, to keep eating, to not to die"?
"Survival" as in the indegenous kids eating from dumpsters? ( here and here ) .
OR "survival" of our INTERNALIZED adoration of Mammon as the provider for pleasurable moments and the utter avoidance of the non-pleasurable.
survival of a vehement desire for what is mentally, socially and culturally construed as 'satisfactory', 'laudable', 'praiseworthy', 'deserving' .which basically is the adoration of wealth, and 'upper' social status, of celebrity and of all other things that represent the ACTUAL internal adoration of Mammon.
Is in this- seemingly 'innocuous' – way that reality is subverted and we (unconsciously) construct the uber-materialistic worldview that continues to discard the honest, deep human, spiritual values that can save us from this madness.
I would rather remember again, and old, "crazy" guy .
"A philosopher named Aristippus, who had quite willingly sucked up to Dionysus and won himself a spot at his court, saw Diogenes cooking lentils for a meal. "If you would only learn to compliment Dionysus, you wouldn't have to live on lentils."
Diogenes replied, "But if you would only learn to live on lentils, you wouldn't have to flatter Dionysus."
― Diogenes of Sinope
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Nov 01, 2019 | off-guardian.org
Gary Weglarz
This is something I've been thinking a lot about lately, and this seems like a good post to share it on.Watching trolls emerge to discredit and attack the lone U.S. candidate who publicly and vocally opposes America's regime change wars and even dares tell the American people that "we are supporting the terrorists – not fighting them" – is bad enough in MSM, but a sad and interesting comment on how completely engaged the State has become with attempting to "control" and "shape" discourse on progressive sites such as this.
My favorite of course is when one State troll debates another State troll in completely "fake" discourse, attempting to amplify their troll message. The other technique that is endlessly amusing is when a single troll posts something a well informed person with progressive values can quite agree with one day, followed the next by complete gibberish posing as "sophistication," followed the next day by talking points right out of the CIA & Pentagon, and then follows all that up with posting something sensible again. Just a bit "crazy-making" no?
It pays to remember ("The 4 D's: Deny / Disrupt / Degrade / Deceive") that come right out of the trolling manual. It should be a red-flag if these descriptors characterize someone's posts.
The saying that if it ("looks like a duck, walks like a duck and talks like a duck, well, it just might be a duck") – is one that is worth applying to our comment's sections discourse. Because if it "posts like a troll"- in the end it doesn't really matter if it "is" a troll (something we will never know), or is simply an uniformed but opinionated idiot – as that person is "doing the work of" the State sponsored trolls in either case.
I find it is always worth periodically reviewing what we know about these operations (thank you Edward Snowden) – as it helps us to better understand and prepares us to better deal with the State sponsored troll operations we now see routinely in all of our truly progressive comments sections on alternative media sites. What we now deal with here at OffG and elsewhere are daily routine attempts to take over, shape and control otherwise rational informed sincere discussion by readers. Sadly this is how some people make their living – existing in a continual state of existential "bad faith."
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Nov 01, 2019 | off-guardian.org
mark
A Brief Summary Of The War In Syria.
2011. The Neocons activate a long standing plan that has been around for 20 years to destroy Syria. Syria is to be destroyed, like Iraq and Libya before it. Assad will be toppled within a few months and Syria smashed into a thousand pieces.
The Axis of Evil, the US and its NATO satraps, Shady Wahabia, Kosherstan and Sultan Erdogan, flood Syria with the necessary cannon fodder, hundreds of thousands of head choppers and throat slitters from a hundred countries, with a licence to murder, burn, rape, loot, steal and enslave to their hearts content. An alphabet soup of takfiri groups is created out of thin air, armed, trained, paid, transported and orchestrated with tens of billions of western taxpayers money. ISIS is just one of many.
The Syrian state, armed forces and people resist with unexpected courage and determination, and fight the proxy head choppers to a standstill. But they are under extreme pressure and have to concentrate their forces in the main battles in the west of the country. This leaves a vacuum that is filled by the phantom ISIS caliphate. This suits the Axis of Evil just fine. There is no problem with ISIS black flags flying over Damascus provided Syria is destroyed.
By 2015, the outcome is in the balance. Clinton and Sultan Erdogan have agreed to impose a no fly zone to turn the tide in favour of the head choppers. A series of Gas Attack Hoaxes and false flag atrocity claims are staged over a protracted period of time to justify Libya style intervention.
All bets are off as Putin overrides his advisors and despatches Russian forces to intervene and prevent the destruction of the Syrian state. With the support of Iran and Hezbollah, the situation is transformed. Though the worst of the fighting is yet to come, the Neocon plot to destroy Syria is a busted flush. Syria is steadily liberated from terrorist occupation.
The main terrorist sponsors try to salvage something from this failure. Sultan Erdogan switches sides and takes the opportunity to attack the Kurds. Trump seizes the opportunity to scale back US involvement, generating much hysteria from all the Zionist shills in Washington. The Kurds seek some kind of accommodation with Damascus.
The war is now winding down. It will take some time before all the terrorist areas are liberated and occupying US and Turkish forces have to withdraw. But the outcome is now inevitable.
Chalk up another failure for the Neocons.
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Nov 01, 2019 | off-guardian.org
Gwyn
I'm still quite annoyed about being called a "paid pro-Putin shill" on one of the Guardian's comment sections. "Paid"! If only!markI've been trying to get my KGB back pay for years. I wrote to the accounts dept. saying I'd take roubles or bitcoin, but nothing has come through.markWe are all Russian assets now. I myself have been a Russian asset for years. I have had to do Putin's bidding ever since he threatened to publish old KGB photographs of me having sex with a rhinoceros.Seamus PadraigSince then, I've been a Kremlin puppet, just like Trump. Gabbard and Jill Stein.
I am a Russian asset and I approve of this message!
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Nov 01, 2019 | off-guardian.org
Wilmers31
Someone with more knowledge to the timeline needs to correlate the punishments for Russia (sanctions) to the oil price.I think they started sanctions when Russian oil and gas deliveries were getting cheaper but US needed 75$+ for the frackers.
It was just eliminating a competitor, especially after they could not purchase the monopoly on Russian gas and oil through the monopoly company Yukos.
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Oct 22, 2019 | discussion.theguardian.com
Luka Lazovic -> Haigin88 , 31 Jul 2019 07:31
She is absolutely in the best position to talk about foreign policy having been there in the trenches and personally knowing horrors or war. I've seen bits of those Fox videos and she was admirable there. Being a veteran probably counts for something in small towns where most Americans live.I wasn't following her on social media so not sure how she fares there.
Bernie, on the other hand, knows how to campaign and has very good domestic policy and he used to be popular in swing states, certainly better than Clinton.
So two of them would be my dream ticket. I feel Warren and Biden would be a loss of another four years or even longer.
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Oct 21, 2019 | off-guardian.org
Toby Russell
If it is true that humans very often fall in worship at the feet of Mammon, which very few reasonable people would contest, and if this idolatry produces almost wholly unwanted outcomes, a few important observations immediately follow.Toby RussellThe first might be that the so-called market and its allegedly 'neutral' distributive mechanisms do not produce the best of all possible worlds as a result of people trading with each other in pursuit of ever more money. The primary reason for this is that market fundamentalism takes no account of power and its symbiotic relationship with money; indeed, it is logically required by its fundamental tenets to deem money a 'neutral veil' that enables market activity as a kind of infinite and inert catalyst.
The second, and far more important, is what we hold to be valuable at the cultural level, and how we go about systemically measuring and distributing that value. Currently, money is the primary, almost only, tool for that job. Thus, if we cannot financially afford to do a thing, that thing is not worth doing by definition, even to the point of actively not doing what is actually affordable and desirable in terms of available resources and know-how to protect and nourish the environment that makes our very existence possible. Essentially, this 'illogic' is how societies operate today. With money as their guiding value system deep in their core functioning we are congenitally condemned to choose 'profitable' endeavours that are in fact destructive and socially corrosive over the long term.
The third is that there is thus something badly wrong in our cultural sense of what value is, how to generate it, and how to distribute it. The cure for this ill lies, in part, in dissolving the boundaries between various relevant disciplines – e.g., ecology, physics, sociology, economics, etc. – to some degree. For, while market-based economics wholly dominates how we think about and operate money, the general problem so sharply illustrated in the article above will persist, even though most of us, the vast majority of us, want that problem to go away. One pivotal element of what ought to be undertaken, in my view, is a very critical and open-minded look at how price and scarcity are interlocked, and how their symbiotic relationship influences how we perceive value, then over-consume as guided by that highly incomplete perception, and consequently fail to prioritize vital human vales such as trust, meaning and belonging.
I wish I could, vexarb, but know only of a few decent ones that critique rather than offer solid ideas for complete overhauls, which is what is needed. One little volume that at least examines some alternative money systems and is also easy reading is Richard Douthwaite's "The Ecology of Money".vexarbAside from that there's Herman Daley's multi-decade commitment to steady-state economics, though he only recently began looking at the money system as a driver of perpetual growth, and I'm not sure what he's put forth on that pivotal point.
There's also "Sacred Economics" by Charles Eisenstein, but his offered solution – negative interest rates funding a guaranteed income as a kind of flowing 'money out from the top / money in at the bottom' dynamic – is likely both impractical and paradoxically too rooted in compound interest and money-profit to really work as expected, though that's my personal opinion. Besides, when radically new is needed, open-minded experimentation is the order of the day.
There's also biophysical economics , but I've only looked at it briefly and that was quite a while ago.
If you read German, there's Franz Hoermann's Infogeld , which is the idea that most interests me. It includes novelties such as asymmetrical prices that are determined scientifically/democratically in terms of actual biophysical costs rather than via so-called 'price discovery', guaranteed basic provision (not income), earning Infomoney for studying, parenting, staying healthy, etc., and a broad philosophical approach that recognizes how complex and subtle real value is, and that linear numbers simply cannot measure it. I translated/paraphrased much of his work a few years ago. It can be found here . It's not a fully fleshed-out idea, just a collection of sketched pieces, but with work and experimentation it might become what's needed
Toby, many thanks for your considered reply. I have marked two of your recommendations for my own reading and as presents for the Festive Season to my grand daughter who is studying both ecology and biophysics: "The Ecology of Money" and Biophysical Economics. The latter seems to be an expansion of Findlay's notion (as a chemist) that wealth ought to be measured in units of energy (an idea which was taken up by our professor of Chemical Thermodynamics in the 50s by comparing nations in terms of their "energy slaves per capita". Ecology and Biophysics are sciences, which is why I was attracted by your 3 principles in the first place.Toby RussellAnecdote to explain where I am coming from: Many years ago Shell Oil inflated the price of their oil reserves; this caused a flutter in business news but I could not understand what the fuss was about because Shell's figures did not affect the real amount of oil that was actually there, underground.
Interesting. And if we go back to the 1930s we find the work of another chemist, Frederick Soddy, who also tackled economics and wealth, in particular how to design a money system that acted in accordance with physical laws, so to speak (e.g. "The Role of Money"). I believe he won a Nobel Prize for his chemistry, but was soundly poopooed by the economists of the time for meddling in their business.vexarbI personally think that wealth and value, as synonyms, cannot ever be objectively defined or measured as they are rooted in subjective experience. Any new economics worth the effort will need to take proper account of this fact, alongside all the necessary biophysics and ecology of course. All schools of the dismal 'science' do address this issue, but with varying degrees of philosophical rigour. The treatments of subjective value I have looked into within economics thus far are unsatisfactory (behavioural economics somewhat excepted), with the market invariably posited as a neutral (thus scientific) 'objectifier' of all that subjective trading between households and firms.
Toby, firstly thanks for the gentle correction: yes it was Soddy who proposed "energy pence", though Findlay was very keen on Chemistry in the Service of Humankind. And I agree thoroughly with your own doubt "that wealth and value, as synonyms, cannot ever be objectively defined or measured as they are rooted in subjective experience."Toby Russell"A person who knows the price of everything and the value of nothing" -- Oscar Wilde.
Your remark seems to throw an interesting light on a well known saying by Rabbi Jeshuah of Nazareth: "You cannot serve both God and Mammon" -- if by God you mean the Creator of All Things Bright and Beautiful, All Creatures Great and Small, All things Wise and Wonderful"; and my Mammon you mean the Creator of Fiat Money alone.
Excellent, thank you for that, BigB! Wow, and John McMurtry got a mention in there. I'll see your McMurtry and raise you a JacksonBigB(I have to say, your thinking and hopes align quite tightly with those of Franz Hoermann. Shame his work is in German. He's a kind of nutty professor, works in a Viennese university in Rechnungswesen or something, which is some form of accountancy, but is very widely read and open-minded.)
Around 2007/2008, I became obsessed with money systems for obvious reasons. I started a blog sharing my angry insights and laying out as clearly and angrily as I could Why Money Has To Go! What I discovered is that people don't want to know, can't imagine a world without money, and I concluded that the cultural lag preventing radical change is a true representation of where we are as a species, as consciousness in human form. Our state of consciousness is as natural as everything else. After all, there is only nature. Even deliberate, malicious distortions of nature are part of nature. And that's when I really started working on myself, which is of course the work of lifetimes. Because, to paraphrase that infamous Michael Jackson song; you can't change them, you can only change yourself.
Have you read any late Merleau-Ponty? He was largely overshadowed by his better known friends Sarte and Simone de Beauvoir. After his death he slipped into the shadow of Sartre's shadow of fame – and was largely forgotten.BigBHe was a huge influence on Varela. Around 2005: some of his late lecture notes turned up – made by an anonymous student – and there were several books published. This has sparked a minor revival in his significance: which I have been revisiting for the last few years.
He held the view of the nature we know as a *constructum* a scientific representationalism that is an active barrier – not to the nature 'without' but the nature within. The *chair du monde* the 'flesh of the world' the heart of all creation and experience.
He was undergoing a Gestalt: to put pure phenomenological experience at the heart of nature – thus liberating science from itself. Echoes of Schrodinger, Bohr, Eccles,: presaging Bohm, Varela, Bitbol etc.
Unfortunately, he died suddenly of a stroke. Sartre and de Beauvoir stole the limelight 'till now.
https://www.radicalphilosophy.com/article/late-merleau-ponty-revived
Regarding money value systems. I wholly concur with you and your "nutty professor" Hoermann. The general or Husserlian 'natural attitude' is based on money. What is hard to discern: is that it is based on it whether people have 'skin in the game'. Everyone wishes the market to do well: because they have 'dreams in the game'. If the economy does well: there will be a return to progress and prosperity – where 'I' will do well. This has nothing to do with access to capital. Access to dreams and values linked to capital are all that is required. Free-enterprise market based economies are really 'desire-dream production' facilities. Linking Freudian pleasure principles to actual production and valorisation of capital. This is Mark Fisher's 'Capitalist Realism'.
That is why the production function is not linked to any real world values. If it were: production – desire-dream production – would stop. Which is why Ayers, Keen, Kummel, Spash et al will be rejected. Because exergy and entropy considerations end the desire-dream "actual fantasy" production. And it can never be restarted.
The real reasons for which are not lack of resources (input source degradation) – or waste pollution of sinks (output sink degradation) they are lack of imagination. If you take away the current money-value nexus: you take away the Self that is invested – self-invested: at all market levels (not just capital markets) – in those values. Value and asset stripping the epochal Cartesian subjectivity of its worth. The paradox is that worth is already less than zero – due to the market failure and artificial intervention of the Central Banks.
Cartesian subjectivity is self-invested in a Capitalist Realism that is about to asset strip and devalue every form of desire-dream production – downgrading entire continents of human aspirations to 'negative yielding junk' status. That is Capitalist Realism. In the coming market failure: everyone fails. There will be carnage – and deaths. And a tsunami of recrimination and blame.
A tiny percentage of 'Cassandras' will be powerless to stop this. All the information is in the public domain. I had no trouble finding any of it. The picture is crystal clear. Whilst the majoritarian involvement is with desire-dream production of perpetual motion prosperity: something entirely different is actually occurring. I cannot think of anyone that is looking at the coming collapse as anything other than the end of another business cycle. We'll just start another business cycle. How?
It's a fair question: one very few want to confront. There is no Plan B: because there is no doubt of the answer. The current political debate is pure pantomime and fantasy if you apply real world dynamical constraints. I wish Steve Keen every success: though I truly believe it has come too late in the day.
I think we would have more success following Merleau-Ponty and foregoing the entire reliance on desire-dream production. Whole people who are actuating life and creation as a syngenesis – the 'together creation' of a valueless value-equality system – don't need spurious dreams. They are living the dream right now. No need to rape the earth. Only preserve it as the only shared value production system we have. But you already know this.
Unbeknownst to me: Ted Trainer has been reviewing a similar reading list to me. And drawn the same "true prophecy" conclusion: we are already in a post-production world.vexarbMaybe we will notice one day!
From the above discussion, one could conclude that conventional economic theory is standing on its head: it uses money as a measure of wealth, when in reality wealth is the measure of money.Toby RussellTake the Icelanders for example: the only "Western" country to follow China's excellent practice of jailing crooked bankers. The Icelandic Leader did not look at the enormous sums stolen, and exclaim in awe, These crooks are too big to fail. Instead, Iceland looked at their real wealth: water, fish, a fragile but productive soil, and geothermal energy. So they cocked a snook at British PM George Brown who called Icelanders "terrorists", jailed their crooked bankers and their crooked politicians, and are doing much better than the UK's Classical Monetarist economy.
Precisely. In a very real sense, we are a simple 180 degree twist away from something wonderful. Its our collective somnambulist imagination that stands in our way.BigBPrecisely.Toby RussellWEALTH:
From Middle English – *wele* = wellbeing; welfareclosely allied to HEALTH – *hoelp* = wholeness; being whole (among other roots).
The word has been engineered in use into a narrowly defined measure of accumulation.
Real wealth is simply being here. Economies do not allow for that anymore.
Thank you. No, I hadn't heard of Merleau-Ponty but will now look into him. It sounds very observant, clear sighted. There is so much of this stuff out there, but the deep dog-whistle excellence of public-relations brain washing has been able to keep the infantile solipsism – which I take to be Cartesian subjectivity – alive and kicking in its pram of consumer conveniences. Who knows what the cost will be.BigB"Share On Twitter" target="_blank" href="https://twitter.com/intent/tweet?text=It+is+way+to+early+to+falsely+declare+that+the+individual+Carte...+&url=https%3A%2F%2Foff-guardian.org%2F2019%2F10%2F16%2Fat-the-feet-of-mammon%2F%23comment-98615">
It is way to early to falsely declare that the individual Cartesian subject is dead. But it its disembodied subjectivity is under threat: from the very science that stands between us and nature.Toby RussellWe supposedly live in a positivist empirical scientific paradigm. Supposedly: because we left us out of the representation. And the rational empirical Self we invented from science and philosophy is nowhere to be found for anyone who cares to look. Which is too few unfortunately.
No one wants to totally debunk science: only to liberate an observer participant/dependent second order science – with first person phenomenology at its heart. After all: we do not experience ourselves via self-reports to others who dictate back to us what and who we can be. Actually, we pretty much do exactly that for the moment.
To bridge the gap: Varela proposed his 'neurophenomenology' – which was a rigorous first person accounting "mutually constraining" the third person neursoscientific lab approach (how much we are supposed to learn from 'rubber hand' illusions – I have never quite been sure. In fact I believe this 'third person' approach to be quite distorting and very possibly even dangerous we 'hallucinate' consciousness; reality is an illusion; etc).
We need to end up with a holistic account – not a 'Frankenstein' paradigm stitched together from phantom limb pains; whole body illusions; aphasia and lesion studies; etc.
We are whole: not the sum of our dead deterministic parts! What a pity Varela died too soon too.
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Yes, a holistic account. For me that starts with accepting there is no matter, just information; no space, just the mathematics of dimension, volume, distance, etc.; no energy, just the mathematics and physics of force, attraction, repulsion, etc.: all information. There is only experience, which is a necessary property of consciousness. We cannot know what is 'beyond' that, because it lies outside what we are. We cannot even know if anything 'beyond' consciousness is possible.Tim JenkinsAnd yes, the proposition that dead bits and pieces can be arranged in such a way as to create the 'illusion' of life and consciousness is wholly untenable. Just the simple query: "Who or what is being deceived by the illusion?" bursts that bubble. Or ought to. People do so cling to their beliefs
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Fine comment, Toby and may I submit that for real values to shine through, on collective societal 'growth' & evolution of consciousness, harmonised with critical reasoning, then the very first thing we need to get rid of is the IMF & Co.Toby RussellNow that Kristalina Georgieva is the new M.D. people should be able to quickly see clearly, that after her 1,001 days at the WBO and her previous pathetic E.U. C.V. one does not need to understand ANYthing to do with how the system truly functions presently & how it could be made to work for the people.
Stalinka's wholly unsuitable levels of deception, distraction & professional incompetence, combined with her love & respect for Mafia Bosses, (literally), in her own personal drive of pure self-interest and fuck Bulgaria and the Bulgarians mentality, was well proven when she sided against Irina Bokova for Secretary General of the U.N. :- purely to get on side with Merkel, May & BG PM Borisov's alliance with Anglo-Zionist-Capitalists & NATO's non-existent interest in the Palestinian Problem. Bokova, on the other hand, had actually done more than just getting down to work in changing Law and scything Budgets @UNESCO and since serving as boss of UNESCO, thanks to Bokova we can now proceed legally, theoretically, against any genocidal policy of war, because in Law,
"The Destruction of Culture is a Terrorist Act "
A solid foundation from which to work from,
in securing Palestinian 'values' & property rights.
Forget the IMF & Stalinka's rhetoric: we don't grow olives in Bulgaria, but have much to trade with those who do and after Erdogan's "Operation Olive Branch", it is high time people penalised Rhetoric & rewarded Sincerity in actions, not empty words inverting
& perverting reality . . . to twist trust, spin meaning & annulate cultural belonging.
"This idolatry produces almost wholly unwanted outcomes" no 'ifs', Toby.Greetings,
Tim"Share On Twitter" target="_blank" href="https://twitter.com/intent/tweet?text=Thank+you%2C+Tim.%0AYes%2C+the+evolution+of+consciousness+is+central....+&url=https%3A%2F%2Foff-guardian.org%2F2019%2F10%2F16%2Fat-the-feet-of-mammon%2F%23comment-98420">
Thank you, Tim.smoeYes, the evolution of consciousness is central. Indeed, I don't think we'll manage to lastingly root out our need for corruptible institutions like the IMF and World Bank and BIS etc., until we have developed or evolved a robust cultural desire to do things very differently. I don't feel a top-down change can happen. And for radical change to be bottom up, effective, sustainable and true to who we are as humans, we have to change in our consciousness, away from fear, distrust and greed, towards love, trust and sharing. And these things take time
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yes , boundaries present profit opportunities. The nation states are bounded human containers.. the humans caught in the containers are fed the information that makes up the environment and so they only know what is made available to them. That means those in control of the propaganda can differentiate the humans and then sort them by binaries..Toby Russell
like gun control, or politicians, or race, place of origin, social factors, education, mental ability, religion or just about anything.. But separation is not enough, those in control of the information (propaganda) then polarize the thinking or feelings of the persons in the differentiated groups; its like a football game, everyone is either for the Red Team and strongly against the blue team, or vice-a-versa.If you exchange a new born child, born to a Jewish family in New York, for a child born the same day in Iran.and and the parents of the exchanged children mature in their own native societies the non genetic child, 24 years later. the adult version of these two now matured children will hate each other, not be able to speak the language of the other and be committed to a vastly different set of goals and hold a vastly different set of basic beliefs.
Nation state encapsulation allows to different humanity and propaganda allows to polarize the thinking of those incarcerated within the nation states. These two things (boundary and propaganda) account for, or are the basis of citizen support for all wars, and binary differences that lead to reasoned differences of opinions. War comes about when some greedy person (usually those supporting the leader and the leader) wants something the polarized other side has or refuses to yield on.
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Yes. Your summation reminds me strongly of Lewis Mumford's The Myth of the Machine, which is about how unchecked ego – the mythic solar hero run rampant – structures societies as mechanical-processional systems revolving around its hidden fears and need for final control of everything. Of course there is never enough control and it all breaks in the end, as narcissism must.I should add, though, that diversity is vital. Life without diversity is impossible. The way for us all, unique as we are, to communicate as successfully as possible with each other, is to have zero beliefs, as you suggest in another comment above. That means almost zero propaganda, and that little which might remain – there may always be a need for some common vision of what life is about as part of meaning making and the fact that humans are social beings – must be explicit and transparent, and always open to robust questioning.
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Oct 20, 2019 | off-guardian.org
This article was first published on February 21, 2017, one month after Donald Trump was sworn in as president, more than two-and-a half years ago. What was true then is even truer now, and so I am reprinting it with this brief introduction since I think it describes what is happening in plain sight today.
Now that years of Russia-gate accusations have finally fallen apart, those forces intent on driving Trump from office have had to find another pretext. Now it is Ukraine-gate, an issue similar in many ways to Russia-gate in that both were set into motion by the same forces aligned with the Democratic Party and the CIA-led Obama administration.
It was the Obama administration who engineered the 2014 right-wing, Neo-Nazi coup in Ukraine as part of its agenda to undermine Russia. A neo-liberal/neo-conservative agenda. This is, or should be, common knowledge. Obama put it in his typically slick way in a 2015 interview with CNN's Fareed Zakiria, saying that the United States "had brokered a deal to transition power in Ukraine."
This is Orwellian language at its finest, from a warmonger who received the Nobel Prize for Peace while declaring he was in support of war. That the forces that have initiated a new and highly dangerous Cold War, a nuclear confrontation with Russia, demonized Vladimir Putin, and have overthrown the elected leader of a country allied with Russia on its western border, dares from the day he was elected in 2016 to remove its own president in the most obvious ways imaginable seems like bad fiction. But it is fact, and the fact that so many Americans approve of it is even more fantastic.
Over the past few years the public has heard even more about the so-called "deep state," only to see its methods of propaganda become even more perversely cynical in their shallowness.
No one needs to support the vile Trump to understand that the United States is undergoing a fundamental shift wherein tens of millions of Americans who say they believe in democracy support the activities of gangsters who operate out in the open with their efforts to oust an elected president.
We have crossed the Rubicon and there will be no going back.
In irony a man annihilates what he posits within one and the same act; he leads us to believe in order not to be believed; he affirms to deny and denies to affirm; he creates a positive object but it has no being other than its nothingness."
Jean-Paul SartreIt is well known that the United States is infamous for engineering coups against democratically elected governments worldwide. Voters' preferences are considered beside the point. Iran and Mosaddegh in 1953, Arbenz in Guatemala in 1954, Indonesia and Sukarno in 1965-7, Allende in Chile in 1973, to name a few from the relatively distant past.
Recently the Obama administration worked their handiwork in Honduras and Ukraine. It would not be hyperbolic to say that overthrowing democratic governments is as American as apple pie. It's our "democratic" tradition – like waging war.
What is less well known is that elements within the U.S. ruling power elites have also overthrown democratically elected governments in the United States. One U.S. president, John F. Kennedy, was assassinated because he had turned toward peace and opposed the forces of war within his own government. He is the lone example of a president who therefore was opposed by all the forces of imperial conquest within the ruling elites.
Others, despite their backing for the elite deep state's imperial wars, were taken out for various reasons by competing factions within the shadow government. Nixon waged the war against Vietnam for so long on behalf of the military-industrial complex, but he was still taken down by the CIA, contrary to popular mythology about Watergate.
Jimmy Carter was front man for the Tri-Lateral Commission's deep-state faction, but was removed by the group represented by George H. Bush, William Casey, and Reagan through their traitorous actions involving the Iran hostages.
The emcee for the neo-liberal agenda, Bill Clinton, was rendered politically impotent via the Lewinsky affair, a matter never fully investigated by any media.
Obama, CIA groomed, was smoothly moved into power by the faction that felt Bush needed to be succeeded by a slick smiling assassin who symbolized "diversity," could speak well, and played hoops. Hit them with the right hand; hit them with the left. Same coin: Take your pick – heads or tails. Hillary Clinton was expected to complete the trinity.
But surprises happen, and now we have Trump, who is suffering the same fate – albeit at an exponentially faster rate – as his predecessors that failed to follow the complete script. The day after his surprise election, the interlocking circles of power that run the show in sun and shadows – what C. Wright Mills long ago termed the Power Elite – met to overthrow him, or at least to render him more controllable.
These efforts, run out of interconnected power centers, including the liberal corporate legal boardrooms that were the backers of Obama and Hillary Clinton, had no compunction in planning the overthrow of a legally elected president.
Soon they were joined by their conservative conspirators in doing the necessary work of "democracy" – making certain that only one of their hand-picked and anointed henchmen was at the helm of state. Of course, the intelligence agencies coordinated their efforts and their media scribes wrote the cover stories. The pink Pussyhats took to the streets. The deep state was working overtime.
Trump, probably never having expected to win and as shocked as most people when he did, made some crucial mistakes before the election and before taking office. Some of those mistakes have continued since his inauguration.
Not his derogatory remarks about minorities, immigrants, or women. Not his promise to cut corporate taxes, support energy companies, oppose strict environmental standards. Not his slogan to "make America great again." Not his promise to build a "wall" along the Mexican border and make Mexico pay for it. Not his vow to deport immigrants. Not his anti-Muslim pledges. Not his insistence that NATO countries contribute more to NATO's "defense" of their own countries. Not even his crude rantings and Tweets and his hypersensitive defensiveness. Not his reality-TV celebrity status, his eponymous golden tower and palatial hotels and sundry real estate holdings. Not his orange hair and often comical and disturbing demeanor, accentuated by his off the cuff speaking style.
Surely not his massive wealth.
While much of this was viewed with dismay, it was generally acceptable to the power elites who transcend party lines and run the country. Offensive to hysterical liberal Democrats and traditional Republicans, all this about Trump could be tolerated, if only he would cooperate on the key issue.
Trump's fatal mistake was saying that he wanted to get along with Russia, that Putin was a good leader, and that he wanted to end the war against Syria and pull the U.S. back from foreign wars.
This was verboten. And when he said nuclear war was absurd and would only result in nuclear conflagration, he had crossed the Rubicon. That sealed his fate.
Misogyny, racism, support for Republican conservative positions on a host of issues – all fine. Opposing foreign wars, especially with Russia – not fine.
Now we have a reality-TV president and a reality-TV coup d'etat in prime time. Hidden in plain sight, the deep-state has gone shallow. What was once covert is now overt. Once it was necessary to blame a coup on a secretive "crazy lone assassin," Lee Harvey Oswald. But in this "post-modern" society of the spectacle, the manifest is latent; the obvious, non-obvious; what you see you don't see. Everyone knows those reality-TV shows aren't real, right?
It may seem like it is a coup against Trump in plain sight, but these shows are tricky, aren't they? He's the TV guy. He runs the show. He's the sorcerer's apprentice. He wants you to believe in the illusion of the obvious. He's the master media manipulator. You see it but don't believe it because you are so astute, while he is so blatant. He's brought it upon himself. He's bringing himself down. Everyone who knows, knows that.
I am reminded of being in a movie theatre in 1998, watching The Truman Show, about a guy who slowly "discovers" that he has been living in the bubble of a television show his whole life. At the end of the film he makes his "escape" through a door in the constructed dome that is the studio set.
The liberal audience in a very liberal town stood up and applauded Truman's dash to freedom. I was startled since I had never before heard an audience applaud in a movie theatre – and a standing ovation at that. I wondered what they were applauding. I quickly realized they were applauding themselves, their knowingness, their insider astuteness that Truman had finally caught on to what they already thought they knew. Now he would be free like they were. They couldn't be taken in; now he couldn't.
Except, of course, they were applauding an illusion, a film about being trapped in a reality-TV world, a world in which they stood in that theatre – their world, their frame. Frames within frames. Truman escapes from one fake frame into another – the movie. The joke was on them. The film had done its magic as its obvious content concealed its deeper truth: the spectator and the spectacle were wed. McLuhan was here right: the medium was the message.
This is what George Trow in 1980 called "the context of no context."
Candor as concealment, truth as lies, knowingness as stupidity. Making reality unreal in the service of an agenda that is so obvious it isn't, even as the cognoscenti applaud themselves for being so smart and in the know.
The more we hear about "the deep state" and begin to grasp its definition, the more we will have descended down the rabbit hole. Soon this "deep state" will be offering courses on what it is, how it operates, and why it must stay hidden while it "exposes" itself. Right-wing pundit Bill Kristol tweets:
Liberal CIA critic and JFK assassination researcher, Jefferson Morley, after defining the deep state, writes:
With a docile Republican majority in Congress and a demoralized Democratic Party in opposition, the leaders of the Deep State are the most – perhaps the only – credible check in Washington on what Senator Bob Corker (R-Tenn.) calls Trump's "wrecking ball presidency."
These are men who ostensibly share different ideologies, yet agree, and state it publically, that the "deep state" should take out Trump. Both believe, without evidence, that the Russians intervened to try to get Trump elected. Therefore, both no doubt feel justified in openly espousing a coup d'etat. They match Trump's blatancy with their own. Nothing deep about this.
Liberals and conservatives are now publically allied in demonizing Putin and Russia, and supporting a very dangerous military confrontation initiated by Obama and championed by the defeated Hillary Clinton. In the past these opposed political factions accepted that they would rotate their titular leaders into and out of the White House, and whenever the need arose to depose one or the other, that business would be left to deep state forces to effect in secret and everyone would play dumb.
Now the game has changed. It's all "obvious." The deep state has seemingly gone shallow. Its supporters say so. All the smart people can see what's happening. Even when what's happening isn't really happening.
"Only the shallow know themselves," said Oscar Wilde.
Edward Curtin Edward Curtin writes, and his writing on varied topics has appeared widely over many years. He writes as a public intellectual for the general public, not as a specialist for a narrow readership. He believes a non-committal sociology is an impossibility and therefore sees all his work as an effort to enhance human freedom through understanding. His website is edwardcurtin.com
Frank Speaker
I remember this excellent piece the first time around. It's indeed even more pertinent today,Martin UsherJohn Deehan...The first step in dealing with this is to combat ignorance and misinformation. There may not be one undeniable truth but we can certainly squash blatant mis-truths. This arena isn't just political -- our culture has a habit of reworking our past in a contemporary image and so subtly warping the lessons of history. Hollywood is a prime offender but then its no surprise to discover that the original master of propaganda, Goebbels, recognized that entertainment that pushed cultural values was a far more powerful tool for propaganda than the media that was, and still is, traditionally associated with propaganda.
If you read Professor Antony C Sutton's books about Wall Street, the Bolshevik Revolution and Hitlers rise to power, it is possible, as Sutton did, to examine the methodology, ideology and psychology of the string pullers in depth. For exposing them, Hutton was as he said " persecuted but not prosecuted ".nottheonly1Sadly though, an old wisdom brings itself into this ludicrous scenery. It also makes the comparison with the Truman show so apt. You can't fix stupid.
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Oct 20, 2019 | off-guardian.org
mark
Dubya rehabilitated himself by slagging off the Orange Man.So he's now a jolly decent chap and all round good egg.
Certainly outweighs a little thing like a couple of million dead sand niggers.
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Oct 15, 2019 | off-guardian.org
On Wednesday, Wikileaks released new evidence of US President-elect On Wednesday, Wikileaks released new evidence of US President-elect Donald Trump 's assertion that Barack Obama was the founder of ISIS – a leaked audio of US Secretary of State John Kerry's meeting with members of the Syrian opposition at the Dutch Mission of the UN on September 22.The audio also is an evidence of the fact that mainstream media colluded with the Obama's administration in order to push the narrative for regime change in Syria, hiding the truth about arming and funding ISIS by the US, as it exposed a 35 minute conversation that was omitted by CNN.
Kerry admits that the primary goal of the Obama's administration in Syria was regime change and the removal of Syrian President Bahar al-Assad, as well as that Washington didn't calculate that Assad would turn to Russia for help.
In order to achieve this goal, the White House allowed the Islamic State (IS) terrorist group to rise. The Obama's administration hoped that growing power of the IS in Syria would force Assad to search for a diplomatic solution on US terms, forcing him to cede power. In its turn, in order to achieve these two goals, Washington intentionally armed members of the terrorist group and even attacked a In order to achieve this goal, the White House allowed the Islamic State (IS) terrorist group to rise.
The Obama's administration hoped that growing power of the IS in Syria would force Assad to search for a diplomatic solution on US terms, forcing him to cede power. In its turn, in order to achieve these two goals, Washington intentionally armed members of the terrorist group and even attacked a Syrian government military convoy, trying to stop a strategic attack on the IS, killing 80 Syrian soldiers.
According to Wikileaks, "the audio gives a glimpse into what goes on outside official meetings. Note that it represents the US narrative and not necessarily the entire true narrative." Earlier the audio was published by the "And we know that this was growing, we were watching, we saw that DAESH [the IS] was growing in strength, and we thought Assad was threatened," Kerry said during the meeting.
. "(We) thought, however," he continued to say, "We could probably manage that Assad might then negotiate, but instead of negotiating he got Putin to support him." "I lost the argument for use of force in Syria," Kerry concluded.
Note that it represents the US narrative and not necessarily the entire true narrative." Earlier the audio was published by the "I lost the argument for use of force in Syria," Kerry concluded.
Earlier the audio was published by the New York Times and CNN, however, the both outlets chose only some its part, reporting on certain aspects, and omitted the most damning comments made by Kerry. In fact, they tried to hide the statements that would allow public to understand what has actually taken place in Syria.
The full audio has never been published by the New York Times; the outlet released only selected snippets. The full audio has never been published by the New York Times; the outlet released only selected snippets. The full audio has never been published by the New York Times; the outlet released only selected snippets.
Mickey
What a surprise!!Don RhudyWe know by observation and by reports from the sailors who served with Kerry on a Swiftboat that Kerry is a coward, liar, and enemy of the United States of America. He faked three Purple hearts to leave Swiftboat service early and return to the states, and he lied to the U.S. Congress while under oath. He belongs in Federal Prison.JamesHCynthia BanksUS Secretary of State John Kerry: "The problem is we in the US care about international law and Russia does not. This is the reason why we can't directly attack Assad forces.The only way we can directly intervene is if we have a UN Security Council resolution, or if our forces are under attack by theirs, or if we are invited by the LEGITIMATE regime well not saying here they're "legitimate" ok, Assad's regime. The Russians were invited in and we're not."
The U.S. knows their presence in Syria is illegal
Kerry contradicts himself when he said that Russia does not care about international law when fact is Russia is legally allowed to operate in Syria at the invitation of the "legitimate" Syrian regime (admittedly, his tongue slipped at that point)
You are so right and it has been proven, Kerry and Hillary are the ones who armed ISIS a d ISIS was the one doing the gas attacks. Assad has the right to his nation and Kerry promised these rebels they could win and they are only seventeen percent of the populace. The people of Syria support Assad. It was a civil uprising we had no right to get involved in. But as we learned the US was trying to take over seven nations in seven years.fmfWe were the bad guys, https://youtu.be/9RC1Mepk_Sw
Thank God they failed.
dougIts not about Syrian regime change, US also wanted to topple Shiite Iraqi Government through ISIS to install Sunni/Wahhabi regime to counter the Tehran influences in Iraq.
I had come to the conclusion many years ago that democrats can never be trusted. All the do is lie and plot and cheat and cast aspersions and smears on everyone who disagrees with them. The smears are usually them trying to smear others with lacks in character that almost always apply to themselves. This news is nothing new. Glenn Beck for just one example has claimed this for years. He has maintained from the fall of Libya and the attack in Benghazzi that it was all about moving arms to Syria to arm and bolster ISIS.BarbaraThe reason why we can no longer trust the Democrats is because they have been infiltrated by the Communist party.BarbaraAlso remember this, the war criminals Rumsfeld and Chaney went to Syria to organize and start pumping out the Syrian oil. They just couldn't wait to get their hands on it. It's about the oil.George CornellAnd even that wasn't enough to make honest people out of them.InerichWrong. No UN resolution when Trump attacked 2 Russian chemical weapons bases in Syria. As Commander in Chief, President Trump made the decision to bomb and destroy.Cynthia BanksYou can't trust the RINO's either. Bush got us into this and I voted for him twice. https://youtu.be/9RC1Mepk_SwJDDPUT him in a rioom with families of the victims of 911. Lock the door.pavlovscat7D3F1ANTPut him in a room with the families of Sandy Hook and he'd have to take out his wallet again.
None of this evidence matters. Look at what happened with Hillary and the proof of her MYRIAD crimes. Someone could post a video a Democrat breaking the law and it wouldn't matter. Lynch and Comey and their minions have proven that power-brokers on the Left are simply beyond the reach of the "long-arm" of the Law.antirepublocratTreason.Lumpy GravybillCNN deleted the audio at all, explaining this with the request of some of the participants out of concern for their personal safety.
So, who then took part in the meeting at the Dutch UN mission? What are the names and the whereabouts of these so called Syrian opposition types? What are the names of the colluding Dutch mission staff? Seeing that none them ever cared in the least about the safety of the Syrian people, why should anyone care for their personal safety? With hundreds of thousands dead, millions of refugees or internally displaced and the country in ruins these people have a lot to answer for. I do hope that they and the hyena who over the past five years so eagerly promoted this mayhem in the western media will be held to account for their crimes at some point.
if this is to inform us that Kerry is a duplicitous weasel,then id guess this has been known for at least a decadeSamHe is just a puppet of some big families and interest groups. He is their voice. He is maybe good in tactics but not in strategy. That's why he made a faulty assumption in Syria.Ronald SmithI really hope that all the responsibles of casualties of civilians and innocent people will face an international tribunal or face the direct cosmic judgement. They betrayed all the secular and tolerant forces in the Middle East by creating a religious confusion. Just to remove Assad? What about the feudal system in Saudia, Qatar (slavery, stoning, beheading )? Where are the Weapons of mass destruction in Iraq? Who voted democratically for all those wars in the US? What is the power of Congress ? Who is going to bring back or payback taxpayers money? Poverty is rising in the US and the number of homeless people becomes astronomical.
A decade? I've known since he was in Vietnam. Him an John McCain we're both traitors to our country.carinaragnoReblogged this on Piazza della Carina .ArrbyI hope someone, at some point, will be able to provide a transcript. It was a bit hard to follow, hard as I did. The women talked fast and maybe the accent didn't help.BigB
The audio, which gives us a glimpse into the pathology of politicians who sell their souls for gain and have to do verbal contortions, speaking in code even to each other (lest somebody want to stab someone else in the back), in order to communicate. There was so much vileness attached to Kerry's inconsitent comments.Hear hear! I got most of the slime coming from Kerry (and the 2nd American?) – but the female and particularly the male opposition rep – I couldn't quite pick.Arrby
I did get the bit when she had a meltdown when Kerry suggested an open election (because the US is big on free and fair elections – including their own as we have just seen.) Apparently the Syrian opposition aren't that keen on them either.Do I take it from this that the Americans think that if the 'diaspora' is included in the vote, that there are enough Syrians abroad inculcated by western propaganda to ouster Assad? Or will that just blowback in their face?
BTW – as most regular commenters are well aware – the recent 2014 Syrian election was completely 'free and fair' – certainly by American standards. Assad won by a landslide.
Yes, I think that you have that right. Kerry is keen on an American managed election (a la Haiti or Honduras) and must believe that the diaspora is sufficiently bamboozled for that to go swimmingly.BigBKerry said that Assad was worried by the prospect of an election. I wonder where he gets his intel from – WaPo or the CIA? Mind you, that's a single-source these days!ArrbyI can't remember exactly what, but I noticed he was inconsistent in his bullcrapping. So he wanted an election, and democracy – gotta mouth 'democracy' -and he didn't.Pierre-henri BredontiotHe of course expected to 'negotiate' with Assad, assuming that after Assad tasted fire he'd get lost, but that didn't go well when the evilest people around, the Russians, who just don't care about international law, were invited in to Syria, lol, because the law is the law. He was all over the place!
Meanwhile, How many different scholars and politicians declaim loudly that the US should forget about international law?, starting with Michael Glennon.
Vaska"the Russians, who just don't care about international law, "How can you say such a thing? Only Russians are allowed to fight in Syria. Assad has been choosed by his people, and call Russia for help, nobody else.
No country but Russia is allowed to put a foot in Syria: that is International Right. That is ONU's law. USA, GB, France, Qatar, South Arabia, THEY don't care about international law. Please excuse my bad language, I'm French. But you understand what I mean.
Those are Kerry's words. Among other things of interest, the recording also shows that the establishment actually do mouth their lies even to themselves, perhaps as a means of disciplining their own ranks. It's institutionalized schizophrenia.RonAmen. Kerry babbled about 'all the people in the camps" voting. Yeah, we know how 'free and fair' the voting will be in Erdogan's camps! -- And we know -- and these hotel-dwelling shysters know -- how many Syrian missions were closed, as in the US, Australia and many other countries -- or were denied allowing voting, because they knew bloody well who ex-pat Syrians would vote for! Over a million Syrian refugees in Lebanon trekked many miles, though Hariri-occupied salafist ghettos, to vote in 2014, so many that there was chaos finding enough voting slips. And ALL for Assad!bevin
The tone of this cabal is all. It's losers, and so they will remain."Do I take it from this that the Americans think that if the 'diaspora' is included in the vote, that there are enough Syrians abroad inculcated by western propaganda to ouster Assad?"BigBHe was obviously hinting that the opposition need not worry about the 'free and fair' bit. After all we have seen, in Haiti most clearly, what they will do to ensure that the people they don't want lose. In Haiti Aristide- a shoo-in- was not allowed to compete. In Yemen only one (US/Saudi approved) name was allowed on the ballot for President. In Iraq no Socialists were allowed to run. In Ukraine the Communist Party was banned. The beauty if the diaspora option is that it would allow ballot boxes to be stuffed in every city in Europe and Arabia, away from the supervision of the election authorities.
But poor old Kerry's audience didn't understand him-they are afraid he really believes in 'democracy'. They probably think that they are smarter than him and have cheated him by pretending to subscribe to democracy!
It is not a "free and fair" election without US interference!BigB
http://www.trueactivist.com/us-interfered-in-foreign-presidential-elections-at-least-81-times-in-54-years/"Democracy has some virtues, folks" – so sayeth the old Bonesman. Enjoy your retirement , John.Greg BaconThe U.S. Government Supplied ISIS' Iconic Pickup TrucksYonatan
Posted on October 12, 2015 by WashingtonsBlog
U.S. counter-terror officials have launched an investigation into how ISIS got so many of those identical Toyota pickup trucks which they use in their convoys.
They don't have to look very farThe Spectator reported last year:
The [Toyota] Hilux [pics] is light, fast, manoeuvrable and all but indestructible ('bomb-proof' might not, in this instance, be a happy usage). The weapons experts Jane's claimed for the Hilux a similar significance to the longbows of Agincourt or the Huey choppers of Nam.
A US Army Ranger said the Toyota sure 'kicks the hell out of a Humvee' (referring to the clumsy and over-sized High Mobility Multipurpose Wheeled Vehicle made by AM General).
The fact is the Toyotas were supplied by the US government to the Al Nusra Front as 'non-lethal aid' then 'acquired' by ISIS.
Al Nusra Front is literally Al Qaeda.http://www.washingtonsblog.com/2015/10/the-u-s-government-supplied-isis-iconic-pickup-trucks.html
The Washingtonsblog article contains an invalid link for the original Spectator article.jeb1511
The correct link for the 2014 Spectator article is:
http://blogs.spectator.co.uk/2014/09/the-four-wheel-drive-is-to-isis-what-the-longbow-was-to-the-english-at-agincourt/The US govt via the CIA provided Ford F250 in their thousands to "liberation" movements in Africa back in the 70's.Brian Harry, AustraliaSo, the U.S. taxpayers paid for the vehicles. No wonder the USA's National Debt is heading towards $19 TRILLION. There seems to be no end to the stupidity in America, giving Israel $3BILLION/year, fighting Israel's wars, and supplying their mercenaries, while the debts keep piling higher???jimsresearchnotes
Not to mention sacrificing young American soldiers etc.Reblogged this on EU: Ramshackle Empire .leruscinoReblogged this on leruscino .Brian Harry, AustraliaIs it any wonder that the people who put Obama in the White House(to act as their stooge) are now in panic mode as Trump readies for the White House, having thumbed his nose at them(by threatening to "Drain the Swamp"). Despite the USA's image as "The most powerful nation on Earth", the people in charge now find themselves in a very weak position, and in danger of loosing control. Trump will need to watch his back during his term as President, the people behind the façade of Freedom and Democracy will do ANYTHING to hold their grip on power.SavWondering if John Hinckley Jr's release was for a reason 🙂BigBLMFAO – I expect he'll be having dinner with the Bush family soon! That cut throat gesture by the old man HW was a promise – not a threat!Brian Harry, AustraliaSav. Good comment, but, I'm sure the CIA have a ready supply of 'guns for hire' ..mohandeerReblogged this on Worldtruth and commented:falcemartelloAssad was going to cut a deal with Russia regarding the Russian pipeline through Syria, Iran and on to China. No way could the US allow this to happen. How to destroy Assad's plan?
Deploy murderous nutters and pretend it was all Assad's own fault with a prepared false narrative which the complicit MSM would spoon feed their public with. Simple.
Enter Russia's Putin with the most sophisticated and advanced military force in the world, add Hezbollah/Iran and China and watch the carnage the US and it's backers have unleashed. Simple, effective, murderous and criminal.
How much more evidence does one need these days to have these people tried for crimes against humanity
Hers some historical facts.Germany in the 30's invaded Czechoslovakia
US and Nato bombed Yugoslavia in the 90'sGermany invaded Poland in the late 30's
US and Nato bombed and invaded Afghanistan in 2001Germany and Italy bombed Spain in the 30's
Us and nato bombed Iraq in the first Gulf war in 1991Germany invade France and western europe in the 40's
US and Nato have the biggest military buildup on Russians border since the second world warGermany in 42 initiate operation barbarossa and invade the USSR
... ... ...Using critical thinking and historical analysis.
The difference in time is circa 70 years . All we hear in the west is Russian aggression , Chinese aggression, Iranian aggression. The parody is amazing .
FREEDOM JUSTICE AND THE AMERICAN WAY IS LOOKING LIKE FASCISM THE FASCIST WAY.The washington consensus is loosing badly and just like most bullies is behaving badly and here where the danger lies. These establishment characters whom ever they may be ( mind u most of my fellow bloggers know full well whom they r) r dying for a war .
Seeing that their terrorist islamaphobic narrative can only carry so much destruction we need to really muddy the waters with a Russia whom historically speaking has been such a bogie man for the west going back to Peter the Great.
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Oct 09, 2019 | off-guardian.org
Casandra2
"wc_tw" target="_blank" title="Share On Twitter" href="https://twitter.com/intent/tweet?text=This+excellent+article+demonstrates+how+the+Con...+&url=https%3A%2F%2Foff-guardian.org%2F2019%2F10%2F06%2Fwatch-udo-ulfkotte-bought-journalists%2F%23comment-97161"> This excellent article demonstrates how the Controlling Elite manipulates the Media and the Message for purposes of misdirecting attention and perception of their true intentions and objective of securing Global Ownership (aka New World Order).
This approach has been assiduously applied, across the board, over many years, to the point were they now own and run everything required to subjugate the 'human race' to the horrors of their psychopathic inclinations. They are presently holding the global economy on hold until their AI population (social credit) control system/grid is in place before bringing the house down.
Needless to say, when this happens a disunited and frightened Global Population will be at their mercy.
If you wish to gain a full insight of what the Controlling Elite is about, and capable of, I recommend David Icke's latest publication 'Trigger'. I know he's been tagged a 'nutter' over the past thirty years, but I reckon this book represents the 'gold standard' in terms of generating awareness as a basis for launching a united global population counter-attack (given a great strategy) against forces that can only be defined as pure 'EVIL'.
MASTER OF UNIVE
"wc_tw" target="_blank" title="Share On Twitter" href="https://twitter.com/intent/tweet?text=Corporate+Journalism+is+all+about+corporatism+a...+&url=https%3A%2F%2Foff-guardian.org%2F2019%2F10%2F06%2Fwatch-udo-ulfkotte-bought-journalists%2F%23comment-97149">
Corporate Journalism is all about corporatism and the continuation of it. If the Intelligence Community needs greater fools for staffing purposes in the corporate hierarchy they look for anyone that can be compromised via inducements of whatever the greater fools want. Engaging in compromise allows both parties to have complicit & explicit understanding that corruption and falsehood are the tools of the trade. To all-of-a-sudden develop a conscience after decades of playing the part of a willing participant is understandable in light of the guilt complex one must develop after screwing everyone in the world out of the critical assessment we all need to obtain in order to make decisions regarding our futures.LoveratBought & paid for corporate Journalists are controlled by the Intelligence Agencies and always have been since at least the Second World War. The CIA typically runs bribery & blackmail at the state & federal level so that when necessary they have instant useless eaters to offer up as political sacrifice when required via state run propaganda, & impression management.
Assuming that journalism is an ethical occupation is naïve and a fools' game even in the alternative news domain as all writers write from bias & a lack of real knowledge. Few writers are intellectually honest or even aware of their own limits as writers. The writer is a failure and not a hero borne in myth. Writers struggle to write & publish. Bought and paid for writers don't have a struggle in terms of writing because they are told what to write before they write as automatons for the Intelligence Community knowing that they sold their collective souls to the Prince of Darkness for whatever trinkets, bobbles, or bling they could get their greedy hands on at the time.
Developing a conscience late in life is too late.
May all that sell their souls to the Intel agencies understand that pond scum never had a conscience to begin with.
Once pond scum always pond scum.
"wc_tw" target="_blank" title="Share On Twitter" href="https://twitter.com/intent/tweet?text=We+need+to+see+a+few+more+UK+journalists+break+...+&url=https%3A%2F%2Foff-guardian.org%2F2019%2F10%2F06%2Fwatch-udo-ulfkotte-bought-journalists%2F%23comment-97118">
We need to see a few more UK journalists break free from their shackles. Not easy I guess when they are so brainwashed and seemingly ignorant to start with. Plus the financial incentives and perks to toe the line.Harry StotleI think it is Anna Brees who used to work for BBC who resigned and is making a success of things. I see she is supporting Robert Stuart's documentary about the BBC reporting of an alleged bombing incident in Syria. Good on her.
On another note I used to hold John Simpson in high regard. He visited and wrote a book on Iran after the revolution and around the time of the Iran – Iraq war. But look at him now. He seems like a brainwashed old fool who actually believes what he reports. If I was a journalist and lied throughout my career for money, I would have given up the pretence when I reached retirement age. So the fact he still reports rubbish must mean he is totally brain dead.
Still give him some credit. At least he bothered to visit the countries at war. Nowadays jounalists just whine about Assad from New York and Beirut cafes their toxic commentary influenced by their annoyance at being banned from Syria. A few journalists seem to have lashed out at Russia for similar reasons – I think Luke Harding might have been one.
But let's see if a few more journalists reach out to the side of truth and sanity. Here's hoping.
"wc_tw" target="_blank" title="Share On Twitter" href="https://twitter.com/intent/tweet?text=The+British+MSM+is+an+important+cog+in+the+war+...+&url=https%3A%2F%2Foff-guardian.org%2F2019%2F10%2F06%2Fwatch-udo-ulfkotte-bought-journalists%2F%23comment-97134">
The British MSM is an important cog in the war machine – it's their job to condition the public mood so that more people are not revulsed by the west's long-running campaign to commit terror offences (using bogus rationalisations such as 'humanitarian aid' or 'spreading democracy').George CornellThere is virtually no chance that journalists who are part of this apperatus will have the courage, principles or intelligence of a Julian Assange – if anything they are more likely to denigrate any dissent who exposes how utterly shite they are.
http://medialens.org/index.php/alerts/alert-archive/2019/911-stockholm-syndrome-julian-assange-and-the-limits-of-guardian-dissent.html"wc_tw" target="_blank" title="Share On Twitter" href="https://twitter.com/intent/tweet?text=Thanks+Harry.+The+Proquest+newspaper+database+i...+&url=https%3A%2F%2Foff-guardian.org%2F2019%2F10%2F06%2Fwatch-udo-ulfkotte-bought-journalists%2F%23comment-97239">
Thanks Harry. The Proquest newspaper database is very informative. The Fraudian has surely earned its nicknames.
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Oct 09, 2019 | off-guardian.org
Dungroanin ->
MikeE Oct 9, 2019 12:46 AM That is my down tick.
Because i feel that some agenda is at play. I'm not going to accuse you of trolling, or even a bit of gas lighting, but it seems like a slide into classic red scaring and recasting of Eric Blair
By way of explaining my emotion and since you mention Warburg, here is an example of Orwellian post humous attribution. He never said "imagine a boot stamping on a human face, forever."
'from a post-publication press release directed by publisher Fredric Warburg toward readers who "had misinterpreted [Orwell's] aim, taking the novel as a criticism of the current British Labour Party, or of contemporary socialism in general." The quotation from the press release was "soon given the status of a last statement or deathbed appeal, given that Orwell was hospitalized at the time and dead six months later."
You can read more at georgeorwellnovels.com, which provides a great deal of context on this press release, which runs, in full, as follows:
It has been suggested by some of the reviewers of Nineteen Eighty-Four that it is the author's view that this, or something like this, is what will happen inside the next forty years in the Western world. This is not correct. I think that, allowing for the book being after all a parody, something like Nineteen Eighty-Four could happen. This is the direction in which the world is going at the present time, and the trend lies deep in the political, social and economic foundations of the contemporary world situation.
Specifically the danger lies in the structure imposed on Socialist and on Liberal capitalist communities by the necessity to prepare for total war with the U.S.S.R. and the new weapons, of which of course the atomic bomb is the most powerful and the most publicized. But danger lies also in the acceptance of a totalitarian outlook by intellectuals of all colours.
The moral to be drawn from this dangerous nightmare situation is a simple one: Don't let it happen. It depends on you.
George Orwell assumes that if such societies as he describes in Nineteen Eighty-Four come into being there will be several super states. This is fully dealt with in the relevant chapters of Nineteen Eighty-Four. It is also discussed from a different angle by James Burnham in The Managerial Revolution. These super states will naturally be in opposition to each other or (a novel point) will pretend to be much more in opposition than in fact they are.
Two of the principal super states will obviously be the Anglo-American world and Eurasia. If these two great blocks line up as mortal enemies it is obvious that the Anglo-Americans will not take the name of their opponents and will not dramatize themselves on the scene of history as Communists. Thus they will have to find a new name for themselves. The name suggested in Nineteen Eighty-Four is of course Ingsoc, but in practice a wide range of choices is open. In the U.S.A. the phrase "Americanism" or "hundred per cent Americanism" is suitable and the qualifying adjective is as totalitarian as anyone could wish.
If there is a failure of nerve and the Labour party breaks down in its attempt to deal with the hard problems with which it will be faced, tougher types than the present Labour leaders will inevitably take over, drawn probably from the ranks of the Left, but not sharing the Liberal aspirations of those now in power. Members of the present British government, from Mr. Attlee and Sir Stafford Cripps down to Aneurin Bevan will never willingly sell the pass to the enemy, and in general the older men, nurtured in a Liberal tradition, are safe, but the younger generation is suspect and the seeds of totalitarian thought are probably widespread among them. It is invidious to mention names, but everyone could without difficulty think for himself of prominent English and American personalities whom the cap would fit.'
http://www.openculture.com/2014/11/george-orwells-final-warning.html-- -- -- -
Pretty much explains the SDP and NuLabourInc and his name sake Blair and our political landscape of the last 50 years, don't you think?
Also pay attention to the 'parody phrase. '
'
As i wrote earlier, perhaps Blair of Eton ultimately saw how clearly hist talents had been misused by the 'totalitarians' before he died.I understand that some of his works are still censored and others never published. As are his state employment in propaganda on which he probably based his 'parody' on.
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Oct 08, 2019 | www.theguardian.com
When the framers of the constitution gave Congress the power to impeach a president, one of the high crimes they had in mind was acceding to what Alexander Hamilton called "the desire in foreign powers to gain an improper ascendant in our councils". James Madison argued for impeachment lest a president "might betray his trust to foreign powers".
The second question is whether Trump did this. The answer is also an unqualified yes. In the published version of his phone conversation with Ukraine's president, Volodymyr Zelenskiy, Trump asks for the "favor" of digging up dirt on Joe Biden.
reinhardpolley , 5 Oct 2019 09:50
Trump is much more than the kid with his hand in the cookie jar, like a brat he smashed the cookie jar and said "What cookie Jar? Biden did it!"NotIdefix -> reinhardpolley , 5 Oct 2019 11:58
And the GOP wimps are there, either nodding in agreement, or looking the other way..https://www.politicalflare.com/2019/10/biographer-reveals-trump-was-a-vicious-bully-as-a-child-who-threw-rocks-at-babies /Jayem64 -> NotIdefix , 5 Oct 2019 13:31"Trump was a loud-mouthed classroom know-it-all who could never admit he was wrong and boasted of giving his music teacher a black eye."
Well.. Total Sociopath, then, maybe even a full-on Psychopath.mbidding -> NotIdefix , 5 Oct 2019 17:26Anti-social-personality disorders in the highest scale -so to speak- always are there since childhood. Psychopaths are as such genetically, from birth. Unlike sociopaths. Sociopaths usually have become as such through things/trauma's experienced in life. Their initially healthy front-cortex is usually either damaged, or has less influence on their behaviour. In Psychopaths, the front cortex doesn't function at all it seems, or at sùch a low level that it can be considered absent. Psychopaths usually have a history of seriously harming animals, people, insects, around them for fun since childhood.
End-result almost the same, though. Complete and utter lack of empathy, ( though, Sociopaths often dó have empathy for their direct family/relatives, where Osychopaths even lack thàt.) stratospherically elevated sense of superiority, prone to uncontrolled ( sometimes even violent and murderous) tantrums when things do not go as he/she wants/demands etc... Enjoyment in the suffering of others. No conscience to speak of etc.
So, in short, Trump to a tee.
As also noted in The Making of Donald Trump by David Kay Johnston. A worthwhile read.ValuedCustomer -> neutralpaddy , 5 Oct 2019 10:06The brand value was all he wanted and that has multiplied. It was always win-win.Nada89 , 5 Oct 2019 10:02Heh. I wonder if you underestimate the ruthlessness of the establishment. Once stripped of the (so far surprisingly robust) protections afforded by elected office I imagine it's more likely he'll be hounded to his grave pour dencourager les autres than ignored as merely a spent pol. I doubt they'll observe the decencies of the mafia and leave his family alone either.
The US is a tinpot republic that ever since the Patriot Act has virtually reduced all citizens to enemies of a paranoid state, untl proven otherwise.curiouswes -> Nada89 , 5 Oct 2019 10:23In a strange sort of way a president like Trump seems like the ideal sort of man to head such a dysfunctional system (because it reflects how uncivilised it is).
Put another way - even if a piece of political theatre does take place (in the shape of an impeachment) it is only a matter of time before Trump is replaced by an unequally unappetising leader who will resume business as usual with powers that really control US economic and military policy.
all the patriot act did was tell the American people that the government doesn't give a "hoot" about the US constitution (specifically the 4th amendment). If the American people wish to trade their freedom for their security, then the constitutionally legal way to do that is with another amendment effectively repealing the fourth.MARK MANNERS -> Nada89 , 5 Oct 2019 16:15PortilloMoment -> Ziontrain , 5 Oct 2019 12:36In a strange sort of way a president like Trump seems like the ideal sort of man to head such a dysfunctional system (because it reflects how uncivilised it is).
The American public have been groomed for years, mainly through cutting education budgets, to accept this kind of president. The pesky internet tends to even things up, but people need to want to use it. They certainly will when their buying power drops.Put another way - even if a piece of political theatre does take place (in the shape of an impeachment) it is only a matter of time before Trump is replaced by an unequally unappetising leader who will resume business as usual with powers that really control US economic and military policy.
It goes in a pendulum swing. Bush, Obama, Trump, Someone Else... It's not so much a right left swing as an Idiot-swing. What the American public want is someone they can admire. Many people admired Obama but so do many people admire Trump. They're not the same people. What Obama promised, and delivered, was get the USA out of the shock of 2007-08 and put it back on its feet again after Bush spent all that money on the Irak war. This keeps everyone happy, as a large part of the US economy is from consumption. It also keeps a part of industry happy, as they need to be able to export and import. The public is not happy with a weak dollar, nor tarifs that both push import prices up. Bush kept the arms industry very happy, for obvious reasons and Trump's constant tension-building abroad sort of does the same. But it still comes down to how happy the public is and how much they can or refuse to be manipulated. They're a bit wiser now.'Politics in the country is a cesspool.'SmilinJackAbbott , 5 Oct 2019 10:06
I don't disagree, but,Newsflash: Politics the world over is a cesspool. History and Ancient history says it has always been so. Names and places, incidents and scandals are in no short supply to confirm nothing much has changed in the modern world.
"Politics is a dirty business" is the understatement of all time. While many politicians are indeed working in the interests of their constituents, many more are not and political parties have only one interest - themselves.
If you want an indication of how much the table is tilted, witness the recent announcement that it's ok for politicians to lie when trying to increase their support. If that doesn't tell us all we need to know - about the links between politics and business, or the fundamental lack of morals inherent in all politics, of the contempt the public are held in, I don't know what will.
SmilinJackAbbott -> Jdivney , 5 Oct 2019 10:13House Democrats will vote to impeach
Yeah but they changed the rules to bypass a vote on an impeachment inquiry specifically to prevent the accused due process & the ability to challenge the accusations.In other words they'll vote to impeach after preventing opposing evidence, in this case the Obama administration meddling in 2016 with the Ukraine's help & the Biden pay for play operation laughably conducted under the guise of rooting out corruption in Ukraine.
As grizzled old prosecutor Rudy Giuliani said he learnt early on if you want to find where the corruption is ignore everything else, follow the money, and it all leads straight to the Bidens.
That didn't take long. There we have it. The Dems are totally justified conducting a kangaroo court show trial because 'there is no opposing evidence'.Ziontrain , 5 Oct 2019 10:26Ok Trump is dirty and should go.curiouswes -> Ziontrain , 5 Oct 2019 11:38But then what? Is there any core of decent politicians left to rule the country? Who? The GOP crooks? The Clinton gang? The Bidens whose son is peddling political influence in corrupt countries? Peloisi and Schumer who are up to their eyeballs in dirty money from AIPAC and are savaging the few clean young politicians in their own party ? There's no end to it.
We are so far from cleaning up the place.
Trump could go, but the circus rolls on...
Jayem64 -> Ziontrain , 5 Oct 2019 13:57Who?
Tulsi Gabbard is the only person running that has the moral authority to run this nation and the ability to get the required votes in order to win. Doing that is going to extremely difficult since the media is controlled by the corporations and the corporations don't want her. Ike warned us about the military industrial complex over 50 years ago and she is the first candidate to openly challenge its authority since that warning.
Trump goes.. They'll get Pence..Bluejil , 5 Oct 2019 05:53Oh. Dear.
Religious loon as POTUS 'What could go wrong'
We truly have lost all sense today, from the USA to the UK, these two nations have most certainly lost the plot, I suppose the writing was always on the wall. Most of us are for our neighbours no matter their class, colour or religion, most of us want a civilised society where we have the necessities in live, decent wages, health care, education. Services that protect us. Shame the actual few keep voting against these things, whether that be from their misery, ignorance or whatever the latest excuse is, those of us who want to return to dignity and work towards progress must vote the charlatans out.newbieveryday -> Bluejil , 5 Oct 2019 06:02Western democracy is dying of greed, consumerism and power madness. Xi and Putin can't believe their dumb luck at how the US and UK are falling apart. People in places like Eastern Europe, Taiwan, etc., may start wondering whether they should gather winter coats and heavy shoes and have a talk with their children.
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Sep 11, 2019 | off-guardian.org
99/11: You Weren't Stupid, Mr. Brown! CNN's brief shining moment on September 11, 2001 Graeme MacQueen
Graeme MacQueenAaron Brown, news anchor during most of CNN's coverage on September 11, 2001, was interviewed on the 15th anniversary of the event. He said in that interview that he had felt "profoundly stupid" when he was reporting the destruction of the first Tower (the South Tower) on that morning.
I I will tell you that a million things had been running through my mind about what might happen. About the effect of a jet plane hitting people above where the impact was, what might be going on in those buildings. And it just never occurred to me that they'd come down. And I thought it's the only time I thought, maybe you just don't have what it takes to do a story like this. Because it just had never occurred to me." (CNN, Sept. 11, 2016, interviewer Brian Stelter)
Is it not remarkable that Brown was made to feel stupid, and to feel inadequate as a news anchor, during the precise moments of his coverage of that day when his senses and his mind were fully engaged and on the right track?
Shortly after 9:59 a.m. Brown had been standing on a roof in New York City about 30 blocks from the World Trade Center. He was looking directly at the South Tower as it was destroyed. He was not just a journalist and not just a news anchor: he was an eyewitness.
He immediately interrupted a journalist who was reporting live about the Pentagon:
Wow! Jamie. Jamie, I need you to stop for a second. There has just been a huge explosion we can see a billowing smoke rising and I can't I'll tell you that I can't see that second Tower. But there was a cascade of sparks and fire and now this it looks almost like a mushroom cloud, explosion, this huge, billowing smoke in the second Tower " (9:59:07 a.m.)
Having reported honestly what he saw with his own eyes, Brown next did exactly what he should have done as a responsible news anchor. He let his audience know that while he did not know what had happened it was clear that there were two hypotheses in play, the explosion hypothesis and the structural failure hypothesis. And then he went to his reporters on the scene, as well as to authorities, to try and sort out which hypothesis was correct.
Here are examples of his setting forth -- after the first building was destroyed and again after the second was destroyed -- the rival hypotheses:
and then just in the last several minutes there has been a second explosion or, at least, perhaps not an explosion, perhaps part of the building simply collapsed. And that's what we saw and that's what we're looking at." ( 10:03:47 )
This is just a few minutes ago we don't know if something happened, another explosion, or if the building was so weakened it just collapsed." ( 10:04:36 a.m. )
we believe now that we can say that both, that portions of both Towers of the World Trade Centre, have collapsed. Whether there were second explosions, that is to say, explosions other than the planes hitting them, that caused this to happen we cannot tell you." ( 10:29:21 a.m. )
Our reporters in the area say they heard loud noises when that happened. It is unclear to them and to us whether those were explosions going on in the building or if that was simply the sound of the collapse of the buildings as they collapsed, making these huge noises as they came down." ( 11:17:45 a.m .)
Brown's honest reporting of his perceptions was balanced repeatedly by his caution. Here is an example:
it almost looks it almost looks like one of those implosions of buildings that you see except there is nothing controlled about this this is devastation." ( 10:53:10 a.m. )
His next move, having set forth the two hypotheses, was to ask his reporters on the scene, who were choking on pulverized debris and witnessing gruesome scenes, what they perceived.
Reporter Brian Palmer said honestly that he was not in a position to resolve the issue.
Brown: Was there Brian, did it sound like there was an explosion before the second collapse, or was the noise the collapse itself?" (10:41:08 a.m.)Palmer: "Well, from our distance I was not able to distinguish between an explosion and the collapse. We were several hundred yards away. But we clearly saw the building come down. I heard your report of a fourth explosion: I can't confirm that. But we heard some "boom" and then the building fold in on itself."
Two others were more definite about what they perceived.
Brown: Rose, whadya got? ( 10:29:43 a.m. )Rose Arce: I'm about a block away. And there were several people that were hanging out the windows right below where the plane crashed, when suddenly you saw the top of the building start to shake, and people began leaping from the windows in the north side of the building. You saw two people at first plummet and then a third one, and then the entire top of the building just blew up
Brown: Who do we have on the phone, guys? Just help me out here. Patty, are you there? ( 10:57:51 a.m. )
Patty: Yes, I am here.
Brown: Whaddya got?
Patty: About an hour ago I was on the corner of Broadway and Park Place -- that's about a thousand yards from the World Trade Center -- when the first Tower collapsed. It was a massive explosion. At the time the police were trying desperately to evacuate people from the area. When that explosion occurred it was like a scene out of a horror film.
As can be seen, the explosion hypothesis was flourishing. Even the news caption at the bottom of the screen shortly after the destruction of the South Tower ( 10:03:12 a.m. ) is striking to read today:
"THIRD EXPLOSION SHATTERS WORLD TRADE CENTER IN NEW YORK"
After checking with his reporters, Brown continued to explore his hypotheses, this time by consulting authorities. This was where he was led astray. "Authorities" are less securely tied to evidence than witnesses and may, in fact, be implicated in high level deception.
First Brown consulted a political authority. He got the Mayor of New York City on the line.
Brown: Sir, do you believe that was there another set of explosions that caused the buildings to collapse, or was it the structural damage caused by the planes?" ( 12:31:45 p.m. )Giuliani: I don't, I don't know, I, uh, I, uh I, I saw the first collapse and heard the second 'cause I was in a building when the second took place. I think it was structural but I cannot be sure."
Later in the afternoon Giuliani got his script right and was more definite in ruling out explosions. But, of course, Giuliani had no right to pronounce on the science of building destruction. Brown should have persisted in his questioning.
Finally, Brown brought in an engineer, Jim DeStefano–associated, we were told, with the National Council of Structural Engineers. DeStefano's brief comments put an end to Brown's explosion hypothesis and rendered CNN's news coverage safe for public consumption.
Brown: Jim De Stefano is a structural engineer. He knows about big buildings and what happens in these sort of catastrophic moments. He joins us from Deerfield, Connecticut on the phone. Jim, the plane hits what and I hope this isn't a terribly oversimplified question, but what happens to the building itself? ( 04:20:45 p.m. )DeStefano: It's a tremendous impact that's applied to the building when a collision like this occurs. And it's clear that that impact was sufficient to do damage to the columns and the bracing system supporting the building. That coupled with the fire raging and the high temperatures softening the structural steel then precipitated a destabilization of the columns and clearly the columns buckled at the lower floors causing the building to collapse.
I am not in a position to call DeStefano a fake or to claim he was reading from a script given to him by others, but I am prepared to say he was extremely irresponsible. He did not say "here is one hypothesis." He said, in effect, "this is what happened." He was in no position to make this claim. There had been no photographic or video analysis of the building destruction, no analysis of the remains of the WTC, no cataloguing of eyewitnesses, nor any of the other methods of evidence gathering. He was shooting in the dark. He was silencing a journalist who was sincerely trying to discover the truth. As we have known for years now, DeStefano not only could have been wrong : he was wrong.*
And let us remember that the entire War on Terror, with its suffering and oppression, has depended on this false structural failure hypothesis. No structural failure hypothesis, no guilty Muslim fanatics. No guilty Muslim fanatics, no War on Terror.
Some readers will feel I am too generous with Brown and with CNN. But I am not interested in portraying them as broadly "dissident" or as on the political Left. I am simply interested in calling things as I see them and giving credit where credit is due. Anyone who wants a contrast to Brown's performance is free to watch the work of Fox News anchor, Jon Scott, on September 11, 2001. The same confidence that allowed him to name Bin Laden as a suspect 42 seconds after the impact of the second plane allowed him to proclaim the structural failure hypothesis directly after the destruction of the South Tower. He persisted even when his reporters in the field clearly spoke of explosions.
David Lee Miller reported:
we heard a very loud blast, an explosion. We looked up, and the building literally began to collapse before us " ( 10:01:17 a.m. )
Rick Leventhal said:
The FBI is here, as you can see. They had roped this area off. They were taking photographs and securing this area just prior to that huge explosion that we all heard and felt." ( 10:06:39 a.m. )
News anchor Scott was troubled by none of this. He overrode, silenced and patronized Fox reporters. At no point did he even acknowledge the existence of a second reasonable hypothesis for the Trade Center destruction.
Of course, it is true that by the end of the day of September 11, 2001 CNN and Fox were singing from the same hymnbook. But I believe we ought to acknowledge Brown's brief, shining moment and consider what might happen if journalists found their courage and trusted their senses and their minds.
Sources:Same-day coverage by CNN and Fox for September 11, 2001 has been sporadically available on the Internet. My notes are from my own previously downloaded files. Times should be accurate to within two seconds.
Notes*Many works have appeared over the years refuting the account of the destruction of the World Trade Center Towers released by the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST). But special note should be taken of two sources:
Ted Walter, Beyond Misinformation: What Science Says About the Destruction of World Trade Center Buildings 1, 2, and 7. Architects & Engineers for 9/11 Truth, 2015.
https://www.ae911truth.org/images/BeyondMisinfo/Beyond-Misinformation-2015.pdf
Lawyers' Committee for 9/11 Inquiry, First Amended Grand Jury Petition, filed July 30, 2018 at the office of the U.S. Attorney in Manhattan, N.Y.
https://www.lawyerscommitteefor9-11inquiry.org/lc-doj-first-amended-grand-jury-petition/
In addition, a recent academic report on the related destruction of World Trade Center 7 destroys whatever confidence we might have in NIST's accounts:
J. L. Hulsey, et al, A Structural Reevaluation of the Collapse of World Trade Center 7 (draft), University of Alaska Fairbanks, Sept. 2019.
https://salsa3.salsalabs.com/o/50694/signup_page/uaf-wtc7-draft-report?killorg=True&loggedOut=True Facebook Twitter Reddit Pinterest WhatsApp vKontakte Email
Graeme MacQueen is the former director of the Centre for Peace Studies at McMaster University. He is a member of the 9/11 Consensus Panel , former co-editor of the Journal of 9/11 Studies , and an organizer of the 2011 Toronto Hearings, the results of which have been published in book form as The 9/11 Toronto Report. He is a Research Associate of the Centre for Research on Globalization (CRG) Filed under: 9/11 , 911 general analysis , featured , latest Tagged with: Aaron Brown , CNN , Graeme MacQueen by Graeme MacQueen
Doctortrinate
Fact – the WTC's were "shown" to eat the "missing" aeroplanes -- Whole !!!MASTER OF UNIVEThe Central Intelligence Agency planned the WTC destruction & Controlled Demolition well in advance of their actual detonation of the buildings via remote control of the planted explosives & USA Military Grade Nanothermite method of cutting all the support beams that were made of low carbon steel. Photographic evidence can still be found on Google.Michael McNultyGeorge W. Bush is a mass murderer that was put in place pre-911 via wholly suspicious vote counts in Florida where he actually lost the vote.
Media & punditry should just call a spade a spade and write that the CIA cooked this up as a false flag to usurp voter authority and usher in a police state that will line the pockets & feather their collective nests much better than the democratic process would.
George W. Bush & the Neocons are public enemy #1.
MOU
I think because 9/11 was in the pipeline the Republicans had Clinton impeached in an attempt to ruin the Democrat chances in November 2000. They needed to be in the White House to turn back the jet fighters on the day, but more importantly the security agencies under a Gore White House would have uncovered the treasonous plot. When they failed to stop the Democrats and Gore won they actually had to go in and steal it which they were able to do in Florida. Otherwise they'd have all faced capital treason charges.EditorDo we think this divides along party lines? The evidence doesn't suggest itTim JenkinsPerhaps somebody could get this chump of the day, Destefano, to give an opinion now today; with the benefit of hindsight & a greater awareness of the physical scientific impossibilities of what he stated on that day, just perhaps, he would like to re-consider his inept scientific comprehension of both physics & chemistry ?MaggieAnd if gets all 'stroppy' & arrogant, invite him to defend his indefensible opinions, in front of a panel of real independent scientists & demolition experts, on a Livestream; just like we had to endure his BS on that day, we may at least have the chance to avenge, once & for all, to see clearly whose argumentation and expertise stands up to scientific & public scrutiny, for the record.
My money would be on Destefano now avoiding ANY further public discussion & confrontation, simply because his attempts to lie, once again, would be too blatantly obvious, not just to the panel questioning his judgement & knowledge on that day, along with his pathetic powers of suggestion,
but to all viewers
Therefore, invite him and watch him dodge all relevant issues, as a form of ridicule !Proof if we needed it?RobGhttps://www.brasscheck.com/video/9-11-wiring-the-buildings/?omhide=true
The 11th of September 2001 is many things, but mostly it is a blatant example of how easy it is to fool the public, and also a blatant example of how we are ruled by criminal psychopaths.Ieuan EinionIt's really that simple.
9/11 if it is anything is the date on which Salvador Allende's democratically elected government in Chile was overthrown by US imperialism and 30,000 died as a result. One of the main squares in the departmental capital where I live in France is the Place Salvador Allende; there are no squares named after George Bush or Tony Blair and there never will be.Tim JenkinsGive it time, Ieuan: we 'received' a statue of John McCain in Sofia, last year, and this tearful year of extreme poverty in Bulgaria, (engineered by NATZO), the Bulgarians received a monumental statue of iconic ironic 'value', (as central banking financial collapse looms) of Woodrow Wilson talk about marketing & selling yourself and your wholly mathematically inept ways & means; the USA knows no bounds & ground zero scientific knowledge, let alone mathematical equations, it appears
they debase any Learning from mistakes, at all costs.
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Jan 01, 2019 | dailymaverick.co.za
The Guardian, Britain's leading liberal newspaper with a global reputation for independent and critical journalism, has been successfully targeted by security agencies to neutralise its adversarial reporting of the 'security state', according to newly released documents and evidence from former and current Guardian journalists.
The UK security services targeted The Guardian after the newspaper started publishing the contents of secret US government documents leaked by National Security Agency contractor Edward Snowden in June 2013.
Snowden's bombshell revelations continued for months and were the largest-ever leak of classified material covering the NSA and its UK equivalent, the Government Communications Headquarters. They revealed programmes of mass surveillance operated by both agencies.
According to minutes of meetings of the UK's Defence and Security Media Advisory Committee, the revelations caused alarm in the British security services and Ministry of Defence.
" This event was very concerning because at the outset The Guardian avoided engaging with the [committee] before publishing the first tranche of information," state minutes of a 7 November 2013 meeting at the MOD.
The DSMA Committee, more commonly known as the D-Notice Committee, is run by the MOD, where it meets every six months. A small number of journalists are also invited to sit on the committee. Its stated purpose is to "prevent inadvertent public disclosure of information that would compromise UK military and intelligence operations". It can issue "notices" to the media to encourage them not to publish certain information.
The committee is currently chaired by the MOD's director-general of security policy Dominic Wilson, who was previously director of security and intelligence in the British Cabinet Office. Its secretary is Brigadier Geoffrey Dodds OBE, who describes himself as an "accomplished, senior ex-military commander with extensive experience of operational level leadership".
The D-Notice system describes itself as voluntary , placing no obligations on the media to comply with any notice issued. This means there should have been no need for the Guardian to consult the MOD before publishing the Snowden documents.
Yet committee minutes note the secretary saying: "The Guardian was obliged to seek advice under the terms of the DA notice code." The minutes add: "This failure to seek advice was a key source of concern and considerable efforts had been made to address it."
' Considerable efforts'
These "considerable efforts" included a D-Notice sent out by the committee on 7 June 2013 – the day after The Guardian published the first documents – to all major UK media editors, saying they should refrain from publishing information that would "jeopardise both national security and possibly UK personnel". It was marked "private and confidential: not for publication, broadcast or use on social media".
Clearly the committee did not want its issuing of the notice to be publicised, and it was nearly successful. Only the right-wing blog Guido Fawkes made it public.
At the time, according to the committee minutes , the "intelligence agencies in particular had continued to ask for more advisories [i.e. D-Notices] to be sent out". Such D-Notices were clearly seen by the intelligence services not so much as a tool to advise the media but rather a way to threaten it not to publish further Snowden revelations.
One night, amidst the first Snowden stories being published, the D-Notice Committee's then-secretary Air Vice-Marshal Andrew Vallance personally called Alan Rusbridger, then editor of The Guardian. Vallance "made clear his concern that The Guardian had failed to consult him in advance before telling the world", according to a Guardian journalist who interviewed Rusbridger.
Later in the year, Prime Minister David Cameron again used the D-Notice system as a threat to the media.
" I don't want to have to use injunctions or D-Notices or the other tougher measures," he said in a statement to MPs. "I think it's much better to appeal to newspapers' sense of social responsibility. But if they don't demonstrate some social responsibility it would be very difficult for government to stand back and not to act."
The threats worked. The Press Gazette reported at the time that "The FT [Financial Times] and The Times did not mention it [the initial Snowden revelations] and the Telegraph published only a short". It continued by noting that only The Independent "followed up the substantive allegations". It added, "The BBC has also chosen to largely ignore the story."
The Guardian, however, remained uncowed.
According to the committee minutes , the fact The Guardian would not stop publishing "undoubtedly raised questions in some minds about the system's future usefulness". If the D-Notice system could not prevent The Guardian publishing GCHQ's most sensitive secrets, what was it good for?
It was time to rein in The Guardian and make sure this never happened again.
GCHQ and laptops
The security services ratcheted up their "considerable efforts" to deal with the exposures. On 20 July 2013, GCHQ officials entered The Guardian's offices at King's Cross in London, six weeks after the first Snowden-related article had been published. At the request of the government and security services, Guardian deputy editor Paul Johnson, along with two others, spent three hours destroying the laptops containing the Snowden documents.
The Guardian staffers, according to one of the newspaper's reporters, brought "angle-grinders, dremels – drills with revolving bits – and masks". The reporter added, "The spy agency provided one piece of hi-tech equipment, a 'degausser', which destroys magnetic fields and erases data."
Johnson claims that the destruction of the computers was "purely a symbolic act", adding that "the government and GCHQ knew, because we had told them, that the material had been taken to the US to be shared with the New York Times. The reporting would go on. The episode hadn't changed anything."
Yet the episode did change something. As the D-Notice Committee minutes for November 2013 outlined: "Towards the end of July [as the computers were being destroyed], The Guardian had begun to seek and accept D-Notice advice not to publish certain highly sensitive details and since then the dialogue [with the committee] had been reasonable and improving."
The British security services had carried out more than a "symbolic act". It was both a show of strength and a clear threat. The Guardian was then the only major newspaper that could be relied upon by whistleblowers in the US and British security bodies to receive and cover their exposures, a situation which posed a challenge to security agencies.
The increasingly aggressive overtures made to The Guardian worked. The committee chair noted that after GCHQ had overseen the smashing up of the newspaper's laptops "engagement with The Guardian had continued to strengthen".
Moreover, he added , there were now "regular dialogues between the secretary and deputy secretaries and Guardian journalists". Rusbridger later testified to the Home Affairs Committee that Air Vice-Marshal Vallance of the D-Notice committee and himself "collaborated" in the aftermath of the Snowden affair and that Vallance had even "been at The Guardian offices to talk to all our reporters".
But the most important part of this charm and threat offensive was getting The Guardian to agree to take a seat on the D-Notice Committee itself. The committee minutes are explicit on this, noting that "the process had culminated by [sic] the appointment of Paul Johnson (deputy editor Guardian News and Media) as a DPBAC [i.e. D-Notice Committee] member".
At some point in 2013 or early 2014, Johnson – the same deputy editor who had smashed up his newspaper's computers under the watchful gaze of British intelligence agents – was approached to take up a seat on the committee. Johnson attended his first meeting in May 2014 and was to remain on it until October 2018 .
The Guardian's deputy editor went directly from the corporation's basement with an angle-grinder to sitting on the D-Notice Committee alongside the security service officials who had tried to stop his paper publishing.
A new editor
Guardian editor Alan Rusbridger withstood intense pressure not to publish some of the Snowden revelations but agreed to Johnson taking a seat on the D-Notice Committee as a tactical sop to the security services. Throughout his tenure, The Guardian continued to publish some stories critical of the security services.
But in March 2015, the situation changed when the Guardian appointed a new editor, Katharine Viner, who had less experience than Rusbridger of dealing with the security services. Viner had started out on fashion and entertainment magazine Cosmopolitan and had no history in national security reporting. According to insiders, she showed much less leadership during the Snowden affair than Janine Gibson in the US (Gibson was another candidate to be Rusbridger's successor).
Viner was then editor-in-chief of Guardian Australia, which was launched just two weeks before the first Snowden revelations were published. Australia and New Zealand comprise two-fifths of the so-called "Five Eyes" surveillance alliance exposed by Snowden.
This was an opportunity for the security services. It appears that their seduction began the following year.
In November 2016, The Guardian published an unprecedented "exclusive" with Andrew Parker, the head of MI5, Britain's domestic security service. The article noted that this was the "first newspaper interview given by an incumbent MI5 chief in the service's 107-year history". It was co-written by deputy editor Paul Johnson, who had never written about the security services before and who was still sitting on the D-Notice Committee. This was not mentioned in the article.
The MI5 chief was given copious space to make claims about the national security threat posed by an "increasingly aggressive" Russia. Johnson and his co-author noted, "Parker said he was talking to The Guardian rather than any other newspaper despite the publication of the Snowden files."
Parker told the two reporters, "We recognise that in a changing world we have to change too. We have a responsibility to talk about our work and explain it."
Four months after the MI5 interview, in March 2017, the Guardian published another unprecedented "exclusive", this time with Alex Younger, the sitting chief of MI6, Britain's external intelligence agency. This exclusive was awarded by the Secret Intelligence Service to The Guardian's investigations editor, Nick Hopkins, who had been appointed 14 months previously.
The interview was the first Younger had given to a national newspaper and was again softball. Titled "MI6 returns to 'tapping up' in an effort to recruit black and Asian officers", it focused almost entirely on the intelligence service's stated desire to recruit from ethnic minority communities.
" Simply, we have to attract the best of modern Britain," Younger told Hopkins. "Every community from every part of Britain should feel they have what it takes, no matter what their background or status."
Just two weeks before the interview with MI6's chief was published, The Guardian itself reported on the high court stating that it would "hear an application for a judicial review of the Crown Prosecution Service's decision not to charge MI6's former counterterrorism director, Sir Mark Allen, over the abduction of Abdel Hakim Belhaj and his pregnant wife who were transferred to Libya in a joint CIA-MI6 operation in 2004".
None of this featured in The Guardian article, which did, however, cover discussions of whether the James Bond actor Daniel Craig would qualify for the intelligence service. "He would not get into MI6," Younger told Hopkins.
More recently, in August 2019, The Guardian was awarded yet another exclusive, this time with Metropolitan police assistant commissioner Neil Basu, Britain's most senior counter-terrorism officer. This was Basu's " first major interview since taking up his post" the previous year and resulted in a three-part series of articles, one of which was entitled "Met police examine Vladimir Putin's role in Salisbury attack".
The security services were probably feeding The Guardian these "exclusives" as part of the process of bringing it onside and neutralising the only independent newspaper with the resources to receive and cover a leak such as Snowden's. They were possibly acting to prevent any revelations of this kind happening again.
What, if any, private conversations have taken place between Viner and the security services during her tenure as editor are not known. But in 2018, when Paul Johnson eventually left the D-Notice Committee, its chair, the MOD's Dominic Wilson, praised Johnson who, he said, had been "instrumental in re-establishing links with The Guardian".
Decline in critical reporting
Amidst these spoon-fed intelligence exclusives, Viner also oversaw the breakup of The Guardian's celebrated investigative team, whose muck-racking journalists were told to apply for other jobs outside of investigations.
One well-placed source told the Press Gazette at the time that journalists on the investigations team "have not felt backed by senior editors over the last year", and that "some also feel the company has become more risk-averse in the same period".
In the period since Snowden, The Guardian has lost many of its top investigative reporters who had covered national security issues, notably Shiv Malik, Nick Davies, David Leigh, Richard Norton-Taylor, Ewen MacAskill and Ian Cobain. The few journalists who were replaced were succeeded by less experienced reporters with apparently less commitment to exposing the security state. The current defence and security editor, Dan Sabbagh, started at The Guardian as head of media and technology and has no history of covering national security.
" It seems they've got rid of everyone who seemed to cover the security services and military in an adversarial way," one current Guardian journalist told us.
Indeed, during the last two years of Rusbridger's editorship, The Guardian published about 110 articles per year tagged as MI6 on its website. Since Viner took over, the average per year has halved and is decreasing year by year.
" Effective scrutiny of the security and intelligence agencies -- epitomised by the Snowden scoops but also many other stories -- appears to have been abandoned," a former Guardian journalist told us. The former reporter added that, in recent years, it "sometimes seems The Guardian is worried about upsetting the spooks."
A second former Guardian journalist added: "The Guardian no longer seems to have such a challenging relationship with the intelligence services, and is perhaps seeking to mend fences since Snowden. This is concerning, because spooks are always manipulative and not always to be trusted."
While some articles critical of the security services still do appear in the paper, its "scoops" increasingly focus on issues more acceptable to them. Since the Snowden affair, The Guardian does not appear to have published any articles based on an intelligence or security services source that was not officially sanctioned to speak.
The Guardian has, by contrast, published a steady stream of exclusives on the major official enemy of the security services, Russia, exposing Putin, his friends and the work of its intelligence services and military.
In the Panama Papers leak in April 2016, which revealed how companies and individuals around the world were using an offshore law firm to avoid paying tax, The Guardian's front-page launch scoop was authored by Luke Harding, who has received many security service tips focused on the "Russia threat", and was titled "Revealed: the $2bn offshore trail that leads to Vladimir Putin".
Three sentences into the piece, however, Harding notes that "the president's name does not appear in any of the records" although he insists that "the data reveals a pattern – his friends have earned millions from deals that seemingly could not have been secured without his patronage".
There was a much bigger story in the Panama Papers which The Guardian chose to downplay by leaving it to the following day. This concerned the father of the then Prime Minister, David Cameron, who "ran an offshore fund that avoided ever having to pay tax in Britain by hiring a small army of Bahamas residents – including a part-time bishop – to sign its paperwork".
We understand there was some argument between journalists about not leading with the Cameron story as the launch splash. Putin's friends were eventually deemed more important than the Prime Minister of the country where the paper published.
Getting Julian Assange
The Guardian also appears to have been engaged in a campaign against the WikiLeaks publisher Julian Assange, who had been a collaborator during the early WikiLeaks revelations in 2010.
One 2017 story came from investigative reporter Carole Cadwalladr, who writes for The Guardian's sister paper The Observer, titled "When Nigel Farage met Julian Assange". This concerned the visit of former UKIP leader Nigel Farage to the Ecuadorian embassy in March 2017, organised by the radio station LBC, for whom Farage worked as a presenter. Farage's producer at LBC accompanied Farage at the meeting, but this was not mentioned by Cadwalladr.
Rather, she posited that this meeting was "potentially a channel of communication" between WikiLeaks, Farage and Donald Trump, who were all said to be closely linked to Russia, adding that these actors were in a "political alignment" and that " WikiLeaks is, in many ways, the swirling vortex at the centre of everything".
Yet Cadwalladr's one official on-the-record source for this speculation was a "highly placed contact with links to US intelligence", who told her, "When the heat is turned up and all electronic communication, you have to assume, is being intensely monitored, then those are the times when intelligence communication falls back on human couriers. Where you have individuals passing information in ways and places that cannot be monitored."
It seems likely this was innuendo being fed to The Observer by an intelligence-linked individual to promote disinformation to undermine Assange.
In 2018, however, The Guardian's attempted vilification of Assange was significantly stepped up. A new string of articles began on 18 May 2018 with one alleging Assange's "long-standing relationship with RT", the Russian state broadcaster. The series, which has been closely documented elsewhere, lasted for several months, consistently alleging with little or the most minimal circumstantial evidence that Assange had ties to Russia or the Kremlin.
One story, co-authored again by Luke Harding, claimed that "Russian diplomats held secret talks in London with people close to Julian Assange to assess whether they could help him flee the UK, The Guardian has learned". The former consul in the Ecuadorian embassy in London at this time, Fidel Narvaez, vigorously denies the existence of any such "escape plot" involving Russia and is involved in a complaint process with The Guardian for insinuating he coordinated such a plot.
This apparent mini-campaign ran until November 2018, culminating in a front-page splash , based on anonymous sources, claiming that Assange had three secret meetings at the Ecuadorian embassy with Trump's former campaign manager Paul Manafort.
This "scoop" failed all tests of journalistic credibility since it would have been impossible for anyone to have entered the highly secured Ecuadorian embassy three times with no proof. WikiLeaks and others have strongly argued that the story was manufactured and it is telling that The Guardian has since failed to refer to it in its subsequent articles on the Assange case. The Guardian, however, has still not retracted or apologised for the story which remains on its website.
The "exclusive" appeared just two weeks after Paul Johnson had been congratulated for "re-establishing links" between The Guardian and the security services.
The string of Guardian articles, along with the vilification and smear stories about Assange elsewhere in the British media, helped create the conditions for a deal between Ecuador, the UK and the US to expel Assange from the embassy in April. Assange now sits in Belmarsh maximum-security prison where he faces extradition to the US, and life in prison there, on charges under the Espionage Act.
Acting for the establishment
Another major focus of The Guardian's energies under Viner's editorship has been to attack the leader of the UK Labour Party, Jeremy Corbyn.
The context is that Corbyn appears to have recently been a target of the security services. In 2015, soon after he was elected Labour leader, the Sunday Times reported a serving general warning that "there would be a direct challenge from the army and mass resignations if Corbyn became prime minister". The source told the newspaper: "The Army just wouldn't stand for it. The general staff would not allow a prime minister to jeopardise the security of this country and I think people would use whatever means possible, fair or foul, to prevent that."
On 20 May 2017, a little over two weeks before the 2017 General Election, the Daily Telegraph was fed the story that "MI5 opened a file on Jeremy Corbyn amid concerns over his links to the IRA". It formed part of a Telegraph investigation claiming to reveal "Mr Corbyn's full links to the IRA" and was sourced to an individual "close to" the MI5 investigation, who said "a file had been opened on him by the early nineties".
The Metropolitan Police Special Branch was also said to be monitoring Corbyn in the same period.
Then, on the very eve of the General Election, the Telegraph gave space to an article from Sir Richard Dearlove, the former director of MI6, under a headline: "Jeremy Corbyn is a danger to this nation. At MI6, which I once led, he wouldn't clear the security vetting."
Further, in September 2018, two anonymous senior government sources told The Times that Corbyn had been "summoned" for a "'facts of life' talk on terror" by MI5 chief Andrew Parker.
Just two weeks after news of this private meeting was leaked by the government, the Daily Mail reported another leak, this time revealing that "Jeremy Corbyn's most influential House of Commons adviser has been barred from entering Ukraine on the grounds that he is a national security threat because of his alleged links to Vladimir Putin's 'global propaganda network'."
The article concerned Andrew Murray, who had been working in Corbyn's office for a year but had still not received a security pass to enter the UK parliament. The Mail reported, based on what it called "a senior parliamentary source", that Murray's application had encountered "vetting problems".
Murray later heavily suggested that the security services had leaked the story to the Mail. "Call me sceptical if you must, but I do not see journalistic enterprise behind the Mail's sudden capacity to tease obscure information out of the [Ukrainian security service]," he wrote in the New Statesman. He added, "Someone else is doing the hard work – possibly someone being paid by the taxpayer. I doubt if their job description is preventing the election of a Corbyn government, but who knows?"
Murray told us he was approached by the New Statesman after the story about him being banned from Ukraine was leaked. "However," he added, "I wouldn't dream of suggesting anything like that to The Guardian, since I do not know any journalists still working there who I could trust."
The Guardian itself has run a remarkable number of news and comment articles criticising Corbyn since he was elected in 2015 and the paper's clearly hostile stance has been widely noted .
Given its appeal to traditional Labour supporters, the paper has probably done more to undermine Corbyn than any other. In particular, its massive coverage of alleged widespread anti-Semitism in the Labour Party has helped to disparage Corbyn more than other smears carried in the media.
The Guardian and The Observer have published hundreds of articles on "Labour anti-Semitism" and, since the beginning of this year, carried over 50 such articles with headlines clearly negative to Corbyn. Typical headlines have included " The Observer view: Labour leadership is complicit in anti-Semitism ", " Jeremy Corbyn is either blind to anti-Semitism – or he just doesn't care ", and " Labour's anti-Semitism problem is institutional. It needs investigation ".
The Guardian's coverage of anti-Semitism in Labour has been suspiciously extensive, compared to the known extent of the problem in the party, and its focus on Corbyn personally suggests that the issue is being used politically. While anti-Semitism does exist in the Labour Party, evidence suggests it is at relatively low levels. Since September 2015, when Corbyn became Labour leader, 0.06% of the Labour membership has been investigated for anti-Semitic comments or posts. In 2016, an independent inquiry commissioned by Labour concluded that the party "is not overrun by anti-Semitism, Islamophobia or other forms of racism. Further, it is the party that initiated every single United Kingdom race equality law."
Analysis of two YouGov surveys, conducted in 2015 and 2017, shows that anti-Semitic views held by Labour voters declined substantially in the first two years of Corbyn's tenure and that such views were significantly more common among Conservative voters.
Despite this, since January 2016, The Guardian has published 1,215 stories mentioning Labour and anti-Semitism, an average of around one per day, according to a search on Factiva, the database of newspaper articles. In the same period, The Guardian published just 194 articles mentioning the Conservative Party's much more serious problem with Islamophobia. A YouGov poll in 2019, for example, found that nearly half of the Tory Party membership would prefer not to have a Muslim prime minister.
At the same time, some stories which paint Corbyn's critics in a negative light have been suppressed by The Guardian. According to someone with knowledge of the matter, The Guardian declined to publish the results of a months-long critical investigation by one of its reporters into a prominent anti-Corbyn Labour MP, citing only vague legal issues.
In July 2016, one of this article's authors emailed a Guardian editor asking if he could pitch an investigation about the first attempt by the right-wing of the Labour Party to remove Corbyn, informing The Guardian of very good inside sources on those behind the attempt and their real plans. The approach was rejected as being of no interest before a pitch was even sent.
A reliable publication?
On 20 May 2019, The Times newspaper reported on a Freedom of Information request made by the Rendition Project, a group of academic experts working on torture and rendition issues, which showed that the MOD had been "developing a secret policy on torture that allows ministers to sign off intelligence-sharing that could lead to the abuse of detainees".
This might traditionally have been a Guardian story, not something for the Rupert Murdoch-owned Times. According to one civil society source, however, many groups working in this field no longer trust The Guardian.
A former Guardian journalist similarly told us: "It is significant that exclusive stories recently about British collusion in torture and policy towards the interrogation of terror suspects and other detainees have been passed to other papers including The Times rather than The Guardian."
The Times published its scoop under a strong headline , "Torture: Britain breaks law in Ministry of Defence secret policy". However, before the article was published, the MOD fed The Guardian the same documents The Times were about to splash with, believing it could soften the impact of the revelations by telling its side of the story.
The Guardian posted its own article just before The Times, with a headline that would have pleased the government: "MoD says revised torture guidance does not lower standards".
Its lead paragraph was a simple summary of the MOD's position: "The Ministry of Defence has insisted that newly emerged departmental guidance on the sharing of intelligence derived from torture with allies, remains in line with practices agreed in the aftermath of a series of scandals following the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq." However, an inspection of the documents showed this was clearly disinformation.
The Guardian had gone in six short years from being the natural outlet to place stories exposing wrongdoing by the security state to a platform trusted by the security state to amplify its information operations. A once relatively independent media platform has been largely neutralised by UK security services fearful of being exposed further. Which begs the question: where does the next Snowden go? DM
The Guardian did not respond to a request for comment.
Daily Maverick will formally launch Declassified – a new UK-focused investigation and analysis organisation run by the authors of this article – in November 2019.
Matt Kennard is an investigative journalist and co-founder of Declassified . He was previously director of the Centre for Investigative Journalism in London, and before that a reporter for the Financial Times in the US and UK. He is the author of two books, Irregular Army and The Racket .
Mark Curtis is a leading UK foreign policy analyst, journalist and the author of six books including Web of Deceit: Britain's Real Role in the World and Secret Affairs: Britain's Collusion with Radical Islam .
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Sep 14, 2019 | www.theguardian.com
With John Bolton dismissed, Taliban peace talks a fiasco and a trade war with China, US foreign policy is ever more unstable and confrontational
It was by all accounts, a furious row. Donald Trump was talking about relaxing sanctions on Iran and holding a summit with its president, Hassan Rouhani, at this month's UN general assembly in New York. John Bolton, his hawkish national security adviser, was dead against it and forcefully rejected Trump's ideas during a tense meeting in the Oval Office on Monday.
...Bolton's brutal defenestration has raised hopes that Trump, who worries that voters may view him as a warmonger, may begin to moderate some of his more confrontational international policies. As the 2020 election looms, he is desperate for a big foreign policy peace-making success. And, in Trump world, winning matters more than ideology, principles or personnel.
The US president is now saying he is also open to a repeat meeting with North Korea's leader, Kim Jong-un, to reboot stalled nuclear disarmament talks. On another front, he has offered an olive branch to China, delaying a planned tariff increase on $250bn of Chinese goods pending renewed trade negotiations next month. Meanwhile, he says, new tariffs on European car imports could be dropped, too.
Is a genuine dove-ish shift under way? It seems improbable. Since taking office in January 2017, Trump has not merely broken with diplomatic and geopolitical convention. He has taken a wrecking ball to venerated alliances, multilateral cooperation and the postwar international rules-based order. He has cosied up to autocrats, attacked old friends and blundered into sensitive conflicts he does not fully comprehend.
The resulting new world disorder – to adapt George HW Bush's famous 1991 phrase – will be hard to put right. Like its creator, Trump world is unstable, unpredictable and threatening. Trump has been called America's first rogue president. Whether or not he wins a second term, this Trumpian era of epic disruption, the very worst form of American exceptionalism, is already deeply entrenched.
The suggestion that Trump will make nice and back off as election time nears thus elicits considerable scepticism. US analysts and commentators say the president's erratic, impulsive and egotistic personality means any shift towards conciliation may be short-lived and could quickly be reversed, Bolton or no Bolton.
Trump wanted quick 'n' easy, primetime credit for a dramatic peace deal in Afghanistan with the Taliban, pushed ahead blindly, then changed his mind at the last minute
Trump is notorious for blowing hot and cold, performing policy zigzags and suddenly changing his mind. "Regardless of who has advised Mr Trump on foreign affairs all have proved powerless before [his] zest for chaos," the New York Times noted last week .
Lacking experienced diplomatic and military advisers (he has sacked most of the good ones), surrounded by an inner circle of cynical sycophants such as secretary of state Mike Pompeo, and driven by a chronic desire for re-election, Trump's behaviour could become more, not less, confrontational during his remaining time in office, suggested Eliot Cohen, professor of strategic studies at Johns Hopkins university.
"The president has proved himself to be what many critics have long accused him of being: belligerent, bullying, impatient, irresponsible, intellectually lazy, short-tempered and self-obsessed," Cohen wrote in Foreign Affairs journal . "Remarkably, however, those shortcomings have not yet translated into obvious disaster. But [that] should not distract from a building crisis of US foreign policy."
This pending crisis stems from Trump's crudely Manichaean division of the world into two camps: adversaries/competitors and supporters/customers. A man with few close confidants, Trump has real trouble distinguishing between allies and enemies, friends and foes, and often confuses the two. In Trump world, old rules don't apply. Alliances are optional. Loyalty is weakness. And trust is fungible.
As a result, the US today finds itself at odds with much of the world to an unprecedented and dangerous degree. America, the postwar global saviour, has been widely recast as villain. Nor is this a passing phase. Trump seems to have permanently changed the way the US views the world and vice versa. Whatever follows, it will never be quite the same again.
Clues as to what he does next may be found in what he has done so far. His is a truly calamitous record, as exemplified by Afghanistan. Having vowed in 2016 to end America's longest war, he began with a troop surge, lost interest and sued for peace. A withdrawal deal proved elusive. Meanwhile, US-led forces inflicted record civilian casualties .
Facebook Twitter Pinterest The US and Israeli flags are projected on the walls of Jerusalem's Old City in May, marking the anniversary of the US embassy transfer from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem. Photograph: Ahmad Gharabli/GettyThe crunch came last weekend when a bizarre, secret summit with Taliban chiefs at Camp David was cancelled . It was classic Trump. He wanted quick 'n' easy, primetime credit for a dramatic peace deal, pushed ahead blindly, then changed his mind at the last minute. Furious over a debacle of his own making, he turned his wrath on others, notably Bolton – who, ironically, had opposed the summit all along.
All sides are now vowing to step up the violence, with the insurgents aiming to disrupt this month's presidential election in Afghanistan. In short, Trump's self-glorifying Afghan reality show, of which he was the Nobel-winning star, has made matters worse. Much the same is true of his North Korea summitry, where expectations were raised, then dashed when he got cold feet in Hanoi , provoking a backlash from Pyongyang.
The current crisis over Iran's nuclear programme is almost entirely of Trump's making, sparked by his decision last year to renege on the 2015 UN-endorsed deal with Tehran. His subsequent "maximum pressure" campaign of punitive sanctions has failed to cow Iranians while alienating European allies. And it has led Iran to resume banned nuclear activities – a seriously counterproductive, entirely predictable outcome.
Trump's unconditional, unthinking support for Benjamin Netanyahu, Israel's aggressively rightwing prime minister – including tacit US backing for his proposed annexation of swathes of the occupied territories – is pushing the Palestinians back to the brink, energising Hamas and Hezbollah, and raising tensions across the region .
With Trump's blessing, Israel is enmeshed in escalating, multi-fronted armed confrontation with Iran and its allies in Iraq, Lebanon and Syria. Add to this recent violence in the Gulf, the disastrous Trump-backed, Saudi-led war in Yemen, mayhem in Syria's Idlib province, border friction with Turkey, and Islamic State resurgence in northern Iraq, and a region-wide explosion looks ever more likely.
The bipartisan consensus forged in the 1990s – in which the US towered over the world and, at low cost, sought to remake it in America's image – has failed and cannot be revived
Stephen Wertheim, historianYet Trump, oblivious to the point of recklessness, remains determined to unveil his absurdly unbalanced Israel-Palestine "deal of the century" after Tuesday's Israeli elections. He and his gormless son-in-law, Jared Kushner, may be the only people who don't realise their plan has a shorter life expectancy than a snowball on a hot day in Gaza.
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...he is consistently out of line, out on his own – and out of control. This, broadly, is Trump world as it has come to exist since January 2017. And this, in a nutshell, is the intensifying foreign policy crisis of which Professor Cohen warned. The days when responsible, trustworthy, principled US international leadership could be taken for granted are gone. No vague change of tone on North Korea or Iran will by itself halt the Trump-led slide into expanding global conflict and division.
Historians such as Stephen Wertheim say change had to come. US politicians of left and right mostly agreed that "the bipartisan consensus forged in the 1990s – in which the US towered over the world and, at low cost, sought to remake it in America's image – has failed and cannot be revived", Wertheim wrote earlier this year . "But agreement ends there " he continued: "One camp holds that the US erred by coddling China and Russia, and urges a new competition against these great power rivals. The other camp, which says the US has been too belligerent and ambitious around the world, counsels restraint, not another crusade against grand enemies."
This debate among grownups over America's future place in the world will form part of next year's election contest. But before any fundamental change of direction can occur, the international community – and the US itself – must first survive another 16 months of Trump world and the wayward child-president's poll-fixated, ego-driven destructive tendencies.
Survival is not guaranteed. The immediate choice facing US friends and foes alike is stark and urgent: ignore, bypass and marginalise Trump – or actively, openly, resist him.
Here are some of the key flashpoints around the globe
United NationsTrump is deeply hostile to the UN. It embodies the multilateralist, globalist policy approaches he most abhors – because they supposedly infringe America's sovereignty and inhibit its freedom of action. Under him, self-interested US behaviour has undermined the authority of the UN security council's authority. The US has rejected a series of international treaties and agreements, including the Paris climate change accord and the Iran nuclear deal. The UN-backed international criminal court is beyond the pale. Trump's attitude fits with his "America First" isolationism, which questions traditional ideas about America's essential global leadership role.
GermanyTrump rarely misses a chance to bash Germany, perhaps because it is Europe's most successful economy and represents the EU, which he detests. He is obsessed by German car imports, on which protectionist US tariffs will be levied this autumn. He accuses Berlin – and Europe– of piggy-backing on America by failing to pay its fair share of Nato defence costs. Special venom is reserved for Germany's chancellor, Angela Merkel, most likely because she is a woman who stands up to him . Trump recently insulted another female European leader, Denmark's Mette Frederiksen, after she refused to sell him Greenland .
IsraelTrump has made a great show of unconditional friendship towards Israel and its rightwing prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, who has skilfully maximised his White House influence. But by moving the US embassy to Jerusalem, officially condoning Israel's annexation of the Golan Heights, and withdrawing funding and other support from the Palestinians, the president has abandoned the long-standing US policy of playing honest broker in the peace process. Trump has also tried to exploit antisemitism for political advantage, accusing US Democrat Jews who oppose Netanyahu's policies of "disloyalty" to Israel.
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Sep 07, 2019 | off-guardian.org/
"Aftermath" is the latest addition to three previous publications by Rickards, Currency Wars (2011), The Death of Money (2014), The Road to Ruin (2016). Together, with the present offering (Aftermath, 2019), the author uses the analogy of the Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse to illustrate the themes of his four books. The latest book is thematic in its approach to the events which have taken place in the world in general and the United States in particular during this period.
HIGH SOCIETYRickards had previously worked for the CIA (possibly still does – who knows?) but now seems to be a free-wheeling business executive, writer and strategic analyst. He tends to circulate outside of the usual middle-ranking semi-elite circles preferring to consort with the less observable, higher-ranking coteries of the inner-party. Moreover, he has nothing but disdain for the run-of-the-mill talking heads to be found (in abundance) in the media and academia – the outer-party.
His observations of this social stratum are unapologetic and caustic:
History is the first casualty of media micro-second attention span. An army of pseudo-savants saturate the airways to explain that tariffs are bad, trade wars hurt growth and mercantilism are a throwback to the 17th century. These sentiments come from mainstream liberals and conservatives and tag-along journalists trained in the orthodoxy of so-called free-trade and the false if comforting belief that trade deficits are the flipside of capital surpluses. So, what is the problem? The problem is that perpetual trade deficits have put the United States on a path to a crisis of the US$."[ 1 ]
As is apparent, his contempt is palpable.
It should be said that much of his writing and theorising is at times occasioned by a high level of sophistication, alas sadly lacking in most of his contemporaries. But for all his refinement and eloquence that doesn't stop him being, from Off Guardian's perspective (and mine), on the other side – the side of the Anglo-Zionist empire.
THE GREAT BETRAYALThroughout this book and previous books there runs a familiar leitmotif; a sense of betrayal by the present dominant section of the US elite. This is not by any means an unusual political phenomenon and bears comparison with the stab-in-the-back myth – a notion doing the rounds in Germany circa 1918.
It held that the German Army did not lose World War I on the battlefield but it was 'traitors' on the home front, especially the traitorous republicans who overthrew the Hohenzollern monarchy in the German Revolution of 1918–19.
This precedent loosely corresponds to Rickards' belief in the perfidy of the current leadership of the US and his vitriol is directed against this globalist faction who are firmly ensconced in both Democrat and Republican parties and whom, he argues, have sold the pass in terms of America's strategic interests. He writes:
Obama, both Bushes, and Bill Clinton were globalists, defined as those willing to trade-off or compromise US interests for the sake of a stronger global community even conservative hawks like Reagan and JFK were firmly in the globalist camp, as they relied on NATO, the UN and the IMF to pursue their cold war goals.
However, all was not lost. As a result of
the Presidential election of 2016 when Donald Trump was sworn in on 17 January 2017 as the strongest nationalist since Theodore Roosevelt. For the first time in 100 years a committed nationalist was sitting in the Oval Office." [ 2 ]
The event was obviously political grist to Rickards' mill.
However, precisely how this liberation of the US from the domestic globalists' stranglehold was to be brought about wasn't made clear, and in fact is barely touched upon by Rickards.
Trump, for all his bombast and promises to Make America Great Again (MAGA), and pursue a radical foreign policy of withdrawal from globalist wars of choice and military adventurism, has been conspicuous by its absence.
Moreover, from the outset he has been beset by the ancien regime of neo-conservatives and neo-liberals – Bolton, Pompeo and Pence – entrenched in key US institutions, as well as various think-tanks and media who are still doggedly set upon the realization of neo-con foreign policy goals.
It seems odd that Rickards doesn't see fit to comment on this important development given that Trumps' campaign promises have disappeared almost without trace since he entered the Oval Office.
IT'S THE ECONOMY STUPIDRickards is on firmer ground, however, when dissecting the 8th wonder of the world – US economic policy. The US sovereign debt (i.e., the debt of the Federal Government) to GDP is now at a record, this is unprecedented for a peacetime administration.
In addition, it is also worth noting the magnitude of US private debt and unfunded future liabilities, pensions, Medicaid, social security and so forth.
This would include household debt, student debt, financial debt, corporate debt, and municipal debt. Add this to sovereign debt and you get a figure roughly 5 times US sovereign debt, and even this is regarded as being a conservative figure according to many – see David Stockman, John Mauldin et al).
According to Rickards, the present situation has been largely the result of excess spending by both Democratic and Republican administrations. The spending has either been on 'Defence' – a Republican favourite – or social like L.B. Johnson's 'Great Society' programme – a Democratic favourite.
LBJ's administration contrived to conduct the Vietnam War as well as an expensive social programme, simultaneously. A guns plus butter economy. (The original version of the Guns versus butter argument was given in a speech on January 17, 1936, in Nazi Germany. The then Minister of Propaganda Joseph Goebbels stated: "We can do without butter, but, despite all our love of peace, not without arms." )
LBJ's guns-and-butter policies were enacted in the late sixties at the height of the Vietnam war and the Tet Offensive. The utopian attempt to have the best of both worlds brought LBJ's administration to an end; more importantly, perhaps it was also the beginning of the process which brought down the curtain on the post WW2 economic world order established at the Bretton Woods conference in 1944.
Because the costs of the Vietnam war were superimposed on the economy not far effectively from full employment, the US domestic sector was severely destabilised.
Instead of taxing the nation to pay for the war, the government engaged in the more acceptable practice of deficit financing
Vietnam showed that neither the United States nor any other democratic nation can ever again afford the foreign exchange costs of conventional warfare, although the periphery was still kept in line by American military initiatives most recently in Yugoslavia and Afghanistan.
The lesson in the long term is that peace will be maintained only by governments refusing to finance the military and other excesses of the increasingly indebted imperial power." [ 3 ]
The figure for the US sovereign debt – began to rise relentlessly from the 1980s onwards approaching wartime levels by the time of the 2008 blowout.
It has been estimated by some economic theorists that any sovereign Debt-to-GDP figure greater than 60% represents a tripwire whereby governments should act to rein in government expenditures.
The EU Maastricht criteria, for example, stipulated that EU Debt-to-GDP should not go over 60% except in certain circumstances and an annual budgetary deficit should not be more than 3%.
That is a pretty tight monetary and fiscal policy EU style, but not to be outdone the spendthrift US was to go on a wild binge in both fiscal and monetary terms the result of which is a now an unpayable mountain of debt. This gives an indication of how far US economic policymaking has drifted away from any viable economic strategy.
Rickards fulminates:
To see how America came to this pretty pass we, one needs to review almost 40 years of fiscal policy under Presidents Reagan, Bush 1, Clinton, Bush 2, Obama and Trump from the period 1981-2019." [ 4 ]
Under Reagan in 1981 US Debt-to-GDP ratio was 32.5%. The President was gung-ho for tax cuts and big spending increases, particularly 'defence' spending. This trend was continued under the tutelage of the Bushes and Clinton, and Debt-to-GDP ratio rose to 56.4% when Bush Jr, took office and had risen to 82% by the time he left.
The Obama years saw the Debt-to-GDP rise to 100%. The diagram below 2009 debt-to-GDP was 82.3% This figure has risen inexorably to over 100% in 2018. Yep, here we have the dreaded law of Diminishing returns. Every new dollar of input gives you 90 cents of output.
The above diagram illustrates the growth of debt vis-à-vis National Income (GDP) since the 2008 blowout. Debt has been growing progressively faster than National Income.
The US economy, like the US shale oil industry, has become a Ponzi scheme in all but name. The Fed's issuance of new debt to pay off existing debt signals the key moment of the Minsky crisis.[ 5 ]
There doesn't appear to be any viable way out this predicament short of a straight default. But Rickards argues that 'the United States will never default on its debt because the Fed can simply print the money and to pay it off.' This will involve an engineered inflation to wipe out the debt. But in fact, inflation is the default, a default by the back door. Getting paid in worthless currency is in essence no different than not getting paid at all.
NO EXITAs for solutions to a crisis which has seemingly reached the point of no return, all that Rickards can offer is a Japanese scenario of low or zero growth punctuated by recession for the United States and by implication for the rest of the world. The United States had its first long decade from 2007 to 2017 and is now into its second decade.
This growth pattern will persist absent of inflationary breakout which the Fed seems powerless to ignite in the short run; a war; or severe depression perhaps caused by a new financial crisis.[ 6 ]
Not much of a prospect for the average family then. But Rickards does give some useful advice to his more opulent readers on how they should diversify their assets.
There are apparently "luxury bombproof bunkers built in former missile silos and expansive estates in New Zealand loaded with rations and good wines."
Really? At this point one wonders if Mr Rickards is being serious or just smug.
SOCIAL IMMOBILITY AND THE RISE OF OLIGARCHYThe social and economic impact on levels of inequality in both the US and globally have been extremely deleterious and seem set to continue. Inequality in income and wealth – a phenomenon identified and outlined by Thomas Piketty – is resulting in societies which more and more resemble feudal economic and social structures rather than textbook capitalism. Social class is hardening into social caste and rates of social mobility are decelerating at an alarming rate.
The liberal notion that the individual is the author of his/her own destiny has become a very dubious proposition when the drawbridges of advantage, birth and preferment are drawn up. Moreover, high levels of income/wealth are not conducive to growth since the new aristocracy owns most of the wealth/income which is hoarded rather than spent on investment and/or consumption. Stagnation, idled capital and rent extraction becomes the economic norm.
Inequality is common in college admissions where the wealthy and connected continue to send their sons and daughters to elite schools while the middle-class are restrained by sky-high tuitions and the burden of student loans.It's true in the housing market where the rich picked up mansions on the cheap in foreclosure sales whilst the middle-class were frozen in mortgage negative equity.
It's true in health care, where the rich could afford all the insurance they needed while the middle class were handicapped by unemployment and the loss of job-related benefits. These disparities also affected the adult children of the middle-class. There are no gold-plated benefits packages in the gig society
Research shows that fewer than 50% of all children aged 30 today earn more than their parents did at the same age. This 50% figure compares with 60% who earned more in 1971, and 80% who earned more in 1950.
The American dream of each generation earning more than the prior generation is collapsing before our eyes The middle class is getting poorer on a relative basis and lagging further behind the rich whose incomes absorb an increasing share of total GDP The manner in which the rich become rich is variable.
It could be due to a number of unrelated factors Problems arise in the way that the rich stay rich become richer and pass on wealth to their children and grandchildren." [ 7 ]
It is a matter of common knowledge that the traditional techniques of preserving and creating wealth have been long established in law, customs, education and socialization; these traditional methods being practised over decades, if not centuries, have produced a system of elite self-recruitment, one moreover which endures through time.
Many of the richest US citizens – e.g., Buffet, Bezos, Zuckerberg – pay minimal tax demands. Much of the wealth of the richest Americans is never taxed because they hold onto real estate and stocks and pass them onto their beneficiaries tax-free. This is one of a perfectly legal method of avoiding tax; there are many more too numerous to cite which include various other examples of tax avoidance/evasion.
Levels of income and wealth inequality within states are usually measured by what is called the Gini Co-efficient. This measure is a commonly used measure of income inequality that condenses the entire income distribution for a country into a single number between 0 and 1 or 0% to 100%: the higher the number, the greater the degree of inequality. A rough estimate of inequality is a figure above 40%.
The United States and China are in the low forties, surrounded by underdeveloped and developing states such as The Democratic Republic of the Congo, Uganda, Burundi and El Salvador. At the other end of the spectrum are Sweden, Norway and Iceland.
In this connection the by now well-known study carried out by two American academics at Princeton University Prof Martin Gilens and North western University Prof Benjamin Page argue that the US is dominated by a rich and powerful elite.
Multivariate analysis indicates that economic elites and organised 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."
In plain English: the wealthy few move policy, while the average American has little power.
The two professors came to this conclusion after reviewing answers to 1,779 survey questions asked between 1981 and 2002 on public policy issues. They broke the responses down by income level, and then determined how often certain income levels and organised interest groups saw their policy preferences enacted.
Americans do enjoy many features central to democratic governance, such as regular elections, freedom of speech and association and a widespread (if still contested) franchise. But we believe that if policymaking is dominated by powerful business organisations and a small number of affluent Americans, then America's claims to be a democratic society are seriously threatened."
In summation, both gentlemen concluded that in essence the US was an oligarchy not a properly functioning democracy. All very true but somewhat self-evident.
Rickards regards the present situation as being irreversible. He does not present any alternative to this trend other than some vague hopes that the 'nationalist' President in the Oval Office will turn things around – MAGA in fact.
The golden age of post WW2 capitalism ended when Nixon took the dollar off the gold standard in August 1971, which was in effect a default by the US. Holders of surplus dollars in Europe who were no longer able to swap these dollars for gold but were merely presented with other US$s with which they had to purchase US Treasurys (Bonds) debts which were never going to be repaid. In the age of fiat currencies Europe and various other holders of US Treasuries were in fact subsidizing the United States.
POOR LITTLE AMERICAAt this point the book becomes one long whinge about how hard done-by America has been and how the rest of the world has taken advantage of this benign gentle giant. This rather bizarre belief calls for further analysis. The US pays some of the bill for NATO whilst European nations pay insufficient amounts for the 'defence' of their countries.
It should be pointed out, however, that in terms of military hardware the NATO alliance is standardized to American specifications. This means large-scale purchasing of US war materiel which is a gift bonus to the US armaments industry.
Then Germany has the nerve to buy Russian gas transported to Europe via Nordstream 2 which is cheaper and more reliable than US Liquified Natural Gas (LNG), when in fact they should be buying more expensive and less reliable US LNG. Apparently, Germany ought really to be subsidising the US shale oil Ponzi racket. Bad, ungrateful Germany.
Then comes the incessant carping regarding trade policy and trade deals. The US in its speed to become a cool, post-modern, financialised economy apparently forgot about the importance of production. In the automobile industry the once dominant US triad of General Motors, Ford and Chrysler are no longer in the vanguard and Japan, with South Korea catching up, is now the leading country in the export of auto vehicles, a position which the US once held. It was the Japanese auto industry which pioneered production methods including just-in-time deliveries and lean production (Toyota). Was anyone stopping the Americans from innovating?
In rank order. Figures quoted in Global Shift – Peter Dicken.
Volkswagen, Germany: Annual Output 8,576,94 Toyota, Japan: Annual Output 8,381.968 Hyundai, South Korea: Annual Output 6,761,074 General Motor, USA: Annual Output 6,608,567 Honda, Japan: Annual Output 4,078,376 Nissan, Japan: Annual Output 3,830,954 Ford, USA: Annual Output 3,123,340 PSA, France: Annual Output 2,554,059 Suzuki, Japan: Annual Output 2,483,721 Renault, France: Annual Output 2,302,769Globally, the leading manufacturer of auto-vehicles is Volkswagen followed by Toyota. GM are 4th and Ford are 8th of ten. Hardly market leaders anymore, but Rickards apportions the blame to 'unfair practices' by foreign manufacturers and argues instead for tariffs. The same goes for other trade partners. Fact that the United States has to a large extent been deindustrialised was a political choice of its own making.
If the US has lost ground in the competition for trade on world markets that is because of its own insular provincialism and hubris, not foreign competitive malpractice. Moreover, much of its productive industry which remains has been outsourced to low cost venues such as China. The US more than anyone should know that its competitors are simply using the same policies that it itself used during the 19th century to break British trade hegemony.
It has been the same story with agriculture. Trade liberalization (this must rank as the greatest misnomer of trade theory) and trade treaties have been an example of the blatant unfairness of such agreements. During the Uruguay round of 'talks' (1982-2000):
the United States pushed other countries to open up their markets to areas of 'our' (i.e. the US's) strength, but resisted, successfully so, to efforts to make us reciprocate.Construction and maritime services, the areas of advantage of many developing countries were not included in the new agreement. Worse still, financial services liberalization was arguably even harmful to some developing countries: as large international (read American) banks squelched local competitors denying them the funds they garnered would be channelled to the international firms with which they felt comfortable, not the small and medium-sized local firms
As foreign banks took over the banking systems of like Argentina and Mexico worries about small and medium sized firms within these countries being starved of funds have been repeatedly voiced.
Whether these concerns are valid or not, whether they are exaggerated or not, is not the issue: the issue is that countries should have the right to make these decisions themselves, as the United States did in its own country during its formative years; but under the new international rules that America had pushed, countries were being deprived of that right.
Suffice it to say that agriculture has always been a flagrant example of the double standards inherent in the US trade liberalization agenda. Although we insisted that other countries reduce their barriers to our products and eliminate the subsidies for which those products competed against ours, the United States kept barriers for the goods produced by the developing countries, and the US continued massive subsidies to its own produce. [ 8 ]
EXORBITANT PRIVILEGEOh, I almost forgot: the imperial tribute that the world pays to the hegemon; aka the reserve status of the dollar. The role of the US dollar in the world's political economy gives it advantages which the rest of the dollar surplus-states are dragooned into accepting. In the late sixties early seventies, the US was on the verge of technical bankruptcy due to its spending profligacy at home and military adventurism in Indochina. It had three choices of how to deal with this acute problem.
[The] 3 courses open to the US government on the collapse of the Gold Pool in London in 1968 were: immediately pull out of the war in South-East Asia and cut back overseas and domestic military expenditure to allow the dollar to firm again on world markets; to continue the war paying for its foreign exchange costs with further outflows of Fort Knox gold; or to induce the Europeans and other payments surplus areas to continue to accumulate surplus dollars and dollar equivalents (US Treasuries) not convertible into gold." [ 9 ]
Of course, it was option three that appealed and Nixon in his television broadcast was to announce a 'temporary' suspension of gold sales by the US to its overseas 'partners'.
The date in question, 15 August 1971, marked the end of one epoch and the beginning of another. The temporary suspension soon morphed into a permanent one and a global fiat currency regime based on the dollar came into being. This represented a culmination of a situation in which the US manipulation of the dollar was termed the 'Exorbitant Privilege' by the senior French politician Valery Giscard d'Estaing. And privilege it was.
The central political fact is that the dollar standard places the direction of the world monetary policy in the hands of a single country which thereby acquires great influence over the economic destiny of others. It is one thing to sacrifice sovereignty in the interests of interdependence; it is quite another when the relationship is one-way.
The difference is that between the EEC(EU) and a colonial empire. The brute fact is that the acceptance of a dollar standard necessarily implies a degree of asymmetry in power which, although it actually existed in the early post-war years, had vanished by the time that the world sliding into a reluctant dollar standard." [ 10 ]
There were a number of advantages which accrued to the dollar contingent on the ending of gold convertibility which Eichengreen listed these in his book. But the principle one was making the surplus nations of the world pay for America's wars with an unconvertible currency. Instead of being paid for in gold, or at least a gold-backed currency the world produced goods and services for a piece of green paper backed by nothing.
Quite a clever little racket when you think about it.
Better still is the way that the two biggest surplus nations, Japan and China, have been the US's main creditors, bankrolling the US by buying its Treasuries. This had another intended, or perhaps unintended effect: long term interest rates on US bonds came down (since bond prices and bond interest rates move in opposite directions) and enabled the property bubble to expand until the inevitable blow-out in 2008.
In mafia terms the US dollar has been a 'made' currency enjoying a set of privileges and protection which it did not earn but foisted upon others. This is a unique dispensation which is enjoyed by the US to which the rest of the world is excluded.
However, it is in the nature of things that privileges will ultimately get abused. In pushing its luck to the point of abuse the US should be aware that initial signs are that the world is sloughing off the US dollar. As it proceeds in that direction, the US currency will lose its position as the global reserve asset. Holders of trillions of dollar-denominated assets will become sellers eventuating in a collapse of the currency.
The US economy lives like a parasite off its partners in the global system, with virtually no savings of its own. The World produces whilst North America consumes. The advantage of the US is that of a predator whose advantage is covered, by what others agree, or are forced, to contribute.
Washington uses various means to make up for its deficiencies: for example, repeated violations of the principles of liberalism, arms exports, and the hunting-down of oil super-profits (which involves the periodic felling of producers; one of the real motives behind the wars in Iraq and Central Asia).
But the fact is that the bulk of the American deficit is covered by capital inputs from Europe and Japan, China and the South, rich oil-producing countries and comprador classes from all regions, including the poorest, in the third world, to which should be added the debt-service levy that is imposed on nearly every country in the periphery of the global system. The US superpower depends from day to day on the flow of capital which sustains its economy and society. The vulnerability of the United States represents a serious danger to Washington's project." [ 11 ]
In light of the above we may conclude that – in spite of the irritating name-dropping – Rickards' books are interesting well written and well-argued; per contra they are very light on facts which have been left deliberately unexamined as well as counter-narratives which have also been ignored.
This was to be expected quite simply because at bottom Rickards is a sophist much in the tradition of Protagoras, Gorgias and Thrasymachus "I say that justice is nothing other than the advantage of the stronger" [ 12 ]
A view which Rickards would certainly endorse. Beneath the Upper Manhattan, polished chic, there resides a ruthless Cold Warrior. The further one digs into the book, the more this becomes apparent.
NOTES:-
- [1] Rickards – Aftermath – page.21
- [2] Ibid., – page.65
- [3] Michael Hudson – Super Imperialism – pp.298/99, 32.
- [4] Rickards – Ibid. – page.66
- [5] Hyman Minsky's theories about debt accumulation received revived attention in the media during the subprime mortgage crisis of the late 2000s. The New Yorker has labelled it "the Minsky Moment". Minsky argued that a key mechanism that pushes an economy towards a crisis is the accumulation of debt by the non-government sector. He identified three types of borrowers that contribute to the accumulation of insolvent debt: hedge borrowers, speculative borrowers, and Ponzi borrowers.
- The "hedge borrower" can make debt payments (covering interest and principal) from current cash flows from investments. For the "speculative borrower", the cash flow from investments can service the debt, i.e., cover the interest due, but the borrower must regularly roll over, or re-borrow, the principal. The "Ponzi borrower" (named for Charles Ponzi, see also Ponzi scheme) borrows based on the belief that the appreciation of the value of the asset will be sufficient to refinance the debt but could not make sufficient payments on interest or principal with the cash flow from investments; only the appreciating asset value can keep the Ponzi borrower afloat.
- [6] Rickards – Ibid., page.85
- [7] Rickards – Ibid., page.239
- [8] Joseph Stiglitz – The Roaring 90s – pp.206/207
- [9] Gold Pool 1968. The price of one troy ounce of gold was pegged to US$35. The larger the gap, known as the gold window, between free market gold price and the foreign exchange rate, the more tempting it was for nations to deal with internal economic crises by buying gold at the Bretton Woods price and selling it in the gold markets. It couldn't last and it didn't.
- [10] Michael Hudson – Ibid. – p.309
- [11] Barry Eichengreen – Exorbitant Privilege – passim.
- [12] Plato – The Republic. Facebook Twitter Reddit Pinterest WhatsApp vKontakte Email
Frank Lee left school at age 15 without any qualifications, but gained degrees from both New College Oxford and the London School of Economics (it's a long story). He spent many years as a lecturer in politics and economics, and in the Civil Service, before retirement. He lives in Sutton with his wife and little dog.
GuyExcellent article by Frank Lee. Many of us are aware of the problems of the USD but few are able to so succinctly explain why and connect the dots to expose the true picture. The bottom line is that the lifespan of the USD as king is almost over .There will not be any rabbit pulled out of the hat to make America great again.That is a feel good cliché used to further induce the population to go back to sleep.FoodBowlThe US has been exposed, and so well said, as a predator nation .There must be a reason why China and Russia are buying up as much gold as their economy will permit .The exchange medium used for trade since time immemorial .
From this point of view, they see enormous assets, and the debts becomes less worrying as they see less urgency to deal with this ever growing liabilities.
We are rushing towards the midnight sun.Warren Buffett is currently sitting on $55 billion in cash so that he does not get destroyed on the upcoming systemic wide crash. Buffett has never pulled this kind of bread from the table in his lifetime whilst waiting for a systemic crash & the inevitable fat tail blowout that is poised to rip the face off of the USA & EU as their eyeballs get ripped out too.
Ripping a face off & ripping eyeballs out is day trader speak for kicking counterparties in the groin for the deal. The French Revolution was all about teaching the financial elite predator class of monetary control freaks who the boss really is when the gravy train slows during Financial Winter.
And if they can't take the heat they should get out of the kitchen!
RW
It has always been thus.
- The Roman Empire imposed tribute on its subjects. You have to send us so much grain, cattle, so many slaves, so much timber for shipbuilding, so much precious metal and base metal, so many wild beasts for our circuses. In return we won't kill you.
- The Nazi Empire imposed tribute on its conquests in identical fashion. Send us your industrial output, agricultural produce and raw materials. In return we'll give you a big credit balance at the Reichsbank.
- Uncle Sugar says send me your BMWs, fine wines, electronic gadgets, oil and minerals. In return I'll give you some worthless little pieces of green paper you can exchange for worthless IOUs called Treasury Bills.
The current (real) military budget is $1,134 billion, around 60% higher than the fictitious figure that is normally touted.
The trade deficit is $900 billion. The budget deficit $1,175 billion, over 20% of the overall budget.
America is borrowing around $4 billion a day from the rest of the world. Uncle Sam is the biggest scrounger, parasite, leech, bludger, and panhandler in the history of the planet.
The official national debt of $22.5 trillion understates the true position by a factor of over ten. Every US man, woman, child, and babe in arms is in hock to the tune of over $700,000.
Good luck to anyone who produces gold in an actual collapse scenario. So you need to buy guns and bodyguards for self-protection if you buy gold...
Gold would probably be of use. Gemstones, jewellery, would not. 99.9% of people are unable to distinguish a real diamond from a piece of glass.
The danger we face from this is that if a large enough economic bloc runs by more rational rules then its going to eventually cream us economically. This forces us to destroy it. This is what's at the bottom of our problems with China. The USSR wasn't strong or well organized enough to pose a real threat to us so it could be taken down primarily by economic means. The Chinese learned their lesson from the Russian experience and 'played nice' which they built their country up -- we all heard the commentariat from a few years ago about them 'not really being communists any more'. Now they're in a position to look us in the eye so we've got to confront them, to take them down. (You'll notice that one of the conditions that will end the trade war is the 'liberalizing of capital markets' -- that is, we need to take over their banking system and currency.) If -- when -- this fails then the only recourse would be actual war.
The crime in all this is in the pursuit of money -- ultimately a wholly artificial concept -- we're wasting immense amounts of resources and human potential, spreading misery and despoliation all over the planet and generally behaving like really awful global citizens. We can and must do better.
American exceptionalism, for example, takes it for granted that we in the West are good, and therefore the East must become more like us. But we are logically, and morally, obliged to look at this from the opposite perspective too: What if the Chinese take it for granted that they are good, and therefore the West must become more like them?
I have been to China, and found the people there to consist of the same mixtures of honest, good, nondescript, sinister and deplorable as we have here at home.
They also share exactly the same fundamental problem as we do: Their politicians and their people, like ours, are two entirely separate things. Of course the origins of Chinese, or Russian, society are different from ours, but that is no reason to despise them. Our origins are often pretty despicable too.
Three thousand years?
He that loveth silver shall not be satisfied with silver; nor he that loveth abundance with increase: this is also vanity. –Ecclesiastes 5:10
Two thousand years?
For the love of money is the root of all evil –1 Timothy 6:10
Surely the Anti Deceased Equine Distress Society has lobbied some sort of statute of limitations onto the books by now?
Proof of their combined ignorance with respect to Cybernetics & Systems Theory was their willingness to follow the likes of the Vietnam War architects that assumed incorrectly that they could impose a closed-looped cybernetic control system over world finance & mercantilism throughout the entire world at the behest of academic failures like Macnamera who would not know a 'closed-looped cybernetic' from an open-looped cybernetic if his life & legacy depended on it.
Simply put, American printing presses at the privately owned Federal Reserve cannot even remotely help or assist in anymore financial profligacy for the Neoconservative or Neoliberal camps of the cerebrally sclerotic & Early Onset Dementia riddled, & uneducated, financial buffoons that emanated out of the now defunct Chicago School headed up by Strauss et al. in the 60s & 70s.
All the macroeconomic indicators over the last two decades have clearly indicated that the Greenspan era of asset inflation was nothing more than the undoing of Federal Reserve Chair Paul Volcker's hard won success during his tenure pre-Greenspan 'Maestro' halcyon days of animal spirits run amok.
In brief, the United States of America can eat my shorts as it is solely responsible for manufacturing a finance control system & requisite money pump fraud that is nothing more than a worldwide Ponzi scheme to defraud the entire world of disposable income & discretionary income gain so that all gains accrue to the rentier class of speculative investors like Warren Buffett & Bob Paulson.
Bottom line is that Warren Buffett will have to purchase all the new automobiles, trucks, houses, mansions, cottages, farms, cites, towns, railroads, roads, & precious metals as the emerging markets & first world markets all decouple just as Professor Emeritus Benoit Mandelbrot hypothesized they would just before he died.
Go ahead, America, print the fake fiat greenbacks to infinity in vain hope of extricating yourselves from the intractable financial muck & mire you are most assuredly going to find yourselves in this approaching October 2019.
Go ahead, Punk, make my day!
Are you feeling lucky, Punk?
RW
Money has no particular loyalty to a country. In pre-WW1 Europe the bourgeois were all intermarried, connected primarily by wealth and power regardless of their nominal nationality, our present equivalent are similarly connected. Just like WW1 when the chips are down we -- the ordinary people -- will be sacrificed on the alter of patriotism while they'll survive and prosper.
Intractable debt limits were broached when Nixon declared the bankruptcy of the Bretton Woods infrastructure of gold backed USA Reserve Currency Status and then opted in ignorance for the petro-dollar bait & switch fiat USD Finance capture worldwide which has now come home to roost across the rust belt of the heartland USA, and in places that were once bastions of manufacturing for the middle class USA blue collar worker such as Detroit or Chicago. Today the business model of the USA is transnationalist whereby places across the USA are not even remotely financed into that transnationalist Wall Street model of Finance that is wholly parasitic to the point of crashing mainstreet USA across all sectors of the Service Sector Industries that were supposed to be replacing the long lost USA Manufacturing Base that was offshored to the Third World sovereigns that would temporarly increase profit margins for the transnationalist class of corporate parasites run amok to collectively destroy all life on Planet Earth for centuries to come if we are lucky.
RW
MASTER OF UNIVEYou have made the common mistake of asserting that it is America, instead of those who govern (the USA and its pundits) that have engineered the problems you point out.
Why would the two parties in congress (Article II followers) and the two fellows with the Article II power, continue to [expand the debt in fake, made up and useless expenses], unless they were controlled by external forces?
Maybe bankers and their high powered corporations are finding they can no longer easily dupe Americans into delivering their resources into the pockets of the wealthy. Maybe the American people have drawn the line, no more, will they produce for the IMF, world bank?
Maybe Americans have decided to refuse the tax burdens imposed to retire the fed debt? Maybe foreign nations have denied the banks and their corporations access to their resources as a means to pay the USA debt? Maybe script has been recognized as a false capital in-capable of ruling the world? Maybe organized criminals have taken up positions in the western governments and used those positions to force on the governed many things? Maybe burdening the USA with debt is part of the plan to bankrupt America? <==but why should the banks bankrupt America, why has access to education been limited, why has the USA spied on Americans? Why have the governed Americans been denied access to the USA? Has the USA retired Americans from productive jobs, in order to accelerate the demise of America? The USA has made Americans into debtors obligated to pay bankers in the form of taxes to be collected by the USA and remitted to the bankers. <= just as is now occurring in Britain, Greece, France, and other places. Privatization, monopolization and conversion from public to private franchising and ownership have served as the transforming agents that have made the elite so wealthy.
Economic Zionism. as opposed to government regulated capitalism, condones no competition, allows no prisoners and either takes or destroys all likely competitive elements (persons, corporations, or nations) Economic Zionism demands the government that governs (as in USA governance over Americans) assist in rendering Americans broke. Is it because until Americans are broke, the EZ bandits are hampered? Is scooping resources into private, monopoly powered, already wealthy hands, the goodies to be had the goal? Maybe the USA is a privatizing agent instead of a benefactor serving Americans?
In USA governed America, there is much very-productive farm land, millions of tons of minerals, many productive seaports, and tons and tons of money making monopolies (patents, copyrights, royalties, government franchised goodies, lucrative government contracts, and plenty of government services and resources) to be privatized for profit. The goodies are located in thousands of acres of rich farmland, the major ports and services attached thereto, and embedded within little domestic American companies which the USA debt will eventually burden into bankruptcy. After all "scalping a bankruptcy" is historically a speciality of economic zionism.
Casino Banking morphed into Late Stage Ponzi Capitalism when Bob Paulson wanted more Residential Mortgage Backed Security issuance and pressured Goldman Sachs into providing more issuance via NINJA loans & Liar Loans after 05 when the Wall Street speculators had to go bottom feeding for loan issuance in order to meet investor demand & apatite for their unhinged Gordon Gecko greed.
'Maestro' Greenspan emphasized his 'flaw' in his macroeconomic model of the world when the investor greed broached fat tails on the order of a 10% crash of the power laws of distributions of loan issuance. Greenspan never assumed that the Financialization Process would exceed a default scenario greater than 5-7% of no-performing loans in the subprime issuance tranche.
American exceptionalism via Henry Paulson USA Treasury Secretary 08 is what rendered American Late Stage Ponzi Capitalism wholly defunct going forward into 2020 & beyond with a permanent lower bound CB Interest Rate Regime & specter of WW3 hot conflagration.
My money is on the pinko Commie bastards this time round the sovereign insolvency loop of domestic misery USA.
WELCOME to the New World Disorder!
RW
This would include household debt, student debt, financial debt, corporate debt, and municipal debt. Add this to sovereign debt and you get a figure roughly 5 times US sovereign debt, and even this is regarded as being a conservative figure according to many
One – at least on this side of the screen – cannot but think that all this is by design. The cart is driven intentionally off the cliff. To start off with a clean slate? Where the wealthy still have their wealth, but the suckers are depending on hand-outs?
An old proverb alledges that: To borrow brings sorrow.
To which only those who make loads of money from lending will disagree. Where are the solutions? No solutions, just listicles as to how bad it all is? Sure, the West is reminiscent of the HMS Titanic – with the slight difference of the hole made by the iceberg (debt) extending over the whole length of the ship. It is listing beyond dancing.
Well, I am willing to tell a secret (that isn't one anymore for quite some time):
- Outlaw/prohibit Interest .
- Prohibit capital gains . Or tax them with 99%.
- Prevent under all circumstances a continuation of Performanceless Profits .
Make them punishable with prison time of no less than half of the age at which they were perpetrated. You're 30? You're going in for 15. You're 65? Easy math.
Fact is, that there are solutions galore to save our souls. Problem is, those whose lives are depending on them, don't demand them to be implemented. And why would the wealthy tax non-payers like Bezos et al want to change their 'winning team'? That is a well known no-no. The only solution the masses of the little people can hope for is 'Force Majeur' that works to their benefit. Shall we wait for that to happen?
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Sep 09, 2019 | off-guardian.org
wardropper
. But we are logically, and morally, obliged to look at this from the opposite perspective too: What if the Chinese take it for granted that they are good, and therefore the West must become more like them?
I have been to China, and found the people there to consist of the same mixtures of honest, good, nondescript, sinister and deplorable as we have here at home.
They also share exactly the same fundamental problem as we do: Their politicians and their people, like ours, are two entirely separate things. Of course the origins of Chinese, or Russian, society are different from ours, but that is no reason to despise them. Our origins are often pretty despicable too.
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Sep 03, 2019 | off-guardian.org
So: the rise of Elizabeth Warren gives the billionaires a 'progressive' candidate who might either win the nomination or else at least split progressive voters during the primaries (between Sanders and Warren) and thus give the nomination to Buttigieg, who is their first choice (especially since both Biden and Harris have been faltering so badly of late).
This explains the gushings for Warren, at such neocon rags as The Atlantic, The New Republic , New Yorker , and Mother Jones .
It's being done in order to set up the final round, so as for its outcome to be acceptable to the billionaires who fund the Democratic Party. Her record in the U.S. Senate is consistently in support of U.S. invasions, coups, and sanctions against countries that have never invaded nor even threatened to invade the U.S., such as Venezuela, Palestine, Syria, and Iran ; she's 100% a neocon (just like G.W. Bush, Obama and Trump were/are); and, to billionaires, that is even more important than her policy-record regarding Wall Street is, because the Military Industrial Complex, which she represents, is even more important to enforcing and spreading the U.S. megacorporate empire than the investment-firms are.
Investigative historian Eric Zuesse is the author, most recently, of They're Not Even Close: The Democratic vs. Republican Economic Records, 1910-2010 , and of CHRIST'S VENTRILOQUISTS: The Event that Created Christianity
I feel like any analysis that even mentions polls is guesswork, because nowadays polls are almost entirely useless. In that they aren't accurately measuring people who are actually going to go to open/semi-open or even closed primaries, and caucuses. The cohort of likely voters is different from the cohort who bothers to pick up a phone call from an unknown (polling) number. Or make it through a whole poll. Or do any online polls. Or have a reachable phone # at all.markPlus the fact that the DNC is already gaming polls, cherry-picking which are "official" for their 2% threshhold. MSNBC and other networks and pundits also cherry-pick. Or even simply outright lie if the poll doesn't match what they want it to.
Polling should either be eliminated or held to MUCH more consistent and much more scientific standards. (demographics, prediction analysis, neutral rather than leading questions, standardized formats, etc.) Until then they're simply more and more useless as predictors of the real poll, the primaries or general.
I liked the article other than that though.
"Vote for me, I'm a Red Indian!"HEY! Somebody shut that child up right now, will you!
In other words he is right to call his supporters a "revolution."
It is of course equally true of the Corbyn movement- any victories are immense defeats for both the Establishment and its media. That, in itself is important.
And nowhere more than in Canada where the third and fourth parties- the NDP and the Greens- continue to tack further and further to the right, trying to catch up with the rightward swing of the Liberal Party -now close to full on neo-naziism- and the ultra right Tories.The difference no is, that countries like Canada, the U.S., Australia, UK, Poland, Ukraine, Hungary and with the AfD Germany are either as fascist, or more fascist than ever before. Once again, Russia is hyped up to be the eternal arch enemy of 'Western fascist values', 'freedom and democracy'. How much more difficult would it be today to round up resistance against a fascist axis that is hellbent to march again Russia?
Sure, Trudeau is nothing but a bag of lukewarm air, but he employs hard core fascists in his cabinet – paid for by the Canadian people. The rest of the what goes for the 'value West' is more of a disgrace than at any time before. These are the real dark ages, as I have stated before. Nothing good can come from these psychopathic puppets in control of countries that ought to deserve much better. Maybe, just maybe, the people of the countries in question should read Rudi Dutschke's works about 'Extra Parliamentary Opposition' – for Dummies?
Turkey intends to buy from Russia additional S-400 air defense systems
That is of course a lie and pure propaganda. And since the U.S. is the second most vulnerable nation to propaganda and fascism – with Germany being the number one, in both the past and the present – the people that refuse to leave the Democratic Fascist Party are remiscent of those people who kept following Hitler, even after it had become clear that his 'party' would drive Germany into the abyss.
For the brownshirt-like followers of proven war criminals that both lead, or finance the 'party', absolutely no crime is big enough that would warrant to turn their back on the fascist party.
History will look at the Sanders Warren debacle in the same way it must look now at the theft of the nomination of Henry A. Wallace in favor of the person that had no whatsoever second thoughts about dropping two nukes on an enemy that had already succumbed to the Soviet forces. Henry A. Wallace would heve never dropped these nukes. He was a staunch supporter of the 'common man'. All his policies reflected that. He was a presidential nominee for, of and by the people.
That did not sit too well with the fascists and they stole the nomination from him. Present day America has turned into this corrupt cesspool because of this stolen nomination. Everything that is sickening about the U.S. today, started in 1944. All the surveillance, the mindcontrol, the cold war and the transformation into a wannabe empire – they are all the result of this infamy by the hands of the Democratic fascists.
To all the mindless party members of the Democratic fascist party: if you repeat history by allowing for the second time to install a puppet of the fascist powers in the U.S., you bear the full responsibilty for the dropping of the next nukes. Suffering from such deep sitting cognitive dissonance, party members will find all kinds of excuses to prevent the truth from coming out. Just as there was no war crime by Clinton and Obama sufficient enough to not cheer them like the greatest baseball team ever. Leave the Democratic fascist party now, or have history piss on your graves.
The difference between Sanders and Wallace is a painful one. Wallace fought against the theft of his nomination with all he got. Subsequently, he realized that the 'Democratic' party would never allow for a person with integrity and the well being of the people at heart to win any nomination. He would have won the following presidency as a third party nominee – Trumann however knew how to prevent that. As the clip states, the American people only have to be frightened and you can sell them their own demise on a golden platter. The ridicule and shaming of those who want a third party can also be traced back to this time.
It is equally very disturbing that the owner class managed to brain wash the people into accepting the use of 'oligarchs', 'billionaires', or 'donors' when in truth they are the real fascists Henry Wallace had warned about. This must be reversed by all means available. People must understand that the concerted use of these euphemisms will make it next to impossible to accept what these persons really are and what their goals are.
So, whereas they would be able to deal with Warren, they wouldn't be able to deal with Sanders, whose policy-record is remarkably progressive in all respects, and not only on domestic U.S. matters.
Frankly, Bernie could be better on foreign policy. While he did vote against the Iraq War–I give him all due credit for that–he hasn't really opposed any of Washington's other wars, coups and régime-change operations in recent memory. Oh: and Bernie, the self-described socialist, once referred to Hugo Chavez as a "dead dictator". That being said, he would still be preferable to the remaining flotsam in the today's Democrap Party.
Democracy is just the shell – if you fill it with sh1t it's bad; if you fill it with honey it's sweet.
Biden is remote-controllable, he'd do as told – so of course big money would prefer him.
- I skimmed through and didn't spot one mention of Gabbard! Seems as if she is being non-personed and ignored as a viable candidate (much like JC has been over here).
There is a long way to that election yet. (The US, ours is finally within reach, unless some wildebeast tramples in )
The DNC dirty tricks won't wash this time – perhaps its time to start reading and talking about the nitty gritty of these leaked mails – if for nothing else for the bravery and ultimate sacrifice of Seth Rich.
How about it Phillip Roddis?
Meantime, this piece from last week by Katia Novella Miller, first of a two parts with second part to follow on the same KBNB World News site, gives a precis of what Wikileaks showed the world.
The fact remains, a Sanders – Gabbard ticket against Trump is the preferable outcome for many observers on the Left.
Just as a reminder, neither Sanders & Gabbard are God like figures, in much the same way Corbyn ain't, however, they are the best available at this juncture in time if we really want some change, even if it is incremental.
I read somewhere that the US electorate were self identified as third Republican, Democrat and independent.
If they were given an independent ticket- not part of the two billionaire funded main parties then enough may join the independent third from these.
I'd say if a Gabbard/Paul grassroots campaign run by the Sanders 'momentum' network got their act together the USA may finally mature into a proper democracy not owned by their neolib con artistes.
Too late. Money is king and those that have most want more. The sideshow of elections produces the performing clowns such as Trump, Obama, Bush etc.all spouting the same vacuous promises on behalf of their wealthy benefactors. No real choice or change and an illusion of caring for the welfare of their citizenry. Listen carefully to the clowns, it's the sound of money talking.
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Aug 29, 2019 | off-guardian.org
Aiwl
Restricting the freedom of Xinjiang jihadis is a thorn in the backside of the criminals in Washington as they see their ability to brainwash, recruit and train more terrorists from the area is hugely reduced.One of the cancers that needs to be eliminated is the propaganda device called VOA, voice of america. It needs to be dealt with and eliminated from all Asian countries. Even today, in VietNam, there are brainaltered creatures who listen to VOA and believe that the US is a force for freedom and democracy.
vexarb
Andre: "Suddenly "markYou wrote of course "Suddenly" as shorthand for 7 years of blood sweat and tears by the Axis of Resistance (Syria, Hezb'Allah, Iran and Russia). Preceded by decades of individual resistance before these Allies came together in a united front.
"A thousand years is but the blink of an eyelid to The Lord". -- Old Testament
Cue more crocodile tears for "the poor Uighurs" from the same people who killed half a million Iraqi children under 5 in Iraq.markI'm just a suspicious of stories about 6 million moslem Uighurs in concentration camps being turned into lamp soap and shades from the same people who are currently waging a hybrid war against China, and who are obviously so, so concerned about the welfare of moslems.uncle tungstenThe USA is soooo concerned about theUighurs that it totally forgot to reserve some concern for the Venezuelan people that it is currently starving and denying national wealth to so they can purchase hospitals, expand education services build new infrastructure etc.The USA has so much concern that even its poodle over the Atlantic at airstrip one has stolen the Venezuelan people's gold so they cannot improve health services, expand education etc etc. The five eyes look on approvingly and should any vassal blink then the USA will simply push up the price of oil as punishment. That increase will not affect the USA as it continues to stripmine the wealth of its future generations to achieve self sufficiency right now.
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Aug 29, 2019 | off-guardian.org
Antonym
Complete BS! It is the continued Pakistani ISI influence in Afghanistan presently though their Haqqani Taliban network plus ISIS that is terrorizing Afghanistan, including intentional bombings of wedding parties
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nadahan_wedding_bombing & https://www.apnews.com
/b5ceb0cfb33d4d73aaaadf5eee19fe9dThe Pakistani army wants Afghanistan as "strategic depth" in case of a conflict with India.
Pakistan is the only overland supply route available for the US military; roads via Iran and Russia are politically out. All their fuel, ammo and food towards Afghanistan is under Pakistani ISI control from 1978 till now, with the interruption of 2009 – 2015 . https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/NATO_logistics_in_the_Afghan_War#History
A liberal, progressive left wing regime that furthered women's rights and social provision was destroyed by Uncle Sam in its own interests to weaken Russia.
Bin Laden and his splendid chaps were put on the CIA payroll for the purpose.
The result was a long running bloodbath with 28,000 Russian and 1,4 million Afghan dead.
Followed by years of civil war, US invasion and the imposition of a narco warlord puppet government on the country.
Might as well run the heroin trade out of Afghanistan as well.
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Aug 29, 2019 | off-guardian.org
Francis Lee
It has now come to the stage where NATO cannot fight a ground war against Russia, China, or even Iran. Since firstly, there would be huge opposition to such another crackpot piece of military adventurism, in both the US and more so in its vassals. The Korean, Vietnam (Indo-China), and Iraq wars ended the era of massive ground conflicts in which hundreds of thousands of ground troops were involved.BittersweetMore importantly was the draft, which met with massive opposition in the US itself. Secondly there was the enormous cost of such a dubious venture. The cost of these wars led to a run on the dollar as other states were cashing in their surplus dollars for gold, all of which resulted to Nixon taking the dollar off the gold standard in August 1971. Empires, as the US is learning, are expensive little items, and as the British also found out during their long retreat, beginning with India.
NATO, like the EU bureaucracy, is little more than a job creation scheme for the otherwise unemployable. It must be difficult to dream up a scheme in which these otherwise redundant individuals can be employed in doing useful. But NATO like the EU is a bureaucracy, and bureaucracies by their nature strive to exist and expand with no particular goals or objectives to realise. It is just a matter or going through the motions: the means, the routine becomes and end in itself. As Joseph Alois Schumpeter observed: " That in Egypt a class of professional soldiers formed during the war against the Hyksos, persisted, even when those were over, along with its warlike instincts and interests this military grouping created by wars that required it, now created the wars in required."
Who will plan economies: Financial managers (Trump and Wall St), or democratic governments (Bernie)?nottheonly1Bonnie Faulkner: If there were pressures to create a New International Economic Order in the 1970s, what was this new order looking to achieve?
Michael Hudson: Other countries wanted to do for their economies what the United States has long done for its own economy: to use their governments' deficit spending to build up their infrastructure, raise living standards, create housing and promote progressive taxation that would prevent a rentier class, a landlord and financial class from taking over economic management.
In the financial field, they wanted governments to create their own money, to promote their own development, just like the United States does. The role of neoliberalism was the opposite: it was to promote the financial and real estate sector and monopolies to take economic management away from government.
So the real question from the 1980s on was about who would be the basic planning center of society. Would it be the financial sector – the banks and bondholders, whose interest is really the One Percent that own most of the banks' bonds and stocks?
Or, is it going to be governments trying to subsidize the economy to help the 99 Percent grow and prosper? That was the social democratic view opposed by Thatcherism and Reaganism.
http://www.unz.com/mhudson/de-dollarizing-the-american-financial-empire/
I didn't know that. I always thought it stand for 'Venom of America'. Or worse.Robbobbobin'It might help, Glasshopper, if you identify your sources on "the longstanding and increasing oppression of Uigurs in Xinjiang".'DunGroaninErm:
Have you travelled all over the region as i have? Do you have friends who've married into the community?
Patient "anecdotal" evidence bad, identifiable textbook assertion definitive? Ever thought of becoming a medic?
The highwater mark for the centuries long Anglo Imperialism is constantly reached across the globe. Indian subcontinent, Tibet, Korea, Vietnam, Cambodia in the east. Afghanistan and across back to the ME now the desperate bottom of the barrel petty caesars of the declining Empire are now splashing around in the Med' – Boltons latest missive by twitter:nottheonly1"All hands on deck in the campaign to stop Iran from funding terror, destabilizing the globe, and breaking international sanctions. The illicit oil heading to Turkey on the Adrian Darya 1 must not be allowed off-loaded in port or at sea."
!!!!!!!!!!!
How the fuck can anyone take the failing Empire at all seriously when one of its highly placed unelected arseholes starts telling the World about what not to do with ONE fully laden oil tanker, thoisands of miles from his homeland?? Who the fuck do they think they are telling never mind talking to? And we are supposed to salute and say yes sir, will do, whatever you say, massa.
Fuck 'em.
Bolton is a mentally ill subject whose sense for reality is so much compromised,that he lives in a fantasy world like anybody who believes to be Napoleon, or worse. He is constantly projecting his own criminal activities onto others.Father BeyondPart of his mental illness is that he is incapable to realize that nobody is taking him serious anymore – but people that are mentally worse off then him. He and his fan base belong into closed mental healthcare, where they can wear their Napoleon hats and hide their hands under their jackets.
My diagnosis of the life-condition of John Bolton is that he displays all the classic attributes of the psychopath.Martin UsherHe tries to present a charming facade, behind which lies a complete lack of empathy with human life, which to these warmongering delinquents, remains a commodity to be disposed of in the satisfaction of their lusts and cravings for money, power, influence and status, at the base of which lies a perversion of the dignity and worth of all life, human or otherwise, which struggles to survive in the face of extinction on this planet, which is the property of no-one yet the property of all.. He is a high priest of Neo-liberalism and he expounds the "Monroe Doctrine" – which is but one of the heretical doctrines of Imperialism. The criticisms being directed towards Andre Vitchek here (and elsewhere) are unfounded and give the impression that these superior beings who mock him from above, have never read any of his books, let alone given any serious consideration to the issues he raises. I don't agree with all of his views, but it appears he displays more courage and integrity than those who like to take cheap shots at him, seeking refuge in the knowledge that few will even bother to challenge them. Just remember one thing – you are as bad as the person you condemn. Looking into the mirror of your life-condition, you will see the "clown", the 'muppet", the "idiot", the "racist" and the 'virtue signaller". Call the next patient in please. . . . . .
There are plenty more Boltons where he comes from. Most are a bit more subtle in their approach but they still share the same goals.I mIn all honesty and in reply to 'Father Beyond' i'm convinced these people are simply crazed from watching too many superhero movies.GeorgeAnother issue is what this means for the home populations of the Western nations. As the Western ruling class finds it harder and harder to intimidate the countries it has been bleeding, it will find its own formerly luxuriant position in danger and will start to demand more and more from its lower classes. And since the threat of a worker's revolution (posed very concretely by Russia and China in the first half of the 20th century) no longer applies, the welfare state (formed as a concession to keep the proles in line) will become increasingly decimated. Our ruling class no longer even has to pretend to care. In short, the UK and US publics will start to become more and more like the foreign native populations targeted by the West.PabloGood points George, although as Vladimir Lenin allegedly said "The best way to control the opposition is to lead it ourselves." ..Or have a look at 'Wall Street and the Bolshevik Revolution' book by Anthony C Sutton, available widely or pdf here; https://www.voltairenet.org/IMG/pdf/Sutton_Wall_Street_and_the_bolshevik_revolution-5.pdfGeorgehttps://steemit.com/life/@steemtruth/controlled-opposition-your-friend-might-be-your-enemy-truth
Also Mao was a "Yaley" – headline: 'Yale Group Spurs Mao's Emergence' http://digital.library.yale.edu/cdm/compoundobject/collection/yale-ydn/id/135148/rec/14
https://www.corbettreport.com/china-and-the-new-world-order-transcript/So it seems that the 'workers revolutions' were not 100% grassroots up risings, just as today's "Colour Revolutions" often arise out of the hidden hand of various change agents and NGO's whose cover is as providing humanitarian support etc.
The Welfare State may have been as you say a concession, but there could conceivably be other reasons too maybe?
I think the Western governments, having had decades of practice and observation, know full well not only to control the opposition and not only to lead it but to create it too. In a way, all this is just an extension of capitalist consumerism. The idea is to find out what everyone wants and then manufacture the image of it, but not the reality.markAccording to the Adam Curtis documentary, "Century of the Self", Edward Bernays, father of the modern PR industry, was asked by cigarette manufacturers how to get women to smoke (in those days it was considered a male activity and the cig industry figured it was missing out on a huge potential market demographic). Bernays did a bit of research and found out that what women wanted was to be more independent "like men". So Bernays staged a publicity stunt whereby a number of young attractive women were to gather and light "torches of freedom" – this info being delivered with maximum publicity throughout the media. So the day comes, the women appear and light cigarettes and smoke them. You hear that and think, "Oh come on now!" But it apparently worked. (Actually I don't think it was a simple case of fooling the public but of signalling via the press that it was no longer "unseemly" for women to smoke.) the point being that women wanted freedom, were delivered a "substitute" which turned out to be little cancer sticks. That's the way capitalism works. And that's also the way the propaganda system works too.
You could call this "the genius of capitalism". Capitalism says, "Whatever you want, we can give! You want beauty? Here it is! You want ugliness? Have it! You want violence? Here! You want rebellion? Here again! You want the overthrow of the capitalist system? No problem!" Of course it doesn't intend the actual delivery of any of these. It simply drudges up more commodities.
Thus we can expect the creation of any number of phoney oppositions. Now it may be paranoia but I think that Dave McGowan's "Weird Scenes Inside the Canyon" about the deliberate manufacture of trendy rebellious pop music has got a lot of credibility. There's a book called "A Century of Spin" all about the PR industry and how it works through organisations that sound like worker's groups or concerned citizen groups but they are just corporate hack entities. If these were easy enough to create in the pre-internet days, just think how much easier it is to do now.
Our ruling elite has run out of places to loot.Wilmers31
Unfortunately those pesky Russkies/ Chinks/ Eye-ranians won't play ball any more.
So they have to cannibalise their own societies, eat their own tail and loot their own countries instead.For a one-son family no reason is good enough for war.Since 'the pill' people adapt their family size to their financial or other means. This results in one-son families at a significant percentage. Russia is quite an example. Due to their housing restrictions they had (have) small families. When I heard in 1982 how distraught Soviet mothers were who had to bury welded zinc coffins (coming from Afghanistan) I knew the Soviet Union was on borrowed time – and then they threw the whole system out.
"But it is too cowardly, too spoiled to risk the lives of its soldiers." No, mothers do not like to see their one son used for war, war that serves the big corporations and not the people who are told it is their fight.
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www.unz.com
It used to be done regularly and it worked: The West identified a country as its enemy, unleashed its professional propaganda against it, then administered a series of sanctions, starving and murdering children, the elderly and other vulnerable groups. If the country did not collapse within months or just couple of years, the bombing would begin.
And the nation, totally shaken, in pain, and in disarray, would collapse like a house of cards, once the first NATO boots hit its ground.
Such scenarios were re-enacted, again and again, from Yugoslavia to Iraq.
But suddenly, something significant has happened. This horrific lawlessness, this chaos stopped; was deterred.
The West keeps using the same tactics, it tries to terrorize independent-minded countries, to frighten people into submission, to overthrow what it defines as 'regimes', but its power, its monstrously destructive power has all of a sudden become ineffective.
It hits, and the attacked nation shakes, screams, sheds blood, but keeps standing, keeps proudly erect.
*
What we are experiencing is a great moment in human history. Imperialism has not yet been defeated, but it is losing its global grip on power.
Now we have to clearly understand 'Why?', so we can continue our struggle, with even greater determination, with even greater effectiveness.
First of all, by now we know that the West cannot fight. It can spend trillions on 'defense', it can build nuclear bombs, 'smart missiles' and strategic warplanes. But it is too cowardly, too spoiled to risk the lives of its soldiers.
It either kills remotely, or by using regional mercenaries. Whenever it becomes clear that the presence of its troops would be required, it backs up.
Secondly, it, the West, is totally horrified of the fact that there are now two super-powerful countries – China and Russia – which are unwilling to abandon their allies. Washington and London do all they can to smear Russia and to intimidate China.
Russia is being provoked continuously: by propaganda, by military bases, sanctions and by new and newer bizarre mass media inventions that depict it as the villain in all imaginable circumstances.
China has been provoked practically and insanely, 'on all fronts' – from Taiwan, Hong Kong, Tibet and the so-called 'Uyghur Issue', to trade.
Any strategy that could weaken these two countries, is applied. Yet, Russia and China do not crumble. They do not surrender. And they do not abandon their friends. Instead, they are building great railroads in Africa and Asia, they educate people from almost all poor and desperate countries, and stand by those who are being terrorized by both North America and Europe.
Thirdly, all the countries in the world are now clearly aware of what would happen to them, if they give up and get 'liberated' by the Western empire. Iraq, Honduras, Indonesia, Libya and Afghanistan, are the 'best' examples.
Submitting themselves to the West, countries can only expect misery, absolute collapse and the ruthless extraction of their resources. The poorest country in Asia – Afghanistan – has totally collapsed under NATO occupation.
The suffering and pain of the Afghan and Iraqi people is very well known to the citizens of Iran and Venezuela. They are not giving up, because no matter how tough their life is under sanctions and the West-administered terror, they are well-aware of the fact that things could get worse, much worse, if their countries were to be occupied and governed by the Washington and London-injected maniacs.
And everyone knows the fate of the people living in Palestine or Gollan Heights, places which have been overrun by the closest ally of the West in the Middle East, Israel.
*
Of course, there are other reasons why the West cannot get any of its adversaries to kneel.
One is – that the toughest ones are left. Russia, Cuba, China, North Korea (DPRK), Iran, Syria and Venezuela are not going to run away from the battlefield. These are the most determined nations on earth. These are the countries that have already lost thousands, millions, even tens of millions of their people, in the fight against Western imperialism and colonialism.
If one is following the latest attacks of the West carefully, the scenario is pathetic, almost grotesque: Washington and often the EU, too, are trying hard; they are hitting, they are spending billions of dollars, using the local mercenaries (or call it 'local opposition'), and then they quickly withdraw after wretched but anticipated defeat.
So far, Venezuela has survived. Syria survived. Iran survived. China is fighting horrible Western-backed subversions, but it is proudly surviving. Russia is standing tall.
This is a tremendous moment in human history. For the first time, Western imperialism is being not only defeated, but fully unveiled and humiliated. Many are now laughing at it, openly.
But we should not celebrate, yet. We should understand what and why this is happening, and then continue fighting. There are many, many battles ahead us. But we are on the right track.
Let them try. We know how to fight. We know how to prevail. We have already fought fascism, in many of its forms. We know what freedom is. Their 'freedom' is not our freedom. Their 'liberty' is not our liberty. What they call 'democracy' is not how we want our people to rule and to be ruled. Let them go away; we, our people, do not want them!
They cannot overthrow our systems, because they are, precisely our systems! Systems that we want, that our people want; systems we are ready to fight and die for!
First published by New Eastern Outlook
Facebook Twitter Reddit Pinterest WhatsApp vKontakte EmailAndre Vltchek
Andre Vltchek is a philosopher, novelist, filmmaker and investigative journalist. He has covered wars and conflicts in dozens of countries. Three of his latest books are Revolutionary Optimism, Western Nihilism , a revolutionary novel "Aurora" and a bestselling work of political non-fiction: "Exposing Lies Of The Empire" . View his other books here. Watch Rwanda Gambit , his groundbreaking documentary about Rwanda and DRCongo and his film/dialogue with Noam Chomsky "On Western Terrorism" . Vltchek presently resides in East Asia and the Middle East, and continues to work around the world. He can be reached through his website and his Twitter. Filed under: conflict zones , empire watch , latest , Russia , Syria , United States Tagged with: "third way" , andre vltchek , china , imperialism , Iran , russia , venezuela by Andre VltchekAndre Vltchek is a philosopher, novelist, filmmaker and investigative journalist. He has covered wars and conflicts in dozens of countries. Three of his latest books are Revolutionary Optimism, Western Nihilism , a revolutionary novel "Aurora" and a bestselling work of political non-fiction: "Exposing Lies Of The Empire" . View his other books here. Watch Rwanda Gambit , his groundbreaking documentary about Rwanda and DRCongo and his film/dialogue with Noam Chomsky "On Western Terrorism" . Vltchek presently resides in East Asia and the Middle East, and continues to work around the world. He can be reached through his website and his Twitter. can you spare $1.00 a month to support independent media
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Jack Leon... ... ...
Which could be more excusable if we had not had the ultimate in living proof of economic reality within recent living memory. If the global economic system was not largely dollarised (to 60% of the global Reserve): then a relatively minor mortgage crisis (or "savings glut") could not possibly have become global and extending for over a decade to date. There is just no way that China and the rest of the world could be pulled in a relatively small perturbation in the value of the dollar. It is proof positive of interlinking – the fact that the global financial crisis was global.
There are no separate systems. It is an extreme failure of economic intelligence to predicate otherwise. If not through economic illiteracy: then through false memory syndrome! FFS: it was only twelve years ago that the system crashed. The interlinking is EVEN MORE integrated now. A loss of confidence or 'moral contagion' will flash around the globe in close to real time. To posit differential 'systems to fight and die for' in the face of economic and historical realism requires a monumental feat of reality aversion and denial. Andre has lost his grip on economic reality. Don't naively follow him.
I remember, when socialist Syria began its resistance to AZC terrorism on Syrian soil, some Trots complained that it was not correct to defend Syria on the ground because the real enemy was global Capitalism up there in the sky.
We all like a story we can rejoice in: a mythic tale of a kingdom of evil and a kingdom of good battling in a primordial duel to the death. In the fantasy story light always overcomes the kingdom of evils dark destruction: so we naturally align with the forces of good heroifying the mythic contenders and denigrating the primal chaotic forces of evil. But for all the relevance this has: we might as well cast Trump as Voldemort and turn to the Harry Potter novels for economic literacy.
To coin a phrase you favour: meanwhile, back in the real world The dollar and the yuan are inextricably and intentionally linked in value. They have been since 1994: 'hard pegged' to 2005; and 'soft pegged' ever since. Do not believe the Chinese denials. The value is set daily: and only a 2% fluctuation is allowed either way. This is economic reality. There are no separate systems that are not underpinned by the value of the yuan: that is in turn determined by the floating value of the dollar. It is a form of criminal negligence to not know this basic fact: and concoct a poorly characterised quasi-mythological fantasy narrative contrafactually.
In the most basic sense: if the dollar and yuan are relatively priced – there are no separate systems. The value of the yuan follows the value of the dollar. Which has been a weakening trend: culminating in the yuan being at its lowest rate since before the GFC.
Absolutely anyone can check out this fact: but they don't. When they encounter it: they deny it. That's because the in stories we tell ourselves – it is the coherence of the narrative construction that matters not the facts. The whole facts are sacred thing is also contrafactual: the story is sacred. Because we identify with our inner story – facts like the dollar/yuan peg are ignored. Andre is the JK Rowling of economic reality. Only his plotlines and script are not nearly as inventive. In the real world – global capitalism is the dark destructive force only, there is no alternative. This is Capitalist Realism. If we as a humanity want to create an alternative: we need to face the hard economic reality. Fantasy narratives are just a faery tale distraction from that. Myths that mean that the dark destructivism carries on unresisted while we spin a good, if ultimately unbelievable, yarn.
Andre also mentions some little victories in America: for example, Cuba and Venezuela. To which we might add back Brazil and give a 4th cheer -- because Lula's back in town!
https://www.asiatimes.com/2019/08/article/lula-from-jail-tells-world-hes-back-in-the-game/
You meant 'accused of being rogue' by fascist regimes (i.e. US/UK/KSA/Australia etc.. ), right?
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consortiumnews.com
Aug 23, 2019 | off-guardian.org
Does our history only appear overheated, while it is essentially calmly predetermined? Is it directional or conceivable, dialectic and eclectic or cyclical, and therefore cynical? Surely, our history warns. Does it also provide for a hope? Hence, what is in front of us: destiny or future?
Theory loves to teach us that extensive debates on what kind of economic system is most conductive to human wellbeing is what consumed most of our civilizational vertical.
However, our history has a different say: It seems that the manipulation of the global political economy – far more than the introduction of ideologies – is the dominant and arguably more durable way that human elites usually conspired to build or break civilizations, as planned projects.
Somewhere down the process, it deceived us, becoming the self-entrapment. How?
*
One of the biggest (nearly schizophrenic) dilemmas of liberalism, ever since David Hume and Adam Smith, was an insight into reality: Whether the world is essentially Hobbesian or Kantian. As postulated, the main task of any liberal state is to enable and maintain wealth of its nation, which of course rests upon wealthy individuals inhabiting the particular state.
That imperative brought about another dilemma: if wealthy individual, the state will rob you, but in absence of it, the pauperized masses will mob you.
The invisible hand of Smith's followers have found the satisfactory answer – sovereign debt. That 'invention' meant: relatively strong central government of the state. Instead of popular control through the democratic checks-&-balance mechanism, such a state should be rather heavily indebted. Debt – firstly to local merchants, than to foreigners – is a far more powerful deterrent, as it resides outside the popular check domain.
With such a mixed blessing, no empire can easily demonetize its legitimacy, and abandon its hierarchical but invisible and unconstitutional controls. This is how a debtor empire was born. A blessing or totalitarian curse?
Let us briefly examine it.
The Soviet Union – much as (the pre-Deng's) China itself – was far more of a classic continental military empire (overtly brutal; rigid, authoritative, anti-individual, apparent, secretive), while the US was more a financial-trading empire (covertly coercive; hierarchical, yet asocial, exploitive, pervasive, polarizing).
On opposite sides of the globe and cognition, to each other they remained enigmatic, mysterious and incalculable: Bear of permafrost vs. Fish of the warm seas. Sparta vs. Athens. Rome vs. Phoenicia However, common for the both was a super-appetite for omnipresence. Along with the price to pay for it.
Consequently, the Soviets went bankrupt by mid 1980s – they cracked under its own weight, imperially overstretched. So did the Americans – the 'white man burden' fractured them already by the Vietnam war, with the Nixon shock only officializing it.
However, the US imperium managed to survive and to outlive the Soviets. How? The United States, with its financial capital (or an outfoxing illusion of it), evolved into a debtor empire through the Wall Street guaranties.
Titanium-made Sputnik vs. gold mine of printed-paper
Nothing epitomizes this better than the words of the longest serving US Federal Reserve's boss, Alan Greenspan, who famously quoted J.B. Connally to then French President Jacques Chirac: "True, the dollar is our currency, but your problem" .
Hegemony vs. hegemoney .
House of CardsConventional economic theory teaches us that money is a universal equivalent to all goods. Historically, currencies were a space and time-related, to say locality-dependent. However, like no currency ever before, the US dollar became – past the WWII – the universal equivalent to all other moneys of the world.
According to history of currencies, the core component of the non-precious metals' money is a so-called promissory note – intangible belief that, by any given point in future, a particular shiny paper (self-styled as money) will be smoothly exchanged for real goods.
Thus, roughly speaking, money is nothing else but a civilizational construct about imagined/projected tomorrow – that the next day (which nobody has ever seen in the history of humankind, but everybody operates with) definitely comes (i), and that this tomorrow will certainly be a better day then our yesterday or even our today (ii).
This and similar types of collective constructs (horizontal and vertical) over our social contracts hold society together as much as its economy keeps it alive and evolving. Hence, it is money that powers economy, but our blind faith in constructed (imagined) tomorrows and its alleged certainty is what empowers money.
Clearly, the universal equivalent of all equivalents – the US dollar – follows the same pattern: Bold and widely accepted promise. What does the US dollar promise when there is no gold cover attached to it ever since the time of Nixon shock of 1971?
Pentagon promises that the oceanic sea-lanes will remain opened (read: controlled by the US Navy), pathways unhindered, and that the most traded world's commodity – oil, will be delivered.
So, it is not a crude or its delivery what is a cover to the US dollar – it is a promise that oil of tomorrow will be deliverable. That is a real might of the US dollar, which in return finances Pentagon's massive expenditures and shoulders its supremacy.
Admired and feared, the Pentagon further fans our planetary belief in tomorrow's deliverability – if we only keep our faith in dollar (and hydrocarbons' energized economy), and so on and on in perpetuated circle of mutual reinforcements.
These two pillars of the US might from the East coast (the US Treasury/Wall Street and Pentagon) together with the two pillars of the West coast – both financed and amplified by the US dollar, and spread through the open sea-routs (Silicone Valley and Hollywood), are an essence of the US posture.
This very nature of power explains why the Americans have missed to take the mankind into completely other direction; towards the non-confrontational, decarbonized, de-monetized/de-financialized and de-psychologized, the self-realizing and green humankind.
In short, to turn history into a moral success story. They had such a chance when, past the Gorbachev's unconditional surrender of the Soviet bloc, and the Deng's Copernicus-shift of China, the US – unconstrained as a lonely superpower – solely dictated terms of reference; our common destiny and direction/s to our future/s.
Winner is rarely a game-changerSadly enough, that was not the first missed opportunity for the US to soften and delay its forthcoming, imminent multidimensional imperial retreat. The very epilogue of the WWII meant a full security guaranty for the US: Geo-economically – 54% of anything manufactured in the world was carrying the Made in USA label, and geostrategically – the US had uninterruptedly enjoyed nearly a decade of the 'nuclear monopoly'.
Up to this very day, the US scores the biggest number of N-tests conducted, the largest stockpile of nuclear weaponry, and it represents the only power ever deploying this 'ultimate weapon' on other nation. To complete the irony, Americans enjoy geographic advantage like no other empire before. Save the US, as Ikenberry notes:
" every major power in the world lives in a crowded geopolitical neighborhood where shifts in power routinely provoke counterbalancing".
Look the map, at Russia or China and their packed surroundings. The US is blessed with its insular position, by neighboring oceans. All that should harbor tranquility, peace and prosperity, foresightedness.
- Why the lonely might, an empire by invitation did not evolve into empire of relaxation, a generator of harmony?
- Why does it hold (extra-judicially) captive more political prisoners on Cuban soil than the badmouthed Cuban regime has ever had? Why does it remain obsessed with armament for at home and abroad?
- Why existential anxieties for at home and security challenges for abroad?
- Whydid the fall of Berlin Wall 30 years ago mark a beginning of decades of stagnant or failing incomes in the US (and elsewhere in the OECD world) coupled with alarming inequalities?
- What are we talking about here; the inadequate intensity of our tireless confrontational push or about the false course of our civilizational direction?
Indeed, no successful and enduring empire does merely rely on coercion, be it abroad or at home. The grand design of every empire in past rested on a skillful calibration between obedience and initiative – at home, and between bandwagoning and engagement – abroad.
In XXI century, one wins when one convinces not when one coerces. Hence, if unable to escape its inner logics and deeply-rooted appeal of confrontational nostalgia, the prevailing archrival is only a winner, rarely a game-changer.
To sum up; After the collapse of the Soviet Union, Americans accelerated expansion while waiting for (real or imagined) adversaries to further decline, 'liberalize' and bandwagon behind the US.
Expansion is the path to security dictatum only exacerbated the problems afflicting the Pax Americana. That is how the capability of the US to maintain its order started to erode faster than the capacity of its opponents to challenge it. A classical imperial self-entrapment!
The repeated failure to notice and recalibrate its imperial retreat brought the painful hangovers to Washington by the last presidential elections. Inability to manage the rising costs of sustaining the imperial order only increased the domestic popular revolt and political pressure to abandon its 'mission' altogether. Perfectly hitting the target to miss everything else
Hence, Americans are not fixing the world any more. They are only managing its decline. Look at their (winner) footprint in former Yugoslavia, Afghanistan, Iraq, Libya and Syria – to mention but a few.
*
When the Soviets lost their own indigenous ideological matrix and maverick confrontational stance, and when the US dominated West missed to triumph although winning the Cold War, how to expect from the imitator to score the lasting moral, or even a momentary economic victory?
Neither more confrontation and more carbons nor more weaponized trade and traded weapons will save our day. It failed in past, it will fail again any given day.
Interestingly, China opposed the 1st World, left the 2nd in rift, and ever since Bandung of 1955 it neither won over nor (truly) joined the 3rd Way.
Today, many see it as a main contestant. But, where is a lasting success?
The Belt and Road Initiative (BRI) is what the most attribute as an instrument of the Chinese planetary posture. Chinese leaders promised massive infrastructure projects all around by burning trillions of dollars.
Still, numbers are more moderate. As the recent The second BRI Summit has shown, so far, Chinese companies had invested $90 [billions] worldwide. Seems, neither People's Republic is as rich as many (wish to) think nor it will be able to finance its promised projects without seeking for a global private capital. Such a capital – if ever – will not flow without conditionalities.
The Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank (AIIB) and the BRICS – or 'New Development' – Bank have some $150 billion at hand, and the Silk Road Infrastructure Fund (SRIF) has up to $40 billion. Chinese state and semi-private companies can access – according to the OECD estimates – just another $600 billion (much of it tight) from the home, state-controlled financial sector.
That means that China runs short on the BRI deliveries worldwide. Ergo, either bad news to the (BRI) world or the conditionalities' constrained China.
Greening international relations along with a greening of economy – geopolitical and environmental understanding, de-acidification and relaxation is the only way out.
That necessitates both at once: less confrontation over the art-of-day technology and their monopolies' redistribution (as preached by the Sino-American high priests of globalization) as well as the resolute work on the so-called Tesla-ian implosive/fusion-holistic systems (including free-energy technologies; carbon-sequestration; antigravity and self-navigational solutions; bioinformatics and nanorobotics).
More of initiative than of obedience (including more public control over data hoovering). More effort to excellence (creation) than struggle for preeminence (partition).
Finally, no global leader has ever in history emerged from a shaky and distrustful neighborhood, or by offering a little bit more of the same in lieu of an innovative technological advancement. (Eg. many see the Chinese 5G as an illiberal innovation, which may end up servicing authoritarianism, anywhere.
And indeed, the AI deep learning inspired by biological neurons (neural science) including its three methods: supervised, unsupervised and reinforced learning can end up used for the digital authoritarianism, predictive policing and manufactured social governance based on the bonus-malus behavioral social credits.)
Ergo, it all starts from within, from at home. Without support from a home base (including that of Hong Kong, Xinjiang and Tibet), there is no game changer. China's home is Asia. Its size and its centrality along with its impressive output is constraining it enough.
Hence, it is not only a new, non-imitative, turn of technology what is needed. Without truly and sincerely embracing mechanisms such as the NaM, ASEAN and SAARC (eventually even the OSCE) and the main champions of multilateralism in Asia, those being India Indonesia and Japan first of all, China has no future of what is planetary awaited – the third force, a game-changer, lasting visionary and trusted global leader.
Post Scriptum: To varying degrees, but all throughout a premodern and modern history, nearly every world's major foreign policy originator was dependent (and still depends) on what happens in, and to, Russia. It is not only a size, but also centrality of Russia that matters. It is as much (if not even more), as it is an omnipresence of the US and as it is a hyperproduction of the PR China.
Ergo, it is an uninterrupted flow of manufactured goods to the whole world, it is balancing of the oversized and centrally positioned one, and it is the ability to controllably destruct the way in and insert itself of the peripheral one. The oscillatory interplay of these three is what characterizes our days.
Professor Anis H. Bajrektarević is chairperson and professor in international law and global political studies, Vienna, Austria. He has authored six books (for American and European publishers) and numerous articles on, mainly, geopolitics energy and technology. His 7th book, From WWI to www. – Europe and the World 1918-2018 was to released in December.
Monobazeus
https://sputniknews.com/world/201908241076626482-greenland-us-consulate-denmark/eddieThe US is opening a consulate in Greenland.!
Colour Change Greenland has officially begun.!
Memo to author: try an analogy with Macau; China's other SAR (special administrative region); the 2nd wealthiest city in the world, and the world leader in gambling profit.. From 05:30 until 23:00, Mainlanders flock into the City, 7 days a week; like an entire country migrating daily.. No protests there, unlike their sinking cousins across the Bay in Hong Kong..Jack LeonThe author suggests that Xinjiang and Tibet be included as somehow vital to China's dynamic progress, when they are empty of resources, and only need to be stabilized as a transit point for the BRI, which is progressing very well indeed.. People here think of it as the New Silk Road, not BRI..
The author is welcome to visit next year, when the 600 k.p.h. Maglev (magnetic levitation) train enters operation, and compare it to say, Amtrak in America, which is like a system from an 1860's cowboy and Indian film..
In 9 more days, high school begins in China, so many of the thrill-seekers will be in class, while the US-paid street criminals will be exposed and ridiculed.. Hopefully locked up for a very long time..
Hopefully locked up for a very long time..markAhh the blessed joys of absolute power literally controlling every aspect of peoples thoughts and daily lives, can't wait to move there. People in Macau cannot be black holed into a Chinese gulag that's exactly why it is so successful, no one with any money goes to gamble and party in Beijing. Mainlanders flock there to escape the prison state that is modern China.
"Please move to the back of the Maglev or you will be punished. Discredited Entities are not welcome on this ride."
When communism collapsed in 1989, a whole class of smug self satisfied individuals like Fukuyama and the Neocons and Ziocons feeding off them patted themselves on the pack, assured of their complete moral superiority and unlimited virtue. They had won, and could now throw their weight around the planet however they pleased.markPeople who were a little bit more far sighted subsequently concluded that communism collapsed FIRST. The prevailing system in the Anglozionist empire just took longer to collapse. Our system of crony capitalism, crapitalism, parasitic financial capitalism, looting kleptocracy, managed to endure for another 20 years before it collapsed in turn over 2007-8, never to recover. It has remained on life support ever since, sustaining its zombie existence through the printing of tens of trillions of toilet paper money backed by nothing but thin air, negative interest rates, and draconian austerity ravaging societies and entire countries.
The world could have been re ordered for the better after 1989. Genuine cooperation between great powers. Wide ranging disarmament. A new security structure for all the countries of the planet. The dismantling of relics like NATO. The resolution of previously intractable conflicts. A much better deal for developing countries with new terms of trade. The needs of billions of people given the priority they deserved. This was all up for grabs. But the opportunity for a better world was thrown away and will never return.
Instead, militarism and aggression were given their head. NATO expanded deep into the former Soviet Union in breach of all the undertakings that were given to the contrary. Russia was comprehensively looted and reduced to destitution and misery. One country after another was invaded and destroyed. Millions died and tens of millions immiserated. The whole planet was destabilised. Trillions were squandered that could have been devoted to productive purposes and real human needs.
We now face disaster on multiple fronts. The very real possibility of war on a scale never seen before in human history, leading to human extinction. Financial, economic and social collapse dwarfing the experience of 1929. Political chaos and upheaval. All of this completely unnecessary.
The US National Debt Clock is whizzing round at $25,000 a second. The current budget deficit is $1,175 billion. Trump is trying to loot the rest of the planet to get himself out of the economic hole he is in.Jack LeonvexarbThe world could have been re ordered for the better after 1989. Genuine cooperation between great powers. Wide ranging disarmament."All very true and concise, but do you truly believe that had the USSR won the cold war and the USA gone bankrupt, they would have even extended the olive branch the other way? Although impossible to definitively say, my guess is yeah right the Soviets would make Perestroika look like a bargain. We'd be wearing shitty Communist clothes, eating Borscht and watching as the party ravaged every resource for the Soviet oligarchs.
Capitalism is ths best system for economic growth, undeniably proven over and over, problem is, your right we live in a corporate communist state, which destroyed the greatest economic system ever created. And I would also agree 2007 was the official end of our great Republic although building for decades to that point.
"the main champions of multilateralism in Asia, those being India Indonesia and Japan first of all"vexarbRead that slowly and all will become crystal clear -- despite the author's Germanic gnomic English.
Sorry, I was being pretty gnomic myself. The Herr Professor is saying that the Chief Champions of Multi-Lateralism are countries which are either allied to the Empire (India) or have been crushed by the Empire (Indonesia) or both (Japan).TheThinkerBigB – I wrote this over on the thread a couple of articles back in a reply to George. But, it seemed pertinent to what you say above, perhaps even reinforces it. As I am double posting, Admin, feel free to delete if it is not useful to the discussion.Gary WeglarzI've been reading a collection of essays by a Australian guy called Careys – on Democracy and propaganda, fully named, Taking the Risk out of Democracy. He died unpublished but his papers were collated in a book after. Here some bits from my read that were interesting.
In Jan 1994 David Hume reflecting on the consequences of the recent state terrorist projects that Washington had organised and directed in its Central American domains, with the Church a prime target. They took special note of 'what weight' the culture of terror has had in domestically the expectations of the majority vis-a-vis alternatives different for the powerful; the destruction of hope, they recognised, is one of the greatest achievements of the free world doctrine of 'low intensity conflict' what is called 'terror' when conducted by official enemies. Noam Chomsky 1994
Propaganda is the management of collective attitudes by the manipulation of significant symbolism collective attitudes are amenable to many modes of alteration . intimidation intimidation .economic coercion drill
But their arrangement and rearrangement occurs principally under the importers of significant symbolism and the technique of using significant symbols for this purpose is propaganda. Lasswell, Bardson & Janowitz 1953
Successful use of propaganda as a means of social control requires a number of conditions: The will to use it, the skills to produce the propaganda, the means to deiiseminate it; and the use of significant symbols with real power over emotional reactions – ideally symbols of the sacred and satanic (Light vs DARK)
A society or culture which is disposed to view the world in Manichean terms will be more vulnerable to control by propaganda. Conversely, a society where propaganda is extensively employed as a means of control, will tend to retain a Manichean world view, a view dominated by symbols and visions of the sacred and satanic.
Manichean – an adherent of the dualistic systems (dual = 2) religious systems of Manes, a combination of Gnostic, Buddiasm, Zoroastrianism and various other elements with a doctrine of a conflict between the Light and Dark, matter being regarded as dark and light / good vs evil – love vs hate
The 'public mind' was recognised long ago by corporate leaders to be 'the only serious danger confronting' their enterprise & major hazards facing industrialists along with the newly realised political power of the masses, which had to be beaten back.
Big Business in the US stated started the Americanise Movement ostensibly to Americanise worker, who was being perceived as being under threat from subversive forces of the Industrial Workers of the world.
what started as a method of controlling the political opinion of immigrant workers quickly turned into a massive program for the thinking of an entire population. One of the most startling examples of the escalation of the whole population in processes of propaganda was how Americanisation Program ( a word which conjures up the 'thought police') came to be transformed into a National Celebration Day for the 4th July, to many of us (Carey's words not mine) it comes as a shock to discover that American Independence Day had it's beginning in a Business led program to control public opinion rather than as a direct expression of a Nation celebrating its historical birth.
("The Soviet Union – much as (the pre-Deng's) China itself – was far more of a classic continental military empire (overtly brutal; rigid, authoritative, anti-individual, apparent, secretive), while the US was more a financial-trading empire (covertly coercive; hierarchical, yet asocial, exploitive, pervasive, polarizing).").wardropper– sorry, but this line left me laughing out loud and gasping for a little air. If the meaning of the term's "covertly coercive" and "exploitive" actually are simply euphemisms to mean things like carpet bombing peasant societies into the 'stone age,' running, training and arming death squads and torture operations decade upon decade, over-throwing democratic populist governments and installing brutal dictators, and organizing and supporting mass murder and torture on an epic scale from Indonesia to Chile to Vietnam to Guatemala, and of course endless others, then yes, I suppose we American's have been "covertly coercive" and "exploitive."
I wonder, however, why such routine U.S. mayhem fails to rise to the level of the former Soviet's "overtly brutal" designation? As usual when I read the world as described by Western "academics" I am confused by the carefully coded language used to describe the absolute amoral brutality of Western empire. But hey, perhaps describing the willful murder of a half-a-million Iraqi children as "worth it," is simply an example of America's "asocial" tendencies rather than of actual barbarity.
The worst of it all is that none of it NEEDS to have "meaning".JunaidAnother sex scandal, or a bank scandal of huge proportions is plastered all over the media, and, two days later, while people are still trying to digest it with the most superficial thought processes they can muster, we suddenly find we are at war with China, Russia – or Denmark, for that matter
"Oh, we seem to be at war again!", would seem to be the most likely response, while we eagerly await the next scandal
The owners of our media honestly deserve the same end that Goebbels faced , but we share guilt inasfar as we have all-too readily allowed them to confuse our thinking until it isn't even thinking any more, but merely knee-jerk reaction to click-bait.
Russian President Vladimir Putin demanded that the Department of Defense, the Ministry of Foreign Affairs. New US weapons: how will Russia respondAntonymRussia's centrality? I wouldn't be fooled by the CIA's apparent obsession with Russia; the rest of the world knows that China is now no. 2. The Chinese have caught up technologically by study and crook, and are financially and population wise much stronger than Russia.Note wellIn fact Russian Siberia must look quite juicy for Beijing with all its space and minerals , were it not for those damn old Russian MIRVs.
Nice essay! Indeed, the US empire has survived [hopefully for not much longer] by swindling, and, fraudulent treaties. One critical aspect of the widespread of US influence is SPYING! Highly likely, most of what the US achieved would not have been possible without the spying apparatus that have infiltrated every corner of the world. Of course, spying did not start with the Internet, although now it is made 'natural'.Antonym
SPYING, and the ubiquitousness of it, should be stated every time US influence is mentioned.Why would only growing Indian or Chinese middle classes be cancer? Any greed is cancer, whether from a beggar or a billionaire. be they be India, Chinese, American, British etc.Fair dinkumThe Western middle class has pushed the planet to the precipice. The 400 million plus Chinese and Indian middle class will bury the world at the bottom of it.Roland SpanskyOh give it a rest, Chicken Little. People such as yourself have been squawking about the planet being on the edge of a precipice for – conservatively – the last sixty years. Open your eyes. It's a con. You've been had.wardropperIt seems to have escaped your attention that the middle classes are the main victims of "austerity" these days. The aim is to wipe them out, and have the 1% vs. the enslaved 99% as the new norm. It would be very uncomfortable to have a flourishing 55% middle class against the 1%, which is why we have austerity in the first place.Dominic Berry
As for "deadly cancers", well, we obviously have our own fair share of those, but it so happens that they are not the middle class.Their education is first and foremost about recognizing the importance of the existing hierarchy and knowing their place in it. Any facts or ideas they learn after this are recognized, understood and acted upon within the context of performing that role.Implicitly anti hierarchical facts provoke a cognitive dissonance which prevents them being recognized, but even when it is recognized as important, not accounted for by the existing procedures, critically important, (e.g., ecological collapse, nuclear weapons, austerity economics,) even when we see that something has to be done, well, "What am I supposed to do?"
Most of the rewards and punishments of being a middle class professional are not related to being right or wrong, justified or not, honest or dishonest. They are to do with being obedient or not, disciplined or indisciplined, "normal" or eccentric.
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Aug 25, 2019 | off-guardian.org
9/11 was conceived, written and performed by the Chosen Folk, a large number of dual nationals, with the assistance of a few key goy stooges. It was a Zionist operation from beginning to end, a USS Liberty/ JFK writ large. The same pattern can be seen in every element of the operation. It was carried out by a Mossad network 200 strong. Lucky Larry Silverstein was the man on the ground in charge of the WTC site, and he made billions out of the atrocity. A score of moslem Lee Harvey Oswalds had a walk on part as convenient patsies. There is no "propaganda" involved. Just fact.OffGYou could lead with 'Israel did it', or 'Mossad did it' – points you introduce later. But no, to you 'the Jews' did it. All of em. Including mr Cohen three doors down who says hello to you in the street.
You are rational and insightful on many other topics yet become a self-defeating bigot whenever you discuss Jewishness – which is far more often than occasions demand.
The game they play is getting easier to fall for and harder to resist. The more you hear those dreary repetitions about Labour anti-Semitism, the more you feel like screaming abuse at "the Jews". And then they have you exactly where they want. Then they can point a finger at you and say (with justification) "Ah! Anti-Semitism!"
Suppose for the sake of argument it was established that the Russian state actually did try to kill Skripal. Of course they didn't, but assume they did.
It would be entirely legitimate to say "the Russians" did it. This wouldn't be racist, or bigoted, or anything else. It wouldn't mean that all 150 million Russians were personally involved, or approved of this action, or played an active part in it, or even that they knew of it or could care less about it.
It wouldn't be some kind of racist trope that bus driver Mr. Ivanovich in Novosibirsk was somehow responsible.
Any more than 300 million Americans and 60 million British were personally responsible for the conspiracy to invade Iraq, or Bush's and Blair's criminal war of aggression.
In like manner the 9/11 atrocity was carried out by a few hundred individuals. Mostly Israeli and dual national Americans, and a significant number of Israel First stooge goys serving Zionist interests.
The vast majority of Jews and Israelis in the world played no part at all, and are just passive recipients of the cover conspiracy theories to explain it away.
This is just a smokecreen that is habitually thrown up whenever anyone connects the dots between Silverstein, a 200 strong Mossad ring, Chertoff, and so many others.
They, like many in the 9/11 truth community – let's face it – cannot allow an honest dispassionate consideration of the facts regarding 9/11 suspects, and the consequent unavoidable conclusion that a hugely disproportionate number of them are Jewish. They are conditioned into turning away from any conclusion which might challenge the more conforting idea that 'elements within the US secret state did 9/11' or 'a private intelligence network were responsible'. With honest consideration though it's hard to dispute your conclusion with respect to the perpetrators.
As you say, the Truth is 'antisemitic'. It stinks of hypocrisy when those who regard themselves as 'truth tellers' or 'truth inquirers' display the very same sophistry as the ones they rightly criticise when it comes to this issue.
This issue is still the key to understanding the politics of our age.
As we already said once and are saying for the second and last time – you and everyone else are free here to critique Israel and individual Jewish people and any other nation or group or individual on any grounds – EXCEPT THEIR RACE
If you find that's restrictive – well, you are a racist.
We're asking you for the second time to leave this discussion here. Move on to something useful or interesting.
As we already said once and are saying for the second and last time – you and everyone else are free here to critique Israel and individual Jewish people and any other nation or group or individual on any grounds – EXCEPT THEIR RACE
Can we criticise their ideology?
I've read your and Mark's attempts to twist your collective denigration of Jews into some type of political analysis. It's like reading Nazi rationalisations of their Final Solution. "The Jews believe they are chosen. The Jews run the banking system and only look after their own, so we have to put them in camps to save the country"
How many Jews do you talk to? Do you think we all run the banking system?
I find you disgusting. I applaud OffG's commitment to free speech, but all you do is exploit and abuse it.
"If we get caught, they will just replace us with persons of the same cloth. So it does not matter what you do. America is a golden calf and we will suck it dry, chop it up, and sell it off piece by piece until there is nothing left but the world's biggest welfare state that we will create and control. Why? Because it is the Will of God and America is big enough to take the hit. So we can do it again and again and again. This is what we do to countries that we hate. We destroy them very slowly and make them suffer for refusing to be our slaves." – Netanyahu.
"Goyim were born only to serve us. Without that, they have no place in the world – only to serve the People of Israel. Imagine that one's donkey would die, they'd lose their money. This is his servant. That's why he gets a long life, to work well for this Jew. Why are Gentiles needed? They will work, they will plough, they will reap. We will sit like an effendi, and eat." – Ovadia Yosef, Chief Rabbi of Israel.
"Our Race is the Master Race. We are divine gods on this planet. We are as different from the inferior races as they are from insects. Other races are beasts and insects, cattle at best. Our destiny is to rule over the inferior races. The masses will lick our feet and serve us as our slaves." – Menachem Begin.
Yosef is dismissed by most sensible Jews as a crazy old bigot and racist. Begin was crazy too and a terrorist. Netanyahu? A thug and a racist fool.
I might as well put quotes up here from Hitler and Goebbels and say that means all white anglo saxons are Nazis.
What is wrong with you? Why is your response to racism to become a racist? Why do you so clearly hate me simply because I was born a Jew? I don't hate you, I do not think you are a donkey. I don't call you a goy. Why are you so full of such hate toward the Jewish race because some Jews are wackos? Newsflash, some white men are wackos also.
I think you have found a way to repeat up-vote your posts and those of the other racists on here. I hope so anyway, if not I am sad .
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Aug 25, 2019 | off-guardian.org
TheThinker
I've been reading a collection of essays by a Australian guy called Careys – on Democracy and propaganda, fully named, Taking the Risk out of Democracy. He died unpublished but his papers were collated in a book after. Here some bits from my read that were interesting. In Jan 1994 David Hume reflecting on the consequences of the recent state terrorist projects that Washington had organised and directed in its Central American domains, with the Church a prime target. They took special note of 'what weight' the culture of terror has had in domestically the expectations of the majority vis-a-vis alternatives different for the powerful; the destruction of hope, they recognised, is one of the greatest achievements of the free world doctrine of 'low intensity conflict' what is called 'terror' when conducted by official enemies. Noam Chomsky 1994
Propaganda is the management of collective attitudes by the manipulation of significant symbolism collective attitudes are amenable to many modes of alteration . intimidation intimidation .economic coercion drill
But their arrangement and rearrangement occurs principally under the importers of significant symbolism and the technique of using significant symbols for this purpose is propaganda. Lasswell, Bardson & Janowitz 1953
Successful use of propaganda as a means of social control requires a number of conditions: The will to use it, the skills to produce the propaganda, the means to disseminate it; and the use of significant symbols with real power over emotional reactions – ideally symbols of the sacred and satanic (Light vs DARK)
A society or culture which is disposed to view the world in Manichean terms will be more vulnerable to control by propaganda. Conversely, a society where propaganda is extensively employed as a means of control, will tend to retain a Manichean world view, a view dominated by symbols and visions of the sacred and satanic.
Manichean – an adherent of the dualistic systems (dual = 2) religious systems of Manes, a combination of Gnostic, Buddiasm, Zoroastrianism and various other elements with a doctrine of a conflict between the Light and Dark, matter being regarded as dark and light / good vs evil – love vs hate
The 'public mind' was recognised long ago by corporate leaders to be 'the only serious danger confronting' their enterprise & major hazards facing industrialists along with the newly realised political power of the masses, which had to be beaten back.
Big Business in the US stated started the Americanise Movement ostensibly to Americanise worker, who was being perceived as being under threat from subversive forces of the Industrial Workers of the world.
what started as a method of controlling the political opinion of immigrant workers quickly turned into a massive program for the thinking of an entire population. One of the most startling examples of the escalation of the whole population in processes of propaganda was how Americanisation Program ( a word which conjures up the 'thought police') came to be transformed into a National Celebration Day for the 4th July, to many of us (Carey's words not mine) it comes as a shock to discover that American Independence Day had it's beginning in a Business led program to control public opinion rather than as a direct expression of a Nation celebrating its historical birth.
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Aug 25, 2019 | off-guardian.org
The Chosen Folk are so "chosen" and clever they have Lucky Larry as their 911 made billionaire poster boy bragging he gave the order to pull 7. Not to mention Epstein, flaunting his sexcapades in the so called "news" like he's some kind of Charles in Charge. No, the one in charge is the Superior General. And the one who claims it all (you included) by Papal Bull enjoys his duper's delight and the inquisition continues unimpeded. Of course the owner of 3/4's of Jerusalem is never mentioned. The ruse (and who benefits) is plain as day.AdminI don't think this is a coherent intervention.
Ethnicity is not racial; it describes cultural, linguistic and national associations. Race is generally understood as a reference to common biological ancestry.
Jewishness might, by some be accurately described as an ethnicity, but not as a race, as there are Jews from different 'racial groups' (-if one subscribes to such a notion at all).
If you are going to intervene with a response like the one above, I would suggest that you go the full mile and explore in an article or three which aspects of Jewishness which relate to ethnicity and which to ideology.'Fins Mcgee' denotes 'chosenness' as a defining ideological characteristic of those who self identify as 'Jewish'. Writers and thinkers like Gilad Atzmon, Israel Shamir and others would be in agreement. If that is a fair summation, then anyone who strongly identifies as 'Jewish' is, in truth, self identifying as somehow 'chosen' or special or superior to non Jews.
If that is unfair or wrong, then explain yourself and explain why. Explain what is 'Jewishness' ?
Taking your comment as it stands as the extent of your view would mean that all criticism of Jewish ideology is, in essence, 'racist'.
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Aug 25, 2019 | off-guardian.org
Even when he was 'sent down' to the cushy jail – he had it made easy. He was able to buy all he wanted. Including kiddie size girl panties! In prison!!His charitable work was supposed to be at a charity set up just before he went in prison guards accompanying him on his daily escapades and multi 'chiropractory' appointments per day were paid by him and had to dress in business suits the records of who met have been destroyed.
But the prison has had to release a whole bunch of records that still exist.
This is a exploding can of worms that doesn't look like stopping anytime soon.
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Aug 24, 2019 | off-guardian.org
People hunger for these stories, not for the real truth that impacts their lives, but for the titillation that gives a frisson to their humdrum lives. It is why post-modern detective stories are so popular, as if never solving the crime is the point.
To say "we will never know" is the mantra of a postmodern culture created to keep people running in circles. (Note the commentaries about the Jeffrey Epstein case.) Elusive and allusive indeterminacy characterizes everything in the culture of postmodernity.
Robert Pfaller, a professor at the University of Art and Industrial Design in Linz, Austria and a founding member of the Viennese psychoanalytic research group "stuzzicandenti," put it clearly in a recent interview :
The ruling ideology since the fall of the Berlin Wall, or even earlier, is postmodernism. This is the ideological embellishment that the brutal neoliberal attack on Western societies' welfare (that was launched in the late 1970s) required in order to attain a "human", "liberal" and "progressive" face.
This coalition between an economic policy that serves the interest of a tiny minority, and an ideology that appears to "include" everybody is what Nancy Fraser has aptly called "progressive neoliberalism". It consists of neoliberalism, plus postmodernism as its ideological superstructure.
The propagandists know this; they created it. They are psychologically astute, having hijacked many intelligent but soul-less people of the right and left to do their handiwork.
Money buys souls, and the number of those who have sold theirs is numerous, including those leftists who have been bought by the CIA, as Cord Meyer, the CIA official phrased it so sexually in the 1950s: we need to "court the compatible left." He knew that drawing leftists into the CIA's orbit was the key to efficient propaganda.
For so many of the compatible left, those making a lot of money posing as opponents of the ruling elites but taking the money of the super-rich, the JFK assassination and the truth of September 11, 2001 are inconsequential, never to be broached, as if they never happened, except as the authorities say they did.
By ignoring these most in-your-face events with their eyes wide shut, a coterie of influential leftists has done the work of Orwell's crime-stop and has effectively succeeded in situating current events in an ahistorical and therefore misleading context that abets U.S. propaganda.
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Aug 24, 2019 | off-guardian.org
George
The use of the word "hate" has become another thought-stopper. It's like calling something "Evil" without further explanation. I first realised this when I found the following article which is specifically about Off-Guardian: https://www.stopfake.org/en/russian-trolls-exiled-from-guardian-find-home-for-their-hate/
The title is in the URL itself but it's worth emphasising since it headlines the article:
"Russian trolls exiled from Guardian find home for their hate"And there it is – the simple assertion "hate". It's so crass. It's like cartoon propaganda – which may well be the most effective kind. And it echoes that old staple, "They just hate us!", "They are haters!" and, best of all, "Hatred of the good for being good." That last one is a masterstroke since it absolves one side of investigation while shoving all blame onto the other side. Best of all, the more "they" hate us, the more "good" we must be! 19 0 Reply Aug 22, 2019 5:25 PM Reader
F*** . am I russian now? ..and where can we pick our passports??Capricornia Man
'In line with the Kremlin's goals, OffGuardian seeks to undermine trust in the "mainstream media".'ROFL I literally nearly fell of my chair laughing.
This lady is revealed as either truly ancient, a cultural hermit or or herself a non-native English speaker.
Also she lies her ancient ass off about Ukraine.
Here are few hard questions:
1. If I state, correctly, that several leaders of Russian mob families are- or have been Jewish, does that make me antisemitic?
I say absolutely it does not. I would back that up by saying that several other crime overlords profess to have Christian ancestry. So not all mob capos are Jewish ..and being Jewish does not make you more likely to lead a life of crime .
2. So what about if I killed a Jewish mobster because his hoods sexually abused my daughter? Does that make me antisemitic??
Absolutely not. I would kill any mob capo whose vermin attacked my daughter. Jewishness does not come into it. I certainly hated the mobster, but I did not hate his Jewishness .
3. What about if I say that the Israeli Secret Service, the Mossad, is a terrorist organisation?
Here we are talking about the official Intelligence Service of the Jewish State. Those folks are going to be Jews, representing Jewry. Is that anti-semitic?
Why?? Being a terrorist basically means you have either a very violent religion or you do not uphold the principles of a less violent one. I would point to the known terrorism in the histories of MI6, the CIA, the OSS and several others to prove that it is not Jewishness that drives the terror, rather the precepts under which Intelligence agencies are run.
4. What if I say that Jews are over-represented amongst the Western media and banking elites? Is that anti-semitic??
Well, firstly the data suggests I am being factual, namely that the actual number of Jews in such positions is far higher than might be expected on a population-based pro rata outcome. Secondly, have I said it is either good or bad? I think I am suggesting that society might discuss why that has come about, whether any consequences have ensued and whether the majority in a society consider those consequences to be appropriate. It is not anti-semitic to ask if a small minority holding inordinate influence/power is aggreable to the majority of the citizenry. After all, we are continually suggesting that white, public-school-educated male graduates of Oxbridge should not dominate UK society in this day and age .
5. What if I say that a small minority of Jews proclaim the Jewish people to be superior to all goyim? Is that factual or anti-semitic??
What if I say to hold such a view makes that subset of Jews to be racist?
My view again is that that is factually accurate. It does not imply all Jews think like that, does it? It is like saying in the 1970s that the National Front was racist: said nothing about the majority of British people, did I?
I would really dare some Jewish people to challenge those arguments.
Not by smearing, scaremongering, bursting into tears or any other melodrama.
Nor by power plays, threats, blackmail or libel.
By cool, reasoned argument .
If you want to debate that subject there is an ongoing and currently civilised discussion between Mark and Mandy Miller on one of the Epstein threads. Feel free to re-post this comment there.
This article is about the media manipulation of the concept of 'hate'.
That said, Rhys does a great job of making his point, and perhaps the concept of "hate" is not so irrelevant to that point.The example of Jewish mob bosses is useful but we could have chosen American ones rather than Russian ones -- the Jewish 'mob' was preeminent in US cities before being displaced by the Italians/Sicilians. What I think is important, though, isn't stated and that's the idea that tribal identity has gradually been made important with our identity is inextricably bound up with our tribe, a tribe differentiated by religion, race or orientation but not notably by our economic class. The question shouldn't be to argue among ourselves about details and crumbs but to ask why allowing ourselves to sliced and diced into potentially warring groups. The media is full of it (literally and metaphorically) -- if its not race or gender then its the latest millennial versus baby boomer BS. To me the answer is obvious -- you don't want people uniting around common goals and expectations, you need to have them at each other's throats, fighting for those crumbs.
Incidentally, having to put up with racist jerks is the unfortunate side effect of espousing free speech. There's no easy way to winnow the good from the bad and you just know that if you let Big Brother decide for you then sooner rather than later it will be *you* that they'll be coming for.
https://occamsrazorterrorevents.weebly.com/they-tell-us-clearly.htmlObviously, it must be a legality because these events are so full of obvious holes they have to be deliberate and in some cases what happens is virtually impossible such as in the event that happened in my own city last week. Mert Ney brandishes a knife in the middle of an amazingly empty Clarence St with BROWN EYES but when we see him pinned ludicrously under the milk crate he has BLUE EYES, a change in eye-colour obviously effected with blue-tinted contact lenses. Does anyone seriously believe that a dextrous Mert pulled out and inserted these contact lenses between his knife-brandishing and being pinned?
Scrutinise the media stories. Notice all the contradictions in the various versions of the story. Notice all the misspellings, the inappropriate tone and register of language. The phony loved ones and witnesses. The nauseating heroes pimping their employer on morning TV. The complete absence of any sense of reality to these highly improbable crimes. What will it take for the recognition of these events to catch on? I simply do not understand.
Here is the word "Staged" inserted incongruously into this text. "Must have been a hell of a drug bender "?????? How much clearer do they have to make it?
Sydney stabbing LIVE: NSW Police confirm body found in Clarence Street unit linked to attack
BREAKING: We can confirm the death of the woman in the Clarence Street unit in Sydney's CBD is linked to the stabbing on the street below. Staged Must have been a hell of a drug benderAnd then we have the Philly cops spraying blood.
https://www.youtube.com/embed/AcGRq80InQU?version=3&rel=1&fs=1&autohide=2&showsearch=0&showinfo=1&iv_load_policy=1&wmode=transparent
If you genuinely want to engage people and are not – as many claim – a troll please take some advice:
Add the words 'I think' or 'could be' occasionally.
Don't comport like a missionary trying to convert unbelievers.
Put forward suggestions rather than pronouncements of dogma.
That way your posts might provoke some genuine discussion. If you ignore these suggestions and continue with these repeat-posted manifestos of certitude it's going to start looking as if the claims of trollery are not misplaced.
PS – this commenter below is inviting discussion of potential hoax shootings – why not engage with him ?
PPS – The link you added to the alleged contact lenses is broken, so we're removing it. Add another below and we'll add it to this post of yours
The blue/brown eyes thing is a non-issue, it can be created simply by changes in lighting levels or resolution. We pointed this out to you once already.
Apologies, I do not remember seeing that, however, I'm not sure your assertion is valid – you'd have to show an example that matches mine. When you say the link didn't work I wonder if you copied the entire link or just clicked because obviously the link wasn't underlined for its entirety and for it to work you needed to copy and paste it. In any case I found a better link – see below.
If you scroll down on this page you will see a ring around Ney's eyes which clearly indicates a contact lens.
https://pressfrom.info/au/news/australia/-141427-sydney-stabbing-accused-mert-ney-reportedly-saw-michaela-dunn-and-other-sex-workers-before-alleged-attacks.htmlIn this photo of a tinted contact lens you will see a similar-looking ring.
https://eyecandys.com/collections/colored-contacts/products/eyecandys-opal-grey-colour-contactsAs usual, OffG, you select one item only – which you don't manage to debunk in any case. There are so very many things wrong with the stabbing incident story. Unsurprisingly, you fail to make a comment on the word "Staged" appearing incongruously for example. Please, I beg you, OffG, what is your explanation for the word "Staged" appearing incongruously in the middle of a paragraph on this story and are you going to tell me that it is just sloppy journalism to say " must have been a hell of a drug-bender" when a woman has just been knifed to death and another woman injured? Are you going to tell me, "sloppy journalism"?
You seem unable to confront evidence, OffG. I have the feeling that you believe it is more scientific to reserve judgement, that one must always sit on the fence about evidence. This is a fallacy. When all the evidence points in a certain direction and none points in any other direction, the scientific thing to do is to call it. It is sitting on the fence that is unscientific.
I wonder what you actually call. Do you think that it might have been 19 terrorists armed with boxcutters responsible for 9/11 after all? Perhaps you do.
INCONTROVERTIBLE FACT
No one, despite the offer to choose your own judge, has responded to my 10-point Occam's Razor challenge for 5 separate events nor has anyone come up with even a single point. The fact that that to you is insignificant means you do not know how to judge logic and evidence. I have put my money where my mouth is but, OffG, you never, ever do that.
https://occamsrazorterrorevents.weebly.com/5000-challenge.html
https://www.youtube.com/embed/82YmcYaaU-k?version=3&rel=1&fs=1&autohide=2&showsearch=0&showinfo=1&iv_load_policy=1&wmode=transparent
quite possibly.
Cheers.
even though the once-revered ACLU does not oppose the Second Amendment.
Of course the American Civil Liberties Union doesn't oppose the Second Amendment–it's a civil liberty! That being said, with things going the way they're going, I wouldn't be at all surprised in the ACLU eventually does turn against the Second Amendment. Once upon a time, not so many years ago, they were free speech absolutists as well–does anyone else here remember the infamous Skokie Nazis? The ACLU actually argued their case pro bono! But in more recent times, they have succumbed to the logic of the campus 'hate speech' craze.
Many legal scholars would respond that the Equal Protection Clause of the 14th Amendment and the Due Process Clause in the Fifth Amendment already provides all American citizens with the guaranteed right to equal protection under the law
And they would, too, if only the US government still followed its own constitution.
Hell, we can even stage pop-festivals and invite grotesque figures like Sir Richard to belt out 'Imagine' while the local militia tool up with CIA hardware before wreaking havoc on unarmed civilians.
If western audiences become slightly sceptical the MSM will do its usual job of reassuring them that mass murder is an inconvenient externality when it comes to building a brighter future.
Why should the American public trust the MSM for what may have already been determined to be a 'hate' crime without providing evidence of the hate
Terrific point. Where do we draw the line on skepticism about official narratives? How much do we really know about these shootings, the identities of the shooters, even the reality of the crimes?
I don't want to get into full "it's a hoax" mode, but surely it's only intelligent to recall there are documented cases of fake events and therefore being prepared to allow the possibility any event may be fake is objectively the only rational response. What stops us? Nothing more than the same kneejerk rejection that makes other people refuse to consider 9/11 may have been an inside job or JFK may not have been shot by LHO.
It's not per se crazy to entertain the possibility, or per se offensive either. Fakery happens, we are constantly being manipulated, being aware of all possibilities is our only defense.
The same intelligence entities that coined the phrase "conspiracy theory" have also closed down any Youtube channels that dare to question, even in the most restrained and respectful way, the reality of any mass shooting. But sites like this condone that censorship, not seeing the connection.
Is it possible to have a non-binary, rational, fact-based discussion about the possibility some mass shootings may be fake?
I invite thoughts
How many are prepared for the continuous effort of questioning and skepticism required in order to be a truly independent and responsible human being?
The lack of responses so far here is not a good sign.
Hey there OffG columnists Phil Roddis, Ed Curtin, CJ Hopkins, Eric Zuesse, Renee Parsons, and hey there BigB, Jen, Maggie, Antonym, Mark, and other "stars" of this forum. People actually come here to read what you guys have to say. This question of fakery is a major subject impinging on our future freedom.
Who of you dares to address it?
edited by Admin at author's request to correct typo
Not so very long ago, I happily dismissed most 'fake shooting' narratives as either merely far-right/lumpen (sorry for such a crass term)-baiting/monetising, conspiracy theories – of the Alex Jones variety.
However, after about two-three years of observing media biases, I find it so much easier to spot where the overriding narratives appear to reside. However the actual events unfold is often less important than their ultimate goal, which is of course mass censorship and getting round that terribly inconvenient Second Amendment. This is I believe, the main agenda of the so-called Hate Crime. Yes, I am aware that this makes me appear to some rather Info-Wars but that's the joy of shedding my own confirmation bias!
I do now assume that there is state or states involvement in all these terror events. They are manipulated/controlled (of sorts), whether the perpetrator knows of it or not. Some may indeed be fake from the onset.
Empty vessels make the most noise and that is I'm afraid the state of corporate 'journalism', who mostly whore themselves for the state/oligarchy narrative. Be very aware of ANY story that is shilled verboten by these hacks, as they are awfully telling in the identification of agendas and the direction of our further enslavement.
https://www.youtube.com/embed/wipVDW3Vc4A?version=3&rel=1&fs=1&autohide=2&showsearch=0&showinfo=1&iv_load_policy=1&wmode=transparent
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Aug 24, 2019 | off-guardian.org
Yonatan
Hate crime, like thought crime, is double-plus ungood. 4 0 Reply Aug 23, 2019 2:45 PM Reader Yes, irony upon irony – the MSM, presumably inspired by PC now actually communicates in 'newspeak'.What term from Orwells dystopia will be popularised next, 'crimethink'?
It may sound hyperbolic but are thoughts being restructured to comply with the principles of Ingsoc?
https://33hpwq10j9luq8gl43e62q4e-wpengine.netdna-ssl.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/04/1984_-_newspeak_dictionary.pdf
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Aug 24, 2019 | off-guardian.org
This is a case of setting up a ludicrous straw man.Suppose for the sake of argument it was established that the Russian state actually did try to kill Skripal. Of course they didn't, but assume they did.
It would be entirely legitimate to say "the Russians" did it. This wouldn't be racist, or bigoted, or anything else. It wouldn't mean that all 150 million Russians were personally involved, or approved of this action, or played an active part in it, or even that they knew of it or could care less about it.
It wouldn't be some kind of racist trope that bus driver Mr. Ivanovich in Novosibirsk was somehow responsible.
Any more than 300 million Americans and 60 million British were personally responsible for the conspiracy to invade Iraq, or Bush's and Blair's criminal war of aggression.
In like manner the 9/11 atrocity was carried out by a few hundred individuals. Mostly Israeli and dual national Americans, and a significant number of Israel First stooge goys serving Zionist interests.
The vast majority of Jews and Israelis in the world played no part at all, and are just passive recipients of the cover conspiracy theories to explain it away.
This is just a smokecreen that is habitually thrown up whenever anyone connects the dots between Silverstein, a 200 strong Mossad ring, Chertoff, and so many others.
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Aug 24, 2019 | off-guardian.org
As the mainstream media consistently rush to judgment, speculation too often becomes fact before all the evidence is considered (ie Russiagate) as the MSM is relied on to provide factual and critical background information.
And yet since 65% of the American public believe that the MSM is peddling fake news begs the question of why should detailed reporting on these tragic events be left to a discredited media establishment or that their information on these recent shootings be considered truthful?
Why should the American public trust the MSM for what may have already been determined to be a 'hate' crime without providing evidence of the hate – as the Divide and Rule Game continues undeterred sowing division and conflict among the American people.
It remains unclear exactly why either tragedy is being specifically labeled a "hate" crime instead of felony murder as if there is a larger agenda to establish 'hate' as a bona fide.
Obviously, such barbaric mass killings are not normal behavior as the rationale for such conduct must stem from some deep emotional depravity just as the epidemic of suicides of young white males who have lost hope in American society makes no more sense.
There is an endemic crisis throughout the country and the political class are responsible. Decades after federal government elimination of grants for community mental health programs, 'hate' is the favorite determinant factor as the world's most violent nation creates a generation of emotionally or mentally unstable young men, many of whom may be on mind-numbing psychiatric drugs.
Since the MSM has failed to inform the American public of advanced mind control practices; perhaps the MSM itself and the young shooters are part of widespread experiment using MK Ultra or other state-of-the-art brain manipulation techniques. How would the American public ever know which might be true?
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Aug 24, 2019 | off-guardian.org
If you say "the Americans" or "the British" invaded Iraq in 2003 and someone tried to close down discussion by screaming "racism" they wouldn't get much mileage out of it.The Chosen Folk can talk about "the Arabs" or "the moslems" (all 2 billion of them) till the cows come home without so much as a raised eyebrow.
But any reference to the Chosen Folk that is not dripping with nauseating, sycophantic, lickspittle toadying, is automatically unacceptable and off limits.
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Aug 24, 2019 | off-guardian.org
Bittersweet
More New 'AIPACs' Popping Up "All of the pro-Israel groups taken together constitute a veritable political juggernaut that seeks to advantage Israel and benefit it directly without regard for the damage done to American democracy and to actual U.S. interests. They should rightly be seen as organizations that regard their loyalty to the United States as negotiable, but they try to obfuscate the issue by claiming, wrongly, that there exist compelling reasons why Israel and the U.S. should continue to be best friends.
As Americans increasingly begin to appreciate how Israel is in fact a serious liability, that line will not continue to sell very well, no matter how many congressmen and tame journalists are bought and no matter how many new groups pop up like mushrooms funded by Jewish billionaires. Change is coming."
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Aug 24, 2019 | off-guardian.org
mark
I'll give you some "truly horrible expressions of bigotry." Palestinians are:- "beasts walking on two legs" (Begin), "drugged cockroaches in a bottle" (Eitan), "hungry crocodiles" (Barak), who "must be crushed like grasshoppers" (Shamir). Truly horrible racist stuff. 8 -4 Reply Aug 22, 2019 1:39 AM Reader
Mandy Miller
Sure there are lunatics and there are racists and some of both are Jews, just as some are not Jews. Taking the words of the racist Jews and using that to fire up your own racist hate of all Jews, even those like me who think Begin was a one-eyed lunatic, is a waste of your life and breeds nothing but more hate. I hope God grants you peace in your heart, Mark.
Imagine that Cameron, or May, or Johnson, called Jews cockroaches or grasshoppers, let alone calling for Jews to be murdered. And every leading UK politician and military figure had done the same as a matter of routine for decades. Imagine the outrage. Rightly so.
I would never call Jews cockroaches. But ALL these Zionist figures ROUTINELY speak of Palestinians in these terms. This is completely normal. And nobody so much as raises an eyebrow. It is perfectly okay for the Chosen Folk to do this.
That is the point. It would be of benefit to the world if there was a little peace in the hearts of these people as well.
Begin did not speak for most Jews while he was alive and certainly doesn't now he's dead. I'm sure he liked to think he did, but why believe that racist schmuck? Ditto for Binyamin, who is as stupid and racist as he is crazy.
Like I said you might as well quote Hitler or Goebbels as being representative of today's Germany or claim they speak for all gentiles everywhere unless individuals specifically state otherwise. I was born a Jew, my kids were born Jews, we didn't volunteer to join! We should not need to officially repudiate Zionism or the crazy ravings of our leaders past or present in order to be assumed good people, any more than you, Mark, should have to repudiate Nazism or Mr Churchill's racism or mr Johnson's anti-Russian schtick to be considered a good person.
I would like to see a good study of Zionism here, I support the Palestinians in their struggle as again do many many Jews of my acquaintance (though, sadly not all I will admit). But do you not see how alienating and hurtful it is to see comments such as "the chosen people did 9/11", or (as was talked about a short while back) "Hebrews have a tendency toward pedophilia"? Please! Have a little respect is all. Talk about the evils of Zionism but don't conflate that with Judaism or with everyone lucky or unlucky enough to be born a Jew!
And all that oy vey goy stuff you do feels quite hurtful also, I am just curious what you think it brings to the conversation by way of enlightenment, communication and brotherly love, Mark? It just looks like you are hating on Jewishness in the same way those Nazi images of guys with hook noses etcetera did. It feels nasty. What does it achieve? Would it be a nice and helpful gesture to at least drop all that?
You can't criticise ANY of these people because it "offends" AIPAC, the Board of Deputies, the Friends of Israel, and "hurts their feelings." You are not allowed to call them out without incurring unprecedented draconian penalties unless you have first solved world hunger, global warming, criticised every other nation on the planet, and obtained a written permit from the Board of Deputies specifying exactly what terms and language you are authorised to use.
Why obsess about Talmudistan? Because it is the tail that wags the dog. It exercises a complete stranglehold over the politics and foreign policy of the US and its satellites like the UK. It incites endless wars which those countries are expected to prosecute on its behalf. It destabilises the entire planet causing indescribable suffering and human misery. It expects and receives a free pass to commit genocide and possess a huge illegal arsenal of WMD it constantly threatens to use. It extorts unimaginable amounts of tribute from other countries. It commits terrorist atrocities like 9/11 with complete impunity. Its endless intrigues and subversion poison the whole public space in entire countries. The smear campaign against Corbyn and the Epstein organisation are just two fairly trivial recent examples. Politicians and ordinary people are not required to swear loyalty oaths to Botswana or Bolivia on pain of instant dismissal. That is the difference.
A bit of kvetching about all the above seems a little bit justified under the circumstances.
My question is, how helpful is it to express those facts in racial terms? Why do you use these words that only have the effect of turning people away from you and closing down there receptiveness?
Ok, what I'm saying is, if you try to tell the average non-political nice well meaning Jewish person or liberal, of which my sister is a good example (both) that Israel is the aggressor nation in so many instances and if you tell them about the terrible plight of the Palestinian people it will be hard for you to get them to listen even if you don't use words that make you sound like a racist. But as soon as you start throwing around words such as Talmudistan and "chosen folk" and mockery of Yiddish with your "oy vey goy" routine, you are giving them a route to the exit door., which is what they want. You are giving them permission to ignore you! They can say "oh what a racist", and just leave the building.
So, my question is, why use that language? What good is it doing you that makes it worthwhile to lose so much credibility among people you could perhaps convert if you approached it differently?
I guess my question is, what does this aggressive use of offensive terms do for you that you hold on to it to the point of undoing any good you could do? Why not just say "Israel"? Why terms such as goy and chosen folk and language that can sound soooo racist and threatening?
I believe you Mark that you don't entertain real racist thoughts, but can you communicate with me why you use that language that makes it sound as if you do? Maybe you don't realize it but to a Jew it feels like a slap across the face. It triggers centuries of dormant fears of persecution. I have to try hard to put that aside and approach you without fear or anger. So I'm asking you, as a gesture toward understanding, to please not use those terms in our conversation? And maybe you might find you don't need that armour, or comfort blanket or whatever it is to you. Maybe you will find your message, which as put above is something I can get on board with, gets across more clearly.
Can we take that step, Mark? I am asking with peace and love in my heart.
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May 14, 2019 | www.theguardian.com
American farmers are likely to feel the pain first. Soybean exports to China collapsed last year when the trade war began, and agricultural exports will be hit harder when, or if, the new tariffs are imposed. Farmers are also suffering from extensive flooding that has delayed planting.
"The sentiment out in farm country is getting grimmer by the day," said John Heisdorffer, the chairman of the American Soybean Association. "Our patience is waning, our finances are suffering and the stress from months of living with the consequences of these tariffs is mounting."
The new round of tariffs will hit other parts of the US food industry, with beans, lentils, honey, flour, corn and oats all on the list of goods that will be taxed.
... ... ...
The Republican senator Chuck Grassley, who represents Iowa, a state heavily reliant on agriculture, has called for a quick resolution to the dispute. "Americans understand the need to hold China accountable, but they also need to know that the administration understands the economic pain they would feel in a prolonged trade war," Grassley said in a statement.
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Aug 18, 2019 | off-guardian.org
Francesca
Judicial hangings were/are designed to snap the neck bones, causing death to come quickly .That is why the victims body weight, slackness of rope, height of drop are carefully calibrated .
Some judicial hangings don't end with a broken neck
Suicide hangings are one thing .if the suicide has the choice, they can leap or kick off from a height, and access a rope Even this does not always end in neck snapping and pretty instant death, but asphyxiation .People generally don't have the physics at their fingertips.
Jail suicides are another , and most often end in aspyxiation .There just isn't the height , or the ligature ."Zhongxue Hua, the Bergen County medical examiner in New Jersey, said a neck fracture was atypical in a suicide but warned not to jump to conclusions.
"It's unusual to have a neck fracture," Hua said. "But the first question to address is when did it occur.
"If Epstein's neck fracture was fresh, Hua said, then "at a minimum, it's a very unusual suicide."
https://www.france24.com/en/20190816-usa-jeffrey-epstein-autopsy-neck-fractures-forensic-expert-suicide-sex-trafficking
I'd be very interested to view the autopsies of a decent number of jail suicides . I'd bet that broken neck bones don't show up very often .Unless of course there's an assistant who brings downward pressure on the body while its tight in its noose.A broken neck is a quick death, strangulation or asphyxiation leaves tell tale signs such as blood shot eyes and burst capillaries
Even if this was the freakiest suicide, the "coincidences " surrounding it are not convincing for such a high profile prisoner
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Aug 18, 2019 | off-guardian.org
mark
It seems obvious that Epstein was murdered, but in reality this is just a side issue.
The MSM will happily carry on sending people down rabbit holes for ever, and ignoring the real questions.
They would like nothing more than to turn this into another JFK, where people speculate endlessly, generating more heat than light. Just what motivated Epstein? Money? Vice? Paedo sex? Spying and blackmailing for Israel? All of the above? Where did his loyalties lie? Was he just a hired hand, an intelligence operative, another Christopher Steele? Or was he more of a gun for hire, an Erik Prince, serving Mossad, the CIA, the Zionist Lobby, or whoever would pay him? Or was he more of his own boss, running his own organisation in his own interests? What about Ghislaine Maxwell? Was she just Epstein's pimp and loyal lieutenant, carrying out his orders? Or was she his Mossad handler, calling the shots, with Epstein as front man?The best way to get at some semblance of the truth is to follow the money. Epstein seems to have appeared virtually out of nowhere as a made man. Wexner appears to have gifted him a $56 million heavily bugged mansion. What does this tell us?
Surprisingly, Maxwell has not gone to ground as expected. She made an exhibition of herself in LA a few days ago, ostentatiously eating a burger in public with a little dog in tow, reading a book about the CIA.
I think the stage is being set for an Oprah or Anderson Cooper style interview, presenting herself as the victim. Now that Epstein is dead, it will be in the interests of a lot of people to load everything on to his deceased shoulders. "I loved Jeffrey .but he was a monster ..he made me do terrible things ..I was frightened of him ..I'm a victim too."
This will probably be coordinated with a smear campaign against the victims, trying to dig up dirt about things like drugs, any criminal or mental health history, and any other issues.
One interesting detail to emerge from the search of Epstein's property is that he had a painting of Bill Clinton in drag, wearing a blue dress, like that of Monica Lewinsky, on his toilet wall. This is probably a case of gloating over the entrapment of Clinton. This somewhat grubby little episode occurred around the time of the Oslo peace deal, when Peres, Barak and Co. were under some pressure to negotiate seriously with the Palestinians, and facing criticism over settlements. Clinton was also under pressure from Zionist interests to release the Jewish/ Israeli spy Jonathan Pollard, imprisoned for treason/ espionage. This is reminiscent of the transvestite J. Edgar Hoover, who was being blackmailed by Meyer Lansky with photographs of him and Claude Tolson wearing dresses.
Dershowitz is another highly dubious character whose involvement warrants serious scrutiny. He previously defended OJ Simson and Spectre. He will probably spearhead a campaign to discredit the witnesses.
Fortunately, this can't be buried completely, even if Maxwell and others escape prosecution. There are a number of outstanding civil claims which will generate even more publicity than would otherwise be the case.
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Aug 18, 2019 | off-guardian.org
Professors Antony C Sutton, Carol Quigley and Guido Preparata wrote some very insightful books demonstrating how so much of what is accepted as official history is false. Quigley's book ( Tragedy and hope), outlines how the transnational financiers and the elites hold the masses in utter contempt. Moreover, Sutton demonstrates the fabricated fight between left and right is a mere distraction to enable them to progress with their plans for humanity. Furthermore, Preparata illustrates in his book, Conjuring Hitler, the notion that masses opinions count for nothing with the elites and the puppet politicians in terms of foreign policy.As Sutton's research discovered, the transnational financiers financed both Communism, Fascism and Nazism and came to some rather disturbing conclusions about their intentions.
Quigley summed it up " the powers of financial capitalism had a far- reaching aim nothing less than to create a world system of financial control in private hands able to dominate the political system of each country and the economy of the world as a whole.
This system was to be controlled in a feudalist fashion by the central banks of the world acting in concert, by secret agreements and conferences.
The apex of the system was to be the Bank for International Settlements (BIS) in Basel, Switzerland, a private bank owned and controlled by the world's central banks which were themselves private corporations Each central bank sought to dominate its government by its ability to control Treasury loans, to manipulate foreign exchanges, to influence the level of economic activity in the country, and to influence cooperative politicians by subsequent economic rewards in the business world." Tragedy and Hope.
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Aug 18, 2019 | off-guardian.org
Comparing Epstein with Jacob Rubenstein's murder of Lee Harvey Oswald is sheer antisemitism.Tim JenkinsLeaked FBI interview of one of the guards.
FBI: Where were you when you discovered Epstein was dead?
Guard #1: I was in his cell.
FBI: Before that. Before you knew he was dead.
Guard #1: I was in his cell strangling him.
FBI: I see. How about you, where were you?
Guard #2: I was making sure the camera was off.
FBI: Are you sure it was off?
Guard #2: Oh yeah, it was unplugged.
FBI: OK, well, I think we need to work on this story a bit more, but otherwise, good job fellas.
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Aug 18, 2019 | off-guardian.org
It attracts attention and will do so for many days to come. There are even some usually astute people suggesting that he may not be dead but might have been secretly whisked off somewhere and replaced with a dead look-alike.
Now, who would profit from suggesting something as insane as this?
The speculation runs rampant and feeds the spectacle. Whether he was allowed to kill himself or was killed makes little difference.
It's akin to asking who pulled the trigger that killed President Kennedy. That's a debate that was intended to go nowhere, as it has, after it became apparent that Lee Harvey Oswald surely did not kill JFK. John Kennedy's murder in broad daylight in public view is the paradigmatic event of modern times. It is obvious to anyone that gives minimal study to the issue that it was organized and carried out by elements within the national security state, notably the CIA.
Their message was meant to be unequivocal and clear: We can kill him and we can kill you; we are in full control; beware. Then they went on to kill others, including RFK and MLK. It takes little intelligence to see this obvious fact, unless you wish not to or are totally lost in the neighborhood of make-believe.
As it was with Jack Ruby killing Lee Harvey Oswald, so it is with Epstein. There will be no trial. Nothing is really hidden except the essential truth. Guess, debate, wonder, watch, read to your sad heart's content. You will have gotten nowhere unless you step outside the frame of the reigning narrative.
Tim HallThose of us who oppose these criminals – and there are growing numbers all over the world – must avoid being sucked into the establishment narratives and the counter-narratives they spawn or create. We must refuse to get involved in pseudo-debates that are meant to lead nowhere. We must reject the language created to confuse.
To arrive at this conclusion is an attest of the deepest truth a mind can grasp. If I could only talk to someone as astute as You. This is not flattery, but the mere realization, that there is nobody in my surroundings that possesses Your ability to make such a point.
That there are now so few people that can have this insight is the result of the absence of philosophy from our lives. It is philosophy who opens the mind and therefore it had to be removed from society. People are well advised to look into it, to overcome this barrage of fabricated narratives.
I suggest all readers refer to the following link to appreciate the futility of humanity's current position in regard to it's ability to resist the coming onslaught to its survival.
Edward, this sentiment is laudable, but they hold such a grip on mass psychological control that such sentiments represent chaff on the wind.
If revolutionary change is to come, we must learn to tell a new story in language so beautiful, illuminating, and heart-rending that no one will listen to the lying words of child molesters, mass murderers, and those who hate and persecute truth-tellers.
Sometimes this is delayed in waiting for toxicology results.
Probably "Suspension" (Hanging.)
Any separate injuries or existing medical conditions would be noted in the post mortem report.In the absence of any police criminal investigation, it would then be for a Coroner's Inquest, almost certainly sitting with a jury, to give a verdict.
Suicide, accidental death, misadventure, unlawful killing, open verdict.
It is for the Coroner's Court to examine the evidence and arrive at a verdict.
If there is doubt or uncertainty, there is the option of an Open Verdict.
Hanging could lead to a verdict of accident or misadventure in certain circumstances.
There was a case where a group of youths saw that someone had left a noose hanging from a tree in a park. One of them, larking around, put his head in the noose and accidentally hanged himself.The US system seems to short circuit the decision making process of the Coroner's Court.
This appears to be no more than an opinion by the medical examiner, sometimes misleadingly referred to as the Coroner.
There seems to be no equivalent to the Coroner's Court.
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OffGuardian
Noam Chomsky has pointed out , the more educated we are, the more we are a target for state-corporate propaganda. Even journalists outside the mainstream may internalize establishment values and prejudices. Which brings us to Parramore's embrace of the term "conspiracy theory." Once a neutral and little-used phrase, "conspiracy theory" was infamously weaponized in 1967 by a memo from the CIA to its station chiefs worldwide.
Troubled by growing mass disbelief in the "lone nut" theory of President Kennedy's assassination, and concerned that "[c]onspiracy theories have frequently thrown suspicion on our organization," the agency directed its officers to "discuss the publicity problem with friendly and elite contacts (especially politicians and editors)" and to "employ propaganda assets to answer and refute the attacks of the critics. Book reviews and feature articles are particularly appropriate for this purpose."
As Kevin Ryan writes , and various analyses have shown :
In the 45 years before the CIA memo came out, the phrase 'conspiracy theory' appeared in the Washington Post and New York Times only 50 times, or about once per year. In the 45 years after the CIA memo, the phrase appeared 2,630 times, or about once per week."While it turns out that Parramore knows something about this hugely successful propaganda drive, she chose in her NBC piece to deploy the phrase as the government has come to define it, i.e., as "something that requires no consideration because it is obviously not true." This embeds a fallacy in her argument which only spreads as she goes on. Likewise, the authors of the studies she cites, who attempt to connect belief in "conspiracy theories" to "narcissistic personality traits," are not immune to efforts to manipulate the wider culture. Studies are only as good as the assumptions from which they proceed; in this case, the assumption was provided by an interested Federal agency. And what of their suggested diagnosis?The DSM-5's criteria for narcissism include "a pervasive pattern of grandiosity a need for admiration and lack of empathy." My experience in talking to writers and advocates who -- to mention a few of the subjects Parramore cites -- seek justice in the cases of the political murders of the Sixties , have profound concerns about vaccine safety , or reject the official conspiracy theory of 9/11 , does not align with that characterization.
On the contrary, most of the people I know who hold these varied (and not always shared) views are deeply empathic, courageously humble, and resigned to a life on the margins of official discourse, even as they doggedly seek to publicize what they have learned. A number of them have arrived at their views through painful, direct experience, like the loss of a friend or the illness of a child, but far from having a "negative view of humanity," as Parramore writes, most hold a deep and abiding faith in the power of regular people to see injustice and peacefully oppose it. In that regard, they share a great deal in common with writers like Parramore: ultimately, we all want what's best for our children, and none of us want a world ruled by unaccountable political-economic interests. If we want to achieve that world, then we should work together to promote speech that is free from personal attacks on all sides. Even more importantly, we should all be troubled by efforts to shut down content and discussions labeled "false and misleading" on major social media platforms.
Who will decide what is false and what is true? ... ... ...
President Kennedy said:
a nation that is afraid to let its people judge the truth and falsehood in an open market is a nation that is afraid of its people."Perhaps we should take a closer look at ideas that so frighten the powers-that-be. Far from inviting our ridicule, the people who insist that we look in these forbidden places may one day deserve our thanks.
John Kirby is a documentary filmmaker. His latest project, Four Died Trying, examines what John Kennedy, Malcolm X, Martin Luther King and Robert Kennedy were doing in the last years of their lives which may have led to their deaths.
GeorgeI am responding to an earlier comment you made because, for some reason, I cannot reply to it in the proper place.Ragnar"The old adage 'two men can keep a secret, if one of them is dead' applies here."
Wrong: secrets can be uncovered even if both of them are dead.
"The conspiracies we know about are exposed because someone talks, or a computer gets hacked."
Conspiracies can be found out by many different ways e.g. documents uncovered, discrepancies, evidence that contradicts what has been claimed etc.
"A two decade old CT, like 9/11, or worse, one six decades old (the JFK assassination), are false because they would have involved too many people–someone would have blown the whistle, if only on their deathbed."
Always a bad sign when you start to repeat "would have". Lots of presumption here.
"No new facts have emerged because the only people who knew anything are long dead, taking the reasons to their graves .."
New facts can emerge all the time even regarding the most ancient of events.
" .or in the case of 9/11, because there was no great conspiracy, beyond the one reported."
So you now have godlike omniscience?
"A propensity for subscribing to conspiracy theories, is, sad to say, indicative of mental inadequacy "
There's no point in going much further here. You now devolve into psychobabble which, as always, is based on the dogmatic assertion that you are right. (cf. the formerly mentioned godlike omniscience)
"If you tell a lie big enough and keep repeating it, people will eventually come to believe it. The lie can be maintained only for such time as the State can shield the people from the political, economic and/or military consequences of the lie.GeorgeIt thus becomes vitally important for the State to use all of its powers to repress dissent, for the truth is the mortal enemy of the lie, and thus by extension, the truth is the greatest enemy of the State." These words are attributed to Joseph Goebbels.
-So, George, it would hardly make a difference whether the State is Marxist or Capitalist. It's either power or truth. They are inherently different and can not be reconciled. Ultimately, there is no bridge possible.
However, so-called "common" goals are of a lower order and cooperation here is possible, temporarily. These relationships are unstable and prone to breaking up precisely because they're ultimately not common at all. The principle are different and the personalities too. Ships Passing In The Night, like. -See?
We all have common goals. Basically the goals of life and health. And these are hardly goals "of a lower order". If that was true then we must be living in a state of "postmodernist relativity" where anyone can decide arbitrarily what matters. And that would certainly lead to your ships-passing-in-the-night scenario i.e. the ultimate divide-and-rule vision.William HBonneyAs for power, the late Marxist writer Ellen Meiksins Wood noted that, in modern times, we have an unprecedented degree of political freedom. But the reason for that is that power no longer lies in politics. It lies in economics. What is the point of having formal rights when your livelihood is gone?
TFSThe old adage 'two men can keep a secret, if one of them is dead' applies here.
The conspiracies we know about are exposed because someone talks, or a computer gets hacked. A two decade old CT, like 9/11, or worse, one six decades old (the JFK assassination), are false because they would have involved too many people – someone would have blown the whistle, if only on their deathbed. No new facts have emerged because the only people who knew anything are long dead, taking the reasons to their graves, or in the case of 9/11, because there was no great conspiracy, beyond the one reported.
A propensity for subscribing to conspiracy theories, is, sad to say, indicative of mental inadequacy. Such people are unable to deal with the complexities of the world as it is, and therefore seek to make it a world of black and white, good and evil, heroes and villains. The internet, with its blurring of fantasy and fact enables them. This is why discussions like this get so polarised.
r. rebar1. 9/11 and JFK are false because WILLIAM HBonney has declared it so.
Boom, thanks for watching kids.
2. In other news, some Conspiracy Theorists Imagined 747-E4Bs above Washington at the time of 9/11 and 25+second delay introduced into the Air Traffic Control System but the Official Conspiracy Account of 9/11 didn't discuss it because there was nothing to see.
3. In related news, HWB wack jobs go on one
4. Corbett, goes off on one: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HXYswf3lzU8
5. And again, Corbett goes even more mental. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mWLis-TVB2w
6. But it's ok kidz, because HWB wack jobs, like first responders, police, fire personnel architects, physicists, former military personnel, pilots, Nobel Peace Prixe winners, medical experts, etc etc all collectively asertained that the Official Conspiracy Theory of 9/11 is about as usefull as the Warren Commission Report.
7. HOWEVER, HWB THINKS YOU'RE A WACK JOB.
unless & until someone goes to jail -- there are no conspiracies & as silence is -- like any commodity -- only as good as the price paid to maintain it -- those who know have a real vested interest in not talking (it's not a secret if you tell someone)roger morrisMs Parramore is doing nothing more than her profession and tenure demands. Witting or un-witting. This co-ordinated and global media attack on the 'Conspiracy Theorist' is co-ordinated and Global for good reason.mathias alexandIt is the 'Great Wurlitzer' at full throat coinciding with extraordinary reductions in internet freedoms of information flow. The determination of international deepstate to make illegal any question or recognition of it under guise of 'Conspiracy theorist=domestic terrorist/anti-semite/anti-Zionist/BDS/trump supporting white supremacist(etc)'- conflating those ULTRA memes with growing awareness of the Anglo/Yankee/zionist PSYOPS underway globally, mean we are entering a choke point in progression of reason, truth and beauty.
A read of the Cass Sunstein/Cornelius Adrian Comstock Vermeule Paper describing 'Conspiracy theory' as a 'crippled Epistemology' and determining 'COINTELPRO' type strategies to counter the danger of their truth becoming certainty, will enlighten those in the dark of IIO methodology and expose Ms Parramore as a true MOCKINGBIRD.
The danger of the conspiracy theorist to the present world order, is that most of the BIG ones, the nasty ones, are true. And CIA operation Mockingbirds' job (Quote) 'is to Guard against the illicit Transformation of Probability into Certainty," that they are .
Try this for conspiracy thinkingGeorgeGood link. I like this bit:Molloy"Ultimately, the average conspiracy theorist has a better grasp of how the world works than the average liberal. Even the most outlandish "conspiracy theory" in existence -- that people like George W. Bush and Queen Elizabeth are shape-shifting, extra-dimensional reptilians -- is closer to the truth than what liberals believe.
The reality is that the ruling class and its public servants really do have a parasitic and predatory relationship to the vast majority of humanity "
I've often felt there is a lot of (metaphorical!) truth in David Icke's ravings, although the reptile image is unfortunate in that actual reptiles are amongst the most sedate and peaceful creatures.
Eichmann and today's useful idiots; Hannah ArendtMolloy(start Arendt quote)
Despite all the efforts of the prosecution, everybody could see that this man was not a "monster," but it was difficult indeed not to suspect that he was a clown. And since this suspicion would have been fatal to the whole enterprise, and was also rather hard to sustain, in view of the sufferings he and his like had caused so many millions of people, his worst clowneries were hardly noticed. What could you do with a man who first declared, with great emphasis, that the one thing he had learned in an ill-spent life was that one should never take an oath ("Today no man, no judge could ever persuade me to make a sworn statement. I refuse it; I refuse it for moral reasons. Since my experience tells me that if one is loyal to his oath, one day he has to take the consequences, I have made up my mind once and for all that no judge in the world or other authority will ever be capable of making me swear an oath, to give sworn testimony.
I won't do it voluntarily and no one will be able to force me"), and then, after being told explicitly that if he wished to testify in his own defense he might "do so under oath or without an oath," declared without further ado that he would prefer to testify under oath? Or who, repeatedly and with a great show of feeling, assured the court, as he had assured the police examiner, that the worst thing he could do would be to try to escape his true responsibilities, to fight for his neck, to plead for mercy -- and then, upon instruction of his counsel, submitted a handwritten document that contained a plea for mercy?
As far as Eichmann was concerned, these were questions of changing moods, not of inconsistencies, and as long as he was capable of finding, either in his memory or on the spur of the moment, an elating stock phrase to go with them, he was quite content.
(end quote)https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/1963/02/16/eichmann-in-jerusalem-i
Chomsky dealing with the indoctrinated. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lLcpcytUnWU&app=desktop Why it is important to call out the so-called 'Global Elite' facilitators on here.Gary WeglarzAnd why it is essential to understand what Eichmann was facilitating (and the madness that morphed into the same apartheid bigotry in the 21st century).
Better understand than be hanged.
wardropperI appreciate the article, but the sentence below is offered with no logical or rational support – it is simply an evidence free assertion:
("But Parramore and many journalists like her are neither assets of an intelligence service nor unthinking tools of big media; ) – really?
It is quite clear that if someone "is" (an asset of an intelligence service) that they will certainly not be broadcasting this fact to the world or to friends and family. And for someone to assert that "conspiracies" don't exist in the real world requires a level of credulity that most intelligent and rational people the least bit familiar with the historical record would find rather difficult to muster up. I dare say it would be much easier in fact to prove the assertion that our Western history is simply the "history of conspiracies" given the oligarchic control of Western populations for millennia. This is hardly "rocket science" as they say. We do have a rather well documented historical record to fall back on to show the endless scheming of Western oligarchy behind the backs of Western populations.
I like Michael Moore's response when asked if he believed the conspiracy theories which were floating about at the time: "Just the ones that are true"John ThatcherA conspiracy theory, like any theory is as strong as the evidence put forward to support it. Often people offer as fact conspiracies that only as yet exist as theories,with greater or lesser amounts of evidence to support.I have no doubt that interested parties who are the accused in these theories, will mount efforts to discredit any theory mounted against them or those they represent.Harry StotleOne of the ways they will do this is to plant "evidence" purporting to support the theory, but easily disproved by easily available information. Unfortunately,it is a sad fact that far too many "conspiracy theorists" readily accept and share along with genuine evidence, this planted "evidence" to the wider internet, thereby undermining the solid evidence of a conspiracy, by associating it with the easily disprovable nonsense.
Isn't it high time we had a term to describe those who always accept the official version of events after controversial political incidents no matter how implausible this account might be?
For example, after the attack on the WTC Kissinger was appointed to the head the 9/11 commission (before stepping down).
'Conspiracy theorists' would have thought – why are neocons appointing a mass-murdering neocon to investigate an event that might have involved neocons (raising obvious credibility issues) – whereas those who regard conspiracy theorists as dribbling fruitcakes would have welcomed the appointment of the nobel peace prize winner.
Anyway, here's a clip of Henry – the believers in everything the government say would never have considered the objections raised in the film – such questions are tantamount to mental illness according to these 'progressives'.
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Aug 16, 2019 | off-guardian.org
Mucho
Easily one of the best, well researched online resources for 9/11 is http://www.bollyn.comChristopher Bollyn's work is crucial as it is mainly focused on the who was behind the attacks, rather than endless investigations into the physics of the event. Physics is an important part of the 9/11 puzzle, but the players involved are of far more importance.
Here is one of his presentations, condensing some of his work into a seminar:
Christopher Bollyn DC 9/11/2017 "The War on Terror among Truth Seekers"
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Aug 16, 2019 | off-guardian.org
OffGuardian already covered the Global Media Freedom Conference, our article Hypocrisy Taints UK's Media Freedom Conference , was meant to be all there was to say. A quick note on the obvious hypocrisy of this event. But, in the writing, I started to see more than that. This event is actually creepy. Let's just look back at one of the four "main themes" of this conference:
Building trust in media and countering disinformation"Countering disinformation"? Well, that's just another word for censorship. This is proven by their refusal to allow Sputnik or RT accreditation. They claim RT "spreads disinformation" and they "countered" that by barring them from attending. "Building trust"? In the post-Blair world of PR newspeak, "building trust" is just another way of saying "making people believe us" (the word usage is actually interesting, building trust not earning trust). The whole conference is shot through with this language that just feels off. Here is CNN's Christiane Amanpour :Our job is to be truthful, not neutral we need to take a stand for the truth, and never to create a false moral or factual equivalence."Being "truthful not neutral" is one of Amanpour's personal sayings , she obviously thinks it's clever. Of course, what it is is NewSpeak for "bias". Refusing to cover evidence of The White Helmets staging rescues, Israel arming ISIS or other inconvenient facts will be defended using this phrase – they will literally claim to only publish "the truth", to get around impartiality and then set about making up whatever "truth" is convenient. Oh, and if you don't know what "creating a false moral quivalence is", here I'll demonstrate: MSM: Putin is bad for shutting down critical media. OffG: But you're supporting RT being banned and Wikileaks being shut down. BBC: No. That's not the same. OffG: It seems the same. BBC: It's not. You're creating a false moral equivalence . Understand now? You "create a false moral equivalence" by pointing out mainstream media's double standards. Other ways you could mistakenly create a "false moral equivalence": Bringing up Gaza when the media talk about racism. Mentioning Saudi Arabia when the media preach about gay rights. Referencing the US coup in Venezuela when the media work themselves into a froth over Russia's "interference in our democracy" Talking about the invasion of Iraq. Ever. OR Pointing out that the BBC is state funded, just like RT. These are all no-longer flagrant examples of the media's double standards, and if you say they are , you're "creating a false moral equivalence" and the media won't have to allow you (or anyone who agrees with you) air time or column inches to disagree. Because they don't have a duty to be neutral or show both sides, they only have a duty to tell "the truth" as soon as the government has told them what that is. Prepare to see both those phrases – or variations there of – littering editorials in the Guardian and the Huffington Post in the coming months. Along with people bemoaning how "fake news outlets abuse the notion of impartiality" by "being even handed between liars the truth tellers". (I've been doing this site so long now, I have a Guardian-English dictionary in my head).Equally dodgy-sounding buzz-phrases litter topics on the agenda. "Eastern Europe and Central Asia: building an integrated support system for journalists facing hostile environments" , this means pumping money into NGOs to fund media that will criticize our "enemies" in areas of strategic importance. It means flooding money into the anti-government press in Hungary, or Iran or (of course), Russia. That is ALL it means. I said in my earlier article I don't know what "media sustainability" even means, but I feel I can take a guess. It means "save the government mouthpieces". The Guardian is struggling for money, all print media are, TV news is getting lower viewing figures all the time. "Building media sustainability" is code for "pumping public money into traditional media that props up the government" or maybe "getting people to like our propaganda". But the worst offender on the list is, without a doubt
"Navigating Disinformation""Navigating Disinformation" was a 1 hour panel from the second day of the conference. You can watch it embedded above if you really feel the need. I already did, so you don't have to. The panel was chaired by Chrystia Freeland, the Canadian Foreign Minister. The members included the Latvian Foreign Minister, a representative of the US NGO Committee to Protect Journalists, and the Ukrainian Deputy Minister of Information
Have you guessed what "disinformation" they're going to be talking about? I'll give you a clue: It begins with R. Freeland, chairing the panel, kicks it off by claiming that "disinformation isn't for any particular aim" . This is a very common thing for establishment voices to repeat these days, which makes it all the more galling she seems to be pretending its is her original thought. The reason they have to claim that "disinformation" doesn't have a "specific aim" is very simple: They don't know what they're going to call "disinformation" yet. They can't afford to take a firm position, they need to keep their options open. They need to give themselves the ability to describe any single piece of information or political opinion as "disinformation." Left or right. Foreign or domestic. "Disinformation" is a weaponised term that is only as potent as it is vague. So, we're one minute in, and all "navigating disinformation" has done is hand the State an excuse to ignore, or even criminalise, practically anything it wants to. Good start. Interestingly, no one has actually said the word "Russia" at this point. They have talked about "malign actors" and "threats to democracy", but not specifically Russia. It is SO ingrained in these people that "propaganda"= " Russian propaganda" that they don't need to say it.
The idea that NATO as an entity, or the individual members thereof, could also use "disinformation" has not just been dismissed it was literally never even contemplated. Next Freeland turns to Edgars Rinkēvičs, her Latvian colleague, and jokes about always meeting at NATO functions. The Latvians know "more than most" about disinformation, she says. Rinkēvičs says disinformation is nothing new, but that the methods of spreading it are changing then immediately calls for regulation of social media. Nobody disagrees. Then he talks about the "illegal annexation of Crimea", and claims the West should outlaw "paid propaganda" like RT and Sputnik. Nobody disagrees. Then he says that Latvia "protected" their elections from "interference" by "close cooperation between government agencies and social media companies". Everyone nods along. If you don't find this terrifying, you're not paying attention. They don't say it, they probably don't even realise they mean it, but when they talk about "close cooperation with social media networks", they mean government censorship of social media. When they say "protecting" their elections they're talking about rigging them. It only gets worse. The next step in the Latvian master plan is to bolster "traditional media".
The problems with traditional media, he says, are that journalists aren't paid enough, and don't keep up to date with all the "new tricks". His solution is to "promote financing" for traditional media, and to open more schools like the "Baltic Centre of Media Excellence", which is apparently a totally real thing .
It's a training centre which teaches young journalists about "media literacy" and "critical thinking". You can read their depressingly predictable list of "donors" here . I truly wish I was joking. Next up is Courtney Radsch from CPJ – a US-backed NGO, who notionally "protect journalists", but more accurately spread pro-US propaganda. (Their token effort to "defend" RT and Sputnik when they were barred from the conference was contemptible).
She talks for a long time without saying much at all. Her revolutionary idea is that disinformation could be countered if everyone told the truth. Inspiring. Beata Balogova, Journalist and Editor from Slovakia, gets the ship back on course – immediately suggesting politicians should not endorse "propaganda" platforms. She shares an anecdote about "a prominent Slovakian politician" who gave exclusive interviews to a site that is "dubiously financed, we assume from Russia". They assume from Russia. Everyone nods.
It's like they don't even hear themselves.
Then she moves on to Hungary. Apparently, Orban has "created a propaganda machine" and produced "antisemitic George Soros posters". No evidence is produced to back-up either of these claims. She thinks advertisers should be pressured into not giving money to "fake news sites". She calls for "international pressure", but never explains exactly what that means. The stand-out maniac on this panel is Emine Dzhaparova, the Ukrainian First Deputy Minister of Information Policy. (She works for the Ministry of Information – nicknamed the Ministry of Truth, which was formed in 2014 to "counter lies about Ukraine". Even The Guardian thought that sounded dodgy.)
She talks very fast and, without any sense of irony, spills out a story that shoots straight through "disinformation" and becomes "incoherent rambling". She claims that Russian citizens are so brainwashed you'll never be able to talk to them, and that Russian "cognitive influence" is "toxic like radiation." Is this paranoid, quasi-xenophobic nonsense countered? No. Her fellow panelists nod and chuckle. On top of that, she just lies. She lies over and over and over again. She claims Russia is locking up Crimean Tartars "just for being muslims", nobody questions her. She says the war in Ukraine has killed 13,000 people, but doesn't mention that her side is responsible for over 80% of civilian deaths.
She says only 30% of Crimeans voted in the referendum, and that they were "forced". A fact not supported by any polls done by either side in the last four years, and any referenda held on the peninsula any time in the last last 30 year. It's simply a lie. Nobody asks her about the journalists killed in Ukraine since their glorious Maidan Revolution . Nobody questions the fact that she works for something called the "Ministry of Information". Nobody does anything but nod and smile as the "countering disinformation" panel becomes just a platform for spreading total lies.
When everyone on the panel has had their ten minutes on the soapbox, Freeland asks for recommendations for countering this "threat" – here's the list:
- Work to distinguish "free speech" from "propaganda", when you find propaganda there must be a "strong reaction".
- Pressure advertisers to abandon platforms who spread misinformation.
- Regulate social media.
- Educate journalists at special schools.
- Start up a "Ministry of Information" and have state run media that isn't controlled, like in Ukraine.
This is the Global Conference on Media Freedom and all these six people want to talk about is how to control what can be said, and who can say it. They single only four countries out for criticism: Hungary, Nicaragua, Venezuela and Russia .and Russia takes up easily 90% of that. They mention only two media outlets by name: RT and Sputnik. This wasn't a panel on disinformation, it was a public attack forum – a month's worth of 2 minutes of hate. These aren't just shills on this stage, they are solid gold idiots, brainwashed to the point of total delusion.
They are the dangerous glassy eyes of a Deep State that never questions itself, never examines itself, and will do anything it wants, to anyone it wants whilst happily patting itself on the back for its superior morality. They don't know, they don't care. They're true believers. Terrifyingly dead inside. Talking about state censorship and re-education camps under a big sign that says "Freedom". And that's just one talk. Just one panel in a 2 day itinerary filled to the brim with similarly soul-dead servants of authority. Truly, perfectly Orwellian.
Jonathan Jarvis
https://southfront.org/countering-russian-disinformation-or-new-wave-of-freedom-of-speech-suppression/Tim JenkinsRead and be appalled at what America is up to .keep for further reference. We are in danger.
It would serve Ms. Amanpour well, to relax, rewind & review her own interview with Sergei Lavrov:-EinsteinThen she might see why Larry King could stomach the appalling corporate dictatorship, even to the core of False & Fake recording of 'our' "History of the National Security State" , No More
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8H7aKGOpSwE
Amanpour was forced to laugh uncontrollably, when confronted with Lavrov's humorous interpretations of various legal aspects of decency & his Judgement of others' politicians and 'Pussy Riots' >>> if you haven't seen it, it is to be recommended, the whole interview, if nothing else but to study the body language and micro-facial expressions, coz' a belly up laugh is not something anybody can easily control or even feign that first spark of cognition in her mind, as she digests Lavrov's response :- hilarious
A GE won't solve matters since we have a Government of Occupation behind a parliament of puppets.Tim JenkinsLatest is the secretive Andy Pryce squandering millions of public money on the "Open Information Partnership" (OIP) which is the latest name-change for the Integrity Initiative and the Institute of Statecraft, just like al-Qaeda kept changing its name.
In true Orwellian style, they splashed out on a conference for "defence of media freedom", when they are in the business of propaganda and closing alternative 'narratives' down. And the 'media' they would defend are, in fact, spies sent to foreign countries to foment trouble to further what they bizarrely perceive as 'British interests'. Just like the disgraceful White Helmets, also funded by the FO.
Pryce's ventriloquist's dummy in parliament, the pompous Alan Duncan, announced another £10 million of public money for this odious brainwashing programme.
Francis LeeThat panel should be nailed & plastered over, permanently:-and as wall paper, 'Abstracts of New Law' should be pasted onto a collage of historic extracts from the Guardian, in offices that issue journalistic licenses, comprised of 'Untouchables' :-
A professional habitat, to damp any further 'Freeland' amplification & resonance,
of negative energy from professional incompetence.
Apropos of the redoubtable Ms Freeland, Canada's Foreign Secretary.markThe records now being opened by the Polish government in Warsaw reveal that Freeland's maternal grandfather Michael (Mikhailo) Chomiak was a Nazi collaborator from the beginning to the end of the war. He was given a powerful post, money, home and car by the German Army in Cracow, then the capital of the German administration of the Galician region. His principal job was editor in chief and publisher of a newspaper the Nazis created. His printing plant and other assets had been stolen from a Jewish newspaper publisher, who was then sent to die in the Belzec concentration camp. During the German Army's winning phase of the war, Chomiak celebrated in print the Wehrmacht's "success" at killing thousands of US Army troops. As the German Army was forced into retreat by the Soviet counter-offensive, Chomiak was taken by the Germans to Vienna, where he continued to publish his Nazi propaganda, at the same time informing for the Germans on other Ukrainians. They included fellow Galician Stepan Bandera, whose racism against Russians Freeland has celebrated in print, and whom the current regime in Kiev has turned into a national hero.
Those Ukrainian 'Refugees' admitted to Canada in 1945 were almost certainly members of the 14th Waffen SS Division Galizia 1. These Ukie collaboraters – not to be confused with the other Ukie Nazi outfit – Stepan Bandera's Ukrainian Insurgent Army -were held responsible for the massacre of many Poles in the Lviv area the most infamous being carried out in the Polish village of Huta Pienacka. In the massacre, the village was destroyed and between 500] and 1,000 of the inhabitants were killed. According to Polish accounts, civilians were locked in barns that were set on fire while those attempting to flee were killed. That's about par for the course.
Canada's response was as follows:The Canadian Deschênes Commission was set up to investigate alleged war crimes committed by the collaborators
Memorial to SS-Galizien division in Chervone, Lviv Oblast, western Ukraine
The Canadian "Commission of Inquiry on War Crimes" of October 1986, by the Honourable Justice Jules Deschênesconcluded that in relation to membership in the Galicia Division:
''The Galicia Division (14. Waffen grenadier division der SS [gal.1]) should not be indicted as a group. The members of Galicia Division were individually screened for security purposes before admission to Canada. Charges of war crimes of Galicia Division have never been substantiated, either in 1950 when they were first preferred, or in 1984 when they were renewed, or before this Commission. Further, in the absence of evidence of participation or knowledge of specific war crimes, mere membership in the Galicia Division is insufficient to justify prosecution.''
However, the Commission's conclusion failed to acknowledge or heed the International Military Tribunal's verdict at the Nuremberg Trials, in which the entire Waffen-SSorganisation was declared a "criminal organization" guilty of war crimes. Also, the Deschênes Commission in its conclusion only referenced the division as 14. Waffen-Grenadier-Division der SS (Galizische Nr.1), thus in legal terms, only acknowledging the formation's activity after its name change in August 1944, while the massacre of Poles in Huta Pieniacka, Pidkamin and Palikrowy occurred when the division was called SS Freiwilligen Division "Galizien". Nevertheless, a subsequent review by Canada's Minister of Justice again confirmed that members of the Division were not implicated in war crimes.
Yes, the west looks after its Nazis and even makes them and their descendants political figureheads.
Most of these people are so smugly and complacently convinced of their own moral superiority that they just can't see the hypocrisy and doublethink involved in the event.MikalinaEva Bartlett gives a wider perspective:Harry Stotle
https://www.globalresearch.ca/londons-media-freedom-conference-smacks-irony-critics-barred-no-mention-jailed-assange/5683808Freedom-lover, Cunt, will be furious when he hears about this!TutisicecreamApparently Steve Bell is doubleplusbad for alluding to the fact Netanyahu has got his hand shoved deep into Tom Watson's arse – the Guardian pulled Bell's most recent ouvre which suggests the media's antisemitism trope might not be quite as politically untainted as the likes of Freedland, Cohen and Viner would have you believe.
https://www.thejc.com/news/uk-news/guardian-cartoonist-steve-bell-specious-charge-of-antisemitism-in-email-to-all-paper-1.486570Meanwhile Owen Jones has taken to Twitter to rubbish allegations that a reign of terror exists at Guardian Towers – the socialist firebrand is quoted as saying 'journalists are free to say whatever they like, so long as it doesn't stray too far from Guardian-groupthink'.
Good analysis Kit, of the cognitive dissonant ping pong being played out by Nazi sympathisers such as Hunt and Freeland.Steve HayesThe echo chamber of deceit is amplified again by the selective use of information and the ignoring of relevant facts, such as the miss reporting yesterday by Reuters of the Italian Neo-Nazi haul of weapons by the police, having not Russian but Ukrainian links.
Not a word in the WMSM about this devious miss-reporting as the creation of fake news in action. But what would you expect?
Living as I do in Russia I can assure anyone reading this that the media freedom here is on a par with the West and somewhat better as there is no paranoia about a fictitious enemy – Russians understand that the West is going through an existential crisis (Brexit in the UK, Trump and the Clinton war of sameness in the US and Macron and Merkel in the EU). A crisis of Liberalism as the failed life-support of capitalism. But hey, why worry about the politics when there is bigger fish to fry. Such as who will pay me to dance?
The answer is clear from what Kit has writ. The government will pay the piper. How sweet.
I'd like to thank Kit for sitting through such a turgid masquerade and as I'm rather long in the tooth I do remember the old BBC schools of journalism in Yelsin's Russia. What I remember is that old devious Auntie Beeb was busy training would be hopefuls in the art of discretion regarding how the news is formed, or formulated.
In other words your audience. And it ain't the public
The British government's "Online Harms" White Paper has a whole section devoted to "disinformation" (ie, any facts, opinions, analyses, evaluations, critiques that are critical of the elite's actual disinformation). If these proposals become law, the government will have effective control over the Internet and we will be allowed access to their disinformation, shop and watch cute cat videos.Question ThisThe liberal news media & hypocrisy, who would have ever thought you'd see those words in the same sentence. But what do you expect from professional liars, politicians & 'their' free press?Tim JenkinsCan this shit show get any worse? Yes, The other day I wrote to my MP regards the SNP legislating against the truth, effectively making it compulsory to lie! Mr Blackford as much as called me a transphobic & seemed to go to great length publishing his neo-liberal ideological views in some scottish rag, on how right is wrong & fact is turned into fiction & asked only those that agreed with him contact him.
"The science or logical consistency of true premise, cannot take place or bear fruit, when all communication and information is 'marketised and weaponised' to a mindset of possession and control." B.SteereMikalinaI saw, somewhere (but can't find it now) a law or a prospective law which goes under the guise of harassment of MPs to include action against constituents who 'pester' them.Question ThisI've found a link for the Jo Cox gang discussing it, though.
https://www.kcl.ac.uk/news/new-research-on-the-intimidation-and-harassment-of-mps-featured-in-inaugural-conferenceI only emailed him once! That's hardly harassment. Anyway I sent it with proton-mail via vpn & used a false postcode using only my first name so unlikely my civil & sincere correspondence will see me locked up for insisting my inalienable rights of freedom of speech & beliefs are protected. But there again the state we live in, i may well be incarcerated for life, for such an outrageous expectation.Where to?"The Guardian is struggling for money" Surely, they would be enjoying some of the seemingly unlimited US defense and some of the mind control programmes budgets.Harry StotleIts the brazen nature of the conference that is especially galling, but what do you expect when crooks and liars no longer feel they even have to pretend?Where to?Nothing will change so long as politicians (or their shady backers) are never held to account for public assets diverted toward a rapacious off-shore economic system, or the fact millions of lives have been shattered by the 'war on terror' and its evil twin, 'humanatarian regime change' (while disingenuous Labour MPs wail about the 'horrors' of antisemitism rather than the fact their former leader is a key architect of the killings).
Kit remains a go-to voice when deconstructing claims made by political figures who clearly regard the MSM as a propaganda vehicle for promoting western imperialism – the self-satisfied smugness of cunts like Jeremy Cunt stand in stark contrast to a real journalist being tortured by the British authorities just a few short miles away.
It's a sligtly depressing thought but somebody has the unenviable task of monitoring just how far our politicians have drifted from the everyday concerns of the 'just about managing' and as I say Mr Knightly does a fine job in informing readers what the real of agenda of these media love-ins are actually about – it goes without saying a very lengthy barge pole is required when the Saudis are invited but not Russia.
This Media Freedom Conference is surely a creepy theatre of the absurd.MikalinaIt is a test of what they can get away with.
Yep. Any soviet TV watcher would recognise this immediately. Message? THIS is the reality – and you are powerless.markWhen are they going to give us the Ministry of Truth we so desperately need?
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Aug 16, 2019 | off-guardian.org
Lapdogs for the GovernmentHere was, of course, another surreal spectacle, this time courtesy of one of the Deep State's most dangerous, reviled, and divisive figures, a notable protagonist in the Russia-Gate conspiracy, and America's most senior diplomat no less.
Not only is it difficult to accept that the former CIA Director actually believes what he is saying, well might we ask, "Who can believe Mike Pompeo?"
And here's also someone whose manifest cynicism, hypocrisy, and chutzpah would embarrass the much-derided scribes and Pharisees of Biblical days.
We have Pompeo on record recently in a rare moment of honesty admitting – whilst laughing his ample ass off, as if recalling some "Boy's Own Adventure" from his misspent youth with a bunch of his mates down at the local pub – that under his watch as CIA Director:
We lied, cheated, we stole we had entire training courses.'
It may have been one of the few times in his wretched existence that Pompeo didn't speak with a forked tongue.
At all events, his candour aside, we can assume safely that this reactionary, monomaniacal, Christian Zionist 'end-timer' passed all the Company's "training courses" with flying colours.
According to Matthew Rosenberg of the New York Times, all this did not stop Pompeo however from name-checking Wikileaks when it served his own interests. Back in 2016 at the height of the election campaign, he had ' no compunction about pointing people toward emails stolen* by Russian hackers from the Democratic National Committee and then posted by WikiLeaks."
[NOTE: Rosenberg's omission of the word "allegedly" -- as in "emails allegedly stolen" -- is a dead giveaway of bias on his part (a journalistic Freudian slip perhaps?), with his employer being one of those MSM marques leading the charge with the "Russian Collusion" 'story'. For a more insightful view of the source of these emails and the skullduggery and thuggery that attended Russia-Gate, readers are encouraged to check this out.]
And this is of course The Company we're talking about, whose past and present relationship with the media might be summed up in two words: Operation Mockingbird (OpMock). Anyone vaguely familiar with the well-documented Grand Deception that was OpMock, arguably the CIA's most enduring, insidious, and successful psy-ops gambit, will know what we're talking about. (See here , here , here , and here .) At its most basic, this operation was all about propaganda and censorship, usually operating in tandem to ensure all the bases are covered.
After opining that the MSM is 'totally infiltrated' by the CIA and various other agencies, for his part former NSA whistleblower William Binney recently added , ' When it comes to national security, the media only talk about what the administration wants you to hear, and basically suppress any other statements about what's going on that the administration does not want get public. The media is basically the lapdogs for the government.'
Even the redoubtable William Casey , Ronald Reagan's CIA Director back in the day was reported to have said something along the following lines:
We know our disinformation program is complete when almost everything the American public believes is false.'
In order to provide a broader and deeper perspective, we should now consider the views of a few others on the subjects at hand, along with some history. In a 2013 piece musing on the modern significance of the practice, my compatriot John Pilger ecalled a time when he met Leni Riefenstahl back in 70s and asked her about her films that 'glorified the Nazis'.
Using groundbreaking camera and lighting techniques, Riefenstahl produced a documentary that mesmerized Germans; as Pilger noted, her Triumph of the Will 'cast Adolf Hitler's spell'. She told the veteran Aussie journalist the "messages" of her films were dependent not on "orders from above", but on the "submissive void" of the public.
All in all, Riefenstahl produced arguably for the rest of the world the most compelling historical footage of mass hysteria, blind obedience, nationalistic fervour, and existential menace, all key ingredients in anyone's totalitarian nightmare. That it also impressed a lot of very powerful, high profile people in the West on both sides of the pond is also axiomatic: These included bankers, financiers, industrialists, and sundry business elites without whose support Hitler might've at best ended up a footnote in the historical record after the ill-fated beer-hall putsch. (See here , and here .)
" Triumph " apparently still resonates today. To the surprise of few one imagines, such was the impact of the film -- as casually revealed in the excellent 2018 Alexis Bloom documentary Divide and Conquer: The Story of Roger Ailes -- it elicited no small amount of admiration from arguably the single most influential propagandist of recent times.
[Readers might wish to check out Russell Crowe's recent portrayal of Ailes in Stan's mini-series The Loudest Voice , in my view one the best performances of the man's career.]
In a recent piece unambiguously titled "Propaganda Is The Root Of All Our Problems", my other compatriot Caitlin Johnstone also had a few things to say about the subject, echoing Orwell when she observed it was all about "controlling the narrative".
Though I'd suggest the greater "root" problem is our easy propensity to ignore this reality, pretend it doesn't or won't affect us, or reject it as conspiratorial nonsense, in this, of course, she's correct. As she cogently observes,
I write about this stuff for a living, and even I don't have the time or energy to write about every single narrative control tool that the US-centralised empire has been implementing into its arsenal. There are too damn many of them emerging too damn fast, because they're just that damn crucial for maintaining existing power structures.'
The Discreet Use of Censorship and Uniformed MenIt is hardly surprising that those who hold power should seek to control the words and language people use' said Canadian author John Ralston Saul in his 1993 book Voltaire's Bastards–the Dictatorship of Reason in the West .
Fittingly, in a discussion encompassing amongst other things history, language, power, and dissent, he opined, ' Determining how individuals communicate is' an objective which represents for the power elites 'the best chance' [they] have to control what people think. This translates as: The more control 'we' have over what the proles think, the more 'we' can reduce the inherent risk for elites in democracy.
' Clumsy men', Saul went on to say, 'try to do this through power and fear. Heavy-handed men running heavy-handed systems attempt the same thing through police-enforced censorship. The more sophisticated the elites, the more they concentrate on creating intellectual systems which control expression through the communications structures. These systems require only the discreet use of censorship and uniformed men.'
In other words, along with assuming it is their right to take it in the first place, ' those who take power will always try to change the established language ', presumably to better facilitate their hold on it and/or legitimise their claim to it.
For Oliver Boyd-Barrett, democratic theory presupposes a public communications infrastructure that facilitates the free and open exchange of ideas.' Yet for the author of the recently published RussiaGate and Propaganda: Disinformation in the Age of Social Media , 'No such infrastructure exists.'
The mainstream media he says, is 'owned and controlled by a small number of large, multi-media and multi-industrial conglomerates' that lie at the very heart of US oligopoly capitalism and much of whose advertising revenue and content is furnished from other conglomerates:
The inability of mainstream media to sustain an information environment that can encompass histories, perspectives and vocabularies that are free of the shackles of US plutocratic self-regard is also well documented.'
Of course the word "inability" suggests the MSM view themselves as having some responsibility for maintaining such an egalitarian news and information environment. They don't of course, and in truth, probably never really have! A better word would be "unwilling", or even "refusal". The corporate media all but epitomise the " plutocratic self-regard" that is characteristic of "oligopoly capitalism".
Indeed, the MSM collectively functions as advertising, public relations/lobbying entities for Big Corp, in addition to acting as its Praetorian bodyguard , protecting their secrets, crimes, and lies from exposure. Like all other companies they are beholden to their shareholders (profits before truth and people), most of whom it can safely be assumed are no strangers to "self-regard", and could care less about " histories, perspectives and vocabularies" that run counter to their own interests.
It was Aussie social scientist Alex Carey who pioneered the study of nationalism , corporatism , and moreso for our purposes herein, the management (read: manipulation) of public opinion, though all three have important links (a story for another time). For Carey, the following conclusion was inescapable: 'It is arguable that the success of business propaganda in persuading us, for so long, that we are free from propaganda is one of the most significant propaganda achievements of the twentieth century.' This former farmer from Western Australia became one of the world's acknowledged experts on propaganda and the manipulation of the truth.
Prior to embarking on his academic career, Carey was a successful sheep grazier . By all accounts, he was a first-class judge of the animal from which he made his early living, leaving one to ponder if this expertise gave him a unique insight into his main area of research!
In any event, Carey in time sold the farm and travelled to the U.K. to study psychology, apparently a long-time ambition. From the late fifties until his death in 1988, he was a senior lecturer in psychology and industrial relations at the Sydney-based University of New South Wales, with his research being lauded by such luminaries as Noam Chomsky and John Pilger, both of whom have had a thing or three to say over the years about The Big Shill. In fact such was his admiration, Pilger described him as "a second Orwell", which in anyone's lingo is a big call.
Carey unfortunately died in 1988, interestingly the year that his more famous contemporaries Edward Herman and Chomsky's book Manufacturing Consent: The Political Economy of the Mass Media was published, the authors notably dedicating their book to him.
Though much of his work remained unpublished at the time of his death, a book of Carey's essays – Taking the Risk Out of Democracy: Corporate Propaganda Versus Freedom and Liberty -- was published posthumously in 1997. It remains a seminal work.
In fact, for anyone with an interest in how public opinion is moulded and our perceptions are managed and manipulated, in whose interests they are done so and to what end, it is as essential reading as any of the work of other more famous names. This tome came complete with a foreword by Chomsky, so enamoured was the latter of Carey's work.
For Carey, the three "most significant developments" in the political economy of the twentieth century were: the growth of democracy the growth of corporate power; and the growth of propaganda as a means of protecting corporate power against democracy.
Carey's main focus was on the following: advertising and publicity devoted to the creation of artificial wants; the public relations and propaganda industry whose principal goal is the diversion to meaningless pursuits and control of the public mind; and the degree to which academia and the professions are under assault from private power determined to narrow the spectrum of thinkable (sic) thought.
For Carey, it is an axiom of conventional wisdom that the use of propaganda as a means of social and ideological control is 'distinctive' of totalitarian regimes. Yet as he stresses: the most minimal exercise of common sense would suggest a different view: that propaganda is likely to play at least as important a part in democratic societies (where the existing distribution of power and privilege is vulnerable to quite limited changes in popular opinion) as in authoritarian societies (where it is not).' In this context, 'conventional wisdom" becomes conventional ignorance; as for "common sense", maybe not so much.
The purpose of this propaganda barrage, as Sharon Bader has noted, has been to convince as many people as possible that it is in their interests to relinquish their own power as workers, consumers, and citizens, and 'forego their democratic right to restrain and regulate business activity. As a result the political agenda is now confined to policies aimed at furthering business interests.'
An extreme example of this view playing itself right under our noses and over decades was the cruel fiction of the " trickle down effect " (TDE) -- aka the 'rising tide that would lift all yachts' -- of Reaganomics . One of several mantras that defined Reagan's overarching political shtick, the TDE was by any measure, decidedly more a torrent than a trickle, and said "torrent" was going up not down. This reality as we now know was not in Reagan's glossy economic brochure to be sure, and it may have been because the Gipper confused his prepositions and verbs.
Yet as the GFC of 2008 amply demonstrated, it culminated in a free-for all, dog eat dog, anything goes, everyman for himself form of cannibal (or anarcho) capitalism -- an updated, much improved version of the no-holds-barred mercenary mercantilism much reminiscent of the Gilded Age and the Robber Barons who 'infested' it, only one that doesn't just eat its young, it eats itself!
Making the World Safe for PlutocracyIn the increasingly dysfunctional, one-sided political economy we inhabit then, whether it's widgets or wars or anything in between, few people realise the degree to which our opinions, perceptions, emotions, and views are shaped and manipulated by propaganda (and its similarly 'evil twin' censorship ,) its most adept practitioners, and those elite, institutional, political, and corporate entities that seek out their expertise.
It is now just over a hundred years since the practice of propaganda took a giant leap forward, then in the service of persuading palpably reluctant Americans that the war raging in Europe at the time was their war as well.
This was at a time when Americans had just voted their then-president Woodrow Wilson back into office for a second term, a victory largely achieved on the back of the promise he'd "keep us out of the War." Americans were very much in what was one of their most isolationist phases , and so Wilson's promise resonated with them.
But over time they were convinced of the need to become involved by a distinctly different appeal to their political sensibilities. This "appeal" also dampened the isolationist mood, one which it has to be said was not embraced by most of the political, banking, and business elites of the time, most of whom stood to lose big-time if the Germans won, and/or who were already profiting or benefitting from the business of war.
For a president who "kept us out of the war", this wasn't going to be an easy 'pitch'. In order to sell the war the president established the Committee on Public Information (aka the Creel Committee) for the purposes of publicising the rationale for the war and from there, garnering support for it from the general public.
Enter Edward Bernays , the nephew of Sigmund Freud, who's generally considered to be the father of modern public relations. In his film Rule from the Shadows: The Psychology of Power , Aaron Hawkins says Bernays was influenced by people such as Gustave le Bon , Walter Lippman , and Wilfred Trotter , as much, if not moreso, than his famous uncle.
Either way, Bernays 'combined their perspectives and synthesised them into an applied science', which he then 'branded' "public relations".
For its part the Creel committee struggled with its brief from the off; but Bernays worked with them to persuade Americans their involvement in the war was justified -- indeed necessary -- and to that end he devised the brilliantly inane slogan, "making the world safe for democracy" .
Thus was born arguably the first great propaganda catch-phrases of the modern era, and certainly one of the most portentous. The following sums up Bernays's unabashed mindset:
The conscious, intelligent manipulation of the organised 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.'
The rest is history (sort of), with Americans becoming more willing to not just support the war effort but encouraged to view the Germans and their allies as evil brutes threatening democracy and freedom and the 'American way of life', however that might've been viewed then. From a geopolitical and historical perspective, it was an asinine premise of course, but nonetheless an extraordinary example of how a few well chosen words tapped into the collective psyche of a country that was decidedly opposed to any U.S involvement in the war and turned that mindset completely on its head.
' [S]aving the world for democracy' (or some 'cover version' thereof) has since become America's positioning statement, 'patriotic' rallying cry, and the "Get-out-of-Jail Free" card for its war and its white collar criminal clique.
At all events it was by any measure, a stroke of genius on Bernays's part; by appealing to people's basic fears and desires, he could engineer consent on a mass scale. It goes without saying it changed the course of history in more ways than one. That the U.S. is to this day still using a not dissimilar meme to justify its "foreign entanglements" is testament to both its utility and durability.
The reality as we now know was markedly different of course. They have almost always been about power, empire, control, hegemony, resources, wealth, opportunity, profit, dispossession, keeping existing capitalist structures intact and well-defended, and crushing dissent and opposition.
The Bewildered HerdIt is instructive to note that the template for 'manufacturing consent' for war had already been forged by the British. And the Europeans did not 'sleepwalk' like some " bewildered herd ' into this conflagration.
For twenty years prior to the outbreak of the war in 1914, the then stewards of the British Empire had been diligently preparing the ground for what they viewed as a preordained clash with their rivals for empire the Germans.
To begin with, contrary to the opinion of the general populace over one hundred years later, it was not the much touted German aggression and militarism, nor their undoubted imperial ambitions, which precipitated its outbreak. The stewards of the British Empire were not about to let the Teutonic upstarts chow down on their imperial lunch as it were, and set about unilaterally and preemptively crushing Germany and with it any ambitions it had for creating its own imperial domain in competition with the Empire upon which Ol' Sol never set.
The "Great War" is worth noting here for other reasons. As documented so by Jim Macgregor and Gerry Docherty in their two books covering the period from 1890-1920, we learn much about propaganda, which attest to its extraordinary power, in particular its power to distort reality en masse in enduring and subversive ways.
In reality, the only thing "great" about World War One was the degree to which the masses fighting for Britain were conned via propaganda and censorship into believing this war was necessary, and the way the official narrative of the war was sustained for posterity via the very same means. "Great" maybe, but not in a good way!
In these seminal tomes -- World War One Hidden History: The Secret Origins of the First World War and its follow-up Prolonging the Agony: How the Anglo-American Establishment Deliberately Extended WWI by Three-And-A-Half Years -- Macgregor and Docherty provide a masterclass for us all of the power of propaganda in the service of firstly inciting, then deliberately sustaining a major war.
The horrendous carnage and destruction that resulted from it was of course unprecedented, the global effects of which linger on now well over one hundred years later.
Such was the enduring power of the propaganda that today most folks would have great difficulty in accepting the following; this is a short summary of historical realities revealed by Macgregor and Docherty that are at complete odds with the official narrative, the political discourse, and the school textbooks:
It was Great Britain (supported by France and Russia) and not Germany who was the principal aggressor in the events and actions that let to the outbreak of war; The British had for twenty years prior to 1914 viewed Germany as its most dangerous economic and imperial rival, and fully anticipated that a war was inevitable; In the U.K. and the U.S., various factions worked feverishly to ensure the war went on for as long as possible, and scuttled peacemaking efforts from the off; key truths about this most consequential of geopolitical conflicts have been concealed for well over one hundred years, with no sign the official record will change; very powerful forces (incl. a future US president) amongst U.S. political, media, and economic elites conspired to eventually convince an otherwise unwilling populace in America that U.S. entry onto the war was necessary; those same forces and many similar groups in the U.K. and Europe engaged in everything from war profiteering, destruction/forging of war records, false-flag ops, treason, conspiracy to wage aggressive war, and direct efforts to prolong the war by any means necessary, many of which will rock folks to their very core.But peace was not on the agenda. When, by 1916, the military failures were so embarrassing and costly, some key players in the British government were willing to talk about peace. This could not be tolerated. The potential peacemakers had to be thrown under the bus. The unelected European leaders had one common bond: They would fight Germany until she was crushed.
Prolonging the Agony details how this secret cabal organised to this end the change of government without a single vote being cast. David Lloyd George was promoted to prime minister in Britain and Georges Clemenceau made prime minister in France. A new government, an inner-elite war cabinet thrust the Secret Elite leader, Lord Alfred Milner into power at the very inner-core of the decision-makers in British politics.
Democracy? They had no truck with democracy. The voting public had no say. The men entrusted with the task would keep going till the end and their place-men were backed by the media and the money-power, in Britain, France and America.
Propaganda Always WinsBut just as the pioneering adherents of propaganda back in the day might never have dreamt how sophisticated and all-encompassing the practice would become, nor would the citizenry at large have anticipated the extent to which the industry has facilitated an entrenched, rapacious plutocracy at the expense of our economic opportunity, our financial and material security, our physical, social and cultural environment, our values and attitudes, and increasingly, our basic democratic rights and freedoms.
We now live in the Age of the Big Shill -- cocooned in a submissive void no less -- an era where nothing can be taken on face value yet where time and attention constraints (to name just a few) force us to do so; [where] few people in public life can be taken at their word; where unchallenged perceptions become accepted reality; where 'open-book' history is now incontrovertible not-negotiable, upon pain of imprisonment fact; where education is about uniformity, function, form and conformity, all in the service of imposed neo-liberal ideologies embracing then prioritising individual -- albeit dubious -- freedoms.
More broadly, it's the "Roger Ailes" of this world -- acting on behalf of the power elites who after all are their paymasters -- who create the intellectual systems which control expression through the communications structures, whilst ensuring these systems require only 'the discreet use of censorship and uniformed men.'
They are the shapers and moulders of the discourse that passes for the accepted lingua franca of the increasingly globalised, interconnected, corporatised political economy of the planet. Throughout this process they 'will always try to change the established language.'
And we can no longer rely on our elected representatives to honestly represent us and our interests. Whether this decision making is taking place inside or outside the legislative process, these processes are well and truly in the grip of the banks and financial institutions and transnational organisations. In whose interests are they going to be more concerned with?
We saw this all just after the Global Financial Crisis (GFC) when the very people who brought the system to the brink, made billions off the dodge for their banks and millions for themselves, bankrupted hundreds of thousands of American families, were called upon by the U.S. government to fix up the mess, and to all intents given a blank cheque to so do.
That the U.S. is at even greater risk now of economic implosion is something few serious pundits would dispute, and a testament to the effectiveness of the snow-job perpetrated upon Americans regarding the causes, the impact, and the implications of the 2008 meltdown going forward.
In most cases, one accepts almost by definition such disconnects (read: hidden agendas) are the rule rather than the exception, hence the multi-billion foundation -- and global reach and impact -- of the propaganda business. This in itself is a key indicator as to why organisations place so much importance on this aspect of managing their affairs.
At the very least, once corporations saw how the psychology of persuasion could be leveraged to manipulate consumers and politicians saw the same with the citizenry and even its own workers, the growth of the industry was assured.
As Riefenstahl noted during her chinwag with Pilger after he asked if those embracing the "submissive void" included the liberal, educated bourgeoisie? " Everyone ," she said.
By way of underscoring her point, she added enigmatically: 'Propaganda always wins if you allow it'.
Greg Maybury is a freelance writer based in Perth, Australia. His main areas of interest are American history and politics in general, with a special focus on economic, national security, military, and geopolitical affairs. For 5 years he has regularly contributed to a diverse range of news and opinion sites, including OpEd News, The Greanville Post, Consortium News, Dandelion Salad, Global Research, Dissident Voice, OffGuardian, Contra Corner, International Policy Digest, the Hampton Institute, and others.
nottheonly1
This brilliant essay is proof of the reflective nature of the Universe. The worse the propaganda and oppression becomes, the greater the likelihood such an essay will be written.GMWSuch is the sophistication and ubiquity of the narrative control techniques used today -- afforded increasingly by 'computational propaganda' via automated scripts, hacking, botnets, troll farms, and algorithms and the like, along with the barely veiled censorship and information gatekeeping practised by Google and Facebook and other tech behemoths -- it's become one of the most troubling aspects of the technological/social media revolution.
Very rarely can one experience such a degree of vindication. My moniker 'nottheonly1' has received more meaning with this precise depiction of the long history of the manipulation of the masses. Recent events have destroyed but all of my confidence that there might be a peaceful way out of this massive dilemma. Due to this sophistication in controlling the narrative, it has now become apparent that we have arrived at a moment in time where total lawlessness reigns. 'Lawlessness' in this case means the loss of common law and the use of code law to create ever new restrictions for free speech and liberty at large.
Over the last weeks, comments written on other discussion boards have unleashed a degree of character defamation and ridicule for the most obvious crimes perpetrated on the masses through propaganda. In this unholy union of constant propaganda via main stream 'media' with the character defamation by so called 'trolls' – which are actually virtual assassins of those who write the truth – the ability of the population, or parts thereof to connect with, or search for like minded people is utterly destroyed. This assault on the online community has devastating consequences. Those who have come into the cross hairs of the unintelligence agencies will but turn away from the internet. Leaving behind an ocean of online propaganda and fake information. Few are now the web sites on which it is possible to voice one's personal take on the status quo.
There is one word that describes these kind of activities precisely: traitor. Those who engage in the character defamation of commenters, or authors per se, are traitors to humanity. They betray the collective consciousness with their poisonous attacks of those who work for a sea change of the status quo. The owner class has all game pieces positioned. The fact that Julian Assange is not only a free man, but still without a Nobel price for peace, while war criminals are recipients, shows just how much the march into absolute totalitarianism has progressed. Bernays hated the masses and offered his 'services' to manipulate them often for free.
Even though there are more solutions than problems, the time has come where meaningful participation in the search for such solution has been made unbearable. It is therefore that a certain fatalism has developed – from resignation to the acceptance of the status quo as being inevitable. Ancient wisdom has created a proverb that states 'This too, will pass'. While that is a given, there are still enough Human Beings around that are determined to make a difference. To this group I count the author of this marvelous, albeit depressing essay. Thank you more that words can express. And thank you, OffGuardian for being one of the last remaining places where discourse is possible.
Really great post! Thanks. I'm part of the way through reading Alex Carey's book: "Taking the Risk Out of Democracy: Corporate Propaganda Versus Freedom and Liberty," referenced in this article. I've learned more about the obviously verifiable history of U.S. corporate propaganda in the first four chapters than I learned gaining a "minor" in history in 1974 (not surprisingly I can now clearly see). I highly recommend this book to anyone interested in just how pervasive, entrenched and long-standing are the propaganda systems shaping public perception, thought and behavior in America and the West.NorcalWow Greg Maybury great essay, congratulations. This quote is brilliant, I've never see it before, "For Carey, the following conclusion was inescapable: 'It is arguable that the success of business propaganda in persuading us, for so long, that we are free from propaganda is one of the most significant propaganda achievements of the twentieth century.' "nondimenticareToo, Rodger Ailes was the man credited with educating Nixon up as how to "use" the TV media, and Ailes never looked back as he manipulated media at will. Thank you!
That is also one of the basic theses of Harold Pinter's Nobel Prize speech.vexarbI read in 'Guns, Germs and Steel' about Homo Sapiens and his domesticated animals. Apparently we got on best in places where we could find animals that are very like us: sheep, cattle, horses and other herd animals which instinctively follow their Leader. I think our cousins the chimpanzee are much the same; both species must have inherited this common trait from some pre-chimpanzee ancestor who had found great survival value in passing on the sheeple trait to their progeny. As have the sheep themselves.AndyBy the way, has anybody observed sheeple behaviour in ants and bees? For instance, quietly following a Leader ant to their doom, or noisily ganging up to mob a worker bee that the Queen does not like?
Almost unbelievable that this was commisioned by the BBC 4 part series covering much of what is in Gregs essay. Some fabulous old footage too. https://topdocumentaryfilms.com/the-century-of-the-self/S.R.PasserbyI'd say the elites are both for and against. Competing factions. It's clear that many are interested in overturning democracy, whilst others want to exploit it.The average grunt on the street is in the fire, regardless of the pan chosen by the elites.
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Aug 16, 2019 | off-guardian.org
The story goes like this: sometime during the height of the Cold War a group of American journalists were hosting a visit to the U.S. of some of their Soviet counterparts.
After allowing their visitors some time to soak up the media zeitgeist stateside, most of the Americans expected their guests to express unbridled envy at the professional liberties they enjoyed in the Land of the Free Press.
One of the Russian scribes was indeed compelled to express his unabashed 'admiration' to his hosts in particular, for the "far superior quality" of American "propaganda". Now it's fair to say his hosts were taken aback by what was at best a backhanded compliment.
After some collegial 'piss-taking' about the stereotypes associated with Western "press freedom" versus those of the controlled media in the Soviet system, one of the Americans called on their Russian colleague to explain what he meant. In fractured English, he replied with the following:
It's very simple. In Soviet Union, we don't believe our propaganda. In America, you actually believe yours!"
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Aug 15, 2019 | www.nakedcapitalism.com
Baby Gerald , August 15, 2019 at 4:46 pm
Kit Knightly at OffGuardian has a great commentary on how the Guardian is shaping its coverage of this Epstein situation, particularly in regard to all us conjecturing types:
Guardian Attacks Epstein "Conspiracy Theories"
It's a pretty scathing take-down and a fun read.
todde , August 15, 2019 at 6:25 pm
from the article:
which totally ignores a cardinal rule when dealing with state agencies: They will only admit to incompetence if the truth is worse.
LOL. Mirrors what I said earlier.
true, so very true.
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Aug 14, 2019 | averypublicsociologist.blogspot.com
... ... ...
The problem, however, is because this is overlaid by factional struggle ...
This, of course, is compounded by the over-amplifying of anti-Semitism by the media and the alacrity with which it has been taken up by Corbyn opponents, including hypocrites who floated "rootless cosmopolitan" criticisms of Ed Miliband when it suited just a few years ago.
Here's the thing. Just because your opponents take up an issue, some times cynically and in bad faith. and use it to inflict as much damage as they can does not mean the problem is fictitious.
Precisely because they can point to Facebook groups full of useful fools, and Twitter accounts with Corbyn-supporting hashtags acting as if the Israel lobby and "Zionists" are the only active force in British politics, this is the stuff that makes the attacks effective and trashes the standing of the party in the eyes of many Jews and the community's allies and friends.
The institutional anti-Semitism in the Labour Party is, therefore, somewhat different to the kind you find in other institutions. It is sustained by the battle for the party, a grim battlefront in a zero sum game of entrenched position vs entrenched position. As such, whatever the leadership do, whatever new processes the General Secretary introduces for one side it will never be enough because, as far as many of them concerned, the leadership are politically illegitimate; and for the other it's a sop and capitulation.
The resolution of the anti-Semitism crisis then is not a matter of compromise -- for each side the issue will only go away with the complete crushing and driving out of the party of the other. A situation that can only poison the well further, and guarantee anti-Semitism won't honestly and comprehensively be confronted.
Boffy said... 3 March 2019 at 16:42A good analysis. But, it emphasizes the point I made in the previous post, which is that, the right are currently engaged in an all out push to remove Corbyn and crush the left with the same old bureaucratic means. Whatever else Williamson may or may not be guilty of, his point that the leadership have facilitated this situation by their continual appeasement of the right is absolutely valid. Its that he is being attacked for, not anti-Semitism.asquith said... 3 March 2019 at 18:54It is first necessary to close ranks, and defeat the assault of the Right. As Marr said to Blair this morning, had Prescott announced he was forming a separate group, and was establishing his own witch-hunting bureaucratic apparatus in the party, Blair would have sacked him immediately - actually not so easy as the Deputy is elected. But the thrust is valid. Unless Corbyn deals with Watson, the Right will roll over the Left, despite the huge disparity in numbers.
Again it comes down to whether Corbyn is up for that task, or whether we need a leadership of the left with a bit more backbone to see it through.
I'm afraid this IS due to the "intersectionality" cult, whereby certain groups are always privileged and wrong, and some are always oppressed and right. Jews are, according to this "analysis", the uber-privileged and uber-white.Ian Gibson said... 4 March 2019 at 05:30We've heard several times that according to "intersectionality" that it's impossible to be racist against white people because racism requires both prejudice and power, and white people are by definition powerful. Therefore, anti-Semitism is dismissed because it can't be a thing because Jews are all-powerful and even more oppressive than other whites.
Those who don't subscribe to all of these beliefs are nevertheless tinged with them, which is why people who aren't staunch antisemites will nevertheless fail to take anti-Semitism seriously.
Coming on the day when the FT have a column seriously positing that criticizing capitalism is inherently anti-Semitic, it seems to me that dancing on the head of a pin about whether the 'careless' anti-Semitism you've described means the party is institutionally anti-Semitic is rather missing the point. (OK, the column is by John McTernan, but the FT gave him column inches to argue that case, and I guess they didn't mean it as the satire it most certainly is.)Boffy said... 4 March 2019 at 09:47As many of the comments on your blog on Williamson attest, the salient feature of this - well, call it witch-hunt for the sake of argument - is the double standards where we have to be whiter than white, whilst no account whatsoever is taken of the most egregious racism elsewhere. We live in society: we can never, ever be that whiter than white - especially when it comes to Israel/Palestine, which is so full of contradictions and traps for the unwary (e.g. the position of the Israeli state claiming to speak for all Jewry around the world, in the way that the Board of Deputies position themselves as speaking for all British Jews - neither close to being true, but small wonder that opponents of what they do and stand for take that universality at face value.)
The fight we need to take up is to compare and contrast just how pro-active the current party is against anti-Semitism in its constitution and machinery with the glaring absence of such elsewhere, and to present a positive picture of what we are doing, rather than mumbling apologetically into our beards. We need to take the fight to the rigged system at the same time as being unstinting in rooting out the troubling stuff.
The other nonsense that has grown up is that it is only those that suffer any form of discrimination who can define what that discrimination is, i.e. only Jews can define anti-Semitism, only black people can define racism against them, only women can define discrimination against women.Jim Denham said... 4 March 2019 at 15:25That then assumes that the members of each of these groups are themselves homogeneous, and agreed in such definitions. In reality, it means that dominant elements, i.e. those connected to the ruling class and ruling ideas get to make those determinations.
If we look at anti-Semitism, for example, it is quite clear that there is no agreement amongst Jews on what constitutes anti-Semitism. The JVL, certainly have a different definition than the JLM.
But, just rationally, the concept that only those discriminated against get to define the discrimination is bonkers. Suppose you come from Somalia or some other country that practices FGM, you could argue that it is part of your cultural heritage, and that anyone seeking to prevent you from undertaking this barbaric practice was thereby racist, on your self-definition of what that discrimination against you amounts to. Or Saudis might argue that it is racist to argue against their practice of lopping off women's heads, or stoning them to death for adultery, including having been raped, etc.
The JVL come pretty close to arguing that there is *no* anti-Semitism in the Labour party (Jenny Manson, for instance, says she's never witnessed any)and Glyn Secker wrote a piece in the Morning Star last year comparing claims of anti-Semitism within Labour to the story of the emperor's new clothes.Boffy said... 5 March 2019 at 09:00Given that the actual data, even allowing for all of the spurious and mischievous accusations of anti-Semitism in the party, made by right-wing enemies of the the party, and particularly of Corbyn and his supporters, amounts to only 0.1% of the membership, and given that of these, 40% were straight away found to be accusations against people who were not even LP members, with a further 20%, being found to have absolutely no evidence to back them, its quite possible that individual members of the LP, have never seen any instance of it.Boffy said... 5 March 2019 at 09:22Take out all those mischievous and malicious allegations made in order to whip up the hysteria, so as to to damage the party, by its enemies, and you arrive at a figure of only 400 potential cases, out of a membership of 600,000, which is 1 member in 1500. If the average branch size if 100 active members, it means on average there is one potential case of anti-Semitism in every 15 branches. So, if you are a member in any of the other 14 branches, you would never see that one potential case of anti-Semitism.
In fact, based upon the actual facts, as opposed to the fiction and factional hysteria that is being whipped up by right-wing opponents of Corbyn and the party, and by supporters of Zionism for their own narrow political reasons, the chances are about 14: that you will never see any even potential instance of anti-Semitism, even on the narrow definition that the party has now imposed upon itself, which comes pretty close if not entirely to identifying anti-Semitism with anti-Zionism, or even just criticism of the current Bonapartist regime of Netanyahu.
In the US, Jewish groups that have long been ardent defenders of Israel have more recently come out to criticize the regime of Netanyahu, and the actions of the Israeli state. The main defenders of Zionism, besides the actual Zionists themselves, appear to be people like the AWL, who for whatever reason hitched their wagon to Zionist ideology some time ago, probably in their usual knee-jerk reaction of putting a plus sign wherever the SWP put a minus. Having done so, and as a result of the bureaucratic centrist nature of the sect, they find themselves now having to follow through on the position they adopted on the basis of the "practical politics" - opportunism - as it dictated itself to them at the time.
If, and probably more likely when, they change position, it will come as with all their previous changes of position with the assertion that "nothing has changed", as when after claiming a few years ago that the LP was a stinking corpse - as they ridiculously stood their own candidates in elections with the inevitable result - and the next minute proclaimed themselves as its most ardent militants, as they sought to use their sharp elbows to gain positions on Momentum's leading bodies!
Incidentally, on the question of "observance", the only time I have seen someone get stabbed, is more than 50 years ago, when I was at school. I've seen plenty of other violent stuff in the intervening period, for example, people getting glassed, people having wrought iron tables smashed over their heads. My sister, who is several years older than me, and was out bopping during the days of the Teddy Boys, saw more people getting slashed, in the 1950's, because the flick knife was the Ted's favoured weapon.Jim Denham said... 5 March 2019 at 11:14But, that doesn't mean that I disbelieve the media when it talks about the current spate of knife crimes. Its just that, however, terrible such crimes are for those that suffer or witness them, and no matter how much the media that has to sensationalise every story, for its own commercial purposes, talks about an epidemic or a knife crime crisis, the number of knife crimes per head of population is extremely small.
The chances that 999 out of 1,000 of us will never be the victim of, or witness knife crime does not mean it doesn't exist. But, those that then claim that the 999 out of 1,000 of us who say we have not seen it, must be somehow being dishonest, are not dealing with the facts, and are simply fuelling a moral panic.
When some phenomena is statistically insignificant, which 1 in 1,500 cases, is, and when as with many such phenomena there is no normal distribution of the occurrence of such cases - for example, knife crime will tend to be concentrated in particular areas - trying to present any kind of rational analysis based upon personal observation is a mug's game.
Just because the only case of stabbing I have witnessed was more than 50 years ago, does not, and should not lead me to think that knife crime was worse 50 years ago than it is today. The actual data would seem to suggest that cases of anti-Semitism were greater in the LP in previous times than they are currently, contrary to what the media and those with factional motives would have us believe. It is certainly thec ase that anti-Semitism is a bigger problem in the Tory party, and other right-wing organisations than it is in the LP, again not that you would know that from the reporting of it, or from the attitude of certain factional sects, such as the AWL.
Speedy said... 6 March 2019 at 06:39Labour has 'much larger' group of antisemitic members which Corbyn has failed to deal with, Momentum founder warns
By Rob Merrick Deputy Political Editor The Independent, Monday 25 February 2019 16:10 |
Labour has "a much larger" group of antisemitic members than it recognises which Jeremy Corbyn has failed to "deal with", Momentum founder Jon Lansman has warned.
The Labour leader's long-standing ally said "conspiracy theorists" had infiltrated the party – a consequence of its huge surge in membership in recent years.
Mr Lansman stopped short of backing the call from Tom Watson, Labour's deputy leader, for Mr Corbyn to take personal charge of the antisemitism complaints dogging Labour.
But he said: "I do think we have a major problem and it always seems to me that we underestimate the scale of it. I think it is a widespread problem.
"I think it is now obvious that we have a much larger number of people with hardcore antisemitic opinions which, unfortunately, is polluting the atmosphere in a lot of constituency parties and in particular online. We have to deal with these people."
Approaching this from another angle...Boffy said... 6 March 2019 at 10:42The apparent level of anti-semitism in Labour is a modern phenomenon turbo-charged and amplified by social media. People have their views reinforced within their bunkers where anti-Israeli memes become anti-Zionist and then become anti-Semitic. It is much easier to send an anonymous email than a letter.
History is very much the tale of new technology transforming the potential of human behaviour and beliefs, and one of the oldest beliefs ("the blood libel") is anti-Semitism.
This is how Labour has changed - ie, the rise of Corbyn has coincided with the ubiquity of this technology. In fact, arguably the rise of Corbyn was aided by it.
Corbyn's nuanced position on Israel/Palestine gives permission to social media extremists.
The rest is history.
Incidentally, this is why you are less likely to confront anti-Semitism in real-life while the internet may be awash with it - there are the real and virtual identities which only occasionally bleed into each other.
Which is true and which is not? We might wonder if technology has evolved ahead of human adaptation - the "real world" filters that govern apparently "real" behaviour missing.
I'm sure even certain posters here are less bananas in "real life" than their online comments might suggest!
I wouldn't trust Lansman on this issue, any more than on many others. Lansman abolished democracy, to the extent it existed to begin with, by turning it into his personal fiefdom, reminiscent of the activities of Hyndman and the SDF. His position on anti-Semitism, and fighting the witch-hunt, and of appeasing the Blair-right's as they attacked Corbyn, has been appalling throughout.Jim Denham said... 7 March 2019 at 09:10Having abolished any democracy in Momentum, which he now runs as its CEO, he also appears to want Corbyn to do the same thing with the Labour Party, abolishing its internal democratic procedures, and putting himself personally in charge of those disciplinary measures. That truly would be the actions of a Bonapartist. That Tom Watson is prepared to do that, as he sets himself up in a situation of dual power, to confront Corbyn is no surprise that anyone who even remotely considers themselves a part of the Left should support should a move is a disgrace. Perhaps no surprise that the AWL supporters of Zionism, and the witch-hunt, appear to be doing so, then.
Its notable that, yesterday, when the Welsh Labour Grass Roots organisation came out to call for Williamson's suspension to be reversed, Kinnock and other Blair-rights immediately called for an investigation into them, and for its Secretary who sits on Labour's NEC to also be suspended, for interfering in an ongoing investigation! So, why did those same Blair-rights not call for the suspension of Watson, who immediately demanded Williamson's suspension, and withdrawal of the whip, before any investigation, or indeed of Hodge and others who on a daily basis go to the media to sally forth about cases that are under investigation, or waiting for investigation.
This truly is reaching into the realms of McCarthyism, where you are found guilty not just of witchcraft, but of consorting with witches, or even having an opinion as to whether an individual charged with witchcraft is guilty, or even the extent to which the number of witches amongst might be exaggerated.
Jim Denham's comment is a case in point. How much more "anti-Semitism" exists? What is the factual basis of the statement, as opposed to click bait headline. Even if the actual extent is 100% more than the data so far presented, that would mean that potentially 1 in 750 LP members might be guilty of some form of anti-Semitism. Its hardly an epidemic, or institutional anti-Semitism, and far less than exists in the Tory Party, which is also infected by Islamaphobia, misogyny, homophobia and xenophobia.
In fact, its probably much less than you would find in the BBC, Sky or other establishment institutions. Anti-Semitism exists, and is a problem, but that does not mean it is not being used by Labour's enemies or the proponents of Zionism for their own political ends. The real conspiracy theorists are those that try to present anti-Semitism as a conspiracy based upon infiltration of the LP, the same people who presented the support for Corbyn from 300,000 new members as really just being a case of far left entryism, by Trots.
This is a meme, taken from Incog Man, a far-right site. It was posted with positive endorsement by a Labour member, Kayla Bibby, a delegate to conference in fact:Boffy said... 7 March 2019 at 12:36Link to the meme:
https://static.timesofisrael.com/jewishndev/uploads/2019/02/ellmann-640x400.jpg
Bibby subsequently received only a formal warning, with Thomas Gardiner of Labour's Governance and Legal Unit (what used to be the Compliance Unit), saying it was only anti-Israel, and not anti-Semitic.
Not only could a Labour member post something obviously anti-Semitic, it was not deemed to be so by the Compliance Unit. I bet we all know people who would agree.
It's not a factually accurate description of global political realities, because Israel does not control the US, if that is what the image is intended to imply. But, the message, is thereby anti-Israeli state, not anti-Semitic. It could only be considered anti-Semitic, if in fact you are a Zionist and claim that Israel and Jews are are interchangeable terms, which they are not.Boffy said... 7 March 2019 at 13:47In fact, there are probably not an inconsiderable number of Jews, who think that the state of Israel does exercise undue influence over US policy, and certainly it seems to be the case that, in the US, more liberal Jewish groups, seem to think that one reason that the Bonapartist regime of Netanyahu, in Israel, was so supportive of Trump, and we see the same support for Trump amongst Zionists in Britain, is at least in part due to the fact that Obama had been distancing the US from its historical uncritical support for Israel.
If we replace Zionism with Toryism, and Jew with British, the situation becomes fairly clear. If the we show the British state as being controlled by Tories, who implement their ideology of Toryism, in what way would criticism of the British state, under the control of such Tories, or criticism of Tories be the equivalent of British people as a whole?
Clearly it wouldn't, because there are a majority of British people who oppose Toryism, and thereby oppose the actions of the British state under the control of the Tories. A nationalist, or racist might want to equate the nation state with the whole of its people, but the people who are doing that here, by interpreting criticism of the Israeli state with anti-Semitism, are the Zionists themselves, and their apologists, because they seek thereby to delegitimize any criticism of the state of Israel and Zionism by equating it with anti-Semitism.
That in effect makes the Zionists themselves, and their apologists anti-Semites, because in adopting this equation of Jewishness with being Zionist, and with Israel, they make all Jews thereby responsible for the actions of Zionism and of the state of Israel!
The problem for the AWL, and its members like Jim Denham, on this issue comes down to this. Until thirty years ago, the organisation, under its previous names, was an ardent defender of the ideas and traditions of Jim Cannon. Cannon's "The Struggle for a Proletarian Party" was required reading for all of its members. Then, in an about face, the organisation overnight collapsed into what Trotsky called "the petit-bourgeois Third Camp", and so became ardent defenders of the enemies of Cannon, the petit-bourgeois Third Camp of Burnham- Shachtman. That kind of wild zig-zag is typical of bureaucratic-centrist organisations, which is what the AWL is.Anonymous said... 7 March 2019 at 16:54As part of this collapse into the petit-bourgeois Third Camp, and the moralistic politics it is based upon, the AWL also adopted the ideas of Third Campists like Al Glotzer, in relation to Israel and Zionism, as opposed to the position of Mandel, which represented a continuation of the ideas of Cannon and Trotsky. I set this out in a short blog post 12 years ago Glotzer and the Jews as Special , after the AWL had repeatedly censored it appearing on their website in response to an article setting out Glotzer's position.
Having committed themselves to the reactionary Zionist ideology that essentially underpins Glotzer's stance - the same thing idea of having lost faith in the working-class, and so having to rely on the bourgeois state, or "progressive imperialism" to accomplish the tasks of the working-class, is behind the AWL's support for NATo's war against Serbia, Iraq, Libya etc., but is also behind the politics of other Third Campists such as the SWP, that instead look to other larger forces, such as reactionary "anti-imperialist" states to carry forward its moral agenda - the AWL are left now trying to defend their position of support for the creation of a racist, expansionist state in Israel, as the inevitable consequences of that venture unfold.
For a Marxist, it is not at all difficult to say that the establishment of the state of Israel is one that we should not have supported at the time, because it would lead to the kind of consequences we see today, and yet, to say, 75 years on from the creation of that state, it is an established fact, and trying to unwind history, by calling for the destruction of that state would have even more calamitous consequences for the global working-class. It is quite easy for a Marx to say that the current nature of the Israeli state, as a racist Zionist state, based, like almost no other state in the world on a confessional basis, i.e. of being a Jewish state, a state for Jews in preference to every other ethnic/religious group flows from the ideology, and nature of its creation. But, then to argue that the answer to that is not a destruction of the state of Israel, which could only be done on the bones of millions of Israeli citizens, Jews and Arabs alike, but is to wage a working-class based struggle against that racist foundation upon which the state has been founded, and that struggle is one that must unite Jews and Arabs alike. In fact, the position of palestinians today is a mirror image of that of the Jews 75 years ago.
The hope of a Two-State Solution disappeared long ago, and was never credible. It simply allows Zionists to proclaim they are in favour of it, whilst doing everything to make it practically impossible, such as extending West Bank Settlements. The solution must flow from a struggle for democratic rights for Israeli Arabs, and for a right for all Arabs in occupied territories to be extended the same rights as any other Israeli, including the right to vote, and send representatives to the Knesset. As I argued thirty years ago, the longer-term solution is a Federal Republic of Israel and Palestine, guaranteeing democratic rights to all, as part of building a wider Federal Republic of MENA.
Boffy said... 8 March 2019 at 11:15Jim Denham: imperialist lackey and sycophant turned Witch hunter in chief
Let us be very clear about what this witch hunt is about, it is about purging from public life any credible and effective opposition to Israel in particular and more generally opposition to the imperialist barbarians of the imperialist core. It is about driving from universities, social media and intellectual life any form of opposition to the interests of the imperialists.
This is nothing but authoritarianism in action, censorship of political opponents and the closing down of any credible definition of free speech.
In other words this is something any leftist worth half an atom would be fighting against with all their energies.
But what do we find, pathetic pro war pro imperialists leftists and post modern liberals joining the witch hunt.
Meanwhile in the real world:
A UN report has concluded that Israel deliberately targeted and killed hundreds of protesting civilians, including children and disabled people and it shot 20,000+ people (yes 20,000+!). The UN says this likely a war crime. Why are the noble defenders of the Palestinian cause in the dock and not notorious Palestinian haters like Jim Denham?
How can anyone on the left get away with supporting and providing ideological cover for Israel How can any leftist allow a socialist movement to be sabotaged by the Israel state and its army of appalling immoral apologists?
These attacks on Corbyn and his supporters, repeated in all of the most aggressive imperialist countries, are simply a proxy attack on the Palestinian people themselves.
Jim Denham's comment here illustrates the problem entirely. The picture he has linked to shows an alien symbiote having attached itself to the face of the statue of liberty. The statue of liberty here represents the US. The symbiote has on its back the Israeli Flag, and likewise, thereby represents the state of Israel. The picture therefore, represents the well-worn, and clearly factually wrong meme that Israel controls the US.Boffy said... 9 March 2019 at 08:58But, as a Zionist organisation, the AWL and its members cannot distinguish between the state of Israel and Jews, so they cannot distinguish between criticism of the state of Israel, and criticism if Jews. For them, as for the Zionist ideology of the state of Israel, which is most clearly manifest in the ideology of its current political leadership, in the form of the Bonapartist regime of Netanyahu, with the recent introduction of blatantly racist laws that discriminate even more openly against not Jewish Israeli citizens, and with his willingness to try to keep his corrupt regime in office by going into coalition with an avowedly Neo-Nazi party that until recent times was considered beyond the pale, even by most Zionists, the term Zionism is synonymous with the term Jew. So, any criticism of Zionism, or of Israel is for them immediately equated with anti-Semitism.
It is what leads such Zionists to then also insist on their right to determine who is a Jew or not. The AWL do that with all those Jews, such as the JVL, who refuse to accept the AWL's definition of anti-Zionism = Anti-Semitism. Its like the old saw that the definition of a Scot is someone who wears a kilt, and when asked about Jock McTavish, from Arbroath, who does not wear a kilt, the reply comes back, then he cannot really be a Scot!
The Zionists insists on defining anti-Zionism as anti-Semitism, and thereby closing down debate. Jim Denham does that most clearly here, in his refusal to debate the actual substantive points. It is typical of the attitude of the AWL, in general which long since gave up trying to defend its bourgeois liberal, opportunist politics by rational debate, and instead turned to bureaucratic censorship, and ill-tempered invective.
Once again Jim Denham reefuses to engage in rational debate, and again resorts instead to his assumption that Israel = Jews, as well as his crude attempts at a typical Stalinist amalgam, to conflate the views of his opponents with some hate figure.Boffy said... 9 March 2019 at 16:31Again Jim Denham makes the conflation of Israel and Jews explicit when he says, "This image also plays on the tired and disgraceful antisemitic 'conspiracy theory' trope of undue Israeli (Jewish) influence on world affairs."
The conflation of equating Israel with the term Jew flows directly from the Zionist ideology that underpins the Israeli State, but which also adopted by the AWL, and its members like Jim Denham. It thereby effectively denies statehood to non-Jewish Israeli citizens, making them non-persons, erasing them from history, in the same way that Jim Denham has sought to do in diminishing if not entirely denying the genocides against other ethnic groups such as Native North Americans, Australian and New Zealand aboriginals etc., as a result of his Zionist privileging of the specific genocide against Jews in the Holocaust.
It is the same kind of racism, of course, that is applied by the BNP and other white nationalists, who seek to portray Britain as being a nation for white Britons, and thereby deny other Britons the right to consider themselves really British. Every socialist, can understand the racist nature of that ideology when it is applied to Britain, and elsewhere, but the AWL, and its members, like Jim Denham, deny it when it is applied to Israel, which they want to treat as being different to every other state on the planet, in defence of their Zionist ideology that privileges Israeli Jews over others, and by extension equates the term Jew with the term Israel.
Its most extreme version comes with the fascists that Netanyahu has now gone into alliance with, whose ideology states that God only put gentiels on the Earth to be slaves and serve the needs of Jews, as the chosen people! It means that they see the place of non-Jewish Israelis in those terms, as being allowed to remain in Israel only on that subservient basis. This is the ideology that the AWL is now logically tied to, in having adopted Zionism as the answer to the problems of Jewish workers rather than socialism.
And, of course, the extension of that principle for other Zionists is illustrated in their support for fascists like Orban in Hungary, who wants to adopt a similar nationalist ideology of keeping Hungary, and other "white" European nations exclusively for "whites", in the same way that Zionists want to keep Israel exclusively for Jews.
It is a sorry state when socialists have degenerated to such an extent that not only do they fail to distinguish between nationalist ideology and socialist ideology by adopting nationalist solutions to workers problems such as "nationalisation", by the capitalist state, but where, in adopting such reactionary nationalist ideology, the logic of their position drives them to supporting the idea that nation states should be exclusively for particular ethnic groups, such as Israel for the Jews, Hungary for white Christians and so on.
The way that the right are using anti-Zionism as the equivalent for anti-Semitism, and the appeasement of that attack has led them to widen the scope of that attack. As Labour List reports , right-wing Labour MP Siobhan McDonagh, is now claiming that to be anti-capitalist is also to be "anti-Semitic". The idea was put forward also by former Blair-right spin doctor, John McTernan, who wrote an article in the FT to that same effectBoffy said... 10 March 2019 at 11:09Channelling Jim Denham, McTernan writes,
"As the historian Deborah Lipstadt points out, anti-Semitic tropes share three elements: money or finance is always in the mix; an acknowledged cleverness that is also seen as conniving; and, power -- particularly a power to manipulate more powerful entities.
All of these feature in the criticism of Israel and the so-called Israel lobby. They can be easily moulded into a critique of capitalism, too."
The line of argument was illustrated to me some weeks ago, in a comment I received in relation to an article I wrote about Marx's analysis of fictitious capital, as part of my critique of Paul Mason's Postcapitalism . The commenter, argued that Marx's analysis of fictitious capital appeared to be simply Marx blaming bankers and money lenders, for which read Jews, for the world's ills, and was thereby simply an expression of the well-known fact that Marx was a self-hating Jew, much as the AWL, describe all those other Jews that do not share their commitment to |Zionism. The commenter as evidence of this provided a link to a literary critique of Marx's On The Jewish Question , which is cited as proving that Marx was an anti-semite.
In fact, I pointed out that in nothing that Marx had written about fictitious capital, or what I had written describing Marx's analysis of fictitious capital are bankers discussed, let alone Jewish bankers. The anonymous commenter, has, in fact, since deleted their comments, meaning that my responses to them were also deleted.
But, this is the way this right-wing witch-hunt proceeds, by throwing a net to catch whatever they can trawl in, and at the very least sowing the seeds of doubt as they require those being attacked to respond to their wild accusations. It means that any statement can be framed to mean that there is some subtext beneath the actual words and pictures that is somehow anti-Semitic, if only you know the relevant coda to unlock the true meaning, and anyone who doubts the meaning being placed upon it, is thereby a defender of the anti-Semitic message. As with the attacks on Momentum, and the initial surge of membership supporting Corbyn, it is always phrased in dark conspiratorial language, about unseen forces being behind what is seen on the surface. So, we were supposed to believe that a few hundred Trots in Britain somehow morphed into 300,000 new LP members! But, Momentum now having shown that it is a tame part of the establishment, is even able to recruit McTernan himself as a member.The appeasement as with all witch-hunts only provokes the witch-hunters to widen the scope of their activities. The AWL, which was at the forefront of helping the witch-hunters with their shameful support for the witch-hunting of Jackie Walker, was repaid by having their own members expelled too, and having right-wing Labour MP's appear on TV, to characterise the AWL themselves as "anti-Semites", despite their well-known Zionist politics. Yet, oddly, the AWL seem to consider that a price worth paying, as their advocacy of Zionism seems to trump any other consideration for them in their politics.
It didn't take long for my comment of yesterday to be proved correct. Today we learn that Jess Phillips has claimed that Marxism is necessarily misogynist, because it places class oppression above all else, and so now claims that as well as the Left in the party being anti-Semitic, it is also misogynist. The attack of the Right, as I said yesterday will spread ever wider on this irrational basis, using all of the usual conspiratorial language that such witch-hunts have always adopted. Rather like a Dan Brown novel, it will imply that there are dark (Marxist) forces at work, of which Corbyn is the head of the coven (or even worse that some unseen Dark Overlord is really standing behind Corbyn, who is only its representative on Earth (i.e. in the LP).It will suggest that these dark forces do not speak openly, but only in codes and symbols that have to be unlocked by the forces of Light, who like Jim Denham, can look into the minds of men and women, and see what is really going inside.
I actually found that despite the anonymous Zionist commenter to my article on Medium having deleted their comments, my replies to them, were in fact still floating around here , here , and here .
As the right-wing extend their witch-hunt against socialists in the LP to claim that Marxists are necessarily misogynist, as well as anti-Semitic – and the same logic presented by McDonagh, McTernon, and Phillips would presumably mean that the Left must also be xenophobic, homophobic, anti- Green, and many other charges they want to throw into the mix – it will be interesting to see whether and to what extent the AWL, join them in that assault, in the same way they have done in their promotion of Zionism.
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Aug 11, 2019 | www.moonofalabama.org
Mina , Aug 10 2019 15:36 utc | 52
Wow!! Those suckers at the BBC manage NOT to mention Maxwell or Prince Andrew (ok... they are mentioned in some of the links they give, but come one!!)
https://www.bbc.com/news/world-us-canada-49306032
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Jul 31, 2019 | www.rt.com
While hysteria raged about possible Russian "interference" in the 2016 US election, British intelligence officials were secretly playing a "key role" in helping instigate investigations into Donald Trump, secret texts have shown. "Turns out it was Britain that was the foreign country interfering in American affairs," former MP George Galloway told RT, speaking about the new revelations published by the Guardian about early British involvement in the 'Russiagate' investigation.
The Guardian reported on texts between former deputy FBI director Andrew McCabe and Jeremy Fleming, his then counterpart at MI5, who now heads GCHQ. The two men met in 2016 to discuss "our strange situation" – an apparent reference to Russia's alleged interference in US domestic politics.
British intelligence "appears to have played a key role in the early stages," the report said.
Galloway said the revelation was not surprising because people "already knew" that British intelligence had played a part in the Russia-related investigations in the US. He recalled that it was former British spy Christopher Steele who drew up the now-infamous Steele dossier, which made multiple unverifiable and salacious claims about Trump and has since been largely discredited. Britain is "up to its neck in the whole Russiagate affair," he said.
The texts also reveal that the Brexit vote was viewed by some in the FBI as something that had been influenced by Russia.
Asked what the UK stood to gain by trying to implicate Russia in a US election scandal at a time when then-foreign secretary Boris Johnson was dismissing baseless claims of Russian interference in the Brexit campaign, Galloway noted that Johnson's comments on Russia have appeared to strangely sway between friendly and antagonistic.
Johnson is like "a sofa that bears the impression of the last person to sit upon him," the former MP quipped. What happens next will depend on who is leading the tango, "the orange man in Washington or the blonde mop-head in London."
In June 2016, the FBI opened a covert investigation codenamed 'Crossfire Hurricane' into Trump's now disproven collusion with Moscow, which was later taken over by special counsel Robert Mueller.
Ultimately, the two-year-long probe that followed came up short, producing no evidence to prove a conspiracy or collusion between Trump campaign officials and Russia
See also:
Also on rt.com Fear behind fury: As DNI, Ratcliffe could expose FISA files that Russiagaters hope stay buried
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Aug 03, 2019 | www.moonofalabama.org
Ghost Ship , Aug 3 2019 10:55 utc | 72
I used to think the Guardian couldn't sink any further into hypocrisy but it has :
The internal emails, released after a freedom of information request by the Palestinian Solidarity Campaign, revealed the council attempted to assess the Big Ride website according to the rubric of the controversial IHRA definition .A few months back the Guardian was pushing for various organisations, including the British Labour Party, to adopt the IHRA definition to combat so-called anti-semitism.I don't remember it suggesting then that the IHRA definition was controversial then.
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Aug 01, 2019 | discussion.theguardian.com
Katherine1984 , 31 Jul 2019 13:44
Like it or not, beating Donald Trump is no easy task.MohammedS , 31 Jul 2019 13:24A candidate too far to the left and they just won't get sufficient support from an electorate which inclines to the right (by UK standards).
Too establishment and "entitled" and some will hesitate to give them even a get-Trump-out vote.
Elizabeth Warren could hit the mark as the candidate best placed to beat Trump.
But she will have to brace herself for him to play a very nasty campaign against her.
Who gives a monkeys? The real issue is that the selfish, disorientated and cowardly way the Dems are conducting this race is handing Trump a winning platform for 2020.TheMediaSux , 31 Jul 2019 13:15
After long hard thinking I have come to the sad conclusion that Trump is right and that he is indeed a genius. He has achieved what he had set out to do. He has polarised the standard bearer for democracy in the world. He has enriched himself and his family. He has broken American society, possibly irreversibly. He has brought about change in the worlds economies. He has also managed to set the debate and the stage to win in 2020. Now some may say he has been an awful president, but looking at his strategy he has been highly successful. He may not be what we want but he has certainly been better at feeling the pulse of America and deciding which medicine to give. A truly evil genius indeed.Sanders and Warren are the only two with some kind of personality. The others look like they were created by lobbyists and corporate donors in a lab on a computer like Kelly Lebrock from Weird Science.TremoluxMan , 31 Jul 2019 13:08The point about taxes going up is a red herring and a straw man argument. If you get insurance through your employer, you pay anywhere from $300/month to $1200/month for yourself and family. Through a Medicare for all plan, that payment would disappear. Yes, you'd pay more in taxes to cover your health insurance, but it would likely be lower than private insurance, a net gain, with better coverage, no deductible or co-pays. Even if it was the same, it's still a wash. You're eliminating an expense for a tax. Plus, you're not paying for some executive's perks and exorbitant salary.ColoradoJack -> Andy Womack , 31 Jul 2019 12:10Personally, I'd feel better paying $50,000-$75,000/year to a government administrator than $10M-$20M/year + perks to a CEO.
Obama was simply being honest there. By any standard, Obama, both Clinton's, Gore (except for climate change) and Biden are at best moderate Republicans. Each would qualify as being to the right of Richard Nixon (leaving aside the issue of integrity).Eisenhower , 31 Jul 2019 11:13
In the case of Bill Clinton, Americans had not got woken to the fact that, while a little less by Democrats, the middle class was nontheless being screwed by both parties. Obama's rhetoric was enough cover to fool the public into thinking he would fight for real change. Both Gore and especially Hillary showed what the public now thinks of "moderates". Bernie Sanders and/or Elizabeth Warren are the only chances to beat Trump in 2020.Reparations for slavery, the elimination of private insurance, free health care for anyone who overstays a visa or walks over from Mexico, and a crystal lady.MoonlightTiger -> BaronVonAmericano , 31 Jul 2019 11:13We are in trouble. My nightmare of a Trump re-election is more and more likely.
I believe it is. HaBaronVonAmericano -> thepianist , 31 Jul 2019 11:11The general election poses an obvious vote against Trump.BaronVonAmericano , 31 Jul 2019 11:05Virtually 100% of the decision-making you have about what future we might want is in the primary.
Staying out of the primary debates is tantamount to abandoning all political power.
Warren and Sanders clearly demonstrated that a party wanting to win should nominate one of them.Cmank1 , 31 Jul 2019 10:54They enthralled the audience, and showed they possess a vision for the future that every other Democratic candidate claims to eventually want, when there's time, maybe, perhaps if they get a majority someday.
Clearly Bernie Sanders and Elizabeth Warren were the clear winners of the night! They shamed the listless other candidates, none of whom exhibited a similar energy, excitement & vision for the future of the country. Despite a definite veneer of displeasure by your account, both the audience at the event, and those watching at home felt the excitement of progressive proposals won the day.KMdude , 31 Jul 2019 10:46The winner of the debate was Trump.DontFanMeBro , 31 Jul 2019 10:39When Sanders declared he's in favor of free healthcare and free education for illegal immigrants there was -at best - muted criticism from the other candidates.
Most Americans are likely outraged by this suggestion and this will play in Trump's favor.
It's obvious that John Delaney is simply a plant by Big Business (which has both the centrist Democrats and all of Republicans in its pocket) to troll and derail the candidacy of progressives Sanders and Warren. His sole function is to throw a monkey wrench in their path and be a "nattering nabob of negativism" (to quote Agnew) regarding their policies. That's all he does all day and all night, and the centrist-loving moderators and journalists love giving him infinite time to do his damageHaigin88 , 31 Jul 2019 04:42The answer is obvious: if you want your best shot at 86-ing the orange pestilence, then it has to be Warren/Sanders or Sanders/Warren. You're not supposed to signal your vice-president until after you've got the nomination, I know, but surely having Trump as president has shredded all previous norms? Go now, right now, and say that it'll be you two. You can even keep it open and say that you don't know who'll head the ticket but it will be Warren and Sanders. That would crush all opposition and keep churning interesting as a guessing game.Maybe Warren should head the ticket. I know that Sanders is very sharp and he plays basketball but if he was president then he'd be asking for a second term and to get sworn in when he's 83 and being in one's eighties might be too much of a psychological barrier. My suggestion, though, would be it's Sanders/Warren but on the promise that Sanders will step aside during his first term, after two years and one day (meaning that Warren could serve out the rest of the term and still then run for two more terms under her own steam).
That would guarantee the first female president and so quieten down the phoney-baloney identity politics drones; better, it would mean that the US would get an excellent leader in Elizabeth Warren, no matter her bodily organs; it would pull together the Crooked H. adherents and get them on side, if they truly care about getting female in there and if it doesn't it will expose them as the phonies they are. And it would keep matters on policy, when Trump is weak, rather than personalities, which is the territory on which Trump wants to fight.
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Aug 01, 2019 | discussion.theguardian.com
BaronVonAmericano -> overtheseaandfaraway , 31 Jul 2019 08:28
Delaney is not a moderate, he is a poorly paid actor for the ruling class. He had a miserable debate performance, like his peers in the second tier set of candidates. That any of the press is attempting to rehabilitate his performance is a sign of extreme bias, not an accurate portrayal of the car crash that transpired last night for his campaign.BaronVonAmericano , 31 Jul 2019 08:19Post debate analysis is breathtaking in it's unanimity: everyone in the establishment press is doing what they can to ignore the fact that Sanders and Warren knocked it out of the park.clarityofthought -> ID9742876 , 31 Jul 2019 08:19Contrary to the mandatory company line, this was not a debate between moderates and progressives; this was a debate between people who want to do something and those who have been hired to stall progress, and it has never been so apparent as it was in this lively debate.
I think the corporate media knows this, which is why they are desperately spinning this in any other way but that Warren and Sanders were the most viable and competent candidates on the stage.
Without question, their performance killed the candidacy of every other person on the stage.
Thanks for a serious response (most of the others were just reactions founded on confirmation bias)You make a good point. Even the conservatives here are on that socialist spectrum in that there is extensive state intervention (NHS, welfare, care, regulation etc). That intervention is to stay irrespective of some of the scare stories for the simple reason no one will get elected on a platform of doing away with it.
In basic terms terms the key difference between "right" and "left" is how to best pay for that state intervention. Incentives and a degree of market freedom versus a state controlled economy and more radical distribution.
So yes the term socialist is often used to scare people by the right - just as the left use "tories" to scare people ["24 hours to save the NHS" anyone?].
There is a reason why centrism has largely prevailed in the west. Its evolved in a Darwin like way as being the best balance for peoples views and expectations. I suspect radical change - left or right - will end up as a major disappointment
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Aug 01, 2019 | discussion.theguardian.com
DanceswithSkunks , 31 Jul 2019 09:39
Sanders and Warren harp on about medicare for all being "free health care".AmericanAnglo , 31 Jul 2019 09:36Let me make one thing clear: Medicare is not healthcare. It is health insurance.
Medicare administrators never touch a patient, they push paperwork around and oversee payment for services rendered by medical professionals. Throwing a third of a billion people onto a system that currently administers care for a hundred million is a recipe for disaster, especially if providers, unable to make a profit, decide to get out of the business. We already have a shortage of doctors and nurses and care facilities in many parts of the country, this is certain to make the problem worse.
What do the candidates propose to do about funding for advanced care if all people are entitled to free organ transplants? There are new cancer therapies, taylor-made for each patient, which show astonishing promise, but cost half a million dollars per patient. Medical care already eats up a sixth of our economy, want to double that? Remember, we also have to tackle climate change at the same time.
Much of Europe has socialized medicine and most European countries permit private insurance, usually as a supplement to the public system. Private patients may receive better, or at least more luxurious, care, but they also take a load off the public system. If the democrats really wanted to make life better for those on the bottom of the income spectrum, they might consider government financing of existing urgent care facilities which are popping up all over the place (there are four in my town of 35,000). Imagine being able to walk in to a "doc-in-a-box", pay $20 and get diagnosed for your flu, high blood pressure, sutures for a cut, or an X-ray for that twisted/possibly broke ankle. Currently, many such patients go to ERs where they receive treatment at many times the $90 walk-in cost of the average urgent care shop.
Consider delivering minor care at schools. Why do I have to take my kids to a doctor to get the immunizations required to attend school or sports physicals. The kids are at school, give 'em their shots and exams there. That way there will be less weaseling out.
This wouldn't be the all encompassing solution that Sanders and Warren are dreaming of, but it would represent a solid start and might intercept unwell patients before they become acute or chronic cases.
By the way, Mr Sanders, stop waving your arms about. The WSJ has a photo of you on its online edition that has you looking like an ape in a cage.
Health care in the US is the most bloated, wasteful and needlessly complex issue facing US citizens today. As Bernie says it should be a human right for each citizen of the wealthiest country on earth. Americans need to understand what a socialized health system is, indeed, they need to understand what socialism is, they conflate it with communism, no one seems to want to explain the difference which would go a long way to gaining wide spread acceptance. Education is another monumental waste of resources. Far too many kids go to college who are not suited to academic endeavor, many take more than four years to graduate an undergraduate degree if they graduate at all, that is not to say they should not be provided a vocational option if they wish. A healthy and educated workforce makes social, economic, and political sense.diesel02 -> GERALD710 , 31 Jul 2019 09:33"Many Americans love the quality of healthcare they get."Vincent Gallagher , 31 Jul 2019 06:11They may love it for now but as drug prices climb, co pays climb and heaven help us ACA gets repealed then what? At least the dems, particularly the "progressives" are pulling out of the business as usual model.
Lots of folks decried FDR's New Deal, even hated it - until it put a paycheck in their hand. They could yell all they wanted about government programs but their children appreciated not starving.
Neither Warren or Sanders is advocating 'outlawing' private healthcare. That is a disingenuous term. They are offering what is common to all western democracies, universal healthcare. Obamacare is a gift to the insurance industry and not a platform for anything other than increased profit by the insurance industry. It was taken from a plan by the Heritage Foundation. It is not a legacy worth preserving, Medicare for all is the alternative and a very good one. Rich people can keep their expensive plans and continue to pay-out-the-ass, which they can easily afford.butmaroo -> chunkychips , 31 Jul 2019 06:11
All the blather by the conservative corporate Democrats posing as moderates is, of course, self-serving and the nonsense about concerns for union healthcare plans is absurd. I was a Union member, a chief steward, sat on the bargaining committee and was a representative to the national: universal healthcare or Medicare for all is an excellent idea, as Mr. Sanders asserts it would allow wage increases ans eliminate the biggest obstacle in contract negotiations which is the cost of health insurance. The cost of which continually was increasing by double digits, along with increases in co-pays. In fact, the increased costs forced the abandonment of what was a superior insurance plan to one that was inferior.
Delaney, is the former CEO of CapitalSource, essentially a loan-sharking operation (a testament by Forbes), involved in foreclosure scams. HealthCare Financial Partners is another Delaney entity worth examining for its less than ethical practices, which in the business world where Delaney dwells, is an unspoken word or determinant.
Delaney bundled together $800,000 for HRC, which bought him the endorsement of Bill Clinton when Delaney ran for higher office. He is conservative and wedded to the profit motive and could care less about ordinary citizens. The current businessman inhabiting the presidency is more than a cautionary tale, which applies to Delaney. He is a conservative Clintonite and embraces the rather malleable ethics of the Clintons, essentially amoral.Surely.Douglas White , 31 Jul 2019 06:10Honestly, only the very dimmest of dimwits would categorize ELIMINATING the $400/month average middle class families pay for Health Insurance Premiums and replacing it with a $250/Month Average payment to the government as 'raising taxes' on those people. If you doubt that, ask yourself why the largest corporations AREN'T screaming about 'raised taxes' if we go to Medicare for All.... it's because they can do the math, and they know that eliminating the $750/month average that THEY pay in Premium contributions PER EMPLOYEE will benefit them much more than the accompanying 'tax increase for M4A...When the OVERALL COST of the system goes down around 15% (Private Insurance 'overhead' increases costs 20%+, Medicare is just under 6%), EVERYONE saves in the long run....
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Aug 01, 2019 | discussion.theguardian.com
ID9059125 -> Uriel238 , 31 Jul 2019 10:14
You're wrong. A Neocon will bridge the divide between what we have now (Full on Crazy Town Heading for WW3) and what a Biden/Klobuchar could lead to: Eg - a Warren or a Beto.ID9059125 -> jaytjohnson , 31 Jul 2019 10:11
Gives people time to realize "hey. this cheaper health care and no student fees and $15 dollar minimum wage aint so bad!!!" <face palm>Biden's key advantage is his appeal to the affluent white middle class secret Trump supporters who came out in droves.ID9059125 , 31 Jul 2019 10:02
A Biden/Klobuchar ticket could be the strongest "right wing" combination for the Dems.As an overall observation and the way these debates are promoted and run, how depressing they are as a commentary on America. It's turned into a sporting, showbiz event, each candidate given one pesky minute to try and get something across.SamDobermann -> ScoundrelDaysSon , 31 Jul 2019 09:59
Short doses for America's short attention span. Let's just be done with it and combine the f****** election with an episode of The Bachelor or f****** Kardashians. It makes me sick.Before a "Medicare for All" (M4A) bill got near a vote there would be massive negative advertising against it. Don't you remember when we were working on getting the ACA passed how the "Tea Party" was formed -- with plenty of $$ from those opposed to any changes in health care provisioning & financing -- & they went into insane rages & attacks? We got the T-Party Republicans out of it who still bedevil us today.The NHS was born out of WWII when Britain had to provide hospitals & clinics all around the country because so many people were pushed out of London & into the boonies. More building occurred centrally to care for the military & vets so there were government owned facilities everywhere.
Here in the US the veteran's Medical facilities are totally separate & jealously held so & if Bernie wants to fold them into his scheme he'll have to go over or through the bodies of all the Vets in America who feel they've earned their care.
A third of all the people in Medicare have *chosen to use a privatized version* which while it limits choice of providers has some added goodies like health clubs. They will fight change as will people with retirement programs that they "earned."
Your last statement actually is astute: "I genuinely believe that unless the slate is completely wiped clean in the short to medium term you'll never have Medicare for all work, last, or garner public support in the way of the NHS, say."
That's true. Truly you can't get there from here. Britain had no system provisioning health care for people in general. They had an almost blank slate. They didn't have to take away something of value from millions of people. That is what Obama knew. You can add on, you can work on underlying problems, you can augment and improve coverage but you can't trash the whole system that so many people rely on.
We need universal coverage for all that want it. There will always be some left out. (Can you mention Trumps & other ultra rich taking part in any insurance for the peasantry). Medicare which has been in existence for 50 years (with much tinkering along the way) covers just 95% of seniors; 5% are completely left out. If you use that as an analogy we would find 5% of 330 million or about 16 million won't be covered AT BEST.
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Aug 01, 2019 | discussion.theguardian.com
curiouswes -> ildfluer , 31 Jul 2019 07:29
Please
As much as I have stated how badly I want Trump impeached, I honestly think Biden would be worse for America and the world, than Trump. Biden thinks we can win a war with Russia. That is insane. No sane person wants nuclear holocaust. However Biden thinks these neoliberal propensities can continue without consequence.Tulsi understands that you can't keep poking Russia with a stick. If you recall, HRC wanted to set up a no fly zone over Syria while Russia was flying combat missions in Syria. That is the type of neoliberal bullshit that can lead to nuclear holocaust. If you have the time watch this old video
If you took the time to watch the video, you should be able to see how the CIA will resume its effort under Biden and Biden's vision is clear from this article he wrote just last year .
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Aug 01, 2019 | discussion.theguardian.com
The Democrats are considered "Moderate republicans" and have been for a number of years. So the moderate moderate democrats are effectively republicans. Just like the so-called centre-left here, are establishment right-wing.
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Aug 01, 2019 | profile.theguardian.com
"And again I say unto you, It is easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle, than for a rich man to enter into the kingdom of God." -Matthew 19:24That either Bernie Sanders or Elizabeth Warren might be considered left-wing is a mark of how skewed American politics is. Where the hell's the center!? And who decided, anyway?
When asked where the phrase "from each according to his abilities, to each according to his needs" came from by a 2002 survey conducted by Columbia Law School, over 66% of Americans said the US Constitution.
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Jul 31, 2019 | discussion.theguardian.com
IndigoBleak , 31 Jul 2019 17:21
CNN retained control of what issues were addressed and when rather than the candidates, so the "clash" between the "moderate" and "progressive" wings of the party was largely orchestrated by the network. Given the number of candidates involved and the structure of what passes for debate during these spectacles they're largely a waste of time.luciddays , 31 Jul 2019 17:29The inevitable question in any US election is can the candidates really change anything? for all of the squealing about Trump he hasn't managed to do anything except give the rich a tax cut.The out of control military spending, the growing void between those born rich and those born poor, the further consolidation of Corporate power...all seems to go unchecked regardless of the rhetoric of any President
Mary B -> Quantum Ape , 31 Jul 2019 13:06
Watch an interview with Corruptus Maximus from the 1980s or early 90s. He was always a dick and a narcissist, but he was articulate and able to speak in full sentences and follow a conversation. He can't do any of that now. Little Donnie Dumbass is the poster boy for cognitive decline.
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Jul 31, 2019 | discussion.theguardian.com
ildfluer -> Canajin , 31 Jul 2019 22:26
They're trying to get rid of Harris and Biden. I'm not sure it's a bad thing. Harris was always going to get drowned by her own record as California's AG. And Biden... meh.ildfluer -> SilverTui , 31 Jul 2019 20:03One of them. Warren eviscerating Delaney was another. Or her saying that Democrats are not the Republicans, wanting to take healthcare away... Then, there was Buttigieg saying that no matter what they do, the Republicans would call them socialists anyway, so who cares.Aldous0rwell , 31 Jul 2019 19:55Kabaservice's comment:ildfluer -> goulot , 31 Jul 2019 19:55...whether the Democrats will end up moving too far to the left to be able to defeat Trump in 2020...
reflects a poorly conceived (false) dichotomy about what "the left" is. When he says "the left" what does he even mean?
There's the socialist left , which seeks to provide good working conditions and pay, and better wealth distributions among the populace. This could be a huge boon to any group suffering under the current economic system - including groups which Trump appealed to in the last election but has utterly failed to do anything for.
There's the identity politics left which Hillary and the Neo-liberals (and the Republicans, actually) embrace as a form of marketing strategy and use to promote free-market ideology.
There's the "Democrat Party" (DNC) left which really stands for little more than party rhetoric any more and vehemently supports Neo-liberalism.
And there's the environmentalist left which sees Global Climate destabilization as the #1 issue facing the planet (a position loathed by the Neo-liberals and identitarians).
There are also combinations and permutations of all these "lefts".
So when Kabaservice says he fears the Democrats moving too far to the left, he's conflating all sorts of things, murkily hiding his intents behind his ill-defined terminology.
He was about to drop out of the race before the debate. He should've done so, Warren eviscerated him.ildfluer -> MohammedS , 31 Jul 2019 19:36There are over 20 candidates. They need to tread carefully. Kamala Harris discovered that roasting Establishment candidate Biden early on didn't help her in the end.ildfluer -> jimmsfairytales0com , 31 Jul 2019 19:30The weirdos/corporate-shrills in the media are all slamming Sanders for his grumpiness and 'shouting'. I mean, the man is angry that people are dying because the Govt isn't looking after them. How's that a minus against Sanders's personality??? Everyone should be mad as hell. I'm a big fan of Warren but no-one can dispute that Sanders is a good man.salsabil , 31 Jul 2019 18:50Delaney - the multi millionaire - looked like he had been entrusted by CNN (and probably the DNC) to be the first of many attack dogs against Sanders and Warren. He was probably meant to appear the voice of reason, speaking rational politics to make make them seem like extremists, but he came across as dumb and sounded like a spokesperson for the very vested interests that will be threatened most by Sanders´ and Warren´s plans. And that gormless face will surely be the subject of memes for years to come!circuit -> daguard41 , 31 Jul 2019 14:31I think I read somewhere that 87% of US elections are won by the candidate with the most money. And since most money comes from the millionaires and their lobbyists the DNC establishment clearly would rather work for those with most, than for those in most need. A bit like the Blairite nest within Corbyn´s Labour Party. And what John Delaney was saying was exactly why ordinary people are so disillusioned with regular politicians - especially those of the so-called ´left´- and why they become so easily taken-in by populists like Trump.
When the right get in they always do stuff for their paymasters. Big stuff. They steal public funds through tax cuts for the rich and the corporations. They repeal protections for workers, and allow Big Oil to destroy the environment. They bloat the budget for the military industrial complex and allow the US Military machine to be used as a private army for the corporations´insatiable resource grab. And they let Wall Street do what it wants.
When the so called parties of the left get in - be they Democrats, Labour, SPD or whoever -they usually do diddly squat. Because deals have usually been made not to shake anything up. Not even to correct the injustices enacted by their predecessors. I saw a stat about US government tax revenues that showed how 50 years ago 33% came from companies and only about 10% came from incomes; today those numbers are reversed. It´s no wonder millions are becoming desperate for change.
I´m sure the DNC and its paymasters will no doubt try to learn something from the debate, to better prep Joe Biden when he steps into the ring, probably against Sanders OR Warren. I can´t see him going up against both of them. But also to better rig future debates against Sanders and Warren, perhaps to try to divide them. Though, to be fair to CNN, they did a pretty good job. But it clearly failed.
What will be interesting will be watching how the adult-in-room MSM switches from incessant Trump bashing to doing everything it can to stop Sanders and Warren. I fear that it will get dirty, and relentless, and both will be attacked, labelled and misrepresented. But if a moderate candidate - like Honest Joe Biden - is jerrymandered into position up against Trump in 2020 then I fear that we are all fucked.
This is the last chance.
That goes for you too Guardian.
Warren/Sanders. Everyone else looks Republican-Lite, or corporate shill.
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Jul 25, 2019 | off-guardian.org
VaskaOriginally by Aaron Maté, July 5, 2019 First published by RealClearInvestigations .
At a May press conference capping his tenure as special counsel, Robert Mueller emphasized what he called "the central allegation" of the two-year Russia probe. The Russian government, Mueller sternly declared, engaged in "multiple, systematic efforts to interfere in our election, and that allegation deserves the attention of every American." Mueller's comments echoed a January 2017 Intelligence Community Assessment (ICA) asserting with "high confidence" that Russia conducted a sweeping 2016 election influence campaign. "I don't think we've ever encountered a more aggressive or direct campaign to interfere in our election process," then-Director of National Intelligence James Clapper told a Senate hearing.
While the 448-page Mueller report found no conspiracy between Donald Trump's campaign and Russia, it offered voluminous details to support the sweeping conclusion that the Kremlin worked to secure Trump's victory. The report claims that the interference operation occurred "principally" on two fronts: Russian military intelligence officers hacked and leaked embarrassing Democratic Party documents, and a government-linked troll farm orchestrated a sophisticated and far-reaching social media campaign that denigrated Hillary Clinton and promoted Trump.
But a close examination of the report shows that none of those headline assertions are supported by the report's evidence or other publicly available sources. They are further undercut by investigative shortcomings and the conflicts of interest of key players involved:
The report uses qualified and vague language to describe key events, indicating that Mueller and his investigators do not actually know for certain whether Russian intelligence officers stole Democratic Party emails, or how those emails were transferred to WikiLeaks. The report's timeline of events appears to defy logic. According to its narrative, WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange announced the publication of Democratic Party emails not only before he received the documents but before he even communicated with the source that provided them. There is strong reason to doubt Mueller's suggestion that an alleged Russian cutout called Guccifer 2.0 supplied the stolen emails to Assange. Mueller's decision not to interview Assange – a central figure who claims Russia was not behind the hack – suggests an unwillingness to explore avenues of evidence on fundamental questions. U.S. intelligence officials cannot make definitive conclusions about the hacking of the Democratic National Committee computer servers because they did not analyze those servers themselves. Instead, they relied on the forensics of CrowdStrike, a private contractor for the DNC that was not a neutral party, much as "Russian dossier" compiler Christopher Steele, also a DNC contractor, was not a neutral party. This puts two Democrat-hired contractors squarely behind underlying allegations in the affair – a key circumstance that Mueller ignores. Further, the government allowed CrowdStrike and the Democratic Party's legal counsel to submit redacted records, meaning CrowdStrike and not the government decided what could be revealed or not regarding evidence of hacking. Mueller's report conspicuously does not allege that the Russian government carried out the social media campaign. Instead it blames, as Mueller said in his closing remarks, "a private Russian entity" known as the Internet Research Agency (IRA). Mueller also falls far short of proving that the Russian social campaign was sophisticated, or even more than minimally related to the 2016 election. As with the collusion and Russian hacking allegations, Democratic officials had a central and overlooked hand in generating the alarm about Russian social media activity. John Brennan, then director of the CIA, played a seminal and overlooked role in all facets of what became Mueller's investigation: the suspicions that triggered the initial collusion probe; the allegations of Russian interference; and the intelligence assessment that purported to validate the interference allegations that Brennan himself helped generate. Yet Brennan has since revealed himself to be, like CrowdStrike and Steele, hardly a neutral party -- in fact a partisan with a deep animus toward Trump.None of this means that the Mueller report's core finding of "sweeping and systematic" Russian government election interference is necessarily false. But his report does not present sufficient evidence to substantiate it. This shortcoming has gone overlooked in the partisan battle over two more highly charged aspects of Mueller's report: potential Trump-Russia collusion and Trump's potential obstruction of the resulting investigation. As Mueller prepares to testify before House committees later this month, the questions surrounding his claims of a far-reaching Russian influence campaign are no less important. They raise doubts about the genesis and perpetuation of Russiagate and the performance of those tasked with investigating it.
Uncertainty Over Who Stole the Emails
The Mueller report's narrative of Russian hacking and leaking was initially laid out in a July 2018 indictment of 12 Russian intelligence officers and is detailed further in the report. According to Mueller, operatives at Russia's main intelligence agency, the GRU, broke into Clinton campaign Chairman John Podesta's emails in March 2016. The hackers infiltrated Podesta's account with a common tactic called spear-phishing, duping him with a phony security alert that led him to enter his password. The GRU then used stolen Democratic Party credentials to hack into the DNC and Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee (DCCC) servers beginning in April 2016. Beginning in June 2016, the report claims, the GRU created two online personas, "DCLeaks" and "Guccifer 2.0," to begin releasing the stolen material. After making contact later that month, Guccifer 2.0 apparently transferred the DNC emails to the whistleblowing, anti-secrecy publisher WikiLeaks, which released the first batch on July 22 ahead of the Democratic National Convention.
The report presents this narrative with remarkable specificity: It describes in detail how GRU officers installed malware, leased U.S.-based computers, and used cryptocurrencies to carry out their hacking operation. The intelligence that caught the GRU hackers is portrayed as so invasive and precise that it even captured the keystrokes of individual Russian officers, including their use of search engines.
In fact, the report contains crucial gaps in the evidence that might support that authoritative account. Here is how it describes the core crime under investigation, the alleged GRU theft of DNC emails:
Between approximately May 25, 2016 and June 1, 2016, GRU officers accessed the DNC's mail server from a GRU-controlled computer leased inside the United States. During these connections, Unit 26165 officers appear to have stolen thousands of emails and attachments, which were later released by WikiLeaks in July 2016. [ Italics added for emphasis.]
The report's use of that one word, "appear," undercuts its suggestions that Mueller possesses convincing evidence that GRU officers stole "thousands of emails and attachments" from DNC servers. It is a departure from the language used in his July 2018 indictment , which contained no such qualifier:
"It's certainly curious as to why this discrepancy exists between the language of Mueller's indictment and the extra wiggle room inserted into his report a year later," says former FBI Special Agent Coleen Rowley. "It may be an example of this and other existing gaps that are inherent with the use of circumstantial information. With Mueller's exercise of quite unprecedented (but politically expedient) extraterritorial jurisdiction to indict foreign intelligence operatives who were never expected to contest his conclusing assertions in court, he didn't have to worry about precision. I would guess, however, that even though NSA may be able to track some hacking operations, it would be inherently difficult, if not impossible, to connect specific individuals to the computer transfer operations in question."
The report also concedes that Mueller's team did not determine another critical component of the crime it alleges: how the stolen Democratic material was transferred to WikiLeaks. The July 2018 indictment of GRU officers suggested – without stating outright – that WikiLeaks published the Democratic Party emails after receiving them from Guccifer 2.0 in a file named "wk dnc linkI .txt.gpg" on or around July 14, 2016. But now the report acknowledges that Mueller has not actually established how WikiLeaks acquired the stolen information: "The Office cannot rule out that stolen documents were transferred to WikiLeaks through intermediaries who visited during the summer of 2016."
Another partially redacted passage also suggests that Mueller cannot trace exactly how WikiLeaks received the stolen emails. Given how the sentence is formulated, the redacted portion could reflect Mueller's uncertainty:
Contrary to Mueller's sweeping conclusions, the report itself is, at best, suggesting that the GRU, via its purported cutout Guccifer 2.0, may have transferred the stolen emails to WikiLeaks.
A Questionable Timeline
Mueller's uncertainty over the theft and transfer of Democratic Party emails isn't the only gap in his case. Another is his timeline of events – a critical component of any criminal investigation. The report's timeline defies logic: According to its account, WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange announced the publication of the emails not only before he received the documents, but before he even communicated with the source that provided them.
As the Mueller report confirms, on June 12, 2016, Assange told an interviewer, "We have upcoming leaks in relation to Hillary Clinton, which is great." But Mueller reports that "WikiLeaks's First Contact With Guccifer 2.0 and DC Leaks" comes two days after that announcement:
If Assange's "First Contact" with DC Leaks came on June 14, and with Guccifer 2.0 on June 22, then what was Assange talking about on June 12? It is possible that Assange heard from another supposed Russian source before then; but if so, Mueller doesn't know it. Instead the report offers the implausible scenario that their first contact came after Assange's announcement.
There is another issue with the report's Guccifer 2.0-WikiLeaks timeline. Assange would have been announcing the pending release of stolen emails not just before he heard from the source , but also before he received the stolen emails . As noted earlier, Mueller suggested that WikiLeaks received the stolen material from Guccifer 2.0 "on or around" July 14 – a full month after Assange publicly announced that he had them.
In yet one more significant inconsistency, Mueller asserts that the two Russian outfits running the Kremlin-backed operation -- Guccifer 2.0 and DC Leaks – communicated about their covert activities over Twitter. Mueller reports that on Sept. 15, 2016:
The Twitter account@guccifer_2 sent @dcleaks_ a direct message, which is the first known contact between the personas. During subsequent communications, the Guccifer 2.0 persona informed DCLeaks that WikiLeaks was trying to contact DCLeaks and arrange for a way to speak through encrypted emails.
Why would Russian intelligence cutouts running a sophisticated interference campaign communicate over an easily monitored social media platform? In one of many such instances throughout the report, Mueller shows no curiosity in pursuing this obvious question.
For his part, Assange has repeatedly claimed that Russia was not his source and that the U.S. government does not know who was. "The U.S. intelligence community is not aware of when WikiLeaks obtained its material or when the sequencing of our material was done or how we obtained our material directly," Assange said in January 2017. "WikiLeaks sources in relation to the Podesta emails and the DNC leak are not members of any government. They are not state parties. They do not come from the Russian government."
Guccifer 2.0: A Sketchy Source
While Mueller admits he does not know for certain how the DNC emails were stolen or how they were transmitted to WikiLeaks, the report creates the impression that Russian intelligence cutout Guccifer 2.0 supplied the stolen material to Assange.
In fact, there are strong grounds for doubt. To begin with, Guccifer 2.0 – who was unknown until June 2016 – burst onto the scene to demand credit as WikiLeaks' source. This publicity-seeking is not standard spycraft.
More important, as Raffi Khatchadourian has reported for The New Yorker, the documents Guccifer 2.0 released directly were nowhere near the quality of the material published by WikiLeaks. For example, on June 18, Guccifer 2.0 released documents that it claimed were from the DNC, "but which were almost surely not," Khatchadourian notes. Neither was the material Guccifer 2.0 teased as a "dossier on Hillary Clinton from DNC." The material Guccifer 2.0 initially promoted in June also contained easily discoverable Russian metadata. The computer that created it was configured for the Russian language, and the username was "Felix Dzerzhinsky," the Bolshevik-era founder of the first Soviet secret police.
WikiLeaks only made contact with Guccifer 2.0 after the latter publicly invited journalists "to send me their questions via Twitter Direct Messages." And, more problematic given the central role the report assigned to Guccifer 2.0, there is no direct evidence that WikiLeaks actually released anything that Guccifer 2.0 provided. In a 2017 interview, Assange said he "didn't publish" any material from that source because much of it had been published elsewhere and because "we didn't have the resources to independently verify."
Mueller Didn't Speak With Assange
Some of these issues might have been resolved had Mueller not declined to interview Assange, despite Assange's multiple efforts.
According to a 2018 report by John Solomon in The Hill, Assange told the Justice Department the previous year that he "was willing to discuss technical evidence ruling out certain parties" in the leaking of Democratic Party emails to WikiLeaks. Given Assange's previous denials of Russia's involvement, that seems to indicate he was willing to provide evidence that Moscow was not his source. But he never got the chance. According to Solomon, FBI Director James Comey personally intervened with an order that U.S. officials "stand down," setting off a chain of events that scuttled the talks.
Assange also made public offers to testify before Congress. The Mueller report makes no mention of these overtures, though it does cite and dismiss "media reports" that "Assange told a U.S. congressman that the DNC hack was an 'inside job,' and purported to have 'physical proof' that Russians did not give materials to Assange."
Mueller does not explain why he included Assange's comments as reported by media outlets in his report but decided not to speak with Assange directly, or ask to see his "physical proof," during a two-year investigation.
No Server Inspection, Reliance on CrowdStrike
Before he nixed U.S. government contacts with Assange, Comey was implicated in another key investigative lapse – the FBI's failure to conduct its own investigation of the DNC's servers, which housed the record of alleged intrusions and malware used to steal information. As Comey told Congress in March 2017, the FBI "never got direct access to the machines themselves." Instead, he explained, the bureau relied on CrowdStrike, a cybersecurity firm hired by the DNC, which "shared with us their forensics from their review of the system."
While acknowledging that the FBI would "always prefer to have access hands-on ourselves, if that's possible," Comey emphasized his confidence in the information provided by CrowdStrike, which he called "a highly respected private company" and "a high-class entity."
CrowdStrike's accuracy is far from a given. Days after Comey's testimony, CrowdStrike was forced to retract its claim that Russian software was used to hack Ukrainian military hardware. CrowdStrike's error is especially relevant because it had accused the GRU of using that same software in hacking the DNC.
There is also reason to question CrowdStrike's impartiality. Its co-founder, Dmitri Alperovitch, is a nonresident senior fellow at the Atlantic Council, the preeminent Washington think tank that aggressively promotes a hawkish posture towards Russia. CrowdStrike executive Shawn Henry, who led the forensics team that ultimately blamed Russia for the DNC breach, previously served as assistant director at the FBI under Mueller.
And CrowdStrike was hired to perform the analysis of the DNC servers by Perkins Coie – the law firm that also was responsible for contracting Fusion GPS, the Washington, D.C.-based opposition research firm that produced the now discredited Steele dossier alleging salacious misconduct by Trump in Russia and his susceptibility to blackmail.
A CrowdStrike spokesperson declined a request for comment on its role in the Russia investigation.
The picture is further clouded by the conflicting accounts regarding the servers. A DNC spokesperson told BuzzFeed in early January 2017 that "the FBI never requested access to the DNC's computer servers." But Comey told the Senate Select Intelligence Committee days later that the FBI made "multiple requests at different levels," but for unknown reasons, he explained, those requests were denied.
While failing to identify the "different levels" he consulted, Comey never explained why the FBI took no for an answer. As part of a criminal investigation, the FBI could have seized the servers to ensure a proper chain of evidentiary custody. In investigating a crime, alleged victims do not get to dictate to law enforcement how they can inspect the crime scene.
The report fails to address any of this, suggesting a lack of interest in even fundamental questions if they might reflect poorly on the FBI.
The Mueller report states that "as part of its investigation, the FBI later received images of DNC servers and copies of relevant traffic logs." But it does not specify how much "later" it received those server images or who provided them. Based on the statements of Comey and other U.S. officials, it is quite likely that they came from CrowdStrike, though the company gets only passing mention in the redacted report.
Asked for comment, Special Counsel spokesman Peter Carr declined to answer whether the Mueller team relied on CrowdStrike for its allegations against the GRU. Carr referred queries to the Justice Department's National Security Division, which declined to comment, and to the U.S. Western District of Pennsylvania, which did not respond.
If CrowdStrike's role in the investigation raises a red flag, the potential exclusion of another entity raises an equally glaring one. According to former NSA Technical Director Bill Binney, the NSA is the only U.S. agency that could conclusively determine the source of the alleged DNC email hacks. "If this was really an internet hack, the NSA could easily tell us when the information was taken and the route it took after being removed from the [DNC] server," Binney says. But given Mueller's qualified language and his repeated use of "in or around" rather than outlining specific, down-to-the-second timestamps – which the NSA could provide -- Binney is skeptical that NSA intelligence was included in the GRU indictment and the report.
There has been no public confirmation that intelligence acquired by the NSA was used in the Mueller probe. Asked whether any of its information had been used in the allegations against the GRU, or had been declassified for public release in Mueller's investigation, a spokesperson for the National Security Agency declined to comment.
Redacted CrowdStrike Reports
While the extent of the FBI's reliance on CrowdStrike remains unclear, critical details are beginning to emerge via an unlikely source: the legal case of Roger Stone – the Trump adviser Mueller indicted for, among other things, allegedly lying to Congress about his failed efforts to learn about WikiLeaks' plans regarding Clinton's emails.
Lawyers for Stone discovered that CrowdStrike submitted three forensic reports to the FBI that were redacted and in draft form. When Stone asked to see CrowdStrike's un-redacted versions, prosecutors made the explosive admission that the U.S. government does not have them. "The government does not possess the information the defendant seeks," prosecutor Jessie Liu wrote. This is because, Liu explained , CrowdStrike itself redacted the reports that it provided to the government:
At the direction of the DNC and DCCC's legal counsel, CrowdStrike prepared three draft reports. Copies of these reports were subsequently produced voluntarily to the government by counsel for the DNC and DCCC. At the time of the voluntary production, counsel for the DNC told the government that the redacted material concerned steps taken to remediate the attack and to harden the DNC and DCCC systems against future attack. According to counsel, no redacted information concerned the attribution of the attack to Russian actors.
In other words, the government allowed CrowdStrike and the Democratic Party's legal counsel to decide what it could and could not see in reports on Russian hacking, thereby surrendering the ability to independently vet their claims. The government also took CrowdStrike's word that "no redacted information concerned the attribution of the attack to Russian actors."
According to an affidavit filed for Stone's defense by Binney, the speed transfer rate and the file formatting of the DNC data indicate that they were moved on to a storage device, not hacked over the Internet. In a rebuttal, Stone's prosecutors said that the file information flagged by Binney "would be equally consistent with Russia intelligence officers using a thumb drive to transfer hacked materials among themselves after the hack took place." In an interview with RealClearInvestigations, Binney could not rule out that possibility. But conversely, the evidence laid out by Mueller is so incomplete and uncertain that Binney's theory cannot be ruled out either. The very fact that DoJ prosecutors, in their response to Binney, do not rule out his theory that a thumb drive was used to transfer the material is an acknowledgment in that direction.
The lack of clarity around Mueller's intelligence community sourcing might appear inconsequential given the level of detail in his account of alleged Russian hacking. But in light of the presence of potentially biased and politically conflicted sources like CrowdStrike, and the absence of certainty revealed in Mueller's lengthy account, the fact that his sourcing remains an open question makes it difficult to accept that he has delivered definitive answers. If Mueller had the invasive window into Russian intelligence that he claims to, it seems incongruous that he would temper his purported descriptions of their actions with tentative, qualified language. Mueller's hedging suggests a broader conclusion at odds with the report's own findings: that the U.S. government does not have ironclad proof about who hacked the DNC.
Social Media Campaign
Mueller's other "central allegation" regards a "Russian 'Active Measures' Social Media Campaign" with the aim of "sowing discord" and helping to elect Trump.
In fact, Mueller does not directly attribute that campaign to the Russian government, and makes only the barest attempt to imply a Kremlin connection. According to Mueller, the social media "form of Russian election influence came principally from the Internet Research Agency, LLC (IRA), a Russian organization funded by Yevgeniy Viktorovich Prigozhin and companies he controlled."
After two years and $35 million, Mueller apparently failed to uncover any direct evidence linking the Prigozhin-controlled IRA's activities to the Kremlin. His best evidence is that "[n]umerous media sources have reported on Prigozhin's ties to Putin, and the two have appeared together in public photographs." The footnote for this references a lone article in the New York Times. (Both the Times and the Washington Post are cited frequently throughout the report. The two outlets received and published intelligence community leaks throughout the Russia probe.)
Further, in a newly unsealed July 1 ruling , a federal judge rebuked Mueller and the Justice Department for having "improperly suggested a link" between the IRA and the Russian government. U.S. District Judge Dabney Friedrich said Mueller's February 2018 indictment "does not link the [IRA] to the Russian government" and alleges "only private conduct by private actors." The judge added the government's statements violate a prohibiting lawyers from making claims that would prejudice a case.
Even putting aside the complete absence of a Kremlin role, the case that the Russian government sought to influence the U.S. election via a social media campaign is hard to grasp given how minuscule it was. Mueller says the IRA spent $100,000 between 2015 and 2017. Of that, just $46,000 was spent on Russian-linked Facebook ads before the 2016 election. That amounts to about 0.05% of the $81 million spent on Facebook ads by the Clinton and Trump campaigns combined -- which is itself a tiny fraction of the estimated $2 billion spent by the candidates and their supporting PACS.
Then there is the fact that so little of this supposed election interference campaign content actually concerned the election. Mueller himself cites a review by Twitter of tweets from "accounts associated with the IRA" in the 10 weeks before the 2016 election, which found that "approximately 8.4% were election-related." This tracks with a report commissioned by the U.S. Senate that found that "explicitly political content was a small percentage" of the content attributed to the IRA. The IRA's posts "were minimally about the candidates," with "roughly 6% of tweets, 18% of Instagram posts, and 7% of Facebook posts" having "mentioned Trump or Clinton by name."
Yet Mueller circumvents this with what sound like impressive figures:
IRA-controlled Twitter accounts separately had tens of thousands of followers, including multiple U.S. political figures who retweeted IRA-created content. In November 2017, a Facebook representative testified that Facebook had identified 470 IRA-controlled Facebook accounts that collectively made 80,000 posts between January 2015 and August 2017. Facebook estimated the IRA reached as many as 126 million persons through its Facebook accounts. In January 2018, Twitter announced that it had identified 3,814 IRA-controlled Twitter accounts and notified approximately 1.4 million people Twitter believed may have been in contact with an IRA-controlled account.
Upon scrutiny, Mueller's figures are exaggerated, to say the least. Take Mueller's claim that Russian posts reached "as many as 126 million" Facebook users. That figure is in fact a spin on Facebook's own guess, as articulated by Facebook general counsel Colin Stretch's congressional testimony in October 2017. "Our best estimate ," Stretch told lawmakers, "is that approximately 126 million people may have been served content from a page associated with the IRA at some point during the two-year period ." And the "two-year period" extends far beyond the 2016 election, to August 2017. Overall, Stretch added, posts from suspected Russian accounts showing up in Facebook's News Feed comprised "approximately 1 out of [every] 23,000 pieces of content."
Yet another reason to question the Russian operation's sophistication is the quality of its content. The IRA's most shared pre-election Facebook post was a cartoon of a gun-wielding Yosemite Sam . On Instagram, the best-received image urged users to give it a "Like" if they believe in Jesus. The top IRA post on Facebook before the election that mentioned Hillary Clinton was a conspiratorial screed about voter fraud . Another ad featured Jesus consoling a dejected young man by telling him: "Struggling with the addiction to masturbation? Reach out to me and we will beat it together."
Mueller also reports that the IRA successfully organized "dozens" of rallies "while posing as U.S. grassroots activists." Sounds impressive, but the most successful effort appears to have been in Houston, where Russian trolls allegedly organized dueling rallies pitting a dozen white supremacists against several dozen counter-protesters outside an Islamic center. Elsewhere, the IRA had underwhelming results, according to media reports: At several rallies in Florida " it's unclear if anyone attended ," the Daily Beast later noted; "no people showed up to at least one," and "ragtag groups" showed up at others , the Washington Post reported, including one where video footage captured a crowd of eight people .
Far from exposing a sophisticated propaganda campaign, the reports suggest that Russian troll farm workers engaged in futile efforts to spark contentious rallies in a handful of states. When it comes to the ads, they may have been engaging in clickbait capitalism: targeting unique demographics like African Americans or evangelicals in a bid to attract large audiences for commercial purposes. Reporters who have profiled the IRA have commonly described it as " a social media marketing campaign ." Mueller's February 2018 indictment of the IRA disclosed that it sold "promotions and advertisements" on its pages that generally sold in the $25-$50 range. "This strategy," a Senate report from Oxford University's Computational Propaganda Project observes, "is not an invention for politics and foreign intrigue, it is consistent with techniques used in digital marketing."
That, in fact, was Facebook's initial conclusion. As the Washington Post first reported , Facebook's initial review of Russian social media activity in late 2016 and early 2017 found that the troll farm's pages "had clear financial motives, which suggested that they weren't working for a foreign government." That view only changed, the Post added, after "aides to Hillary Clinton and Obama" developed "theories" to help them "explain what they saw as an unnatural turn of events" in their loss of the 2016 election. Among these theories: "Russian operatives who were directed by the Kremlin to support Trump may have taken advantage of Facebook and other social media platforms to direct their messages to American voters in key demographic areas." Despite the fact that "these former advisers didn't have hard evidence," the Democratic aides found a receptive audience in both congressional intelligence committees. Democrat Mark Warner, the Senate intel vice chairman, personally flew out to Facebook headquarters in California to press the case. Not long after, in the summer of 2017, Facebook went public with its new "findings" about Russian trolls. Mueller has followed their lead – just as the FBI followed the leads of other Democratic sources in pursuing both the collusion (Fusion GPS) and Russian hacking (CrowdStrike) allegations.
John Brennan and the ICA
As it falls short of proving its case for a "sweeping and systematic" Russian interference campaign, the Mueller report also fails to support its claim regarding the motive behind such efforts. In the introduction to Volume I, Mueller states that "the investigation established that the Russian government perceived it would benefit from a Trump presidency and worked to secure that outcome." But nowhere in the ensuing 440 pages does Mueller produce any evidence to substantiate that central claim.
Instead Mueller appears to be relying on the intelligence community assessment (ICA) released in January 2017 – four months before his appointment – that accused the Russian government of running an "influence campaign" that aimed "to undermine public faith in the U.S. democratic process," and hurt Hillary Clinton's "electability and potential presidency" as part of what it called Russia's "clear preference for President-elect Trump."
But the ICA itself produced no evidence for any of these assertions. Its equivocation is even more blunt than Mueller's: The ICA report's conclusions, it states, are "not intended to imply that we have proof that shows something to be a fact."
On the core conclusion that Russia aimed to help Trump, there is not even uniformity: While the FBI and CIA claim to have "high confidence" in that judgment, the NSA makes a conspicuous deviation in expressing that it has only "moderate confidence."
As it casts doubt on a core allegation of Russia's alleged motives, the NSA's dissent debunks the oft-repeated claim that the ICA represented the consensus view of all 17 U.S. intelligence agencies.
Moreover, it would even be misleading to portray the ICA as the product of the three agencies that produced it – the CIA, FBI, and NSA. Instead, there are multiple indications that the ICA is primarily the work of one person, who would spend the next two years accusing Trump of treason: then-CIA Director John Brennan.
A March 2018 report from Republicans on the House Intelligence Committee says that Brennan personally oversaw the entire ICA process from start to finish. In December 2016, the GOP report recounts, President Obama "directed Brennan to conduct a review of all intelligence relating to Russian involvement in the 2016 elections." The resulting ICA "was drafted by CIA analysts" and merely " coordinated with the NSA and the FBI." The GOP report observes that Brennan's CIA analysts were "subjected to an unusually constrained review and coordination process, which deviated from established CIA practice ."[ Italics added for emphasis.] A lengthy Democratic rebuttal to the GOP members' report does not refute any of these findings.
Echoing the NSA's dissent, the House GOP questions the ICA's conclusion that Putin interfered to secure Trump's victory. The committee, they write, "identified significant intelligence tradecraft failings that undermine confidence in the ICA judgments regarding Russian President Vladimir Putin's strategic objectives for disrupting the U.S. election." [ Italics added for emphasis.]
The Brennan-run process may have also excluded dissenting views from other agencies. Jack Matlock, the former U.S. Ambassador to Russia, has claimed that a "senior official" from the State Department's intelligence wing, the Bureau of Intelligence and Research (INR), informed him that it had reached a different conclusion about alleged Russian meddling, "but was not allowed to express it." An INR spokesperson declined a request for comment.
The ICA's production schedule also raises a red flag: The outgoing Obama administration tasked Brennan with churning it out in seemingly unprecedented time. "Ordinarily, the kind of assessment that you're talking about, there would be something that would take well over a year to do, certainly many months to do," former federal prosecutor Andrew McCarthy told the House Intelligence Committee in June. " [S]eems to me, in this instance, there was a rush to get that out within a matter of days."
But even if Brennan had been given all the time in the world, the very fact that he was placed in charge of the intelligence assessment was a massive conflict of interest. Brennan was handed the opportunity to validate, without independent scrutiny or oversight from unbiased sources, serious allegations that he himself helped generate.
Efforts to reach Brennan through MSNBC, where he is a commentator, were unsuccessful.
Months before he oversaw the intelligence assessment, Brennan played a critical role in the FBI's decision to open the probe of Trump-Russia collusion. "I was aware of intelligence and information about contacts between Russian officials and U.S. persons that raised concerns in my mind about whether or not those individuals were cooperating with the Russians, either in a witting or unwitting fashion," Brennan told Congress in March 2017, "and it served as the basis for the FBI investigation to determine whether such collusion-cooperation occurred."
On top of his self-described role in generating the investigation of possible Trump-Russia collusion, Brennan also played a critical role in generating the claim that the Russian government was waging an influence campaign. According to the book "The Apprentice" by the Washington Post's Greg Miller, the CIA unit known as "Russia House" was "the point of origin" for the U.S. intelligence community's conclusion during the presidential campaign that "the Kremlin was actively seeking to elect Trump." Brennan sequestered himself in his office to pore over the CIA's material , "staying so late that the glow through his office windows remained visible deep into the night." Brennan "ordered up," not just vetted, "'finished' assessments – analytic reports that had gone through layers of review and revision," Miller adds, but also "what agency veterans call the 'raw stuff' – the unprocessed underlying material."
Anyone familiar with how cherry-picked, false intelligence made the case for the Iraq War will recognize "raw material" as a red flag. Here's another: According to Miller, one piece of intelligence that was "a particular source of alarm to Brennan," was the "bombshell" from "sourcing deep inside the Kremlin" that Putin himself had "authorized a covert operation" in order to, "in his own words damage Clinton and help elect Trump" via "a cyber campaign to disrupt and discredit the U.S. presidential race." A former CIA operative described that sourcing as "the espionage equivalent of 'the Holy Grail.'"
Undoubtedly, a mole within Putin's inner circle – able to capture his exact orders – would indeed fit that description. But that raises the obvious question: If such a crown jewel of espionage exists, why would anyone in U.S. intelligence allow it to be revealed? And why hadn't that "Holy Grail" source been able to forewarn its American intelligence handlers of any number of Putin's actions that have caught the U.S. off-guard, from the annexation of Crimea to the Russian intervention in Syria?
Brennan was the first to alert President Obama of a Russian interference campaign, and subsequently oversaw the U.S. intelligence response.
Since leaving office, Brennan has laid bare his personal animus towards Trump, going so far as to call him "treasonous" – an unprecedented charge for a former top intelligence official to make about a sitting president. In the weeks before Mueller issued his final report, Brennan was still predicting that members of Trump's inner circle, including family members, would be indicted. Given Brennan's bias and consistent patterns of errors, Mueller's unquestioning, apparent reliance on a Brennan-run process is suspect.
Although Mueller seemed to accept the ICA's explosive claims at face value, Brennan's work product is now facing Justice Department scrutiny. The New York Times reported on June 12 that Attorney General William Barr is "interested in how the C.I.A. drew its conclusions about Russia's election sabotage, particularly the judgment that Mr. Putin ordered that operatives help Mr. Trump." In what is most likely a direct reference to Brennan, the Times adds that Barr "wants to know more about the C.I.A. sources who helped inform its understanding of the details of the Russian interference campaign," as well as about "the intelligence that flowed from the C.I.A. to the F.B.I. in the summer of 2016."
Until Barr completes his review of the Russia probe, the April 2018 report from GOP members of the House Intelligence Committee remains the only publicly available assessment of the Brennan-controlled ICA's methodology. One reason for this is the fact that President Obama personally quashed a proposed bipartisan commission of inquiry into alleged Russian interference that would have inevitably subjected Brennan and other top intelligence officials to scrutiny. According to the Washington Post, in the aftermath of the November election, Obama administration officials discussed forming such a commission to conduct a sweeping probe of the alleged Russian interference effort and the U.S. response. But after Obama's then chief-of-staff, Denis McDonough, introduced the proposal, he:
began criticizing it, arguing that it would be perceived as partisan and almost certainly blocked by Congress. Obama then echoed McDonough's critique, effectively killing any chance that a Russia commission would be formed.
With Obama having killed "any chance that a Russia commission would be formed," there has been no thorough, independent oversight of the intelligence process that alleged an interference campaign by Russia and triggered an all-consuming investigation of the Trump campaign's potential complicity.
New Opportunities to Answer Unresolved Questions
Barr's ongoing review, and Mueller's pending appearance before Congress, offer fresh opportunities to re-examine the affair's fundamental inconsistencies. Authorized by the president to declassify documents, Barr could shed light on the role that CrowdStrike and other sources played in informing Mueller and the Brennan-directed ICA's claims of a Russian interference campaign. When he appears before lawmakers, Mueller will likely face questions on other matters: from Democrats, his decision to punt on obstruction; from Republicans, his decision to carry out a prolonged investigation of Trump-Russia collusion despite likely knowing quite early on that there was no such case to make.
If the U.S. government does not have a solid case to make against Russia, then the origins of Russiagate, and its subsequent predominance of U.S. political and media focus, are potentially even more suspect. Given that allegation's importance, and Mueller's own uncertainty and inconsistencies, the special counsel and his aides deserve scrutiny for making a "central allegation" that they have yet to substantiate.
Correction:
- July 5, 2019, 7:40 PM Eastern An earlier version of this article misstated the month of FBI Director James Comey's testimony in 2017 to Congress about the bureau's handling of Democratic National Committee servers. It was in March, not January.
The US elite jump up and down with moral indignation about an evidence-free allegation of foreign interference in its domestic politics, whilst ignoring actual evidenced foreign interference in its domestic affairs, and all the while constantly interfering in the domestic affairs of foreign countries and boasting about it.Tim JenkinsThe congressman asks:
"When you talk about the firm that produced the Steele reporting, the name of the firm that produced that was Fusion GPS. Is that correct?"
"I am not familiar with – with that," Mueller replied.
"It was. It's not a trick question. It was Fusion GPS," Chabot retorted.
The Congressman then asked whether Mueller was familiar with the owner of Fusion GPS.
"That's outside my purview," Mueller replied."1) Heavy involvement in Uranium One deal, with the Russians.
2) Cover up of all investigations 9/11, as FBI Boss.
3) Clean up of Epstein's abhorrent dealings, last time around.
4) The Great Russia-Hoax, by Magic Mueller & Co.
For my mind, I can imagine BTO -"You ain't seen nothin', yet "
They are thick as sh.t when it comes to hiding what they do, have the power to make it hard to find the truth tho.
(stoooopid woman, not interested in learning, better said, in others learning) 😉Off with their heads: Final Solutions ? Judge Priti Patel ?
Personally, i'd love to see Epstein in a safe cell, in between Cardinal sinner George d'Pedo Pell & Harvey Weinstein: all with webcams & wifi LIVE & pay per view:-
VIP Big Bro. Chokey & the Bandits, (online Live 🙂 )
I would actually pay to view that, even if only briefly on the BBC, though I've never given a penny to the BBC, since 1979 I swear m8 🙂
The poor chap is obviously suffering from advanced Alzheimer's. You'd think they could come up with a better front man for their conspiracy theory.
It was a novel idea to outsource the investigation to Crowdstrike. There's a lot to be said for privatisation. Most commendable. Maybe the next time there's a high profile criminal investigation the FBI will outsource the murder investigation to Sam Spade, Ace Gumshoe.
Add dozens of 'That's not my purview' or some variation of it, and 5 hours magically shrinks.And asking if politicians are corrupt is like asking what colors the sky, we all know the answer.
Each unto its own.
****************"Mueller does not explain why he included Assange's comments as reported by media outlets in his report but decided not to speak with Assange directly, or ask to see his "physical proof," during a two-year investigation." with an unlimited budget to investigate !
What more than that did you need to know ? Alles Klar and if you are still unsure, then just ask yourself why Bill Binney & Kurt Weibe, ex NSA programmers of "Parallel Platforms", have NOT been called to testify, either ! The technical end 'stuff' proves that Mueller has been lying all along on his 'Witch Hunt' & Russia-Hoax and has NOT been addressing any one of the most important questions & problems that lead to further investigations & indictments of many key figures: which include potentially prosecuting the murderer of Seth Rich and why Mueller charged all others for lying to him during his pathetic investigation, but NOT Jo' MIFSUD ! Mueller himself should be prosecuted for his omissions & failure to prosecute Mifsud & question Richard Dearlove more intensively !
Get Mifsud under Oath immediately: he started all this who the hell is MIFSUD? Why is MIFSUD being protected? What the Fuck were Steele & Mifsud & Dearlove thinking to conspire & concoct on behalf of Deep State Governors & Operatives, who transcend both the USUK Governments combined ! ? !
This is an old article that helps you comprehend something of the background of the lies & deceptions of Mueller's pathetic efforts, & yesterday's statements confirm that he never intended to reveal anything at all, including yesterday, but why do we not have some brief qualification of Mueller's Testimony just yesterday, as an addendum here @OffG ?
How does OffG expect the Brits. to keep up to speed ? Especially, what will happen next with Boris Johnson and his dilemmas @home with GCHQ ? Coz' GCHQ were wholly involved in this TREASON USA attempt & Russia-Hoax, as were Italian Secret Services and the Ukrainian S.S. !
These matters can no longer be resolved behind closed doors, unless you wish to live continuously & forever onwards, under a corporate Fascist Dictatorship of "Parallel Platforms" & Pedophile Politicians ! it's that simple, so take 5 minutes and listen to Jim Jordan cross question Mueller, just yesterday, and you'll begin to see that Mifsud is being protected and we need to know WHY? HOW? & What from ? & by whom Logic, the wholly zionist owned & controlled mainstream media, surely! Coz' the ball is still rolling and it will not stop @Mifsud's desk, nor the boss of GCHQ's desk heads are gonna' roll, when this ball gets finally kicked into the annals of a very pissy secret service "History of the National Security State" and BoJo has some serious thinking to do about how he deals with the nameless cnuts in the British not so civil service, who used orphans kids in Ireland to entrap politicians and leverage any future political discussions with British Pedophile Politicians fully controlled !!!
E.G. GARY HOY !It should be noted that yesterday, before Bill Barr stepped into his bullet proof vehicle, after answering a few questions to journalists, he beamed the biggest smile I ever saw on his public face and uttered the words "it goes with the territory". Bill Barr has clearly grown more comfortable with where he stands, today and he has no intention of kicking this can of worms down the road, including Jeffrey Epstein & Ghislaine Maxwell, charges will be brought, thankfully finally and Boris Johnson will be forced to reveal much more than he would likely wish regarding "The History of the National Security State" and it will help mask his inevitable blunders, down the road.
You should have, after watching Mueller !
I have pasted three links deliberately so that Admin must read this 😉
The Guardian live reporting missed every mention of Steele, Dearlove, a 'Russian' how very suspicious! Lol
I do believe the Russian State is capable of hacking – as is every such capable state in the world. I surmise they did hack – that is the most likely source of the Integrity Initiative / Institute of Statecraft material.
We will see how many independent news sites and bloggers actually exist by their journalism and blogging on this revealed conspiracy.
And this all presents a prime opportunity for OffGuardian. 🙂
It will be a tough ole' cookie for Kit to crack: maybe in bite sized pieces, step by stepIt's a very real tangled web that transcends borders of governance and forces one to not shy away from the words Corporate Fascist Dictatorship, with zero privacy & total control of all flows of Knowledge,
Not just Scientific . . .
Mercer & Cambridge Analytica ? the tip of the iceberg,
as UreKismet rightly points out below, Carole d'Cad certainly has much to answer for, in the biggest internet Psyop sting & string of distractions from the Key issues of programming our futures, collectively.But more important than even that is, even if the Russian State – oops sorry. . . "Putin" {said quickly with all emphasis on vowels none on consonants so it sounds more like a hoick & spit than a word} by some miracle did succeed so what? You cannot push a decent spliff skin between the dems & rethugs on the stuff which really matters.
Disagree? Check out the Tufts alumni diary entry for yesterday . The article tells us how the Senate Foreign Relations committee, who are the mob allegedly responsible for devising and implementing amerika's foreign policy, actually had a falling out on monday, a disagreement between a dem senator and a rethug member of the old boys steamroom and bar club.
This was the first public contretemps in decades. Wow I bet that was over something vital!
Nah, the dispute was over the murder of that Kashoggi creep, they reckon the dems wanted to slap Saudi with a wet bus ticket, whereas the rethugs preferred a damp feather as the instrument of corporal punishment.
Why on earth would anyone who hadn't bought a seat at the table e.g. the invaders of occupied Palestine waste energy, let alone the $30,000 that crowdstrike claimed Russia had spent on a forlorn hope of trying to get something up like sanctions relief, when everyone knows the correct way to do it is to bribe both sides with tens of millions?
Now "tens of millions" may seem a lot until you understand you will get it all back plus a lot extra for the hassle. Yep the amerikan pols become dependent on your 'donation' real quick. So from then on out, they find a way to give you money for some nonsense program which you then give back to 'em all as donations – less about 95% for expenses natch – but everyone is cool with that, they know there are considerable overheads in the lobbying biz.
That is why just about all of them plan on getting into lobbying themselves – just as soon as their little black books are chocka with the foibles of all the other congress-creeps and senate-slugs.
I watched the netflix doco "The Great Hack" which tries a camera eye view of the Cambridge Analytica investigation. IMO It reveals graun contractor Carole Cadwalladr to be the sort of deeply dedicated journo not too proud to let the facts stand in the way of a good beat up/fit up.
Shockingly for the graun, the target of this character assassination is a 'sister', yep another member of the victimised by patriarchy club.
A young woman by the name of Brittany Kaiser whose parents were financially destroyed by the cfc. After the family home was seized in 2014 she had to quit being an unpaid worker for the dems in DC & took an extremely well paid gig (VP) with CA. Apparently her conscience got the better of her so when the stories about what they and facebook had been doing came out she whistle blew in the US inquiry and the english parliament enquiry.
Too bad Cadwalladr decided she (Kaiser) would be useful in yet another graun attack on Julian Assange.
Kaiser had sent Wikileaks a couple bit coins back in the noughties when she was an idealistic Obama intern and bit coins weren't worth much. Years later she visited Julian at the Ecuador embassy on CA business and she insists that neither Russia or H Clinton's email were discussed, but Cadwalladr ran this article claiming she did both, without a scintalla of watchamacallit – evidence, proof whatsoever.
Of course in reality Kaiser may be nothing like the possum trapped in the headlights she presents as; this is a TV show (all over the torrent and usenet sites if like me, people prefer not to pay for the fibs they are told) in which both Cadwalladr & Kaiser get lots of time. For me Kaiser came across as someone acting more like a human than, the bigger the front, the smaller the back, Cadwalladr did.
None of us can ever know for sure who did what to whom during prez 2016, so we are left with considering the mountains of bulldust using our sense of humanity mixed with the few facts we can be sure of. In that light IMO, it makes zero sense for the Russian state to try on something that is so obviously doomed to fail, so they didn't.
I've always maintained that any connections Trump has with Russia are going to be based on money. As in "there are people who have lots of money who need some kind of investment vehicle to launder it" and "a tangled web of casinos and real estate holdings is a perfect laundromat for money of dubious origins". This doesn't automatically suggest that Trump's a money launderer for the Russian mob but rather there's no clear cut line between what's clearly criminal and what's clearly totally legal and a lot of businesses operate in the gray between the two.
(Politically, though, the last word on Trump support was spoken to me by a Hungarian/American colleague who intended to vote for him. He lived in Budapest and his interest wasn't in US domestic politics so much as not being caught in WW3. He thought Hilary was going to start a war, Trump would keep us out. I thought he was being a bit naive (and have been proven right) but you couldn't blame him for exercising an abundance of caution.)
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Jun 29, 2019 | OffGuardian
This article was first published on March 1st of this year, however, it is given fresh relevance in the wake of Labour's reinstatement, and then re-suspension, of Derby MP Chris WilliamsonPhoto: The Crucible at the Pacific Conservatory Theatre
PUTNAM: Now look you, sir. Let you strike out against the Devil, and the village will bless you for it! Come down, speak to them -- pray with them. They're thirsting for your word, Mister! Surely you'll pray with them.
PARRIS: (swayed) I'll lead them in a psalm, but let you say nothing of witchcraft yet. I will not discuss it. The cause is yet unknown. I have had enough contention since I came; I want no more.
Arthur Miller – The CrucibleIn his magisterial autobiography, Timebends , describing his motivation behind his classic work The Crucible (extracted above) -- the most compelling and enduring allegorical piece of drama to grace the American theatre -- Arthur Miller reveals the following:
What I sought was a metaphor, an image that would spring out of the heart, all-inclusive, full of light, a sonorous instrument whose reverberations would penetrate to the centre of this miasma. For if the current degeneration of discourse continued, as I had every reason to believe it would, we could no longer be a democracy, a system that requires a certain basic trust in order to exist."
The 'miasma' referred to by Miller in the above passage was the atmosphere of censorious paranoia whipped up by the anti-Communist witchhunts of the 1940s and 1950s, starting under the auspices of the House Un-American Activities Committee (HUAC), established in 1938, joined thereafter by Senator Joseph McCarthy's Senate hearings into alleged Communist infiltration from the late 1940s.
The period concerned, commonly referred to as McCarthyism, illuminated the parameters of free speech and expression in a country and culture which prides itself on both. It drilled home the profound truth that tyranny is less the by-product of totalitarian political systems and more the product of totalitarian ideas and nostrums that sustain political orthodoxy in a given space and time. And, too, whenever those ideas and nostrums come under challenge, said democracy is exposed as a cloak behind which mendacity resides, ruthlessly seeking malcontents to expose and miscreants to punish.
In Britain in 2019 we need no longer turn to US history for an understanding of McCarthyism and its execrable fruits.
For in Britain in 2019 McCarthyism is with us and among us, corroding our public and political discourse, poisoning it with the untruths, lies and mendacious smears of some of the most malignant political forces that ever existed in these islands.
Reds under the bed has been replaced with antisemites under the bed; this with the full and open complicity of a mainstream media whose dread over the prospect of transformational political change is entwined in tight embrace with that of an Establishment -- political and security -- in ensuring nothing but nothing will ever change in this country apart from the colour of the curtains on the windows in Downing Street.
Jeremy Corbyn's leadership of the Labour Party has to intents been usurped by his deputy Tom Watson, a man for whom Shakespeare's "Hell is empty, and all the devils are here!" line from The Tempest could have been written with in mind.
Labour Friends of Israel
Watson is the Labour Party's Matthew Hopkins, the infamous witch-hunter whose reign of terror in 17th century Britain finds its metaphorical equivalent in the 21st century with the objective not of locating and hanging out to dry antisemites but instead anti-Zionists, which means to say genuine anti-racists.
For what is Zionism if not racism, a species of white supremacy responsible for relegating the humanity of five million men, women and children of the illegally occupied West Bank and besieged Gaza Strip to that of latter-day Helots?
Adding to the mountain of intellectual and moral ordure erected in service to this miasma of untruth and base hypocrisy, are the findings of a UN investigation into the Palestinians killed and wounded by Israeli snipers during last year's Great Return March in Gaza.
According to the UN's Santiago Canton:
Israeli soldiers committed violations of international human rights and humanitarian law. Some of those violations may constitute war crimes or crimes against humanity."
In diplomatic-speak, Mr Canton is here referencing the manner in which Israeli soldiers shot down dozens of unarmed Palestinians -- among them children, medics and journalists -- like deer in a forest, with some of those Israeli soldiers caught on tape laughing and celebrating their 'kills'.
It is to this monstrosity of an apartheid state Tom Watson and his friends are giving succour and sanction; and it this supremacist juggernaut of oppression we are expected to accept as compatible with left-wing progressive values.
There is nothing more grotesque than being lectured to about antisemitism, or any other form of racism, by apologists for a racist apartheid state. Yet this grotesquerie is precisely where we have arrived at in response to Corbyn's unlikely elevation to the leadership of the Labour Party.
His legacy as a staunch supporter of Palestinian human rights and self-determination has been weaponised against him and his supporters by a pro-Israel lobby within and without the Labour Party, plumbing depths of indecency last witnessed during the era of McCarthyism across the Atlantic.
For those who doubt how deeply entrenched the pro-Israel lobby now is within the UK body politic, Al Jazeera's blistering documentary The Lobby is required viewing.
Given the context and the stakes involved in this ongoing witch hunt and smear campaign, the lack of meaningful resistance on the part of Corbyn is unconscionable; his refusal to mobilise his base in the face of it inexplicable. The result has not been to see it disappear but for it to prosper and grow in ferocity.
Be under no illusion either of the complicity of key figures in and around the Labour leadership in whipping up and/or acquiescing in this baseless hysteria -- Lansman, McDonnell et al. -- to the point where Corbyn has been rendered well nigh unelectable as a prospective prime minister.
That this is a smear campaign and witchhunt conducted, regardless of the fog of obfuscation deployed to the contrary, on behalf of a foreign power -- and an apartheid power at that -- compounds the offence.
But this issue is now bigger than Corbyn. It is about where we stand on matters of intellectual and moral integrity; and most of all on the rights we accrue to an oppressed people and those of their oppressor. Future generations are watching and waiting for the stance that we take.
Arthur Miller understood this, which is why his light will shine forever bright as a beacon of moral courage in an age of deceit.
End.
Ben Trovata
"They misunderestimated me."George Bush,the Younger,Nov. 6, 2000.MichaelKI'll not supply any facts. None whatsoever,saying only: Corbyn( I believe) is made of better material. Blairites must be expelled, or otherwise, go away!
I think one has to appreciate, despite all the 'far-left' labels stuck on him, that Corbyn only appeared to be a 'raving looney leftie' in comparison with the rightwing Blairite majority of MPs who've controlled the Labour Party for so long and capitulated to and followed a Thatcherite political agenda, for decades.markCorbyn himself isn't really a 'revolutionary' or even a radical. He's what half a century ago would have been described as a pretty normal, middle-of-the-road, Labour social democrat, barely on the left of the Party at all. But some of this is debatable, depending on where one stands on the spectrum personally. It's a sign of how far 'left' politics and 'left' discourse has degenerated in the UK, and political culture's moved so far to the right, that Corbyn, like a relic of a bygone era, is perceived as far more leftwing than he actually is, in reality.
What he is though, is ineffective as a leader. He lacks authority, I think, because he fundamentally lacks a set of strong ideas that show what he stands for and where he wants the country to move. There's no real narrative that mobilises support for him, and this is the curse of Labour; the leadership's fear of mobilising the membership and their supporters and votes in the country, too much and too far, which could easily lead to them raising their expectations way beyond what's 'realistic' and possible within the boundaries of bourgeois liberal democracy. Labour fought for political power in parliament; but didn't believe in openly challenging economic power in society in any meaningful way, because that strategy was simply not allowed because it was 'revolutionary' and not reformist.
Of course Corbyn is a "raving loony lefty."Barovsky
He wants to re nationalise the railways (maybe.)
And build a few council houses (maybe.)
How raving loony is that?
Obviously he's a raving loony.
Oh, and he objects to the genocide of the Palestinians.
Obviously a raving anti semite as well.
Just ask the Board of Deputies and Margaret Hodge and the Daily Mail. They'll explain it all to you.More to the point; he's a (Labour) Party man. The Party comes first, regardless. For almost 130 years the Labour Party has been an integral part of British capitalism and imperialism and the British state. Thus Corbyn, a run-of-the-mill social democrat is concerned only with the survival of the Party and he will do whatever is necessary in its defence including defenestrating his election manifesto (compare his draft with the one finally circulated in 2017)!mathias alexandShould he by some chance actually end up as PM, what are the odds of him actually reversing austerity when he's already sold out over every key part of his original manifesto?
There are going to be a lot of very disappointed and once more disconnected Labour voters.
What is this "leadership" and "authority" thing? As for his ideas he could have any number of them that you will never hear about in the MSM.MaggieTrue Mathias, but you can see and hear about them on the Jimmy Dore Show whose shows truly are a breath of fresh air:falcemartelloBernie Sanders of Britain and why he is widely loved, and sadly rare. July 2016
https://www.youtube.com/embed/a29WF44jDug?version=3&rel=1&fs=1&autohide=2&showsearch=0&showinfo=1&iv_load_policy=1&wmode=transparent
Labour Party Platform, Amazingly specific and pro worker. May 2017
https://www.youtube.com/embed/vI073wq2zKY?version=3&rel=1&fs=1&autohide=2&showsearch=0&showinfo=1&iv_load_policy=1&wmode=transparent
Jeremy Corbyn Delivers Inspiring Speech June 2017
https://www.youtube.com/embed/8RsSPOcVcNM Wimbledon issues ban on chanting Jeremy Corbyn July 2017
https://www.youtube.com/embed/0MwqZkBOEz0 Pro Jeremy Corbyn ad makes Right wingers cry.July 2017
https://www.youtube.com/embed/ptC-0_gObNM NBC News Smears Jeremy Corbyn as an anti semite. July 2017
https://www.youtube.com/embed/F4d-ZAPx1q4 BBC Andrew Neil smashes Jeremy Corbyn Smear on Live TV Feb 2018
https://www.youtube.com/embed/IJZkYDYh37U Corbyn responds rationally to Russian nerve attack and is immediately smeared March 2018
https://www.youtube.com/embed/OsnAIUZIt8M Corbyn smeared as anti semite for attacking Bankers. September 2018
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=X9US9v0ndusAnd on and on it goes, and the sh*t does stick. For the majority of people eventually just cave in and believe this Zionist garbage.
Anti-semitism oldest form of gas lighting that was ever created in the western world especially after the second world war. If one were to go to Palestine it is not uncommon to find some ebraic semite wearing a t shirt with on it printed an IDF soldier taking aim at a pregnant arab semite. Israel has to be exposed for what it is. It is an anglo-zionist colonial outpost.. Zionism was born in England it pre dates Herzl.harry lawHence until more exposure of the brutal nature of the Israeli zionist and their parents the anglo-zionist becomes exposed then the diluted term of anti semite will continue to be used. I find that with the dying western paradigm so will this gaslighting term become irrelevant .If any intellectual honesty were to be used the real anti semites are the zionist.
Post Scriptum : Israel has a shelf life and it is omploding with in hence so will zionism.
Having experience racism first hand growing up and still being exposed to it today for mhy ethnicity I am not fortunate enough as the ashkanazi /zionist to deflect and gaslight my oppressors.
Former South African Minister Ronnie Kasrils himself Jewish on Thursday accused Israel of conducting a policy against the Palestinians that was "worse" than apartheid.andyoldlabourSpeaking on the sidelines of a UN meeting on the situation in the Palestinian territories, Kasrils said South Africa's townships had never been attacked by helicopter gunships and tanks, in contrast to the military means employed by Israel.
https://www.iol.co.za/news/politics/israel-worse-than-apartheid-sa-kasrils-352481
Labour Friends of Israel, Conservative Friends of Israel, Liberal Democrat Friends of Israel – all different organisations?Capricornia ManNo, of course they are not, even if the ordinary man in the street may think so.
They are all controlled by the Israeli state, to do the bidding of that state, to demonise any person who shows empathy with the plight of the Palestinian people, any person who dares criticise the actions of the Israeli state.
On the other hand, you have Jewish Friends of Labour, seen by the Israeli state as "self hating Jews", the "wrong type of Jew".
What we are seeing at the moment is – Zio-McCarthyism.'McCarthyism' is exactly what I have been calling the witch-hunt for some time. It's surprising that the term is taking so long to come into general use when it is the appropriate term based on historical analogy, as shown by the article. The pile-on against anyone who dares to support the political and national rights of the Palestinians induces physical illness in anyone remotely interested in justice and truth.vwbeetleThe rancid 'liberal' media frames its "coverage" by treating accusations of 'antisemitism' not as the thing which has to be proved, but as the proof itself. A classic McCarthyite process.
The vast majority of Britons must be fed up having their politics held up to ransom in this manner. Stand up for yourselves and by-pass the fifth column and the coward element in the Labour Party.
To read the Guardian, one would think that Williamson has no supporters in Labour whatsoever. As far as the Guardian is concerned, Jewish Voice for Labour and its condemnation of the witch hunt and smear campaign against Corbyn and Williamson and anyone who supports Palestinian rights, does not exist. Up until a couple of years ago I was a regular contributor on CIF discussion threads, largely rebutting Zionists and their propaganda and outright lies. I was eventually blocked, probably because large numbers of Zionists reported me, despite the fact that I largely restricted my posts to historical facts. Over the past two years it is almost impossible to make comments on CIF about any article about Israel/Palestine, or the anti-semitism smear campaign. What has happened at the Guardian? Does anyone know why the paper seems to have changed course?MichaelKThe lurch to the political right at the Guardian is linked to the Snowden and Assange revelations that challenged the cosy ideological relationship between the media and the state, to a degree that is simply not allowed, if one wants to be seen as loyal and responsible. There are consequences is one, as an individual, group or institution, is perceived as being illoyal by the Establishment and the state.HaltonbratAssange and Snowden pulled the Guardian over an invisible line, into a grey area, at the time, which was perceived as being tantamount to treason, and now the Guardian has been successfully reined in once more and now co-opperates with the state on matters relating to 'national security.' The damage, has been undone and a proper and reasonable relationship established.
The Guardian has been pro-Zionist since the days of editor CP Scott who introduced the Zionist leader to Looyd George and supported the Zionists in his writings in the Manchester Guardian.ShardlakeIt all changed, and not for the better, after Alan Rusbridger left. It's as much a mouthpiece now for this appalling government as the Murdoch press and their like. There's been a continual shift in centre ground politics to the right since the days of Thatcher.Stephen MorrellWe are seeing what Edward Bernays described in 1928 as the conscious and intelligent manipulation of the organised 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 moulded, our tastes formed, our ideas suggested largely by men we have never heard of.
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.
PS. The Labour Party never fails to disappointStephen MorrellIt's time to stop calling Israel an 'apartheid state'. Snipers today, missiles and bombs tomorrow, with deliberate and active ruination of amenity, infrastructure and the means to live -- by siege, every day.HaltonbratIsrael's atrocities are not simply 'crimes against humanity'. They're crimes directed against a particular ethnic/national/racial segment of humanity. That's called genocide. Netanyahu and his gang are genocidal, and consequently the garrison state of Israel is also a 'genocide state'. Time to start applying the g-word.
Yes, The actions of Israel meet the UN definition of genocide.markThe Times of Israel, a national newspaper, quite openly advocated genocide. It called for the Palestinian people to be exterminated at concentration camps in the desert. The "Justice" Minister, a woman called Shaked, called for Palestinian mothers to be exterminated, so that no Palestinian children could be born. Two rabbis in Israel published a book called "The King's Torah." It called for all Palestinian children to be murdered.maggieKilling a goy, any goy, is a Mitzvah, a praiseworthy act.
If the Jews get the war with Iran they have been trying to incite and agitate for for so long, they will use this as cover to carry out actual genocide on a massive scale.
People need to give up completely on Labour. It is infested wall to wall with 30 shekel whores.
Hi Mark, Do you have links to the information you have posted please.markIf we give up on Labour, then who do we rely on? I think what we should be doing is focussing all our energies on removing (de selecting) the 90 "friends of Israhell" who have been baying for Chris Williamson and Jeremy Corbyn to be removed permanently from the Labour Party. Beginning with the evil with Hodge, and her cronies headed by Tom Watson.
The Times of Israel, 1/8/14.Stephen Morrell
"When Genocide Is Permissible", by Yochanan Gordon.
Openly advocates, endorses and justifies the genocide of the Palestinians.Ayelet Shaked, 14/7/14.
"Mothers of all Palestinians should be killed. They have to die and their houses should be demolished. They are all our enemies and their blood should be on our hands."
A day before Palestinian teenager Muhammad Abu Khudair was kidnapped and burned alive by 6 Jew thugs, Shaked published a call for the genocide of the Palestinians in Facebook.
"The entire Palestinian people is the enemy, including its elderly and its women, its cities and its villages, its property and its infrastructure."
She called for the slaughter of Palestinian mothers. "to prevent them giving birth to little snakes."The King's Torah, 230 page book published 2009 by Od Yosef Chai Yeshiva. Authors Rabbis Yitzhak Shapira and Yosef Elitzur. Endorsed by many leading rabbis.
It openly incites and calls for the extermination of the Palestinians, and explains how this is morally justified.
It is a call for indiscriminate extermination.
The killing of children, en masse, responds to "the existence of an internal need for revenge."
"In the face of revenge, no one is innocent, be they old, young, children, men or women, and regardless of their health."
It rejects any notion of international law and the protection of civilians in time of war, or international humanitarian law on the prevention of genocide. Israel is above international law, because Jews are superior to Gentiles and the lives of Gentiles have no value.Jews are indoctrinated from birth to hate all the goyim.
Israel is an openly genocidal, terrorist, racist state.
There is no doubt that in the event of a major war with Iran, it would use this as cover to commit genocide, which has been long planned.I apologise for taking up so much space in replying to your very telling question about what alternative is there to Labour. First, it should now be clear to everyone that Labour, whether led by Corbyn or any other 'left' social democrat, is no answer to the dire situation we face. Right now there is no mass party on this planet that can provide the leadership necessary, let alone serve as the instrument, for the revolutionary change so desperately needed to excise the malignancy of capitalism from the human social organism. This is a crisis of revolutionary leadership.markThe bourgeois Greens are not the answer either, and most of the traditional left and 'far' left are mired in one form or another of opportunistic kow-towing to Corbyn and Labour or the Greens. This isn't to say that one should never vote Labour, the party of the working class. It's to say that one should only give support to Labour, as 'a rope supports a hanging man' (Lenin), when it furthers revolutionary and class consciousness in the working class. The working class, as politically backward as it might be now in many ways, is the only class with the social power to overthrow the capitalists -- it can stop and start production at will and, most importantly, if it had the political consciousness and leadership to do so, it could take over production and overthrow capitalism. Such a consciousness is smothered and suppressed by Labour and the current leaders of the trade unions (such as the latter currently exist).
Presently Labour deserves no vote because under Corbyn they've refused to support Brexit and are pushing for a second referendum. Tony Benn, Corbyn's mentor, would have been railing against him over his betrayal of this fundamental class issue in Britain. Corbyn is Blair lite. On the EU he's Blair quiet.
If in power, Corbyn would either be forced to bow to the diktats of capital and the ruling class or be pushed out, and pronto. Already forces centred on MI6's The Guardian, the Zionist lobby, the aristocratic feudal relics, the military, 'the City' rentiers, and of course the Blairites, have been undermining him because of his mild reformist and foreign policy stances. However, the ruling class would rush to Corbyn and Labour, or another 'left' alternative, if their rule were seriously threatened by an awakened working class. Before fascism, Corbyn would be their best and last hope.
What then of the left and far left? They're all still propaganda groups. We have the likes of the SP, SWP, Socialist Alternative and so on, who've advocated a vote for Labour unconditionally at just about every election. And they've also supported the bourgeois Greens. In doing so, they provide no alternative to Labour. Instead their strategy is to try to pressure Labour to the left. How's that been working? Corbyn still supports the EU. How many times has he mentioned Julian Assange? Or the basic necessity to do away with the monarchy and House of Lords and all the other 'traditions of the dead generations [that] weigh like a nightmare upon the living' (Marx). At least in the US, the ISO (followers of the late Tony Cliff) have decided to sate their opportunistic appetites and dissolve themselves to join the Democratic Socialists of America (ie, social democrats inside a bourgeois party, the Democratic Party of Hiroshima and Nagasaki).
Then we have the Socialist Equity Party, ostensibly 'Trotskyist' and followers of David North, that declares trade unions in principle to be an instrument for the subjugation of the working class. Imagine that: the prime defense organs of the working class historically are written off in advance because their leaderships betray the rank and file (which they do, but not always, not inevitably). Outfits like the SEP don't have a perspective to take these trade union leaderships on from within and fight to replace them with a revolutionary leadership in the heat of struggle to turn the unions into real working class defense organs.
Consequently, a revolutionary consciousness cannot be developed from within the working class in struggle for it to act in its own historic interests. The SEP have a slew of other programmatic issues that are awry as well, but their outlook boils down to opportunism afraid of itself.
This isn't to say that the World Socialist Website is completely useless. It isn't, but its articles on workers and trade union struggles in particular need to be taken with a large grain of salt.
In short, if there are only propaganda groups at the moment that pose an alternative to Labour, then it at least behoves those looking for an alternative to Labour to not waste time or effort on any group that can't get even the basics of a program right, let alone before they even dirty their hands in actual struggle.
What's left then? Right now, the first criteria to look out for is if an ostensibly revolutionary group advocates 'No vote to Labour', and draws a class line for Brexit and against a new referendum; one that works consistently to destroy any illusions in the bourgeois state and its parliament ever being 'reformed' to act in the interests of the working class -- which means also exposing those who do. That's pretty fundamental, but it's a start.
So far the only group that does these things in the UK is the Spartacist League of Britain. See:
https://www.icl-fi.org/english/wh/index.html
and
https://www.icl-fi.org/english/wv/1157/brexit.htmlVery shrewd assessment. But I'd say a re run of pre war Weimar is the most likely outcome. People are far more likely to turn to far worse than Trump or Farage as things deteriorate. Expect to see more Zionist controlled opposition like the EDL.maggieMmm.. Stephen, a very interesting reply.. and links, which I will read and try to digest, though I have to confess a lot of the information contained therein, at 'first glance' I thought had been tried, tested and failed owing to the avarice of the capitalists and their power to remove the ground from under our feet.Stephen Morrell
This may be the wrong interpretation? But I will read the links more thoroughly and try to get my head around the concepts.What I think we could do immediately, is to have the one man one vote system, to elect the 'man/woman' we choose to represent us and dispense with 'parties' altogether.
Surely, it can't be that difficult with today's technology, which would automatically dispense with the ballot box and the inherent frauds that continually happen.
Or am I being too simplistic and naïve?
Then again.. isn't this just the Russian system, and was that of Libya?The organs of power that spring up during revolutions are what work at the time. They're not created a priori, but they go on to serve the basis for the exercise of mass democracy. The Paris Commune had the The Committee of Public Safety, Russia had soviets (Russian for workers' council) that first arose in 1905 and again in 1917. The basis for their power rests on a politically conscious and armed constituency that has risen up which can recall elected representatives at any time (because they're armed).espartacoSoviets elect representatives to higher soviet bodies (collegiate system), but their main purpose is to decide and vote on what, not whom. On an economic plan for example.
In contrast, bourgeois democracy at most gives you the privilege of voting for which scumbag will oppress you for the next 4 or 5 years. This is not to denigrate democratic rights but it is the way capitalist rule is disguised and legitimated; and we're made to feel responsible for outcomes because we participated in voting in elections. We help the executioner load his gun. One should never confuse elections with democracy.
I can recommend the following reading list which might help:
EH Carr, "What is History" (a great, broad-brushed approach to understanding different stages in human history and development).
K Marx, F Engels, "The Communist Manifesto"
F Engels, "Socialism Utopian and Scientific"
VI Lenin, "What Is To Be Done" (On the need for a party of the Bolshevik type)
VI Lenin, "State and Revolution" (On why the existing state must be smashed replaced by a new one, and what happens to it after a socialist revolution)
LD Trotsky, "Lessons of October" (On why the revolution occurred in backward Russia and not Germany)
LD Trotsky, "Results and Prospects" (On why backward countries in the epoch of imperialism not being able make a bourgeois revolution whose tasks can only be accomplished by a proletarian revolution -- the theory of 'Permanent Revolution')
LD Trotsky, "The Revolution Betrayed" (Why Stalin arose and soviet democracy was smashed in the USSR)
Some of these are a little heavy going and polemical (eg, Lenin), and Marx is full of historical and literary references, but patience will be rewarded. Except for EH Carr (available as a Penguin classic), these can all be accessed at: https://www.marxists.org/
Too much ado about nothing It is very simple Socialism has NOTHING to do with religion Judaism, Christianism, Islamism or whatever. They invite these kind problems because the bourgeois that control Labour, allowed every kind of minorities to infiltrate the Party (and all other parties) to, eventually, destroy it through religious, racial and minority wars. What you see is what you get when leftist minoritymongering has taken over politics. The solution is very simple, all religious groups should be thrown out of the party, together with all the bourgeois. MP's first !!!lundielI agree. We currently have MPs of all parties acting as agents for their countries of birth, or as agents of third countries (Ms Smeeth). This worked when they (agents) had no real political power, they were limited to cultural exchange visits etc. The change came with the growth in size and power of our security services .there's more than one way to skin a cat like Corbyn!MaggieFear not Lundiel, the work is already begun . Jeremy will NEVER be allowed to lead.MuchoAnonymous 'Civil Servants' (Deep State Operatives) have briefed the media regarding the allegedly frail condition of possible PM-to-be Jeremy Corbyn on the basis of – no evidence whatever.
Understandably, Corbyn is very angry about this demanding an investigation into the leak.Given the story is without foundation and knowing the threat the establishment sees in Corbyn, a leader whose policies include the creation of a National Bank (aaaarghh the fiend the fiend) and the renationalisation of public utilities (including transport) a leader whose knee-jerk reaction to Ashkenazi Jewish assaults against the Semitic population in Israel is to speak out loudly and boldly in defence of Palestinians' rights
given all this, we know that the idea of Jeremy Corbyn as Prime Minister of Great Britain is absolutely unacceptable to our ruling 'establishment'.
Let it be said then what Mr Corbyn and his inner circle must be thinking about the appearance of this non-story that the establishment is 'creating the option to eliminate' Mr. Corbyn (by heart attack dart?) in the event of his winning or threatening to win a UK general election.
Performing such a national service would be 'business as usual' for our "protectors" at MI5.
For example -Keith Mothersson: After he died in 2009, his obituary appeared in The Guardian.
The following facts are not included in the obituary of this heroic absolute gentleman:
"Keith created an organisation in 2008/9 called "ALL FAITHS FOR 9/11 TRUTH".
He, like most members of '9/11 Truth (UK & Ireland)', saw 9/11 truth as a spiritual (as much as a political) matter.
He went round the country meeting religious leaders and forming connections and bonds between the various groups he had organised. There were C of E, Catholic, Muslim (the largest group based in a couple of the biggest mosques in the country), Buddhist, and even a Jewish group.
I was involved with Keith, approaching 'Catholic' leaders (as an aside, the couple I tried to talk to [it was early days] were hostile to the idea even engaging with the issue maybe, for someone who has taken vows of obedience, this is an issue for the Pope alone)."The thing is that Keith was the connection and bond between the groups he had started forming.
He lived in Perth, Scotland. On one evening during September 2009 Keith returned to his house in Perth. He arrived home in a dishevelled state, exhausted and confused. He told his partner that he been accosted by a group of men on the walk home and had "a terrible struggle in a van". He had been held down then released. He repeated "Why me?" to himself a few times before his partner helped him to bed.
She told friends that when Keith woke up he didn't know who he was. He did not recognise her either. He was taken to hospital where he lay silently in bed for two weeks before dying.
A multi-faith, well-organised, religious collective demanding answers re 9/11 represented a genuine threat to the "Deep State".
Keith had gone too far. He was "eliminated" and his nascent organisation along with him.
And there is no one to whom one can even report this terrible crime. Such is the nature of our society.
https://wwwkevboyle.blogspot.com/2019/06/corbyns-health-and-keith-mothersson.htmlJeremy Corbyn is not a fool. He understands very well the 'options' for the Deep State such a story creates and what this leak could possibly imply.. that is why I believe he may look as if he is indecisive?
Very interesting Maggie, thanksandyoldlabourThat is indeed correct. The various politicians who are involved in this disgraceful hounding of Corbyn and others, have pledged alliegence to Israel and the interference of Israel in the politics of the UK.Martin UsherThe key to the anti-Semitism problem is the conflation of Judaism with Zionism. This didn't happen by accident, it is a deliberate and relatively modern policy. (An old (Jewish) friend described the indoctrination he got to me growing up. That was quite a long time ago, its probably so ingrained now that nobody notices this process any more.)RamdanI may have a very simplistic view of things but to me Judaism is an Abrahamic religion with deep roots going back thousands of years. Zionism is a relatively modern European movement that dates from the latter half of the 19th century that has origins and aims that are not unlike many other 'volk' movements from the same period. Most of these were relatively harmless, 'back to the land' sorts of things but the racial undertones provided the underpinnings for, among others, the Nazis.
I know I'll probably get flamed for saying this but seriously there's a huge undercurrent of racism in some parts of Jewish society. I was first made aware of this many years ago when and old (goy) friend made the mistake of marrying an Orthodox girl. Up to that point I had only known secular/reform Jews so didn't think too much of it but the reaction from her family was quite extreme, protracted and not at all nice. The culture's there if you look for it -- its actually not unlike radical Islam in mindset so if it ever gets to a position of power (e.g. in modern Israel) then its going to be trouble for the untermensch!
"Israeli Zionism is the singular cancer that has been forcefully injected into the minds of world leaders across the globe; a cancer that these similarly affected leaders would wantonly force upon what little remains of the moral, civilized and correct conscience of man."vwbeetleZionism is a malevolent influence upon the body politic of the western world.Francis LeeThe picture of Tom Watson and the other political 5th Columnists in the Labour party standing in front of a very large blue and white star of David flag tells us all we need to know. A bit like a political group in the UK sporting a Hammer and Sickle flag at Tory party conference. Labour Friends of Israel is of course a Zionist front in the LP. It's object is to further Israeli interests, and therefore it necessarily means against British interests. What else would they be doing? Promoting socialism perhaps? LFI has already been set in motion to get Corbyn and his co-thinkers to change their ways or else. In this sense also the British elite are working hand-in-glove with LFI and the Israelis, and it wouldn't at all surprise me if the CIA were not also involved at some level.mathias alexandThe trouble with Labour is that it doesn't want to be regarded as being 'extreme' or 'unrespectable'; oh dear no. We've even done away with Clause 4. Now how much higher do you want us to jump? We want to be Her Majesty's loyal opposition. 'Pale pink humbug' as Orwell called it. He called it right.
Labour is hampered by a lack of internal democracy which goes back to its origins as an alliance of pre-existing groups like trade unions, etc.DunGroaninThe Obsessive Groaniads daily pile of AS mud slinging, Barbara Ellen frothsGezzah Potts
"maddening, mendacious, slippery, gormless, prevaricating'
she snarls NOT writing about the tory clowns.
"I've long been anti-Corbyn for reasons beyond Brexit (antisemitism, anybody?)"
She raves and slobbers not realising that she is projecting.Another article there by a 'famous' author – ive never heard of – has his unnamed publicist getting lots of free advertising for his 'great' writings for free because he thinks he has been subjected to AS!
Complete Utter Nonsensical Crappery by the shameless gormless Groaniad.
Ho hum – wait till the next government tasks the completion and implementation of Leveson 2.
DG . What do you expect from these presstitute stenographers. Full boycott of all mainstream media, including alleged 'progressive' media. On a tangent, used to read Barbara Ellen many years ago (30?) when she wrote for the NME which was basically my 'bible' back then. How sad the once great Babs Ellen has become a . Slug.DunGroaninAh the NME – a bible for us back in the day – see how it was taken out and shot after it supported Corbyn in 2017.Gezzah PottsA very accidental death it suffered.
Imagine what they would bave done to Russell Brand if he had had the same influence.
Yes i'm afraid most of the neolib con artiste creatures of the Obssezsive Groan are beyond saving. They will sizzle in the light.
Thanks DG. I only know the NME is now online only, didn't know the reasons for its print demise. I wonder what the late Steven Wells would have made of all this ludicrous crap? I just can't tolerate the cretinous craven presstitutes in the MSM anymore. Gets me too fecked off knowing what they're loudly spouting is pro empire, pro imperialist bullshit in the service of the 0.01℅. Good site for you to check is Neoliberalism Softpanorama. A vast treasure trove of info.Francis LeeWhat is difficult to forgive is the fact in times gone by, and occasionally today, the Jewish intelligentsia have made a huge input into the development of western civilization. In terms of politics, Marx, Rosa Luxembourg, Greogy Lukacs, Eduard Bernstein, Leon Trotsky, Leonard Woolf; in terms of social theory, Emile Durkheim, Sigmund Freud, Erich Fromm, Hannah Arendt; in terms of literaure Franz Kafka, Saul Bellow. Contemporary intellectuals being Noam Chomsky, Norman Finkelstein and possibly a less well-known and very courageous Jewish oppositionist, Gideon Levy, who writes for Haaretz. These were the guys I cut my teeth on as a student and whom I still revere to a great extent. It was the Jewish intelligentsia who led the opposition against the forces of reaction, particularly in Europe.John CalvertTimes have changed it seems, Israel and Zionism are now the forces of reaction.
Yes. But how many of those great names would have willingly and proudly posed in front of the national flag of the state of Israel?Philip ToalFacts would be appreciated in light of the truth that G. levy, Finkelstein, Pappe etc. are indeed alive and well. It's apparently a case of informed opinions based on pure facts as opposed to ignorance as to who is alive or dead that is issue important.Chris WAntinationalism for goyim and nationalism for jews – because goyim have these genocidal tendencies Many, many Jews deep down believe that Non-Jews want to kill them, so pre-emptive strikes is the way to go. Most of all strikes against the ethnic and religious identity of non-Jewish people, because those identities make a people strong. So socialist Jews in Europe and zionist ones everywhere fight the same pro-Jewish/anti-goyim fightharry lawJohn McDonnell encapsulates for me the pathetic spinelessness of the Labour Party, in a long interview with the Jewish news the interviewer asked him why Corbyn shared platforms with Anti-semites "So when we're talking about sharing a platform with anti-Semites, we're not talking about people who are just supportive of the Palestinian cause, do you think it might be time for an apology"?markJmD: "You have to look at why he was sharing platforms, it was not to endorse them, it was to try and engage with them".
There you have it, his friend Corbyn spent the past 30 years of his life traversing the country addressing Palestinian and antiwar groups and offering them his support, then in one sentence McDonnell throws his friend under the bus "it was not to endorse them". With a friend like McDonnell who needs enemies.
My advice to McDonnell is get on your belly and crawl and then ask for forgiveness from the Board of Deputies, it still will not be enough. They will only be happy when Corbyn is destroyed.However much you grovel and appease these people, it is never enough. Give $10 billion to Israel and you're anti semitic because you haven't given it $50 billion. Fight 5 wars for Israel, and you're anti semitic because you haven't fought 10 wars for Israel.Steve HayesNetanyahu explained it all quite well.
"If we get caught, they will just replace us with persons of the same cloth. So it does not matter what you do. America is a golden calf, and we will suck it dry, chop it up and sell it off piece by piece till there is nothing left but the world's biggest welfare state that we will create and control. Why? Because it is the Will of God and America is big enough to take the hit. So we can do it again and again and again. This is what we do to countries that we hate. We destroy them very slowly and make them suffer for refusing to be our slaves."
To America, add Britain.
The comparison to a witch hunt is perfectly accurate. The attack works by mere accusation. The facts, evidence, criteria of evaluation are all irrelevant. Accuse emotively, and construe any dissent or even scepticism as proof of guilt. This is the modus operandi of the witch hunters, the arbiters of truth and the only acceptable version of reality. This becomes a loyalty test. Anyone who refuses to support the witch hunters is either already a witch or in imminent danger of becoming one. https://viewsandstories.blogspot.com/2018/09/on-dog-whistles-and-witch-finders.htmlHarry Stotle'The attack works by mere accusation. The facts, evidence, criteria of evaluation are all irrelevant. Accuse emotively, and construe any dissent or even scepticism as proof of guilt. This is the modus operandi of the witch hunters' – hammer, welcome to head of nail.MaggieRight out of Goebel's hand bookSteve Hayes
- "This is the secret of propaganda: Those who are to be persuaded by it should be completely immersed in the ideas of the propaganda, without ever noticing that they are being immersed in it."
- "The truth is the greatest enemy of the State."
- "If you tell a lie big enough and keep repeating it, people will eventually come to believe it. The lie can be maintained only for such time as the State can shield the people from the political, economic and/or military consequences of the lie. It thus becomes vitally important for the State to use all of its powers to repress dissent, for the truth is the mortal enemy of the lie, and thus by extension, the truth is the greatest enemy of the State."
Maggie I am pretty sure that none of the quotes you attribute to Goebbels were said/written by him. Perhaps you could cite your source(s)?MuchoHurricane survivors forced to pledge allegiance to Israel to receive Support (In Texas Town) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PqOIeUTx8VQ&t=11sMuchoFormer Congresswoman Cynthia McKinney talks with PressTV about how the Israeli Lobby owns both the Congress and the Senate and how AIPAC and the ADL took her out. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=w_VNOk7Wv5A
More than 200 British MPs sign a pledge to Israel https://unitedwithisrael.org/over-200-uk-candidates-sign-pro-israel-pledge/
Montel Jordan – This Is How We Do It https://www.youtube.com/embed/0hiUuL5uTKc
More than 200 British MPs sign a pledge to Israel ..should say Candidates for election, not MPs
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Jul 29, 2019 | off-guardian.org
Bonanza media investigative team of independent journalists conduct exclusive interviews with one of the suspects in the downing the MH17, the Malaysian prime minister, the colonel that collected the black boxes and much more.
Eye-opening testimonies from witnesses and irrefutable evidence from experts. Exclusive footage shot in Malaysia, the Netherlands and at the crash area in Ukraine.
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Jul 29, 2019 | off-guardian.org
mark
He once got drunk on a bottle of vodka before he became a teetotaller. He often wears a red tie. He was once seen attending a film performance of "War And Peace." And (a dead giveaway) he has been seen talking to Putin and actually shaking his hand.
And if all that isn't conclusive evidence that he's a Kremlin spy, then I don't know what is.
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Dec 25, 2018 | www.theguardian.com
For 40 years, the ideology popularly known as "neoliberalism" has dominated political decision-making in the English-speaking west.
People hate it . Neoliberalism's sale of state assets, offshored jobs, stripped services, poorly-invested infrastructure and armies of the forcibly unemployed have delivered, not promised "efficiency" and "flexibility" to communities, but discomfort and misery. The wealth of a few has now swelled to a level of conspicuousness that must politely be considered vulgar yet the philosophy's entrenched itself so deeply in how governments make decisions and allocate resources that one of its megaphones once declared its triumph "the end of history".
... ... ...
Paul Keating's rejection
It was a year ago that a third sign first appeared, when the dark horse of Australian prime ministers, Paul Keating, made public an on-balance rejection of neoliberal economics. Although Liberal PM Malcolm Fraser instigated Australia's first neoliberal policies, it was Keating's architecture of privatisation and deregulation as a Labor treasurer and prime minister that's most well remembered.
Now, "we have a comatose world economy held together by debt and central bank money," Keating has said, "Liberal economics has run into a dead end and has had no answer to the contemporary malaise." What does the disavowal mean? In terms of his Labor heir Bill Shorten's growing appetite for redistributive taxation and close relationship to the union movement, it means "if Bill Shorten becomes PM, the rule of engagement between labour and capital will be rewritten," according to The Australian this week. Can't wait!
Tony Abbott becomes a fan of nationalising assets
Or maybe's Sukkar's right about the socialists termiting his beloved Liberal party. How else to explain the earthquake-like paradigm shift represented by the sixth sign? Since when do neoliberal conservatives argue for the renationalisation of infrastructure, as is the push of Tony Abbott's gang to nationalise the coal-fired Liddell power station? It may be a cynical stunt to take an unscientific stand against climate action, but seizing the means of production remains seizing the means of production, um, comrade. "You know, nationalising assets is what the Liberal party was founded to stop governments doing," said Turnbull, even as he hid in the dens and in the rocks of the mountains to weather – strange coincidence – yet another Newspoll loss.
• Van Badham is a Guardian Australia columnist
"new introduction to a re-released Marx and Engels' Communist Manifesto. Collective, democratic political action is our only chance for freedom and enjoyment."fleax -> internationalist07 07 , 27 Apr 2018 05:43Might be true. But frightening that people should naively still think that democracy is to be found in the 'Dictatorship of the Proletariat' [ ie those who know what's good for you even if you don't like it ] of the Communist Manifesto after the revelations of what that leads to in the Gulag Archipelago , Mao's China , Pol Pot , Kim John - un .
How quickly the world forgets. - you might just as well advocate Mein Kampf it's the same thing in the end !
most "isms" kill off their rivals and the unbelievers when they usurp powercharleyb23 -> RedmondM , 27 Apr 2018 05:37That's what you claim and it might be so but I'm not interested in keeping a score on the matter. The point you failed to get is that the people you mentioned where totalitarian thugs. They used the banner of communism to achieve their ends. They would have used what ever ideology that was in fashion to achieve the same results.daily_phil , 27 Apr 2018 05:35Does present day neo-liberalism actually qualify as a political movement?Vested interests and the dollar seem to have all the power. Lies and deception are so common the truth is seen as the enemy. The voting public are merely fools for manipulation. Nah, neo-liberalism is not government, it is something far nastier, and clearly not what the public vote for, presuming a vote actually counts for anything anymore.
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Jul 23, 2019 | www.theguardian.com
TashiDelek , 24 Jan 2019 13:41
Tech platforms circumvented the MSM and allowed different voices to be heard. Policing these platforms are still currently beyond the capabilities of tech companies. Content censorship is a main focus of AI right now. You can expect an impersonal, Stalinist PC police in every platform very soon.Gegenbeispiel -> MoBro999 , 23 Jan 2019 09:05Narratives themselves are the problem.UpVoteThis -> DasInternaut , 23 Jan 2019 08:32We need to be looking at the current situation. History (almost entirely an extremely unpleasant horror show) is only relevant in that we have to deal with its mostly negative relics.
Your way of looking at things assumes that everybody has convergent interests. The populists argument is that those smart guys in power are only looking after their own interests and not everybody else's.daWOID -> Kapone78 , 23 Jan 2019 02:23Fighting ignorance with ignorance? Not a cool move, Comrade.999Jasper , 23 Jan 2019 01:55"[Marx] had few qualms about colonialism as many leftists in the 19th century."
1] Read Marx's stuff on India and Ireland and American Slavery.2] "Marx didn't say much about culture."
Intro to the Grundrisse? Feuerbach Theses? German Ideology? All of what's been dismissed as the "Humanist" Marx, meaning almost everything written before Capital?3] " it is actually right-wingers who have used Gramsci's concept of Cultural Hegemony with both hands."
Read up. Here's for starters:Which brings me to the gist:
"Cultural Marxism," also known as Western Marxism, non-Leninist Marxism, etc. etc. Stuff they can't accuse of being in collusion with Marxist-Leninism, Stalinism, etc. Ranging from late Engels to Adorno to Benjamin to Sartre and beyond.""Bannon, Kristol and many other have read him extensively."
About as much as you have, pal.Kapone78 , 23 Jan 2019 00:46It doesn't seem to have occurred to the author that the American populist right, not the European populist right, has the weaker argument, when it comes to Silicon Valley.This is a paradox that clever progressives ought to be able to exploit, if only by asking non-American rightwing populists to explain their great love for an industry that even Steve Bannon considers to be "evil".
I think Big Tech ought to pay higher taxes (and I vehemently oppose the scandalous subsidies and tax breaks they receive), but I think that's the case with all vastly wealthy corporate interests, including such sectors as finance, property, bio-pharma, and energy.
I'm not much of a fan of Facebook, but in general my life's loads more convenient and affordable because of the likes of Google, Netflix, Amazon, Uber and Airbnb. Plus, you know, they seem to piss off Trump and Bannon. So that's a plus.
As a Marxist, I would like someone to explain to me the meaning of the expression "cultural Marxism".StephenO , 23 Jan 2019 00:28It's cool to be an intellectual onanist or an outright bell-end (like Bolsonaro's minister who said that global warming was a Marxist plot), but words have meanings and it would be nice to use words carefully.
The bloody irony of "cultural Marxism" is that even though Marx didn't say much about culture, LGBTQ(put another letter here) or minorities (he had few qualms about colonialism as many leftists in the 19th century), it is actually right-wingers who have used Gramsci's concept of Cultural Hegemony with both hands.
Bannon, Kristol and many other have read him extensively and have the cheek to criticise others for promoting "cultural Marxism", which is a figment of their imagination.
Cultural Marxism is the Godwin point of intellectual discourse.
cyberclark , 22 Jan 2019 19:29The American wing of the movement sees big tech as an attractive target of attack....
One of those statements that indicates how deep you are wandering in the woods. There is an onslaught of EU countries and EU councils that have sued big tech in the US. The investigations don't stop and the threats don't stop.
In 2018, the EU hit Google with a fine of $5 billion in an antitrust verdict with respect to the Android operating system. In 2017, the EU hit Google with a $2.7 billion judgement with respect to displaying advertisements.
That is just the recent material with respect to Google.
The biggest pressure faced by Facebook (again) comes from the left. The pressures over data, the race to take-down opposing viewpoints and the fines for non-compliance. Facebook has been forced by the left to hire so many "fact-checkers" that it has affected its profitability. (Recent discoveries reveal that Mark Zuckerberg lied to Congress -- a felony offense.)
... as bashing it helps to delegitimize the legacy of Obama and Clinton, seen as its primary enablers.
The Clinton's have amassed a remarkable trail of felony violations in many areas. Continued pressure against the swamp is slowly removing their layers of protection. Documents and evidence are also appearing that implicates Obama and some advisers in various illegal activities in 2016 with respect to the FBI and DOJ.
That process continues to move forward, irregardless of the House.
The Right Wing Christian parties have found the Immigrant hot button with which to field their arguments. Loosely knitted with finance to hide their real purpose, they are finding success. I say, unmask them for their actual fears propelled by underlying bigotry and fear.iruka , 22 Jan 2019 16:51StephenO , 22 Jan 2019 16:06"Big tech monsters like Google and Facebook have become nothing less than incubators for far-left liberal ideologies and are doing everything they can to eradicate conservative ideas and their proponents from the internet."
If only it were true.
No fan of Mussolini, but he did oversee the eradication of malaria in Italy.
And I love free speech, but it's hard to justify the proposition that "conservative ideas" really constitute a set of ideas, a coherent perspective. They're more accurately understood as a set of noises, devoid of coherent meaning, made while harming oneself and others.... They're just more verbose versions of, say, the inarticulate noises made by a headmaster while whipping a young child for some fabricated misdemeanour. Noises the child will learn to make while punishing others......
Peter Gray -> Gegenbeispiel , 22 Jan 2019 15:53But there's one issue on which there's no agreement between American rightwing populists and their peers in the rest of the world: what to make of Silicon Valley. On the one hand, its services and platforms have been a boon to the populists everywhere...
Followed by more strawmen and generalized incoherence. In a recent speech, Macron started by reminding his audience of Marie-Antoinette and King Louis XVI. The later was decapitated because of a poor economic performance and wide-spread discontent.
And in 1517, the theologian Martin Luther nailed Thesis 86 to a church door and started the Protestant Reformation.
In Morozov's scope of history, humanity has never experienced a social eruption, revolution, or change of direction until Silicon Valley. That is not surprising since the progressive left's extent of history begins around 1932.
Also, the author's knowledge of Silicon Valley's history is heavily flawed with biases and fraudulent presentations.
Tech isn't new anymore. Silicon Valley is almost 40 years old in terms of its social impact. That's equivalent to the 1960s for the US car industry, which is about the time that the social and political negatives of car ownership began to manifest in public debate. The novelty of big tech has begun wearing off as its early benefits fade, and the costs to society linger. It's the rest of the world that is lagging behind the USA in terms of disillusionmentPeter Gray -> 1Eloise , 22 Jan 2019 15:48The far left and the far right have a point about tech. Silicon Valley has always had lamentable political tendencies: a love of both neoliberalism, a penchance for "Singaporean" authoritarianism, and an ungainly mix of personal hubris and pseudomessianic claptrap. In the US big tech is guilty of overselling itself to the public while just proving to be little better at corporate citizenship than oil companies.Layng1 , 22 Jan 2019 11:52The ambition and business method of all social media is to create a condition of extreme excitability, reactiveness and strong engagement by users so as to maximize participation and thereby to drive revenue streams, whether these are advertising or product sales or data acquisition for future commercial exploitation.Layng1 -> irishmaninholland , 22 Jan 2019 11:33Accordingly, Big Tech relies on the hyper provocation and ultra engagement of the "2 minutes hate" as it is described by some.
It's like throwing out morsels of raw meat to a group of crocodiles or alligators and watching the feeding frenzy.
The commercial model of Big Tech demands the strong drivers of intense hate, fear, envy and even hostility.
Negative emotions, acting on the more primitive parts of the brain, subvert our critical faculties and drive our impulsive and destructive behaviours for the advantage of Big Tech.
Politically correct and worthy speech will ertainly not optimize the revenues. You need the fulminating hate merchants, the graders, the nasties and the trolls. That gets other users highly exercised and strongly engaged.
I know of few social media based outlets which cynically and manipulatively use a few social provocateurs to throw out incendiary and provocative hate speech so as to get the punters enraged and engaged.
Alt-right and hard right sells. Hate speech stimulates.
The commercial objective is to get the online dogs salivating out of a Pavlovian reaction to the trigger bells of hate, discrimination, fear of migrants, provocation over identity issues, fear of being swamped, loss if he familiar and the rise tinted but deceptive lens of nostalgia for a wholly fictitious imagined past.
Gd point. The ambition of all social media is to create a condition of extreme excitability, reactive ness and engagement so as to maximize participation and thereby to drive revenue streams.MatthewHenson -> bradgate , 22 Jan 2019 09:49Excellent and apposite reference to Orwell in this context.
Big Tech relies on the hyper privication and engagement of the "2 minutes hate" as you aptly describe it.
It's like throwing out morsels ofvraw meet to a group of crocodiles or alligators and watching the feeding frenzy.
The commercial model of Big Tech demands the drivers of hate, fear, envy and even hostility. Negative emotions, acting on the more primitive parts of the brain, subvert our critical faculties and drive our impulsive and destructive behaviors.
Politically correct and worthy speech will not optimize the revenues.
I know of few social media based outlets which cynically and manipulatively use a few social provocateurs to throw out incendiary and provocative hate speech so as to get the punters engaged.
Alt-right and hard right sells. Hate speech stimulates.
Get the online dogs salivating out of a Pavlovian reaction to the trigger bells.
And as we have seen with Facebook's monthly scandals they are not going to behave better unless they are forced to. It would be good to have governments that might help: right now that's the EU alone, China being a special case.jonniestewpot -> edmundberk , 22 Jan 2019 09:46Layng1 , 22 Jan 2019 08:22Left wing is not really to do with labour politics anymore
Of course it is though that was simply a vehicle to uplift the whole of society making it egalitarian. Silicon Valley can only be implicated as left wing as communism for the rich. In no respect are they looking for equality quite the reverse their celebrated ideal is the emancipation of the individual to be great wealth creators, if they have a social conscience their beneficence will be to become philanthropists creating another legacy from their wealth.
You can see why European fascist like them they were always happy to work with capitalists in the past. It seems their US counterparts are behind the curve on that.
Big Tech preserves the surface veneer of democracy whilst controlling the prejudices and direction of the electorates.MoBro999 -> Tiny Toy , 22 Jan 2019 08:08Big Tech assimilates us into a hive mind. It is not yet absolute but we are well on the way to being controlled by those who use Big Tech to direct us.
Only the far right libertarian billionaires can afford to use Big Tech to impose their wishes.
Democracy is being replaced by a toxic mix of plutocracy, technocracy and a mobbing mass directed like a murmurstion of starlings.
Read Shoshana Zuboff's book, "Surveillance Capitalism" for an insight.
I consume social media and technology; therefore I am.
"The rhetoric of hatred and divisiveness only has one logical conclusion, which is ultimately to pit every individual against every other individual. The order in which they do so is not some kind of universal, it's a complex product of cultural fears and how they can be exploited."Smolker -> PeppermintSeal , 22 Jan 2019 07:54But ironically the obsession with "identity politics" the erasure of wider communities in favour of further and further fragmentation- seen as "progressive", is helping to deliver the same agenda. is it not? It concentrates on what makes us different, not what makes us similar.
Gegenbeispiel , 22 Jan 2019 07:28No, they've provided a platform for almost anyone to encourage and amplify their message, including far-left, far-right, people looking for missing cats etc.
I made this point in my original post.
You seem to be agreeing with me for the sake of disagreement, as a mechanism to get your point across, in the process omitting and skewing the points I made.
You subtly edited one of my statements to omit the term capital. My full sentence was as below:
We're in a desperate situation where capital and tech giants have utilised social media to encourage, amplify and legitimise the very worst human impulses.
The point here is that capital has a tremedous advantage over smaller and grass roots movements because it can employ companies such as Cambridge Analytica and Aggregate IQ to mobilise opinion.*
In this arena, as in every arena, money helps people seize and bolster power. The assertion that left and right can exert the same influence in this domain is a false equivalence.
Social media isn't a channel through which all views can flow equally. Your claim to this effect is either disingenuous or naive.
* They're the same company, but that's another discussion.
Here's a sound analysis of the global economy for you, Zhenya: capitalism is an unrecoverable failure. Wreck it, scrap it, replace it by egalitarian cybernetically centrally-planned low-competition, moderated-consumption leisure-oriented socialism with a private sector limited to 30% of GDP or less.partoftheproblem , 22 Jan 2019 07:08One thing that appears to be missing from this is the recent trend in rightwing populists being kicked off online payment processes services & fund raising tools, not to mention twitter and similar social media platforms. It's easy enough to understand thePenneArrabiata -> callaspodeaspode , 22 Jan 2019 07:04Alex Jones/Infowars being banned from paypal being one such example, another interesting one is, again, paypal and them banning the Proud Boys , the amusing part is they banned Antifa groups as well for violating the same terms of service.
Throw in social media sites "Purging political discussions" and it's easy to see how there's going to be hate from populists. Social media has become a vital tool of political discussion, but it's not... yet stable, the platform providers are reactionary and inconsistent in their approach to sorting problems.
I think this can be explained by the American propensity to conflate "conservatism" with "market liberalism". It's a sleight of hand that really confuses some people.edmundberk -> ID1174659 , 22 Jan 2019 07:02Left wing is not really to do with labour politics anymore, if it ever was. Arguably it was only ever a useful grievance to be harnessed that has long been superseded. Harnessed to the goal of remaking mankind to the favoured plan of upper middle class utopians. I think that at bottom that is what leftism is in its essence.callaspodeaspode , 22 Jan 2019 07:00The idea that these most ludicrously successful and world-bestriding capitalist enterprises are founded and staffed by Marxists, or folks who are pretty much indistinguishable from Marxists, would, one might think, be something that would engender a long and thoughtful period of reflectioGary Cross -> expatinscandinavia , 22 Jan 2019 06:53Big tech are a classic example of those who are "socially liberal but fiscally conservative". In other words, are happy to have compassion and a conscience...as long as it doesn't cost them anything.ValuedCustomer -> Smolker , 22 Jan 2019 06:52The assumption among academics was that, should new media democratise our politics it would, naturally, advantage the left. The people would throw off their shackles and reclaim authority from capital. The wave would be egalitarian rather than divisive.Capital has successfully devised an ersatz, designedly harmless (to them) "left" and used its class/cultural power to squash and demonise the real thing.
How do we begin to fight back? Can we fight back?
Sure. The bourgeoisie's exploitation of our common decency has pretty much exhausted itself. It's essential that new left currents are exclusively proletarian however.
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Jul 23, 2019 | discussion.theguardian.com
Smolker -> expatinscandinavia , 22 Jan 2019 06:50
PenneArrabiata , 22 Jan 2019 06:49I don't think either 'side' is necessarily wrong here. The social media giants are generally made up of left-leaning people; not necessarily surprising given that they're based in California and are made up of relatively young college graduates.
This is fundamentally untrue.
At best these people have appropriated socially liberal attitudes because it suits their capitalist instincts.
There's a market for social liberalism. Tech giants and their owners have branded aspects of their companies accordingly.
If the money flows in the other direction, these same companies and owners will profit from this stream without compunction. Increasingly that's where the money streams from.
These people are capital. Their ethics stretch no further than their bottom line.
Zuckerberg et al. sell notions of "hacking the system" only to service a profit imperative. Indeed, they've "hacked" publishing laws to dodge accountability.
The last thing they are is left wing.
I don't think this article is very coherent.dsdsdsdsds -> DoctorWibble , 22 Jan 2019 06:48Bannon, while condemning Silicon Valley, is one of the main proponents of the use of its platforms in propaganda. Indeed, it was central to the 2016 election of Trump and the campaigns he has overseen in Europe.
What he describes as "evil" are the utopian tech barons, as they are an easy target for popular hate. This is, of course, rank hypocrisy - as he and his "pro-business" allies are neither calling for them to be taxed nor brought down to size, and they are quite happy to use their services.
Therefore, I don't think there is a divide between the US far right or their offshoots around the world. The paradox at the centre of all these movements is that they are both for and against powerful elites, when it suits them.
The arab spring was initially viewed by many as an anti US uprising using the freedom of the internet.jon9521 -> dsdsdsdsds , 22 Jan 2019 06:41
When it didnt deliver honey and unicorns, by many it was retrospectively recast as a US coup using a US corporation controlled by zionists.Its not the medium it is the ownership and the bias behind it. TV media today is left wing biased not just in UK but US and other western countries too. Similarly, we have to look at the ownership of the big internet companies and their bias today also.ID1174659 -> expatinscandinavia , 22 Jan 2019 06:41If you have a questionable attitude to tax you are NOT left wing. More Libertarian.bradgate , 22 Jan 2019 06:40The tech giants don't care about 'left' or 'right', 'conservative' or 'progressive'. They care about money and they care about enriching their senior executives and shareholders.DoctorWibble , 22 Jan 2019 06:37It wasn't that long ago that progressives bubbled over with excitement at the role played by Twitter and Facebook in the Arab Spring. And of course no profession has embraced Twitter more enthusiastically than journalists. If that was removed half our newspapers would be blank pages. Ambivalence about the big social media platforms is not unique to populists. If your ideas get traction on it you like it. If your opponents ideas get traction you don't. Not entirely unlike traditional media in this respect.Smolker , 22 Jan 2019 06:34The advent of social media produced an upswell of academic papers and arguments.dsdsdsdsds , 22 Jan 2019 06:34As the internet became a growing cultural and political tool, the framing question for much academic debate was as follows:
Will "new media" democratise our culture and politics, or be co-opted by established actors to bolster their hegemonic status.
The assumption among academics was that, should new media democratise our politics it would, naturally, advantage the left. The people would throw off their shackles and reclaim authority from capital. The wave would be egalitarian rather than divisive.
Post-Brexit and Trump, this assumption has been exposed as deeply flawed.
While Western politics has become increasingly polarised, the beneficiaries have been the increasingly hard to far right.
We're in a desperate situation where capital and tech giants have utilised social media to encourage, amplify and legitimise the very worst human impulses.
How do we begin to fight back? Can we fight back?
Isnt this just the modern equivalent of 1950s republicans complaining that new fangled TV makes JFK seem better looking and more likely to win elections? You cant uninvent TV or the internet.geniusofmozart -> Laurence Bury , 22 Jan 2019 06:32
Barack Obama was the pioneer of using social media to help win elections but there was zero outcry about it.Automation will likely eliminate all jobs eventually. The idea that it's a tool of the liberal centre to displace the "provincial periphery" is nonsense.unclestinky , 22 Jan 2019 06:27Nada89 , 22 Jan 2019 06:23Now who else does that remind me of Steve?Steve Bannon called people leading "evil" Silicon Valley "complete narcissists" and "sociopaths"
2008 was the pivotal year that trust was lost in the banks, the political class and the media; all three have been fighting a rearguard action ever since.DasInternaut , 22 Jan 2019 06:21The crash saw politicians use public money to bail out the banks while the media were complicit in subverting this reality, blaming certain groups for causing the melt down (such as the poor, the feckless, migrants, etc).
In the meantime things have become much worse guaranteeing that the next crash (which is just round the corner) will be far worse than 2008 because borrowing has reached such stratospheric proportions, while none of the root causes of 2008 have been addressed - the likes of the Yellow Vests in France are probably a taste of what is to come.
Most of the arguments around the digital media are driven by a desire to surpress the nature of previous and coming economic catastrophes in my opinion typified by some of the groups who are trying to exploit the lack of honesty about why living conditions are under threat in places like Spain, Greece and the North of England.
So outside of the US, populist see social media as a way out of some sort dictatorship by people smarter than themselves? That's just perverse. I want the damned country to be run by people who are smarter than I am. I hope this will actually happen one day.Laurence Bury , 22 Jan 2019 06:19I tend to think that the Atlanticists are right here - Big Tech represents the liberal centre who would happily replace the provincial periphery with robots for cultural as well as economic reasons.expatinscandinavia , 22 Jan 2019 06:12
In Continental Europe, the new populism is nascent and so as we saw with the leader-less Gilets jaunes, folk are still excited about the self-organisation potential of the Net.I don't think either 'side' is necessarily wrong here. The social media giants are generally made up of left-leaning people; not necessarily surprising given that they're based in California and are made up of relatively young college graduates. And yes, they are getting filthy rich off the backs of some questionable policies and, in some instances, questionable approaches to taxation.For all the faults of the left and right populists, and there are many, I think they are right in thinking that the big tech companies are no angels.
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Jul 23, 2019 | www.theguardian.com
The US justice department is opening a broad antitrust review into major technology firms, as criticism over the companies' growing reach and power heats up.
The investigation will focus on growing complaints that the companies are unlawfully stifling competition.
"The Department's review will consider the widespread concerns that consumers, businesses and entrepreneurs have expressed about search, social media, and some retail services online," the Department of Justice said in a statement.
ss="rich-link"> A new antitrust frontier – the issue closing partisan divides in the name of policing big tech Read more
"Without the discipline of meaningful market-based competition, digital platforms may act in ways that are not responsive to consumer demands," added the assistant attorney general Makan Delrahim, of the antitrust division.
The review will investigate practices of online platforms including Facebook , Alphabet's Google, Amazon and Apple.
The investigation comes amid calls from lawmakers, including Democratic presidential candidates such as Elizabeth Warren, that the companies should face more scrutiny.
Lat week, Facebook, Google, and Amazon faced a grilling before the House subcommittee on antitrust, commercial and administrative law over their hold on markets including digital advertising, e-commerce and cloud computing.
Lawmakers questioned Amazon over the fees it levies against third-party sellers on the platform and whether this creates a monopoly of power. They also questioned Facebook executives over practices of targeting startups for acquisition and copying features of companies that decline to be acquired.
Lawmakers also grilled Facebook this month over its plans to launch a global cryptocurrency, called Libra. In the hearing, Senator Sherrod Brown of Ohio said Facebook showed "breathtaking arrogance" in attempting to launch a digital financial service after a number of major privacy scandals.
In July, the Federal Trade Commission approved a $5bn fine against Facebook for its handling of user data surrounding the Cambridge Analytica scandal in 2018.
"Facebook is dangerous," Brown said, likening the company to a toddler playing with matches. "It has burned the house down repeatedly and called every attempt a learning experience. Do you really think people should trust you with their bank accounts and their money?"
The Department of Justice investigation is already under way, the Wall Street Journal reported on Tuesday. The department hosted a private presentation from critics of big technology companies, who walked legislators through concerns and arguments for breaking up the firms.
Facebook, Alphabet , Amazon and Apple did not immediately respond to requests for comment.
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Jan 07, 2015 | www.theguardian.com
Jeffrey Epstein scandal: women with new identities run firms from Epstein-linked property
This article is more than 4 years old
Two women questioned about Prince Andrew in 2010, operating businesses from New York property years after appearing to have left Epstein's entourage
Jon Swaine in New York
Sarah Kellen and Nada Marcinkova, questioned by lawyers about whether Prince Andrew had any involvement in Epstein's abuse, have reinvented themselves as Sarah Kensington and Nadia Marcinko. Photograph: the guardian Two of Jeffrey Epstein's alleged accomplices are running businesses from a Manhattan property linked to the wealthy sex offender under new identities, years after appearing to have left his scandal-plagued entourage.
Nada Marcinkova and Sarah Kellen, who were questioned by lawyers about whether Prince Andrew had any involvement in Epstein's abuse of underage girls, have since reinvented themselves as Nadia Marcinko and Sarah Kensington.
Marcinkova, 29, is now a pilot and the chief executive of Aviloop, a website selling discounted flying lessons and other deals related to aviation. Kellen, 34, states that she is the owner of SLK Designs, a renovations firm.
However according to public records, both businesses have operated from addresses in a building on East 66th Street in Manhattan majority-owned by Epstein's brother Mark, a wealthy property magnate. Two condominiums in the building sold last year for $2.5m and $1.85m.
Nada Marcinkova, left and Sarah Kellen, second from right. Via newyorksocialdiary.com Photograph: newyorksocialdiary.comMarcinkova's company is officially registered with New York authorities at the building. Import records show that Kellen's company takes deliveries there.
Jeffrey Epstein , a friend of Andrew's who was jailed in 2008 for soliciting prostitution from a minor, was accused in 2011 court documents of using the building to house young women. Several rented condominiums in the building have been lived in by Epstein associates, according to public records.
Mark Epstein said in a brief telephone interview on Tuesday: "I own the majority of the units in the building, but I've never heard of those companies," referring to the firms run by Marcinkova and Kellen.
Virginia Roberts, who has long claimed that she was Epstein's "sex slave", alleged in a US court filing last week that she was forced to have sexual relations with Andrew. The prince vehemently denies the allegation against him and is under intense pressure to fully account for his friendship with Epstein.
Marcinkova and Kellen were among four named Epstein associates identified by US government prosecutors as "potential co-conspirators" who would avoid charges under the controversial plea deal Epstein struck in 2007, which saw him serve just over year in jail for his offences.
The two women both cited their right under the US constitution to avoid incriminating themselves when they were asked a series of questions by lawyers for alleged victims of Epstein under oath in 2010 – including whether underaged girls were forced to have sex with Andrew.
Kellen was accused by lawyers in legal filings of "bringing girls to Epstein's mansion to be abused". According to police files, a series alleged victims of Epstein told investigators that they were led to a massage room in Epstein's mansion in Palm Beach, Florida, by a woman named Sarah.
One alleged victim claimed to police that she was told Marcinkova had been bought from her parents in eastern Europe by Epstein when she was 15, according to detectives. One alleged that she was made to have sex with Marcinkova and to watch her have sex with Epstein.
Marcinkova's biography on the Aviloop website now states: "Over the years, she has proven herself to be a distinguished entrepreneur". In addition to carrying out international design work, Kellen is in a relationship with a successful Nascar driver, stating on her website that "most of my fans know that I am Brian Vickers' girlfriend".
Sarah Kellen, now Kensington, with boyfriend Brian Vickers. Kellen was accused by lawyers in legal filings of 'bringing girls to Epstein's mansion to be abused'.The domains for both websites are registered through the same Arizona-based service that allows the identities and contact details of the website owner to be shielded from public view.
Attorneys for Epstein did not respond to an email asking whether Epstein had assisted his former associates in any way in securing their new identities, establishing their businesses or in maintaining the property.
Marcinkova and Kellen did not respond on Tuesday to telephone calls, voicemails, emails and text messages seeking comment. Attorneys who represented them when they were questioned in 2010 did not respond to queries about whether they still spoke for the women.
Mark Epstein said that his brother did not own any of the units in the building. Asked how it came to be that associates of his brother lived in the building, Mark Epstein said: "They're rentals. The ones I own, I rent all of them out." Asked whether he owned the units where associates of his brother lived or registered businesses, Mark Epstein said: "I don't know, and even if I knew, that's not information I'm giving you."
"I don't keep track, I've owned them for 20-something-odd years and I don't know," Mark Epstein said, when asked if he owned a unit that according to public records Kellen once used. "There's only a few people I know who live there, such as friends," he said.
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Jul 22, 2019 | jessescrossroadscafe.blogspot.com
"The press of the United States? It is a parasitic growth that battens on the capitalist class. Its function is to serve the established by moulding public opinion, and right well it serves it.
I know nothing that I may say can influence you. You have no souls to be influenced. You are spineless, flaccid things. You pompously call yourselves Republicans and Democrats. There is no Republican Party. There is no Democratic Party.
There are no Republicans nor Democrats in this House. You are lick-spittlers and panderers, the creatures of the Plutocracy.
You talk verbosely in antiquated terminology of your love of liberty, and all the while you wear the scarlet livery of the Iron Heel."
Jack London, The Iron Heel
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Jul 20, 2019 | failedevolution.blogspot.com
Whenever the Tories get into trouble, the BBC helps them out July 18, 2019 While the BBC ratchets up its campaign against the Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn, the timing of its Panorama programme couldn't have been more perfect.
by Readers of The National
Part 2
I HAVE never seen such a one-sided, biased documentary as the BBC Panorama programme on antisemitism in the Labour party. This was backed up by biased coverage on news programmes on TV and radio. Those of us in Scotland have become used to BBC bias in the coverage of independence, which is why the BBC in Scotland has the highest number on people refusing to pay the licence fee.Now people in England are experiencing this level of bias I predict the number of non-payers will rise significantly too. Of course we can protest, but the evidence is from Scotland that the BBC ignore the protests.
For the record, as a former Labour party member for many years and a councillor and an MEP I never encountered anti-semitism in the Labour party, indeed Jewish members were active in every section of the party without encountering any prejudice. The so-called problem has only begun when Jeremy Corbyn became Labour leader – not because he is anti-semitic.I've known Jeremy Corbyn for more than 40 years and he is a committed anti-racist. He has been targeted because he is a supporter of Palestinian rights, and the people attacking him inside and outside the Labour party have close connections to the Israeli Government. Indeed Al Jazeera have a very good documentary of people from the Israeli embassy boasting they have a fund of a million pounds a year to bring down their enemies.
Of course if I was a member of the Labour party I could be expelled for stating the above, but fortunately in Scotland our First Minister is on record as supporting Palestinian rights. No doubt we can expect accusations of anti-semitism soon. It is not anti-semitic to criticise the state of Israel for its dreadful treatment of Palestinians and I hope we in Scotland can continue to uphold that right despite the BBC's dreadful bias!
Hugh Kerr (former Labour MEP)/EdinburghSource:
https://www.thenational.scot/politics/17767070.whenever-tories-get-trouble-bbc-helps/
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Jul 19, 2019 | www.unz.com
Q: Who and what drove this cultural and political direction within the corporation?
A: There are a number of drivers behind this biased BBC culture. The most important is the fact that a small number of hardline Zionists occupy key positions at the top and middle levels of the corporation, as well as at the shop-floor level, by which I mean the people who select what to publish or broadcast on a daily basis and who provide editorial steer to journalists. This has been widely publicised and has been in the public domain for some time -- see, for example, this http://tinyurl.com/ydhjzeek , these (a) http://tinyurl.com/y7mjtkc6 , (b) http://tinyurl.com/y7k39vsh , and (c) http://tinyurl.com/y3x9nktl . Also see this http://tinyurl.com/y6ne4apn and this http://tinyurl.com/y7l88zwl .
Q: What about political impartiality, supposedly a core BBC value?
A: Unfortunately, there are many examples of such pro- Israel hype, some blatant and others who slant the news by use of emphasis and/or omission. For instance, there was Sarah Montague's interview with Israel's defence minister, Moshe Ya'alon , in March 2015, Head of Statistics' Anthony Reuben's reflection on fatalities in Gaza ( http://tinyurl.com/ycc9p8d4 ), and the utilization of Gil Hoffman, an Israeli army reservist and chief political correspondent for the Jerusalem Post to write for the BBC News website ( http://tinyurl.com/yanppk93 ) to mention but a few.
Q: Does the broadcaster have the means or inclination to fix itself ?
A: In my opinion, the chances of the BBC fixing itself is about zero. Apart from what I have said above, it is a cowardly, spineless organisation. Not only does it always pursue the path of least resistance by selecting to broadcast what is least likely to upset the Zionist lobby, but it is also deadly afraid of what the Daily Mail might say about its output. Very often, and by that I mean almost on a daily basis, one would hear senior managers ask at the morning agenda-setting editorial meetings, "What would the Daily Mail say about that?" Invariably, they would choose what is least likely to be picked up and criticised by the Daily Mail. Please remember, this is a public broadcaster that is funded by taxpayers (yes, the License Fee is a tax) and is supposed to "Educate, Inform and Entertain", not propagandise on behalf of Israel.
Q: Some of the so-called Labour 'Whistleblowers' were exposed by Al Jazeera as Israeli Lobby assets . Is it possible that the BBC was so bold as to interview these characters hoping that no one would notice or was it simply a matter of a clumsy decision making? Can the BBC match the journalistic dedication of organisations such as RT or Al Jazeera?
A: There is no chance whatsoever that the BBC would do anything approximating Al Jazeera TV's programme on Israeli infiltration of the Labour Party ( http://tinyurl.com/yad6fslm ). The BBC is institutionally pro-Zionist and institutionally spineless.
Q: You worked in the corporation for 35 years, did you notice a deterioration in the quality of people hired? Was there a change in employees' attitudes and their willingness to express themselves freely and critically?
A: I worked for the BBC's English-language outlets as an editor and senior editor for 35 years. Since the early 1990s there has been growing intolerance of criticism of editorial management decisions, even in internal forums which internal BBC propaganda claims are meant for staff to speak freely. This applies across the board on all matters. But certainly with regard to Israel and Zionism, any questioning of BBC impartiality would attract accusations of anti-Semitism and would certainly spell the end of one's career, no matter how privately and confidentially such criticism is conveyed.
Colin Wright , says: Website July 14, 2019 at 8:30 pm GMT
It wasn't always this way. See the 2002 BBC documentary Dead in the Water , documenting Israel's 1967 attack on the USS Liberty .dearieme , says: July 14, 2019 at 9:49 pm GMTIt demonstrates conclusively that the attack was deliberate and even goes so far as to speculate that it was a black-flag operation intended to justify a joint US-Israeli invasion of Egypt proper.
Personally, I'm skeptical of that -- although it's possible. I think Israel just wanted to ensure she wasn't forced to withdraw from Sinai as she had been in 1956. After all, in the upshot, we didn't force Israel to withdraw this time -- but she may not have been sure of that outcome. Making it appear the Egyptians had sunk the Liberty would have helped to assure we would be in no mood to demand any such thing of Israel.
Of course, Israel muffed it. She wasn't able to sink the Liberty , and wasn't able to prevent her from sending out a distress signal. Machine-gunning the lifeboats was of no use if the attack had to be aborted before the Liberty could be finished off and the surviving crew members never needed to get into those lifeboats.
There's nothing special about Israel. The BBC has a policy on every contentious subject, domestic or international. A conspicuous current example is Brexit.Colin Wright , says: Website July 14, 2019 at 10:30 pm GMT@dearieme 'There's nothing special about Israel. The BBC has a policy on every contentious subject, domestic or international. A conspicuous current example is Brexit.'petrochnko , says: July 15, 2019 at 7:20 am GMTLol. This piece notwithstanding, the BBC used to give Israel a pretty hard time.
Then, at some point about fifteen years ago, it was very noticeably brought to heel and has since toed the Zionist line as closely as it can without visible displays of submissive piddling.
The same applies to the Guardian , by the way. Many of its staff who used to report accurately on the Middle East can now be found on Middle East Eye.
In a way, I find the Zionism of these organs a lot more nauseating than that of, say, the Wall Street Journal or Fox News. At least with the latter, there's a kind of ideological consistency to their Zionism. With the BBC and the Guardian , it's the rankest, most craven hypocrisy imaginable.
Sally Snyder , says: July 15, 2019 at 12:08 pm GMTIt demonstrates conclusively that the attack was deliberate and even goes so far as to speculate that it was a black-flag operation intended to justify a joint US-Israeli invasion of Egypt proper.
The USS Liberty was an ELINT ship. The Israeli's attacked it to prevent the US listening in to Israeli military radio traffic, and keep the US in the dark re Israel's operations.
Here is an article that clearly explains the pro-Israel bias in America's mainstream media:Beavertales , says: July 15, 2019 at 5:39 pm GMThttps://viableopposition.blogspot.com/2019/04/the-pro-israel-skew-in-american.html
This study shows us that the pro-Israel narrative has become so firmly entrenched in the American mainstream media that it is almost impossible for news consumers to discern the truth about the situation in Israel and Palestine. This has greatly benefitted Washington which has made it abundantly clear that it sides with Israel in this fifty year-old conflict.
The Canadian Broadcasting Corporation (CBC) is also under the editorial control of pro-Zionists.Alfred , says: July 16, 2019 at 1:48 pm GMTSince the takeover, they have a limited number of revolving topics: holocaust, anti-semitism, slavery, South African Apartheid, Jewish diaspora feel-good stories, Black lives matter, aboriginal suffering, colonialism, Islamophobia/ why-can't-we-accept-women-in-hijabs, the KKK, white racism, reparations for Jewish victims of history, refugees, the need to crush white identity .
You cannot go a week of even a day without a mention of one of the above. News critical of Jews or Israel is not allowed.
Here is from today's ZerohedgeTsigantes , says: July 16, 2019 at 4:44 pm GMT"Combat Ready" Missile Seized During Police Raid On Italian Neo-Nazis
The BBC claims that these neo-Nazis were supporters of the Russian-speakers who do not wish to be controlled by the ZioNazis of Kiev.
In reality, the Italian police said the precise opposite. This weaponry was destined to help the ZioNazis of Ukraine. They were to be used against the beleaguered defenders of the Donbass region.
The lies of the BBC are constant. This is an ongoing phenomenon – MH17, Syrian Chemicals, Skripals, Iran's nuclear weapons, Hong Kong's peaceful protesters, concentration camps for Uighurs, Global Warming, Building 7 collapsed 20 minutes after broadcast that it had fallen etc.
@Tsigantes I should really qualify:bbccheese , says: July 16, 2019 at 4:46 pm GMTmy forgotten!! point was that this period of MSM upheaval and enormously rising salaries, noticeably from the 1990s onward, coincided with ever increasing pro-Israel coverage and ever decreasing pro-Palestinian coverage. Today it has become virtually an 'anti-semitic' 'racist' 'hate' crime to be sympathetic to Palestinians .accompanied by tearful Zionist bleatings about fearing for their lives, lurid word pictures of nazis walking the streets and claims of massive population flight to Israel – although the numbers of UK jews does not seem to decrease. The perception – which could be wrong but given their total dominance of the media – is quite the opposite!
@(((They))) Live The Hungarian Foreign Minister should have asked the interviewer "Why does the US do the foot soldier work to protect against the same invasion of muslims into Israel?" While Israel the only country allowed to shoot and kill those even coming close to their border has the right!Tsigantes , says: July 18, 2019 at 9:50 am GMT@Parfois1 You raise an interesting point. I remember the outcry over the Beeb reporting on the Falklands that the Beeb was left wing and treasonous. The BBC was giving massive air time to Labour MPs and talking heads saying that the Falklands should be abandoned, handed to the Argentinians.Agent76 , says: July 19, 2019 at 1:39 pm GMTMy left wing father (ex-WW2 RN submarine officer) surprised me by pointing out that whatever the rights or wrongs of UK 'owning' the Falklands the fact was that they did and therefore in the circumstance of armed invasion the UK was obliged to defend it on the principle of national sovereignty. Not to mention discouraging other such invasions.
I bring this up because exactly these issues have re-appeared today.
That is, the old left-wingism of BBC reportage has morphed into the new left-wingism of today: i.e. LGBT+, racism, anti-semitism, indoctrinating homosexuality & trans issues into infants in state schools etc. Pro-EU, pro-open borders, pro-migrant, pro-Israel, pro-war. Anti-Brexit, anti-sovereignty, anti-patriotism, anti-nationalism, anti-religion, anti traditional family all of which the Beeb loudly deems 'fascist' [deplorable] across all its channels.
MAY 23, 2019 Life Or Death – Corporate Media Or Honest Media?Relying on the corporate media, including BBC News, to provide a reliable account of the world is literally a matter of life or death, on many levels.
"Who controls the issuance of money controls the government!" Nathan Meyer Rothschild
June 13, 2016 Which Corporations Control The World?
A surprisingly small number of corporations control massive global market shares. How many of the brands below do you use?
http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article44864.htm
"Control the oil, and you control nations. Control the food, and you control the people." Henry Kissenger
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Dec 25, 2018 | www.theguardian.com
For 40 years, the ideology popularly known as "neoliberalism" has dominated political decision-making in the English-speaking west.
People hate it . Neoliberalism's sale of state assets, offshored jobs, stripped services, poorly-invested infrastructure and armies of the forcibly unemployed have delivered, not promised "efficiency" and "flexibility" to communities, but discomfort and misery. The wealth of a few has now swelled to a level of conspicuousness that must politely be considered vulgar yet the philosophy's entrenched itself so deeply in how governments make decisions and allocate resources that one of its megaphones once declared its triumph "the end of history".
It wasn't, as even he admitted later . And given some of the events of the contemporary political moment, it's possible to conclude from auguries like smoke rising from a garbage fire and patterns of political blood upon the floor that history may be hastening neoliberalism towards an end that its advocates did not forecast.
Three years ago, I remarked that comedian Russell Brand may have stumbled onto a stirring spirit of the times when his "capitalism sucks" contemplations drew stadium-sized crowds. Beyond Brand – politically and materially – the crowds have only been growing.
Is the political zeitgeist an old spectre up for some new haunting? Or are the times more like a strong angel proclaiming with a loud voice, "the combination of inequality and low wage growth is fuelling discontent. Time to sing a new song."
In days gone past, they used to slice open an animal's belly and study the shape of its spilled entrails to find out. But we could just keep an eye on the news.
Here are my seven signs of the neoliberal apocalypse:
... ... ...
5. The reds are back under the beds
... ... ...
6. Tony Abbott becomes a fan of nationalising assets... How else to explain the earthquake-like paradigm shift represented by the sixth sign? Since when do neoliberal conservatives argue for the renationalisation of infrastructure, as is the push of Tony Abbott's gang to nationalise the coal-fired Liddell power station?
It may be a cynical stunt to take an unscientific stand against climate action, but seizing the means of production remains seizing the means of production, um, comrade.
"You know, nationalising assets is what the Liberal party was founded to stop governments doing," said Turnbull, even as he hid in the dens and in the rocks of the mountains to weather – strange coincidence – yet another Newspoll loss.
... ... ...
• Van Badham is a Guardian Australia columnist
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Dec 17, 2018 | profile.theguardian.com
msTOmsTO -> AsDusty 23 Aug 2016 00:43
Marx, Engels and Gramsci all died before the second world war began. I doubt they had much to say about what caused it.ShaunNewman -> Ohcolowisc , 23 Aug 2016 00:25Regarding the posited failure of "neoliberalism", if you want to know what real failure of a political and economic system looks like, have a look at the consequences of Marxism for every country where it held sway in the 20th century.
A recession followed by a few years of sluggish growth is hardly catastrophic
Democratic socialism must take the place of this capitalist system where 50% of the global economy is owned by just 1% of the population, patently unfair for billions of people. To have 1% having more than they could possibly spend in a lifetime is ludicrous while we have others starving and millions of "people" living below the poverty line.ShaunNewman -> RobertKlahn , 23 Aug 2016 00:21RobertKlahnMatthew Kilburn , 23 Aug 2016 00:03The capitalist (USA) system diverts huge amounts of money via corporations 50% of the global economy to just 1% of the global population, which is patently unfair. The 1% ownership grows every day because these 1% people have a mental illness called insatiable greed, where enough is never enough. Yes 'fair trade' would help, but what must be broken is the compliance of conservative governments around the world who fail to tax these corporations a 'fair share' of taxation to help "the people" to raise their living standards. We must adopt democratic socialism with million of USA citizens voted for with Bernie Sanders, and as is practiced in the Nordic countries, who tax corporations fairly and obtain a good standard of living for "their people."
What comes next? Hopefully some kind of neo-nationalistic Westernism in which the societies that, up until the turmoil of the 60s and 70s shaped the course of global affairs, rediscover their roots and identifies.ShaunNewman -> martinusher , 22 Aug 2016 23:58If "neoliberalism" seems to be in retreat, perhaps the simplest explanation is that the cultures that gave rise to it - western, Christian, often English-speaking cultures - most certainly ARE in retreat.
How can we answer questions like "what is happening to us?" or "How should we react?" When we can't even identify the "us" or the "we"?
We need government that will restrain capitalism and use the system for the benefit of "the people" not the corporations. Which in practice means "don't vote conservative."ShaunNewman -> martinusher , 22 Aug 2016 23:56martinusherShaunNewman -> Roger Elliott , 22 Aug 2016 23:47Yes, the point is that unrestrained capitalism does wreck lives, but continues to feed the 1% with mare more than they could ever spend. This is precisely why we need a system of democratic socialism as practiced on the Nordic countries, where "the people" come first and the corporations run a distant second.
However if the UK continues to elect conservative governments the reverse will always be the case, with "the people" running a distant second.
Globalization, capitalist society in the 70s quickly became ownership of 50% (and continuing to grow) of the global economy by just 1% of the population. We need to change to democratic socialism as practiced by the Nordic countries.ShaunNewman -> CopBase , 22 Aug 2016 23:43The biggest economic problem is "corporate welfare" find out how much subsidy the UK government 'gives' to profitable corporations, the ordinary taxpayers loss.ShaunNewman -> tamborineman , 22 Aug 2016 23:31How we got here was via the capitalist system whereby 50% of the global economy is now owned bt just 1% of the global population. A collection of individuals who are filthy rich but who also have the mental illness of insatiable greed, and who won't be satisfied until they own 60% and so on. They avoid paying tax, and conservative governments help them by providing loop holes in taxation legislation so their corporations can avoid paying tax or pay up to 5% of their huge incomes in a token gesture. In Australia out of 1,500 corporations surveyed 579 have not paid a cent since at least 2013. The Australian people should be marching in the streets for a 'fair go' but the apathy prevents that. They probably won't get angry until such time as they realize that the 1% own 70% of the global economy and they are being squeezed even harder into 14 hour days without a break, only then will they crack, if at all.ciaofornow -> Citizen0 , 22 Aug 2016 22:58Quantitative easing first upped the stock market and therefore the retirement portfolios of the US middle class as well as the portfolios of the wealthy, and now the US economy is finally producing middle class jobs (recent report, NY Times) and not just the upper middle class.AsDusty -> msTOmsTO , 22 Aug 2016 22:41
------------------
Rubbish!
QE is just the creation of trillions more in debt. Artificially raising asset prices is not a free market. A free market depends on people being able to pay the prices. But today in the UK, people require three loans to buy a house the price of which has been artificially raised by QE. That enriches the homeowner, the bank, and estate agent. but in equal measure, it impoverishes the house buyer.the blowing up of asset prices will have to go on forever (still, not one penny of QE has been repaid), or the system will collapse. But that is impossible. It will destroy the value of money. See what happens to stock prices each time the US "threatens" to raise interest rates and stop QE programmes. And just check out personal debt levels in the UK and US. It is unsustainable.
The basic problem of neoliberalism is that it demands low pay as a competitive measure. But that means people have less money to spend in the consumer economy. So neoliberalism requires deregulated banking, pushing up asset prices, so people feel wealthy and take on more debt with which to compensate their low pay, and so they can shop. But that in turn leads to higher debts until the debts are not likely to be repaid. Banks collapse.
The bailouts and money printing has raised asset prices as you say. So now they are at record highs. And if the system demands they go higher while keeping down pay. Who the Fuck is going to pay?
The system is designed to collapse. It only exists today thanks to the creation of money that does not really exist. We may as well adopt grass as money as keep this system going.
The flipside of artificial growth in asset prices is the falling value of earnings.in 1996, UK average pay equalled 30-35% of a typical house. Today, it is only 10% of a house, and in London, 7%. And for the system to function, that percentage must fall.
No, quite a lot of people have been writing about it. Marx, Engels and Gramski all discussed the tendency of free market economics to lead to conflict. More recently you could look at the work of Galbraith, Sachs and Frank Stilwell, just off the top of my head.ciaofornow -> MurrayGSmith , 22 Aug 2016 22:35You failed to understand the article. It says the post war period (1945-70s) was the longest and most successful economic run, especially for working classes, in history.tamborineman , 22 Aug 2016 22:34It is "neoliberalism" since the late 70s that led to the trebling of personal debts on stagnant wages, and finally the collapse of the banks. And ever since the whole economic show has only been kept alive with life-saving drugs (QE which is basically pretending there is a cash flow rather than reality of a solvency crisis, govt set zero interest rates, bailouts). But we have merely got stagnation.
And your last point is a straw man. Hardly anyone wants to replace this failing system with Stalinism.
We have had two contrasting economic systems in the West since the War. The one had far more regulation, and stronger wage growth for workers, the latter since 1979 has been neoliberalism.
The first collapsed in the stagnation of the 70s. The latter died in 2008, and has been kept going through state support and printing trillions more in debt. But the bailouts are failing. They are failing because it was never a cash flow crisis. It was a solvency crisis. Now the debts are even greater.
Selective description posing as analysis and allowing the emotional triggers of a couple of key phrases to justify the selectiveness. It sounds magisterial but it ain't and, as others have pointed out, it gives us little on where do we go from here. This is precisely because he has really not told us what he thinks here is, how we got here, and why we got here.Ohcolowisc -> RobertKlahn , 22 Aug 2016 22:25The last thing a capitalist corporation wants is to compete (i.e. having actual competition). What they want is monopoly. That's why they "rig" the markets - among others by merging with and acquiring their competitors until they reach near monopoly in their industry (or industries).ciaofornow , 22 Aug 2016 22:20That's the essence of the statement that "there never have been free markets, only rigged markets". And there never will be. "Free markets" are transient phenomena that exist only for relatively short time periods during which the leading players do the rigging. The only factor that could keep free markets "free" is government - and that's why it is hated so much by corporations and is rendered practically toothless in the US. It limits their ability to rig and to loot.
The only form the phrase "free markets" exist for prolonged periods of time is when it is used as a propaganda slogan by neoliberal ideologues (even though it is the exact opposite of what really happens).
And why has it taken so long for such an article to be published? Many of the points in this article should have been apparent to intelligent commentators right after the 2008 crisis.AsDusty -> candeesays , 22 Aug 2016 22:16Why has it taken so long for political fallout?
The major reason is cited: Parties such as New Labour, supposedly of the Left that continued to support this failing system. Gordon Brown bailed out the banks, claimed to save the world, and then let it all go on as before. A Disgrace of a leader that history will condemn as a fool. And how many commentators of the time lauded him for it? Far too many. And many of them still in the jobs. Jesus Wept!
What the writer understands and too many are in denial about is this. New Labour is dead. It died in 2007-8 with the collapse of the banks.
Then the amazing coincidence that the third party (the Lib Dems) was taken over by the neoliberals just before the Financial Crisis brought the neoliberal age to an end, and which went onto support the True Neoliberal party (the Tories). In the US, a man who ran on a candidacy of Change only for the world to find out it was bluster and rhetoric! Obama will not go down as a Great President at all. He tried to bail out a failing system. He will be a footnote in history.
Then those bloody bailouts. They not only bailed out the bankers and the rich. They bailed out millions of largely older voters, artificially pumping up house prices. The old vote. And they voted to back this grand theft against Reason, and the younger generations. The result of the bailouts will be a far greater Financial Crisis than 2008. The disconnect between people's debts and wages is worse today than in 2006. That can mean only one thing. Collapse is coming. And now the debts are even bigger. Bailouts are wrong, have failed, and will not be politically acceptable again.
Conservative parties will be repositories for those afraid of change, and those happy to be bailed out until the crisis explodes again. On the change side, if we do not have Left Populism, we will get nationalism.
In terms of stronger border controls there is no doubt this is happening. The US, Europe and here in Australia the governments grip on border entries has only got tighter. As for international labour migration, Trump, Brexit and the European refugee crisis will see increasing pressure on lowering the numbers of migrant workers.CivilityPlease -> MurrayGSmith , 22 Aug 2016 22:07
Increasing labour migration has been a ploy by government to try and make globalisation work, as globalisation requires the free flow of labour across international borders. The political pressure to reduce migrant numbers will be too much to resist, and greater controls will be put in place.This is not a choice between A or B. Stop fighting yesterday's battles. Its over, just as the article declares. What is developing as we speak will steer tomorrow's civilization and it will be neither of the old paradigms. We have to come to a consensus about where we want to go. What principles do we have faith in to inform our assessments of what we keep or alter? What roles will we play? What will our purpose(s) be? That is the business we need to be about to arrive at an orderly, deliberate future, prepared for a long journey to a better world. Or we push and pull in all different directions and go round and round the same old ground making the same old mistakes until the world moves on and leaves us behind. We will need to work together or fail each alone. Are you ready?candeesays -> MurrayGSmith , 22 Aug 2016 22:02It is theory without politics or economics.The period from GATT was predicated on strong welfare states and national industries trading. Not privatising societies and globalising capital.
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Nov 10, 2016 | discussion.theguardian.com
JamesWonnacott , 10 Nov 2016 11:18
"And of course, they answer it by bashing immigrants and people of colour, vilifying Muslims, and degrading women."
Muslims, of course, never degrade women do they?
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Nov 09, 2016 | -> www.theguardian.com
People have lost their sense of security, status and even identity. This result is the scream of an America desperate for radical change.
'Elite neoliberalism unleashed the Davos class. People such as Hillary and Bill Clinton are the toast of the Davos party. In truth, they threw the party.
They will blame -> James Comey and the FBI. They will blame -> voter suppression and racism. They will blame -> Bernie or bust and misogyny. They will blame third parties and independent candidates. They will blame the corporate media for giving him the platform, social media for being a bullhorn, and WikiLeaks for airing the laundry.
But this leaves out the force most responsible for creating the nightmare in which we now find ourselves wide awake: neoliberalism. That worldview – fully embodied by -> Hillary Clinton and her machine – is no match for Trump-style extremism. The decision to run one against the other is what sealed our fate. If we learn nothing else, can we please learn from that mistake?
Here is what we need to understand: a hell of a lot of people are in pain. Under neoliberal policies of deregulation, privatisation, austerity and corporate trade, their living standards have declined precipitously. They have lost jobs. They have lost pensions. They have lost much of the safety net that used to make these losses less frightening. They see a future for their kids even worse than their precarious present.
At the same time, they have witnessed the rise of the Davos class, a hyper-connected network of banking and tech billionaires, elected leaders who are awfully cosy with those interests, and Hollywood celebrities who make the whole thing seem unbearably glamorous. Success is a party to which they were not invited, and they know in their hearts that this rising wealth and power is somehow directly connected to their growing debts and powerlessness.
For the people who saw security and status as their birthright – and that means white men most of all – these losses are unbearable.
-> Donald Trump speaks directly to that pain. The Brexit campaign spoke to that pain. So do all of the rising far-right parties in Europe. They answer it with nostalgic nationalism and anger at remote economic bureaucracies – whether Washington, the North American free trade agreement the World Trade Organisation or the EU. And of course, they answer it by bashing immigrants and people of colour, vilifying Muslims, and degrading women. Elite neoliberalism has nothing to offer that pain, because neoliberalism unleashed the Davos class. People such as Hillary and Bill Clinton are the toast of the Davos party. In truth, they threw the party.
Trump's message was: "All is hell." Clinton answered: "All is well." But it's not well – far from it.
Neo-fascist responses to rampant insecurity and inequality are not going to go away. But what we know from the 1930s is that what it takes to do battle with fascism is a real left. A good chunk of Trump's support could be peeled away if there were a genuine redistributive agenda on the table. An agenda to take on the billionaire class with more than rhetoric, and use the money for a green new deal. Such a plan could create a tidal wave of well-paying unionised jobs, bring badly needed resources and opportunities to communities of colour, and insist that polluters should pay for workers to be retrained and fully included in this future.
It could fashion policies that fight institutionalised racism, economic inequality and climate change at the same time. It could take on bad trade deals and police violence, and honour indigenous people as the original protectors of the land, water and air.
People have a right to be angry, and a powerful, intersectional left agenda can direct that anger where it belongs, while fighting for holistic solutions that will bring a frayed society together.
Such a coalition is possible. In Canada, we have begun to cobble it together under the banner of a people's agenda called The Leap Manifesto , endorsed by more than 220 organisations from Greenpeace Canada to Black Lives Matter Toronto, and some of our largest trade unions.
Bernie Sanders' amazing campaign went a long way towards building this sort of coalition, and demonstrated that the appetite for democratic socialism is out there.
... ... ...
josephinireland -> Briar 72 73So, the very people harmed by neoliberalism have elected someone already a member of the Davos class, whose rise will harm them even more. Another own goal for democracy.
greenwichite -> Briar 33 34Never has there been a transfer of wealth from so many to so few and it isn't just happening in the USA. People have rightly had enough - but you are right, voting for Trump is hardly the way to fix it.
SlumVictim , 10 Nov 2016 09:23I have a feeling the Davos class sneer at Donald Trump. He's just a builder, really, whereas in Davos they like financiers and tech billionaires.
tempestteacup -> SlumVictim 44 45The problem with centre left parties throughout the western world is that they sold out to corporate capitalism, which forced people who rejected neoliberalism to go to the extremes to protest. The question is, once someone's loyalty has been broken, it is that much more difficult to win loyalty back, if it is possible at all.
zephirine -> tempestteacupGood, concise post.
And you're right - the neoliberal capture of centre-left legacy parties from the Democrats to the German SPD and French Socialist Party has created an exceptionally unpromising landscape and public mood. Trust has been broken. Responsibilities betrayed. Intellectual traditions traduced, distorted, or simply cast aside.
In moments of humiliation or defeat - and make no mistake, this was both - there needs to be reflection and a willingness to return to first principles as well as evolving new strategies and insights appropriate to the present.
Economic realities shape cultural and social relations. The left should always listen to the experiences of people and build a consensus based on solidarity between groups and not the alienated support of different self-interested demographics. Exploitation is the corner-stone of capitalism when it is left to run unchecked. Without regulation, capitalism tends towards monopolies that end up subverting democracy itself.
These are the issues Bernie Sanders raised and the enthusiasm with which it was greeted is testimony to the fact that there are white working class voters hungry for a politics of positive, radical social change. Intoning with robotic piety that the people have never had it so good despite overwhelming evidence to the contrary is a form of deceit; when it comes from the mouths of corporate Democrats, it is political obscenity.
tempestteacup -> zephirineI think what I've realised from the Brexit and Trump results is how desperate people are for something to believe in. What used to be called 'the vision thing'.In moments of humiliation or defeat - and make no mistake, this was both - there needs to be reflection and a willingness to return to first principles
For decades we've had to choose between different forms of managerialism and variations on a theme of 'there is no alternative to rule by the market'. We just had to put up and shut up, there was nothing to get excited about. Nobody's ever jumped up and down shouting "What do want? Trickle-down economics! When do we want it? Now!"
The thing about demagogues is they offer that emotional release. What we need is principled political movements that also enable it.
FrankyJane , 10 Nov 2016 09:26Absolutely right. One of the by-products of There Is No Alternative, though, is that managerialism and wonkiness have been fetishised. Hillary Clinton's devastatingly uninspiring offer to the American people was hailed by some as a mark of her "maturity", "experience", and "competence". Bernie Sanders, by contrast, was attacked for firing people up, for inspiring them to believe change was possible - by implication, of course, such attacks rest on the belief that change is in fact not possible at all. It is a bleak nihilism that states the best that can be hoped or organised for is a slightly better management of existing structures.
There is a hypocrisy, too, when someone like Clinton derides Trump's economic plans as "Trumped-up trickle-down". In reality, they were arguing simply over who would offer the *bigger* tax cuts. The notion that there were alternative visions on the economy, on climate change, on racial equality or healthcare and education, not to mention foreign policies, was almost completely absent.
This is why I wrote that in some ways Hillary Clinton was the greater evil in this election. It is one thing to hark backwards to a mythical past, as Donald Trump did. It is quite another to put such tight constraints on the entire notion of what is possible in the future. Trump offered nostalgia. Clinton offered the tyranny of low expectations - forever.
But that is all in the past now - for the future, I agree with you that there needs to be a willingness to offer radical, inspirational and visionary alternatives to a system that has simply not worked for the majority of people who through no fault of their own find their quality of life, possibilities and security in decline while wealth flows ceaselessly upwards and into the pockets of those already insulated from the harm their favoured politicians unleash.
Bernie showed what can be done - he also showed that people are willing to finance such campaigns and thus liberate the political process from the death-grip of corporate donations. Personally, I am sceptical of whether the Democratic Party is an appropriate vehicle for such politics (I know that Bernie doesn't agree with me!) Regardless, his campaign should provide somewhat of a model for what can be done - and likewise his statement from today. Amidst the headlong rush - in this paper as well - to denigrate and smear voters for failing to advance bourgeois liberal interests, it is imperative that deprived, working class voters of all races are listened to properly and not labelled racists and bigots. A few no doubt are. But these are, in many instances, the same people that helped elect Barack Obama in 2008 and 2012. They are crying out for something to organise around. Hillary Clinton failed because she was not and never has been a person capable of, even interested in, offering that.
DaveLester -> FrankyJaneThis article is brilliant. Truth in spades.
One tiny quibble.
You write: "there was a failure in the campaign to connect with older black and Latino voters who are the demographic most abused by our current economic model."
A major reason the Sanders campaign didn't connect in time was the DNC's suppression of the debate schedule. A corrupt but wildly successful tactic that saw Clinton sweep the southern states.
Andymcneilis -> FrankyJaneThis article is brilliant. Truth in spades.
Naomi, has omitted one very important detail: automation, i.e. the use of AI to replace jobs.
This absolutely requires us to restructure society to provide security and purpose to each every one of us who is not part of the super rich owners.
For example we will see driving jobs rapidly disappearing within the next five to ten years.
I also notice that where the worst effects of rampant capitalism are ameliorated there appear to be fewer issues. I'm thinking of many Western European nations where the issues do not yet seem to have the over fifty percent traction that they have in the US and the UK. If Australia were suffering a similar economic slow down it may well join the US and UK. But what's happening in Canada and New Zealand?
yellowshark -> DaveLester 25 26I don't think it is. It is the same old hate hate hate blame the white man stuff.
If you want to know why you lost and will keep losing look in the mirror -as a tribe the left - despises anything different to your view of the world - ironic
parmantom , 10 Nov 2016 09:27Over the last few months I've been writing in here about the main difference between (some of?) those Western European nations and the UK and US. One big difference is we (I'm from the UK but applies also to US) use the First Past The Post voting system. This enforces a two party system (Duverger's Law) which tends to crowd out minority voices - can you imagine a conservative/green alliance in government in UK/US as happened not too long ago in Germany.I also notice that where the worst effects of rampant capitalism are ameliorated there appear to be fewer issues. I'm thinking of many Western European nations where the issues do not yet seem to have the over fifty percent traction that they have in the US and the UK.
Much of what ails the UK and the US is not evident in the North Western Eu nations: less inequality, greater wealth (in the UK, not US - GDP per capita: from worldbank data), better healthcare outcomes, better education outcomes, greater worker productivity. The move to neoliberalism under Thatcher/Reagan and the resultant move to market economics and reduction in nationalised industries (Larry Elliot recently wrote an article on here describing the issue https://www.theguardian.com/business/2016/nov/06/the-legacy-of-leaving-old-industrial-britain-to-rot-is-becoming-clear ) and the Left didn't have a reply: workers lost their jobs and their traditional political parties couldn't help. A move to the centre and the rise of third way politics of Clinton/Blair was the only way that the Democrats and (New) Labour could get into power: did they do anything to help the left-behind? The Global Financial Crisis and resultant austerity, coupled with rising rates of immigration and the inability of those people to have their voices heard with FPTP led to Trump/Brexit and the rise of popular nationalism/socialism.
BillyBalfour -> Klamberra 0 1This is a useful and pertinent plea. However the article failed to include the automation of work as a massive driver of joblessness.
We humans get excited by success, but if large swathes of Society cannot embrace change and adaptation as a determinant of ambition, then technology advance and neoliberal economics will ruin them.
Iterative workplace skills are perhaps the biggest investment a Society should make. The alternative is governments paying chunks of Society in place of work. Society will generate new jobs, but unless those replace by Technology at work adapt, great pain will come. For sure you cant easily blame Technology, its easier to blame migrants...
stuffandnonsense -> parmantom 8 9I only some one had seen it coming. Read The Mighty Micro, Christopher Evans. 1979
dunwich , 10 Nov 2016 09:32Manufacturing has moved to China and Mexico. Jobs have been off-shored to India and the Philippines. What is left behind? Take a look at Detroit. Automation hasn't had that much impact - it's cheaper to (under)pay a bunch of people in developing countries than automate solutions.
Herschy -> dunwichYes, there are some real insights here and the beginnings of a response, which has been pretty much absent elsewhere.
A pity that, although comments have finally been opened, the piece is somewhat buried well down the page, and that Hadley Freeman's vastly inferior piece which bangs on about misogyny (as at least 3 pieces did yesterday) is being promoted.
Trump is snarling bully with what look like very unattractive attitudes towards women. But as, Klein also pointed out on R4 this morning, the most important thing about this election is not that Clinton failed to break the glass ceiling.
Full marks.
Paul Baker , 10 Nov 2016 09:34Freeman is also right, most of Trump's voters don't match the description of them as down on their luck working class people, most are just upper middle class people with backward views and a decent paycheck.
Herve Boisde -> Paul BakerReally? You respond to the crushing defeat of Liberal pseudo intellectualism with even more Liberal pseudo intellectualism? And you can't understand why it's all going wrong for you?
Lazio99 , 10 Nov 2016 09:37When the popular vote goes to Conservatives then I might agree with you. Trump is hardly a symbol of a crushing mandate.
josephinireland -> Lazio99Everybody's an expert after the event, aren't they? OK, noble sentiments but "let's set aside whatever is keeping us apart"?
What is keeping people apart is that the elitism of the political classes and their hangers on, certainly in the UK. They are absolutists; they have no concern over what ordinary people think. If anyone at all thinks differently from them then they are wrong, end of.
They don't see any need to back their opinion up, to debate the point. Anyone who thinks differently from them is just plain wrong. This is usually backed up with sneers and insults. Racist, xenophobe, stupid, misogynist.
These people can't change. their sense of infallibilty and superiority is unchallengeable.
What is keeping them apart is themselves; to change would be to surrender their sense of superiority and entitlement. They can't do it.
Expatrician -> Lazio99 24 25Yes, it is quite noticeable how those who disagree become a 'target' (in more ways than one I suspect).
Lazio99 -> Expatrician 4 5Ms Klein was wise long, long before this event. You should read the Shock Doctrine. It makes everything much easier to follow and predict.
Brouillard , 10 Nov 2016 09:39OK, fair point.
I should have made it plain that absolutism isn't confined to the political classes. It's amazing how many people collapse into incoherent rage when they are disagreed with; and a lack of toleration of the views of others tends to make the "others" themselves be less tolerant. It's a vice that spreads.
DawnBreaks , 10 Nov 2016 09:40Of all the articles in the Guardian, this is the only one that gets close to defining the cause of Trump's win. What we have is effectively the educated rebelling against the educated and who can blame them. Our financial system is rigged towards the better educated who are disproportionately contributed for their efforts at a cost to the less well educated. Is it any wonder that they vote for change? I don't think Trump is the answer any more than Brexit is in this country. But blaming Trump's win on wholesale misogyny and racism is sneering prejudice that could be every bit as damaging as Trump's racism and sexism
Our educated politicians need to work out how to make capitalism work for the middle, support the bottom and not over reward the top. It is doing the opposite currently
Barbara Watson -> DawnBreaks 8 9Everyone who voted Trump is neo-fascist? ... still think the left is missing the point. All around the world people are being lifted out of poverty by globalised industry; jobs and hence wealth are being redistributed more evenly around the world. I thought the left were in favour of wealth redistribution.
BillInTheStyx , 10 Nov 2016 09:42The elephant in the room was hardly mentioned if at all. The Israelis love him, the American Jews were split but, guess what, he was endorsed by KKK and David Duke! What the hell is going on?....
DefinitionOfMadness -> BillInTheStyxThe problem with a coalition of progressives, is that "the left" in general don't believe in limits on growth or even climate change.
Look at the Richmond by-election, where labour MPs want to turn the spotlight from the issue of airport expansion, to Zac Goldsmith's support for Brexit.
Look at union support for continued use of coal, feeding into the labour party's own ambivalence. Or the frankly bizarre support for building trident submarines, to keep the jobs, but not actually using them.
If you want a coalition that does something about climate change - and all the other ecological ills of the earth - you will have to reach out to small c- and even large C- conservatives - the likes of Boris's father Stanley Johnson and Zac Goldsmith (mayoral campaign notwithstanding) - and dare I say it, cut out some of the social progressives, whose ecological credentials are not so progressive. That really would change everything.
Henryb63 , 10 Nov 2016 09:43Look at union support for continued use of coal, feeding into the labour party's own ambivalence.
You do know that Tony Blair closed more pits than Margaret Thatcher don't you?
Flix -> Henryb63The first thing to do is to stop vilifying the white man, most are hard working and keep economies going, stop calling them names and blaming for everything bad that has happened since the Roman Empire and before.
Chris Bentley -> Henryb63 45 46Absolutely. We need compromise not division.
Andymcneilis -> Chris Bentley 6 7Amen to that. Its just racism/sexism of another kind. As a good husband and father, hard-working professional, law abiding citizen, good neighbour etc I am made to feel guilty for being a white man. Shouldn't all individuals be judged on their merits???
Martin Cohen , 10 Nov 2016 09:44Spot on - does the white worker not have rights ?
EnduraKlaar -> Martin Cohen 11 12What is puzzling is that based on your premise these vast swathes of disenfranchised voters surely sided with the enemy as represented by an elitist, sneering billionaire. What he has now created though is a massive crisis of expectation. The anti Trump protests seen in the last 24 hours may in time be replaced by those whose aspirations he has ignited but remain unfulfilled. Clinton winning the popular vote may be a moral victory of some kind but here in the UK we are used to having to accept a government often voted for by barely a third of the electorate. Other commentators have said things like 'it's the end of democracy as we know it'. How so, when electing Trump is the clearest demonstration of democracy in action there is, whether you like the result or not. The parallels with Brexit are startling. France next?
stevevarcoe , 10 Nov 2016 09:44No, what really really pisses people off is when the winners of the election (and numpties in the media) talk of a "clear mandate" and "the people voted for this". In the US as in the UK it's nothing of the kind (Democrats won more votes for christ sake, and you call it "clear democracy") and this reality-corrupting idea of "clear mandate" causes real trouble.
Klamberra -> stevevarcoeI'm sick of seeing the word elite used by angry people in these forums. Used to describe the powerful, mostly faceless people who they believe oppress them. They read newspapers owned by tax dodging aristocrats and pornographers and then they go out and vote for multi millionaire who inherited every cent and a chinless public school prick with an EU pension.
ParisHiltonCommune -> Klamberra 13 14Agreed - elite has become the word for anyone who has more (earned, inherited, studied, courage) than the writer of the word. It's a vile word.
Guess11 , 10 Nov 2016 09:45True. Perhaps the word should be replaced by "plutocracy", but the media don't like to use that word as it pinpoints the causes of most our problems far more accurately than "elite".
usasandy -> Guess11 4 5A bit simplistic. The Davos class is a very small number of people. Their votes couldn't elect a pope in a vatican on their own.
No, the real turning point is that those losing out and seeing no chance of that changing now outnumber those who are dragged along by the elites, on an upward if gentle trajectory, with belief that they can 'make it'. Much more subtle.
And the Elephant is the unwillingness to accept that long term there is no fundamental reason for a historically rich nation to maintain relative prosperity compared to historically poorer ones. Parity is inevitable in the long term - one man is as valuable as any other.
josephinireland , 10 Nov 2016 09:51It's not the votes of the Davos class, it's their power in the world to control the votes of everyone else.
zephirine -> josephinireland 9 10The 'American dream' is dead in the water for the vast majority these days.
josephinireland -> zephirine 2 3The idea of the 'American dream' seems to have morphed into a nasty belief that if you're poor it's your own fault. You didn't 'want it enough'. You must be secretly lazy and undeserving, even if you're actually working three jobs to survive, or even if there are no jobs.
This view has taken hold in the UK too, where the tabloids peddle the view that anyone who claims state benefits must be a fraud. But at least, people here and in mainland Europe have the direct experience of war within living memory and we understand that you can lose everything through no fault of your own. In the US, even when there's a natural disaster like Katrina it seems to be the poor people's fault for not having their own transport and money to go and stay somewhere else.
It always seems very odd to me that so many people who think like that profess to be Christian. 'Poverty equals moral failure' is the complete opposite of what Jesus Christ got into so much trouble for saying.
Amen to that. I couldn't agree with you more. ,
Flix , 10 Nov 2016 09:51Amen to that. I couldn't agree with you more.
Grotesque -> FlixSuperb article. A voice of reason in the sea of hysteria from the other Guardian commentators who don't seem to be learning anything from this.
What I think the left needs on a political level is to dispense with identity politics (which only divides people who should be on the same level in terms of economic status and relative need) and have a coming together moment, wherein we effectively set out that woman, man, black, white, homosexual, heterosexual, etc who are living at the bottom end of society all come together behind a unified political purpose - one that doesn't seek to demonise others within its ranks. Because let's be honest - the racism that brought Trump to power is at least partially a response to the intolerant, bigoted views of 'progressives' on the 'left'. Look at Hadley Freeman's article today as an example. These people divide us, and make the job harder.
The left needs to embrace rational egalitarianism, not agenda driven crusades. They aren't working, they're complicit in delivering hell.
Flix -> Grotesque 3 4What I think the left needs on a political level is to dispense with identity politics (which only divides people who should be on the same level in terms of economic status and relative need) and have a coming together moment, wherein we effectively set out that woman, man, black, white, homosexual, heterosexual, etc who are living at the bottom end of society all come together behind a unified political purpose - one that doesn't seek to demonise others within its ranks.
But we know as a sociological fact that if you are, say, an African-American you experience forms of oppression based on the fact that you are African-American. Explicitly naming that oppression, however, is seen to be divisive, and few people will stand with them behind a unified political purpose. Where does that leave us?
bingostan -> thisux 14 15Naming the oppression isn't divisive, in my view. The way in which the naming is done, and at whom the blame is directed, can be - and often is. I believe most people can rationally assess what is and is not oppression if done in a calm and measured way - all except the racists anyway (and they'd probably still be able to see it rationally, they just wouldn't care). But if you start screeching at people, they're just going to switch off - and screeching is generally what we see.
In the wider context of the improvement of people's lives at the bottom end of the scale, I believe you would get buy in from other, non-affected groups. In fact, we see this all the time - BLM and LGBT groups frequently work with each other on combatting things that harm one or both of them. Where this falls flat is when you get the demonising of the white working class (especially the male, cis-gendered working class), who should be allies for other low income people.
Why do people assume that working and lower middle class white men, who are being squeezed and seeing their incomes and quality of life fall in the same way as everyone else, are the problem - the enemy to be railed against, while we have super rich white men (and women, and even an increasing number of super rich non-white men, believe it or not), who are literally stacking the whole system in such a way that all lower income groups suffer? I suspect because actually fixing the issue and compromising and working together isn't as important as being a victim for a lot of the people who lead the identity politics drive. They'd rather scream at racists - who in turn scream back.
The only reason I think the 'progressives' can't see this is because they have too big a stake in the status quo.
TeTsuo36 -> thisux 10 11[neoliberalism] has devastating environmental consequences, Including the impoverishment of huge numbers of people.
But people aren't interested in the World, this is the mistake the globalisers make.
They care about their family, their town and their country. Since 1979 things have stood still. My Plumber Father bought his first house at 22, on a single wage. He could leave a job on Friday and have another one on Monday.It takes 2 professional salaries to buy a house now and I can't walk to China to pick up that new job over the weekend.
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Nov 10, 2016 | discussion.theguardian.com
dartmouth75, 10 Nov 2016 10:26
KelvinYearwood , 10 Nov 2016 10:30That ship has sailed. Bernie was the opportunity and it wasn't grasped. The moment for a 'left' alternative has been lost for a long time. The whole globalised liberal paradigm - allied to the metropolitan elite's obsession with identity politics at the expense of bottom-line issues - has been broken up by people who now realise centre-left politicians (Clinton/Obama) have presided over whole communities being gutted in the name of 'free' trade (for 'free' trade read labour arbitrage). I felt it in my bones that Trump would be elected - 55% of US households are worse off than they were in 2000, how on earth could anyone possibly think that that would result or a vote for the status quo.
rebuydonkey , 10 Nov 2016 10:31Well said Naomi.
I am an angry white male, and I am not a misogynist, as this paper would have it. I am fully aware of the appalling nature of Donald Trump.
On the other hand, I fully understand the bureaucratic nature of the Democrat Party, the embedded interests of Wall Street and the military-industrial complex in that bureaucracy, the dirty tricks that that bureaucratic machinery got up to in order to extinguish Bernie Sander's campaign.
I am aware of how that machinery has been ramping up a situation of global conflict, shamelessly recreating an aggressive Cold war Mk II situation with Russia and China, which is simply cover for the US racist colonial assumption that the world and its resources belongs to it in its sense of itself as an exceptional entity fulfilling its manifest destiny upon a global stage that belongs to its exceptional, wealthy and powerful elites.
And I am aware of how Hillary was so keen to service this reality and American image of itself. And to go beyond that, and bomb Libya for 6 months, killing thousands of civilians (Middle eastern unpeople) and, may I suggest, doing nothing whatsoever for the women of Libya. Quite the opposite!
Michael Moore, in a talk in which he predicted the victory of Trump before the election, notes how Trump went into an American car factory and told the executives of that company that if they relocated to Mexico, he would put a huge tax on their cars coming into America. Not all was misogyny in the vote for Trump. Whether he delivers on his threat or not, unlike the democrat bureaucratic machinery, he showed he was actually listening to working class Americans and that he was ;prepared to face up to company executives.
What has this paper got to say about Hillary and the Democrat Party's class bigotry – its demonstrable contempt for 10s of millions of Americans whose lives are worse now than in 1973, while productivity and wealth overall has skyrocketed over those 43 years.
What has this paper got to say about the lives of African American women, which have been devastated by Republican/Democrat bipartisan policy over the last 43 years?
What has Hadley Freeman got to say about Hillary's comment that President Mubarek of Egypt was "one of the family? A president whose security forces used physical and sexualised abuse of female demonstrators in the Arab Spring?
A feminist would need more than a peg on their nose to vote for Hillary – a feminist would need all the scented oils of Arabia. Perhaps Wahhabi funded Hillary can buy them up.
brianpreece -> rebuydonkeyGreat article. I think there needs to be a lot of soul searching in certain sections of the media and amongst the left wing political parties too. They don't have the correct approach to a rapidly changing ground swell of opinion. They are fast becoming out of touch - leaving a huge void for more conservative rhetoric (euphemism) to take over.
The failure to tackle immigration concerns across the west is the greatest example of comfy left wing elites being so far away from general consensus imo. The assumption that if you are concerned about immigration then you are a racist, xenophobic half wit appears rife amongst elites and the highly educated.
TeTsuo36 -> rebuydonkeyI agree that this is a great article. And I agree that there is a coming migration crisis that we need to be very worried about, as the refugees from the Middle East try desperately for a better life away from conflict zones and poverty. However, the right wing have very skilfully redirected the anger that SHOULD be directed at what Naomi cleverly calls the "Davos class" onto a very small "immigration" issue that we have in the UK today.
The evidence for this is that in the EU referendum, the areas that were most strongly Leave were generally speaking those with few or no immigrants. I campaigned for Remain here in Stockport where there are very few immigrants and I also campaign regularly against privatisation in the NHS and over and over again, I am told that immigrants are the problem in an area which has virtually none. I don't think that people are concerned about immigration are half wits, but I think they've been manipulated.
"Fear the stranger" is an evolutionary response buried deep in our brains that we need to control with rationality and it's such an easy button for the right wing to push. I grew up in Northern Ireland so I saw this at first hand. My grandfather was a highly intelligent technocrat, but he was also an Orangeman. He did not seem able to understand that the Catholics he knew and were his friends were the same "them" that he demonised. All progressive people need now to find a way, as Naomi's article says, to repoint this anger to where it belongs. Sorry if this makes me a comfy left wing elite!
zephirine -> brianpreeceIt is not going to happen. The holier than thou, supremacist arrogance of the illiberal class, means they can never admit they were wrong. Look at the past year here ATL and then BTL. Witness the absolute, unchanging and frankly extreme editorial line, in the face of massive discourse and well argued opposition BTL. Even now there are no alarm bells ringing in the back of their minds, they are right and everyone else is wrong. No attempt to understand, such is their unwavering belief in the echo chamber. You will only find an attempted programme of re-education in these pages. They will be still be doing it as Europe falls into the hands of the far-right.
ID3924525 , 10 Nov 2016 10:33It's all about jobs, really, isn't it? There is a natural fear of 'the other', but if times are good and jobs (proper jobs, not ZHC) are plentiful, it feels less important. On the face of it, it seems odd that the most fear of immigration is in places where there isn't much immigration, but they're often places where there isn't much work either.I campaigned for Remain here in Stockport where there are very few immigrants and I also campaign regularly against privatisation in the NHS and over and over again, I am told that immigrants are the problem in an area which has virtually none. I don't think that people are concerned about immigration are half wits, but I think they've been manipulated. "Fear the stranger" is an evolutionary response buried deep in our brains that we need to control with rationality and it's such an easy button for the right wing to push.
OhReallyFFS , 10 Nov 2016 10:34Here is what we need to understand: a hell of a lot of people are in pain. Under neoliberal policies of deregulation, privatisation, austerity and corporate trade, their living standards have declined precipitously. They have lost jobs. They have lost pensions. They have lost much of the safety net that used to make these losses less frightening. They see a future for their kids even worse than their precarious present.
Yes. But, in the meantime, the system has become so right-wing that it only permits a right-wing outburst - a Social-Democratic one is instantly discredited by the totalitarian media outlets.
There is no way to articulate an effective response to this attack within the system.
tomandlu -> OhReallyFFS 2 3As usual Klein seems to make more sense than anyone else.
This paper needs to decide where it's going to stand politically for the next few years.
Rights are important, but identity politics contain too much whimsy and focus on the self.
SaintTimothy , 10 Nov 2016 11:01Yes, but they're politically and economically cheap, don't require much thought, and you get to hang out with pop-stars.
This article is spot on except that both Bernie Sanders and Elizabeth Warren jumped on the Clinton neoliberal train for reasons of political expediency. From now on, anything either of them say should be critically examined before being supported.
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Nov 10, 2016 | discussion.theguardian.com
CosmoCrawley, 10 Nov 2016 10:44
Cuniform -> CosmoCrawley 0 1It wasn't just free trade that the white working class voters of the rust belt states were angry about, it was also high immigration. Naomi doesn't mention this, probably because fluid borders is one policy which the Davos class and left-liberals like herself agree on.
Such a[n intersection left] coalition is possible. In Canada, we have begun to cobble it together under the banner of a people's agenda called The Leap Manifesto, endorsed by more than 220 organisations from Greenpeace Canada to Black Lives Matter Toronto, and some of our largest trade unions.
And if such a coalition of the usual suspects got off the ground in the USA it would just about seal a second term for Donald.
JulesBywaterLees -> CosmoCrawleyWould this be a movement that would see us being turned from supine consumers back into citizens who actively care about more than a new TV?
Otherwise, look to see a recurrence, here and elsewhere, of the riots we saw in England in 2011.
nollafgm -> Cuniformgovernment for the centre ground has been about management- the days when the US New Deal funded by taxing the rich and which built the wealth Americans now miss, and the Labour post war government that built the NHS [and taxed the rich] is part of history. Instead we have no new innovation but a little bit of tweaking with banks and global business.
No government wants to upset the powers that run the economy- so a multinational can move its workforce to a country with lower pay, lower environmental regulation- it can use the inequality to move not only manufacturing but people.
In return the gutted communities become less smart and given bread and circuses but their privilege and lack of mobility means they don't travel to pick fruit elsewhere- yet they still demand food on the table and the only ones prepared to travel and work hard are the even greater poor.
And the right simply blames the immigrants, the others and you believe them.
don't stop at 2011, the precedent started in 1934 in Nuremberg Germany. Trump used the same how to manual written by Goebbels, he got the idea from the Romans.
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Nov 10, 2016 | discussion.theguardian.com
Flooch -> Scott WardThis is an excellent response. However already you can hear the liberal elite dismiss the Trump voters as idiots - it's always funny when you hear people complain that Trump threatening to put his opponent in jail, or Brexiters threatening the partiality of the judiciary are threats to the democratic system... these same people then start making the argument the electorate is too stupid to make a decision. The liberal elite need to acknowledge the tangible suffering and injustice being faced by working-class people across Europe and the United States, and act to address it.
There was a telling point early on in the election coverage when the democrat representative on the BBC panel was arrogantly smiling once the exit polls showed Clinton on for a comfortable victory. Andrew Neil put him straight back in his place when he asked 'is it not concerning for the Democrat Party that they are no longer the party of the blue-collar American?' The representative highlighted the arrogance and complacency of the liberal elite, that seconds after the election result looked to be in, he seemed to go back to not caring about working-class people and re-enter the elite bubble.
boilingriver -> Scott WardGreat post. Inequality has been visibly widening in the US (and the UK) for years, principally as a result of globalisation. A large proportion of the people are "mad as hell" and have decided to try to do something about it. Trump is unlikely to be the answer, but there will be more support for anti-politicians (such as Grillo & the 5 Star movement in Italy) while the conventional politicians continue to bleat nonsense.
montmartian , 10 Nov 2016 10:49some people see that you put in the same republican representatives that are just the opposite side of the same coin. Actually the repubs are worse . No to unions, higher min wage, tax cuts to the very wealthy etc. Dems talk about these issue but can never get it together to actually implement them.
Flooch -> montmartian 3 4I think Naomi has given the answer by mistake. The liberal elite is totally disconnected from the rest of the country. It wasn't just trump it was a red wave of republican victory -- her article demonstrates how little she understands.
The liberal elite includes the media, who can't wait to run stories of "thousands" of people protesting about Trump in the US. Yes, thousands, in a country with a population of 318 million.
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Nov 10, 2016 | discussion.theguardian.com
CaptainSpaulding, 10 Nov 2016 10:42
SocTrap -> CaptainSpaulding 0 1This election will spawn losers all over the place; the most tragic losers will be those that voted a supposed maverick into the high office in order to fight the 'liberal' or whatever establishment hoping to bring jobs back to the people.
However, you cannot fight the establishment with the establishment and Trump -who is a billionaire FFS- is another one who represents that. If he didn't he would not have been allowed to run.
Just for the same reason that Bernie was squeezed out, not that I think he is a real socialist but one who would have come too close to do some real change. To quote Rosa Luxemburg: If an election would mean real change it would have been abolished
It is strange and telling that the discourse within the American public over the last 40 years or so allowed themselves to discuss and tackle to various levels of success issues like sexism, racism, institutional racism, misogyny, xenophobia, even sexuality and yes, even gun laws but one thing that is an absolute no-no in discourse is the economical and subsequentially political system.
As long as people believe the American Dream is within reach to them, just like they believe it was for individuals like Trump, the economic system will remain its status quo and that is: riches for a few, struggles for many.
The establishment will see for that and always find ways to maintain. One thing that has always worked perfectly fine is to find scapegoats like foreigners, immigrants, people on welfare, coloured people , minorities and so on. Can't even say this is typically American, it has worked most recently in the UK within the brexit discussion and in Germany and other places.
The power is with people, I remain optimistic; an election, though, will not change anything
BizaaroLand , 10 Nov 2016 10:42You correctly state that you cannot fight the establishment with Trump. But I suggest he is the best choice. You assume a choice has been made to get that single person to help them. I suggest a choice has been made to plant a suicide bomber in the establishment.
The problem has been that Obama has put an empathetic, intelligent and articulate face on the front of a deeply corrupted system. To attack the system one appears to be attacking him and that can be awkward.
With Trump in that position, the entire credibility of the establishment has been destroyed. Trump is a clown. An idiot. Every time he spouting something misogynistic or racist he became a better weapon for the public to use to against the establishments structures. No better place for him than to have him as the Icon of the establishment. The (now) unacceptable face.
As you say, the power is with the people. But they first must be angry and disgusted at the establishment. Clinton was not distasteful enough to rally the lefts anger. Trump is perfect.
boilingriver -> BizaaroLand 0 1One thing particular about Killery: I believe she was meant to deliver more war for her Davos employers. I've had enough of 'Mericuh's wars for profit, and to protect the Bankers fortunes. At this point I'm ready to vote for Idi Amin, if it stops the banker wars being waged for them by their proxy the United States.
Trump will not stop the wars. All anyone had to do was look at the voting records of the republicans in office( that were reelected) that voted for more war equipment. They also wanted TTIP. Until the public realizes we have to change our state representatives nothing will change.
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Nov 10, 2016 | discussion.theguardian.com
Mike Pilcher, 10 Nov 2016 11:06
Walter Wilkins -> Mike Pilcher 2 3... ... ...
Why are state owned industries bad things? When one debates it the way the argument has been framed - Left vs Right - it is hard to defend, ending in a "commie vs. fascist" diatribe.
If it's framed by "Why should profit be made from essential services, water, electricity, telephone, rail, health services, especially when there's only one delivery mechanism, a pipe, a rail, a cable, a hospital?" (and one paid for and put in by the Government) then that's a different debate.
Then the debate moves to "Govt's can't run companies". Only then can we frame the debate about fixing the right problem. Get Govt's to run essential services effectively, not giving up that they can't and allowing corporations to profit from essential services – that profit is your taxes.
To win this argument the debate needs to not be the ideological argument of Left vs Right. We need a new approach for the 21st Century that embraces change, technology and dynamism and overlays it with pragmatism, social caring and a drive for growth.
Is Amazon a force for change? Yes. Should it have been allowed to part fund its growth by arbitraging tax savings between one US state and another? No.
Should Uber be able to set up a taxi business? Yes. If there is an existing business in place, with infrastructure and investment, should new entrants be forced to adhere to the same rules and regulations that supported that existing business, and taxed to allow the established businesses to evolve, with taxes paying for the re-training of people, paying for investments, supporting infrastructure? I think so.
When we have autonomous vans replacing delivery drivers, should we tax companies that use them to offset the social cost of laying off millions of people in the transportation sector to pay for re-training and infrastructure investments, or should we simply allow offshore companies to export jobs and money?
I suggest we need a new approach. Not Left or Right. We need to ditch the neoliberal policies that created free market capitalism and not replace it with socialism, but replace it with logical, pragmatic, socially-focused capitalism. So long as our choice is left or right, you get Trumped. I hope someone can find a new way.
petersview -> Mike Pilcher 0 1Do we need more well articulated positions such as the one that's posted here? Definitely.
ROMhack -> Mike Pilcher 0 1You can be one of those who finds a better way. So can I, so can every one of us, if we're willing to take on the responsibility of participating in the process at the local level, as I said in my earlier post. I'm an old man now, but I've always been involved in the political process. We haven't always achieved what we wanted, that's a fact of life. But my country, Australia, is a better place today than it was 1n 1937 when I was born. The USA has suffered a setback this week, more reason for the young people to get into the process at the coalface, and build better parties that reflect their values.I hope someone can find a new way.
Superlative post.
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Nov 10, 2016 | discussion.theguardian.com
intonsus , 10 Nov 2016 11:10I think there's a lot of truth to this; over hear we could say that many Trump voters are the equivalent of the miners and steel workers who lost out under Thatcherism, and whom Labour used to at least try to represent.
But the other horn of the dilemma in which such people find themselves is cultural. A cultural revolution has taken place over the past fifty years which has weakened, and threatens to destroy, the culture that many of these people feel comfortable with, and people like Clinton tell them to be happy about that, or be called bigots. Working people whose lodestars are faith, flag and family are derided, and dismissed as relics.
A party which combined a more Left-wing populist economic policy with a socially conservative cultural position would absolutely clean up, and would help a great many poor people. But the Left is too infatuated with racial, sexual, moral and social revolution to care. The "rust-belt" poor look to the Democrats for aid, are are given transgender lavatories. It's an insult.
ASTMcVeigh -> intonsus 0 1You took a great many words to say what you actually mean: "Hilary Clinton is a corrupt lifelong politician totally in bed with the bankers, world financiers, and rich elites, whilst peddling a enough rubbish to attract the SJWs. She's been found out and that's why she lost".
stuart6233 , 10 Nov 2016 11:12And Bernie could have won: https://pplswar.wordpress.com/2016/10/18/bernie-sanders-the-most-popular-politician-in-america /
Am disgusted with the DNC.And yes, I voted Clinton (due to being registered in a swing state). Glad I did, now, though it hurt three weeks ago. Signed, a Berner.
Marangaranga -> stuart6233 8 9You espouse "hate" more than anyone. This article is full of "hate" directed at all the "groups" you don't like. Hypocrisy!!
I resent being called racist, mysognist, and stupid - and I would vote for Trump just to p..s you off.
You just don't get it. It's people like you that the world is rebelling against. Highly paid, know-it-alls with your vain moral superiority.
Your not part of the solution. You are the problem!
Grotesque -> stuart6233 2 3I really don't know where to start with this.
Nothing in the article directs hate at voters or groups of voters. It is, arguably, disgusted with the Trump and Brexit campaigns but is full of sympathy for the plights of many who voted for them.
Secondly, voting for Trump just to rebel against 'highly paid know-it-alls with vain moral superiority' is just crazy. It might not be racist or misogynistic but it is stupid. Voting to 'p..s' someone off is treating your vote, democratic right and responsibility with distain.
The craziest part of all of this is that the highly paid people who you are rebelling against will get a tax cut from Trump. It is the poor that will bear the brunt of his presidency.
stuart6233 -> Marangaranga 0 1Voting for something entirely to piss someone else off is stupid, though.
stephen12345 , 10 Nov 2016 11:59"Neo-fascist responses"
"Trump-style extremism"
"they answer it by bashing immigrants and people of colour, vilifying Muslims, and degrading women"You call my right to vote the way I choose "stupid".
You just don't get it. Millions of Americans voted exactly this way. A big middle finger to the establishment, media, Wall Street, "experts", and yes moral posturing know-it-alls is a great way to use your vote.
You completely misunderstand Trump. He is far more for the working man than Clinton. The poor voted for him in droves. And for good reason.
He won for the same reasons Brexit won.
There has been no real recovery for working people or most people in the west since the great recession. White working class people in both countries are angry. They are angry that they are no longer given a significantly preferential seat at the dinner table (or at least compared to yesteryear), angry that they have to compete equally with everyone else.
In the UK apparently we must now concentrate on white working class people concerning education. They are not discriminated against and on the contrary still are free from many prejudices that non whites experience yet they under perform.
And why should they receive preferential treatment? Are we to be judged on the past exploits of generations before us? Perhaps their forebearers served for the country... well my son's great grandfather served the UK during WWII even though he was from another country and what did they give him in return... sweet f*** all; a one way ticket home with a pat on the back and a "good luck" with dealing with his wounds and rehabilitation. Neither did it benefit his ancestors the slightest so why should it be taken into account for Britons today?
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Nov 10, 2016 | discussion.theguardian.com
In order to justify the unjustifiable (a corporate elite exploiting the world as their own private estate), they constructed an artificial equivalence to make it seem that their self-interested economic system was part and parcel of a package of 'democracy', 'multi-racial tolerance', 'LGBT tolerance' etc, so that people would be fooled into thinking that rejecting the economics meant rejecting all the other things too.
George Soros' "Open Society Foundation'" is a key offender here. The false consciousness thus engendered does indeed set the scene for fascism, but a genuine left opposition can and needs to be built and we can only hope that we can succeed in so doing.
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Aug 21, 2016 | www.theguardian.com
... ... ...
The neoliberal era is being undermined from two directions. First, if its record of economic growth has never been particularly strong, it is now dismal. Europe is barely larger than it was on the eve of the financial crisis in 2007; the United States has done better but even its growth has been anaemic. Economists such as Larry Summers believe that the prospect for the future is most likely one of secular stagnation .
Worse, because the recovery has been so weak and fragile, there is a widespread belief that another financial crisis may well beckon. In other words, the neoliberal era has delivered the west back into the kind of crisis-ridden world that we last experienced in the 1930s. With this background, it is hardly surprising that a majority in the west now believe their children will be worse off than they were. Second, those who have lost out in the neoliberal era are no longer prepared to acquiesce in their fate – they are increasingly in open revolt. We are witnessing the end of the neoliberal era. It is not dead, but it is in its early death throes, just as the social-democratic era was during the 1970s.
A sure sign of the declining influence of neoliberalism is the rising chorus of intellectual voices raised against it. From the mid-70s through the 80s, the economic debate was increasingly dominated by monetarists and free marketeers. But since the western financial crisis, the centre of gravity of the intellectual debate has shifted profoundly. This is most obvious in the United States, with economists such as Joseph Stiglitz, Paul Krugman, Dani Rodrik and Jeffrey Sachs becoming increasingly influential. Thomas Piketty's Capital in the Twenty-First Century has been a massive seller. His work and that of Tony Atkinson and Angus Deaton have pushed the question of the inequality to the top of the political agenda. In the UK, Ha-Joon Chang , for long isolated within the economics profession, has gained a following far greater than those who think economics is a branch of mathematics.
Meanwhile, some of those who were previously strong advocates of a neoliberal approach, such as Larry Summers and the Financial Times 's Martin Wolf, have become extremely critical. The wind is in the sails of the critics of neoliberalism; the neoliberals and monetarists are in retreat. In the UK, the media and political worlds are well behind the curve. Few recognise that we are at the end of an era. Old attitudes and assumptions still predominate, whether on the BBC's Today programme, in the rightwing press or the parliamentary Labour party.
As Thomas Piketty has shown, in the absence of countervailing pressures, capitalism naturally gravitates towards increasing inequality. In the period between 1945 and the late 70s, Cold War competition was arguably the biggest such constraint. Since the collapse of the Soviet Union, there have been none. As the popular backlash grows increasingly irresistible, however, such a winner-takes-all regime becomes politically unsustainable.
Large sections of the population in both the US and the UK are now in revolt against their lot, as graphically illustrated by the support for Trump and Sanders in the US and the Brexit vote in the UK. This popular revolt is often described, in a somewhat denigratory and dismissive fashion, as populism. Or, as Francis Fukuyama writes in a recent excellent essay in Foreign Affairs: “‘Populism’ is the label that political elites attach to policies supported by ordinary citizens that they don’t like.” Populism is a movement against the status quo. It represents the beginnings of something new, though it is generally much clearer about what it is against than what it is for. It can be progressive or reactionary, but more usually both.
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Jul 04, 2019 | www.theguardian.com
Neoliberal economics and other fairytales about money Politics is not about a struggle over a fixed pot of money, says Mary Mellor, and the best way to end austerity is to reject it as an ideology, says Peter McKenna
Aditya Chakrabortty ( It's reckless. But a Tory cash splurge could win an election , 3 July) is right to point out the hypocrisy of the political right about public expenditure. While progressive proposals for public spending are decried as burdening the hard-pressed taxpayer, the right is happy to use public money to rescue the banks or boost their electoral chances.
As I explain in my book Money: Myths, Truths and Alternatives, neoliberal economics is built on a fairytale about money that distorts our view of how a contemporary public money system operates. It is assumed that public spending depends on extracting money from the market and that money (like gold) is always in short supply. Neither is true. Both the market and the state generate money – the market through bank lending and the state through public spending. Both increase the money supply, while bank loan repayments and taxation reduce it. There is no natural shortage of money – which today mainly exists only as data.
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The case for austerity missed the point. Politics is not about a struggle over a fixed pot of money. What is limited are resources (particularly the environment) and human capacity. How these are best used should be a matter of democratic debate. The allocation of money should depend on the priorities identified. In this the market has no more claim than the public economy to be the source of sustainable human welfare.
Professor Mary Mellor
Newcastle upon Tyne• Over the years Aditya Chakrabortty has provided us with powerful critiques of austerity. His message now – that EU membership "is the best way to end austerity" – overlooks the fact that the UK was in the EU all that time.
Moreover, the EU's stability and growth pact requires that budget deficits and public debt be pegged below 3% and 60% of GDP respectively.
Such notions are the beating heart of austerity, and the European commission's excessive deficit procedure taken against errant states has almost universally resulted in swingeing austerity programmes. These were approved and monitored by the commission and council, with the UK only taken off the naughty step in 2017 after years of crippling austerity finally reduced the deficit to 2.3% of GDP.
The best way to end austerity – and to sway voters – is to reject austerity as an ideology regardless of remain or leave, and rehabilitate the concept of public investment in a people's economy.
Peter McKenna
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Nov 10, 2016 | discussion.theguardian.com
HuckleAndLowly, 10 Nov 2016 10:03
ydobon -> HuckleAndLowlyThere is a fundamental difficulty here which progressives have not fully faced. It is that more open trade and welcoming immigration policies are, on the one hand, a progressive and moral good (we should feel solidarity with people from the global south; it feels wrong to bar them from our countries and stop them from benefiting from our economies).
On the other hand, more open immigration policies will mean more workers, which will of course take jobs away, especially from the poorest in our own societies. Similarly, more open trade will more jobs in poorer countries and fewer jobs here, again taking jobs, especially from the poorest in our societies. this is morally wrong: we should feel solidarity with our own poor.
Further, more open immigration policies are what capitalism 'wants': more workers will necessarily drive wages down, and so produce greater profits for corporations and the rich, and therefore greater inequality in our society overall. Comfortably well-off liberals can appear and feel progressive by supporting more open immigration, while in fact this support aligns with capitalist policies that benefit them and exploit those who are worse off.
We need a progressive movement that can resolve this and square the circle.
Well said. ,
olivercotts -> HuckleAndLowlyWell said.
HuckleAndLowly -> olivercotts'We need a progressive movement that can resolve this and square the circle'.
A good point, but any idea how to progress?
Honestly, no, beyond stressing the fact that more open and welcoming immigration policies are not unalloyed morally good things: they lead to lower wages for the poor and middle class, and lead to greater inequality, since lower wages translate into greater profits for corporations and their owners.
Perhaps if a progressive argument towards tempering and controlling immigration can be made, based on the fact that open immigration leads to greater inequality and in the end benefits the 1% the most, then we can get some sort of progress.
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Jul 06, 2019 | www.theguardian.com
As an economist I endorse Dan Button's article ( Stop obsessing about GDP: we should focus on wellbeing , 11 June). The most we can say is that a succession of GDP figures over months should indicate whether the economy is growing or moving into recession. Also aggregate GDP statistics tell us nothing about how national wealth and income are distributed: globalisation in recent decades has increased the size of the cake, but the main beneficiaries have been the already better-off.
To extract meaning from GDP trends we have to break it into its components: consumption, investment, government spending, the trade balance. Consumption is by far the largest of these, and the main driver of the economy, but its level is precariously underpinned by unsecured private debt. It is broadly accepted that real investment (in new productive capacity) is dismally inadequate for the continued growth of a modern economy; much of what does take place goes into buying paper assets.
As for government expenditure, most of us are crying out for more on education, health, social care, police, early childhood services, to name a few, but as a nation we want "big state" levels of public services financed by "small state" levels of taxation. Last, we have a massive balance-of-payments deficit: we are exporting too little to pay for our imports; we are living beyond our means. We can only continue this by selling capital assets (such as water companies) to overseas investors, thus losing the dividends and tax revenue that they generate.
Lawrence Lockhart
Bath• Spot on, Dan Button. But focusing on GDP is even more absurd than "prioritising short-term growth over long-term sustainability". In Jeremy Lent's The Patterning Instinct (a magnificent book recently recommended by George Monbiot ) a passage spells out the absurdity: "Anything that causes economic activity of any kind, whether good or bad, adds to GDP. An oil spill, for example, increases GDP because of the cost of cleaning it up: the bigger the spill, the better it is for GDP."
He goes on and finally shows that "after a country's GDP per capita reaches a moderate level there is no correlation between the wealth of a country and the reported happiness of its population".
Trouble is, this is hard for free-market "wealth creators" to swallow and, as Lent observes: "the mainstream media unquestionably accept the mantra of our locked-in ideology that economic growth, measured by GDP, is the social objective to be pursued above all else". So well done Dan Button and the Guardian for questioning the mantra. Keep it up.
John Airs
Liverpool• Although the measurement of "personal wellbeing" introduced by David Cameron's government in 2010 is a welcome addition to crude GDP measures, it relies heavily on subjective assessments of life satisfaction, personal happiness, perception of financial situation, level of anxiety and a strange "worthwhile rating". It would be more useful to measure the wellbeing of society as a whole using objective criteria.
These could include, along with GDP per head, medical factors such as infant mortality, longevity, incidence of mental illness, numbers of doctors per head and access to hospitals; social factors such as crime rates, percentage of population in prison, stability of marriages and partnerships, working hours, holidays, homelessness and unemployment; cultural factors such as human rights and access to the arts; and environmental factors such as pollution and carbon footprint.
Such a measure, if internationally agreed, could be used to rate the success or otherwise over time of governments, and to compare wellbeing between countries.
Peter Wrigley
Birstall, West Yorkshire• It is increasingly accepted that continued economic growth is a short route to eventual disaster for anyone not protected by high wealth: the decline in biodiversity, global heating, air pollution, water stress, soil deterioration and rising sea levels are all trends directly linked to the increase in the amount of the natural world's resources going to fuel consumption. The only way we can protect the mass of human populations is to abandon economic growth altogether and concentrate on better using what we have. This will include changing the numerous ways in which human societies channel the profits of economic activity into the pockets of a few, and challenging the immense pressure exerted by those few on governments whether democratic or other.
Jeremy Cushing
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Jul 14, 2017 | www.theguardian.com
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Over the last two years, a different, in some ways unrecognizable Larry Summers has been appearing in newspaper editorial pages. More circumspect in tone, this humbler Summers has been arguing that economic opportunities in the developing world are slowing, and that the already rich economies are finding it hard to get out of the crisis. Barring some kind of breakthrough, Summers says, an era of slow growth is here to stay.
In Summers's recent writings, this sombre conclusion has often been paired with a surprising political goal: advocating for a "responsible nationalism". Now he argues that politicians must recognise that "the basic responsibility of government is to maximise the welfare of citizens, not to pursue some abstract concept of the global good".
One curious thing about the pro-globalisation consensus of the 1990s and 2000s, and its collapse in recent years, is how closely the cycle resembles a previous era. Pursuing free trade has always produced displacement and inequality – and political chaos, populism and retrenchment to go with it. Every time the social consequences of free trade are overlooked, political backlash follows. But free trade is only one of many forms that economic integration can take. History seems to suggest, however, that it might be the most destabilising one.
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The international systems that chastened figures such as Keynes helped produce in the next few years – especially the Bretton Woods agreement and the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade (Gatt) – set the terms under which the new wave of globalisation would take place.
The key to the system's viability, in Rodrik's view, was its flexibility – something absent from contemporary globalisation, with its one-size-fits-all model of capitalism. Bretton Woods stabilised exchange rates by pegging the dollar loosely to gold, and other currencies to the dollar. Gatt consisted of rules governing free trade – negotiated by participating countries in a series of multinational "rounds" – that left many areas of the world economy, such as agriculture, untouched or unaddressed. "Gatt's purpose was never to maximise free trade," Rodrik writes. "It was to achieve the maximum amount of trade compatible with different nations doing their own thing. In that respect, the institution proved spectacularly successful."
Partly because Gatt was not always dogmatic about free trade, it allowed most countries to figure out their own economic objectives, within a somewhat international ambit. When nations contravened the agreement's terms on specific areas of national interest, they found that it "contained loopholes wide enough for an elephant to pass", in Rodrik's words. If a nation wanted to protect its steel industry, for example, it could claim "injury" under the rules of Gatt and raise tariffs to discourage steel imports: "an abomination from the standpoint of free trade". These were useful for countries that were recovering from the war and needed to build up their own industries via tariffs – duties imposed on particular imports. Meanwhile, from 1948 to 1990, world trade grew at an annual average of nearly 7% – faster than the post-communist years, which we think of as the high point of globalisation. "If there was a golden era of globalisation," Rodrik has written, "this was it."
Gatt, however, failed to cover many of the countries in the developing world. These countries eventually created their own system, the United Nations conference on trade and development (UNCTAD). Under this rubric, many countries – especially in Latin America, the Middle East, Africa and Asia – adopted a policy of protecting homegrown industries by replacing imports with domestically produced goods. It worked poorly in some places – India and Argentina, for example, where the trade barriers were too high, resulting in factories that cost more to set up than the value of the goods they produced – but remarkably well in others, such as east Asia, much of Latin America and parts of sub-Saharan Africa, where homegrown industries did spring up. Though many later economists and commentators would dismiss the achievements of this model, it theoretically fit Larry Summers's recent rubric on globalisation: "the basic responsibility of government is to maximise the welfare of citizens, not to pursue some abstract concept of the global good."
The critical turning point – away from this system of trade balanced against national protections – came in the 1980s. Flagging growth and high inflation in the west, along with growing competition from Japan, opened the way for a political transformation. The elections of Margaret Thatcher and Ronald Reagan were seminal, putting free-market radicals in charge of two of the world's five biggest economies and ushering in an era of "hyperglobalisation". In the new political climate, economies with large public sectors and strong governments within the global capitalist system were no longer seen as aids to the system's functioning, but impediments to it.
Not only did these ideologies take hold in the US and the UK; they seized international institutions as well. Gatt renamed itself as the World Trade Organization (WTO), and the new rules the body negotiated began to cut more deeply into national policies. Its international trade rules sometimes undermined national legislation. The WTO's appellate court intervened relentlessly in member nations' tax, environmental and regulatory policies, including those of the United States: the US's fuel emissions standards were judged to discriminate against imported gasoline, and its ban on imported shrimp caught without turtle-excluding devices was overturned. If national health and safety regulations were stricter than WTO rules necessitated, they could only remain in place if they were shown to have "scientific justification".
The purest version of hyperglobalisation was tried out in Latin America in the 1980s. Known as the "Washington consensus", this model usually involved loans from the IMF that were contingent on those countries lowering trade barriers and privatising many of their nationally held industries. Well into the 1990s, economists were proclaiming the indisputable benefits of openness. In an influential 1995 paper, Jeffrey Sachs and Andrew Warner wrote: "We find no cases to support the frequent worry that a country might open and yet fail to grow."
But the Washington consensus was bad for business: most countries did worse than before. Growth faltered, and citizens across Latin America revolted against attempted privatisations of water and gas. In Argentina, which followed the Washington consensus to the letter, a grave crisis resulted in 2002 , precipitating an economic collapse and massive street protests that forced out the government that had pursued privatising reforms. Argentina's revolt presaged a left-populist upsurge across the continent: from 1999 to 2007, leftwing leaders and parties took power in Brazil, Venezuela, Bolivia and Ecuador, all of them campaigning against the Washington consensus on globalisation. These revolts were a preview of the backlash of today.
Rodrik – perhaps the contemporary economist whose views have been most amply vindicated by recent events – was himself a beneficiary of protectionism in Turkey. His father's ballpoint pen company was sheltered under tariffs, and achieved enough success to allow Rodrik to attend Harvard in the 1970s as an undergraduate. This personal understanding of the mixed nature of economic success may be one of the reasons why his work runs against the broad consensus of mainstream economics writing on globalisation.
"I never felt that my ideas were out of the mainstream," Rodrik told me recently. Instead, it was that the mainstream had lost touch with the diversity of opinions and methods that already existed within economics. "The economics profession is strange in that the more you move away from the seminar room to the public domain, the more the nuances get lost, especially on issues of trade." He lamented the fact that while, in the classroom, the models of trade discuss losers and winners, and, as a result, the necessity of policies of redistribution, in practice, an "arrogance and hubris" had led many economists to ignore these implications. "Rather than speaking truth to power, so to speak, many economists became cheerleaders for globalisation."
In his 2011 book The Globalization Paradox , Rodrik concluded that "we cannot simultaneously pursue democracy, national determination, and economic globalisation." The results of the 2016 elections and referendums provide ample testimony of the justness of the thesis, with millions voting to push back, for better or for worse, against the campaigns and institutions that promised more globalisation. "I'm not at all surprised by the backlash," Rodrik told me. "Really, nobody should have been surprised."
But what, in any case, would "more globalisation" look like? For the same economists and writers who have started to rethink their commitments to greater integration, it doesn't mean quite what it did in the early 2000s. It's not only the discourse that's changed: globalisation itself has changed, developing into a more chaotic and unequal system than many economists predicted. The benefits of globalisation have been largely concentrated in a handful of Asian countries. And even in those countries, the good times may be running out.
Statistics from Global Inequality , a 2016 book by the development economist Branko Milanović, indicate that in relative terms the greatest benefits of globalisation have accrued to a rising "emerging middle class", based preponderantly in China. But the cons are there, too: in absolute terms, the largest gains have gone to what is commonly called "the 1%" – half of whom are based in the US. Economist Richard Baldwin has shown in his recent book, The Great Convergence, that nearly all of the gains from globalisation have been concentrated in six countries.
Barring some political catastrophe, in which rightwing populism continued to gain, and in which globalisation would be the least of our problems – Wolf admitted that he was "not at all sure" that this could be ruled out – globalisation was always going to slow; in fact, it already has. One reason, says Wolf, was that "a very, very large proportion of the gains from globalisation – by no means all – have been exploited. We have a more open world economy to trade than we've ever had before." Citing The Great Convergence, Wolf noted that supply chains have already expanded, and that future developments, such as automation and the use of robots, looked to undermine the promise of a growing industrial workforce. Today, the political priorities were less about trade and more about the challenge of retraining workers , as technology renders old jobs obsolete and transforms the world of work.
Rodrik, too, believes that globalisation, whether reduced or increased, is unlikely to produce the kind of economic effects it once did. For him, this slowdown has something to do with what he calls "premature deindustrialisation". In the past, the simplest model of globalisation suggested that rich countries would gradually become "service economies", while emerging economies picked up the industrial burden. Yet recent statistics show the world as a whole is deindustrialising. Countries that one would have expected to have more industrial potential are going through the stages of automation more quickly than previously developed countries did, and thereby failing to develop the broad industrial workforce seen as a key to shared prosperity.
For both Rodrik and Wolf, the political reaction to globalisation bore possibilities of deep uncertainty. "I really have found it very difficult to decide whether what we're living through is a blip, or a fundamental and profound transformation of the world – at least as significant as the one that brought about the first world war and the Russian revolution," Wolf told me. He cited his agreement with economists such as Summers that shifting away from the earlier emphasis on globalisation had now become a political priority; that to pursue still greater liberalisation was like showing "a red rag to a bull" in terms of what it might do to the already compromised political stability of the western world.
Rodrik pointed to a belated emphasis, both among political figures and economists, on the necessity of compensating those displaced by globalisation with retraining and more robust welfare states. But pro-free-traders had a history of cutting compensation: Bill Clinton passed Nafta, but failed to expand safety nets. "The issue is that the people are rightly not trusting the centrists who are now promising compensation," Rodrik said. "One reason that Hillary Clinton didn't get any traction with those people is that she didn't have any credibility."
Rodrik felt that economics commentary failed to register the gravity of the situation: that there were increasingly few avenues for global growth, and that much of the damage done by globalisation – economic and political – is irreversible. "There is a sense that we're at a turning point," he said. "There's a lot more thinking about what can be done. There's a renewed emphasis on compensation – which, you know, I think has come rather late."
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Jul 05, 2019 | www.theguardian.com
Inside the 21st-century British criminal underworld - World news - The Guardian
There are almost 5,000 criminal gangs in the UK. But the old family firms are gone – today's big players are multinational, diversified and tech-savvy.
By Duncan Campbell Main image: Underworlds old and new: Curtis Warren, John Palmer, the Hellbanianz and others. Photograph: Chris Radburn/PA
Thu 4 Jul 2019 06.01 BST Last modified on Thu 4 Jul 2019 12.22 BST
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W ho rules the underworld today, and where do they conduct their business? Once there were the familiar mugshots and Runyonesque nicknames, the clubs and pubs where the usual suspects gathered, plotted and schemed. Now organised crime is run like any other business, and its leading figures look like every other broker or tycoon. We have entered into a world of what Sir Rob Wainwright, until recently Europe's most senior police officer, calls "anonymised" crime. The underworld has become the overworld.
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The National Crime Agency has estimated that £90bn of criminal money is being laundered through the UK every year, 4% of the country's GDP. London has become the global capital of money-laundering and the beating heart of European organised crime. English is now the international underworld's lingua franca. Crime is an essential part of the British economy, providing hundreds of thousands of jobs, not just for professional criminals – the NCA reckons there are 4,629 organised crime groups in operation – but for police and prison officers, lawyers and court officials, and a security business that now employs more than half a million people.
AdvertisementJust as the names of familiar shops have been departing from the high street, the old family firms of criminals are disappearing, whether in London, Glasgow, Newcastle or Manchester. And just as British football fans have had to learn how to pronounce the names of the legions of new foreign players, detectives have had to learn to do the same for the increasing number of new criminals. Britain was once dealing with drugs imports from half a dozen countries; now it is more than 30. A young person who would in the past have sought an apprenticeship in a trade or industry may now find that drug dealing offers better career prospects. And, apart from drugs and guns, British trading channels now facilitate the trafficking of women from eastern Europe and Africa for prostitution and children from Vietnam as low-level drug workers.
The underworld's modus operandi has shifted in the past quarter century. "The international nature of crime and technology are probably the two biggest changes," says Steve Rodhouse, the NCA's head of operations. Speaking at the NCA's unprepossessing headquarters in Vauxhall, south London, Rodhouse explains how the agency's work has mushroomed. "Pretty much all of the NCA's most significant 'high-harm' operations now involve people, commodities or money transferring across international borders. The days of having a drugs gang, a firearms gang or a people-trafficking gang have changed because of the concept of polycriminality. Groups satisfying criminal markets, whatever they may be, is now much more common. These are businesses and people are looking to exploit markets, so why confine yourself to one market?"
Wainwright, who served as Europol chief for nine years, has also noted this internationalisation of crime. Addressing a Police Foundation gathering just after his retirement last year, he said that Europol, the European equivalent of Interpol, having expanded since its foundation in 1998 when "it consisted literally, of two men and a dog – admittedly, a sniffer dog – in Luxembourg," now dealt with 65,000 cases a year. By 2018, he reckoned that 5,000 organised crime groups were operating across Europe and the mafia model had been replaced by a "more nimble" model, with 180 different nationalities operating, mixing legal with illegal business and working with between 400 and 500 major money-launderers. This was multinational business with specialists in recruitment, movement, money-laundering and the forging of documents.
AdvertisementThe internet, of course, is a major factor. Wainwright likened its effect on crime to that of the motorcar in the 1920s and 30s, when suddenly criminals could escape at speed and take advantage of new markets. He cited the dark web, which he said was selling 350,000 different illegal items – 60% of which were drugs – but including everything from guns to pornography and even operating a ratings system for speed of dispatch and quality. The combination of new faces of whom the British police – and often Interpol and Europol – were unaware, along with an increasingly tech-savvy pool of criminals able to disguise their identities, made for a toxic cocktail. Crooks anonymous.
O ne group with little interest in anonymity are the Hellbanianz, a gang of cocky young Albanians based in Barking, east London. They went online in spectacular fashion in 2017 via Instagram and YouTube rap videos to flaunt their ill-gotten wealth and firepower.
Their most prominent member, Tristen Asllani, who lived in Hampstead, was jailed for 25 years in 2016 for drug dealing and firearms offences which included possessing a Škorpion submachine gun. He was caught after a police chase in north London which ended when he crashed his car into a computer repair shop in Crouch End. A photo of Asllani, showing him stripped to the waist after he had apparently spent long hours in the prison gym, appeared on a social media page called My Albanian in Jail, with a caption saying "Even inside the prison we have all conditions, what's missing are only whores".
The flashy cars and bundles of banknotes on display in the Hellbanianz videos were the result of the importation of cocaine and cannabis, but the gang was also involved in the weapons trade. The pictures showed £50 notes wrapped around a cake and their HB logo written in cannabis. After they were arrested and jailed, other gang members have posted pictures of themselves, taken with smuggled mobile phones, from inside prison where they cheerfully inscribe their gang name on the walls.
AdvertisementMuhamed Veliu, an Albanian investigative journalist, who knows London well, says that the Hellbanianz have been on the crime scene in east London for many years. "They are sending a bad message to young Albanians. By seeing such photos, they think the streets of UK are paved with gold Bizarrely, despite the fact they are in the prison, they show the outside world photos of their life behind the bars." He said that there was a concern that the British media stereotyped all Albanians as criminals but, he added, the 2006 Securitas robbery, in which two Albanians played key roles in the theft of £53m from a depot in Kent, was regarded with some national pride back home. "It was 'the crime of the century', it was seen as very different from making money from prostitution, which is the lowest form of crime. It is wrong, of course, but they did need bravery to get involved, and at least they went for a bank – that was the feeling in the Albanian community." There are currently around 700 Albanians in British jails.
"Albania is Europe's largest producer of cannabis," says Tony Saggers, the former head of drugs threat and intelligence at the NCA. "It is important not to stereotype, but the Kosovan war led to Albanians pretending to be Kosovan in order to get asylum in the UK. Many of the people who came just wanted a better life, but there were criminals among them who were able to set up illicit networks The UK criminal has a get-rich-quick mentality while the Albanians' strategy was get-rich-slow, so they have driven down the price of cocaine in the UK. They knew that if they expanded, they could undercut the market." It helped that their reputation preceded them. "The Albanian criminals may be ruthless and potentially murderous when controlling their organised crime," said Saggers, "but when they come to the UK they try to be more charismatic and they use fear – 'We're here, we need to get on,' that sort of approach. So there is little violence from the older Albanian criminals in the UK, because they know that violence attracts more attention."
The Albanians had already established themselves in a darker fashion when 26-year-old Luan Plackici was jailed in 2003 and said to have made more than £1m from trafficking "poor, naive and gullible" young women who thought they were on their way to jobs as waitresses or barmaids. Some had to service up to 20 men a day to pay for the £8,000 "travel bill" from Romania and Moldova.
AdvertisementThe international nature of people-trafficking was exposed fully in 2014 by a trial of a gang that imported more than 100 women into Britain. The trial ended with the gang leader, Vishal Chaudhary, being jailed for 12 years. Chaudhary, who lived the high life in Canary Wharf in London, contacted young women through social networks in Hungary, the Czech Republic and Poland, offering work as receptionists, nannies or cleaners in England. But when they got to the UK, the women were forced to work in brothels. Chaudhary's team, all of whom were jailed, consisted of his brother, Kunal, who worked for Deloitte in Manchester, a Hungarian heavy called Krisztian Abel and the latter's sister, Szilvia, who helped recruit the women.
A cannabis farm discovered in a house in Oldham in 2013. Photograph: Christopher Thomond/The Guardian
There are numbers of young people involved in what the legal system terms "forced criminality". The lawyer Philippa Southwell has specialised in such cases, which apply in particular to young Vietnamese people brought illegally into the UK by traffickers and forced to work in cannabis farms to pay back debts of up to £30,000 that their parents have undertaken in order for them to have a new life in Europe.
Advertisement"The modus operandi of criminal organisations is to target children or young adults, trafficking them across the world in a journey that can take months," Southwell says. "Those being trafficked from Vietnam, often transit via Russia, Germany and France, by boat, lorry and even by foot. Once at their destination, they will be locked in a premises and made to tend the cannabis plants, by watering them and ensuring the lighting is on. These cannabis grows are sophisticated multi-million-pound drug operations, with the electricity often being extracted illegally and high-value equipment used. The windows of the buildings may be nailed shut. The farms normally operate in rural areas where the chance of detection is reduced."
The boys and young men were in a form of debt bondage, but no matter how hard they worked, their debt never seemed to be paid off. "There is a misconception within the criminal justice system that they are free to leave because the doors may not always be locked," says Southwell, "but the reality is that they have nowhere to go – they are controlled through threats of violence, debt bondage, isolation, fear and other complex control methods that are regularly used by traffickers."
F rom the Chinese opium dealers in the 1920s, the Italian gangsters in the 30s, the Maltese pimps in the 50s, the West Indian Yardies in the 60s, the Turkish heroin dealers in the 70s to the east Europeans gangsters and Nigerian fraudsters today, there has long been an unfair tendency to blame foreigners as dominant figures in the underworld. While they may have all had their parts to play, the homegrown British villain – whether artful dodger or ruthless kingpin – has always been the bedrock of the underworld.
"Everyone wants to be a gangster," says BX, a young former gang member from north-west London. "Everyone's seen it on TV and that's what they want to be. They look at music videos and it looks like the people in them are making hundreds of thousands of pounds, although the reality is that they are still living at their mum's house. Most of them come from estates and they see their parents going to work, struggling to pay the bills. They come home, their mum's not there, and all the places where kids could play are closing down. Nine times out of 10, they leave school without qualifications. So if you're broke, if you can't get a job, you're going to take the opportunity. My parents had no clue what I was up to – I didn't come back with any marks on my face."
The recent upsurge in knife attacks has focused attention on gangs. At one stage last year, there were six separate knife murder trials underway at the Old Bailey, all gang-related, all involving more than one defendant, none older than 22. "It's not a black thing, it's not a white thing, everyone's doing it," says BX. "There's no: 'I'm black, he's white, we can't get along' any more." There were still ample opportunities for smaller-time dealers: "You can make a grand a week."
An organised gang carrying out robberies on scooters in London in 2018. Photograph: MET Police
The hierarchy of gangs remained a key factor. "If you're a drug dealer, you have to find people who will do your dirty work for you. The way it works is the elders, who are, say, 24 or 25, they see you doing well, so they might take you under their wing. The young kids acting as look-outs, they're thinking: 'I'm part of that guy's enterprise. That could be me in however many years, I could get promotion.' As they say, loyalty brings forth royalty."
Territory is important commercially. "If you're doing five keys (kilos) a week and then suddenly you're only doing three a week, it doesn't take long to realise that someone's out there taking your customers. So you have to eliminate the opposition. How do you do that? By either taking them out, or tipping off the police. You are never supposed to snitch, but I know one guy, from Southall, who's a millionaire now; he was in competition with a guy from the same area so he informed the police." There's a not-unfounded suspicion that some informers have continued to commit crimes while under police protection. "All the old-school rules – they're gone. I know people who work with the police to get immunity for themselves. I know one who everyone knows works with the police, he's even been shooting people, but you type his name into Google you won't find anything about him and, believe me, his record is way longer than my arm."
The risks are high. "Of the people I grew up with, only three of us haven't been to jail, although I've been arrested many times. My older brother has been in and out of jail – nine months here, six weeks there. But there are less police than ever, so that gives you the incentive, and even if you get arrested, you're not going to do that long."
While the young gangs have largely replaced the old family-based crews, so have young, helmeted, scooter-riding robbers smashing their ways into jewellers and mobile phone shops taken on the role of the old sawn-off shotgun-wielding bank robbers.
W hile those smalltime home-grown villains may still thrive, an increasing number of members of the British underworld have followed old imperial traditions and headed abroad to cut out the middle-man, establishing themselves not only in the traditional bolt-hole of Spain, but in the Netherlands, Thailand and South Africa. The person who was to rewrite the rulebook on drug dealing is the street-smart Liverpudlian Curtis Warren, better known by his nicknames Cocky or the Cocky Watchman. Born in 1963, his criminal career started at the age of 12 with a conviction for car theft. By 16, he was on his way to borstal for assaulting the police. Other offences followed, but it was only when he moved into the drugs business, working out of Amsterdam, that he established his reputation as one of the most prolific traffickers of modern times – Interpol's "Target One" and the subject of a joint British–Dutch investigation codenamed Operation Crayfish.
While Warren's move to Amsterdam, where fellow British dealers also established themselves, seemed like a smart idea in that he was less exposed to the British police, it was also a weakness, because the Dutch authorities were able to tap his phone without restriction and secure the evidence they needed. (Although they also required English help in translating Liverpudlian for them.) In October 1996, police in the Netherlands seized 400kg of cocaine, 60kg of heroin, 1,500kg of cannabis, handguns and false passports. Nine Britons and a Colombian were arrested, and Warren was soon portrayed as the biggest fish in the net. He was jailed for 12 years for a conspiracy to import what was claimed to be £125m of drugs into Britain. The Observer suggested he was "the richest and most successful British criminal who has ever been caught", and he was the only drug dealer to make it on to the Sunday Times rich list. T-shirts with an old mugshot of Warren on them were still for sale in Liverpool 20 years after Operation Crayfish.
Curtis Warren. Photograph: PA
After his release from jail in the Netherlands in June 2007, Warren was only a free man for five weeks. He headed to Jersey, but was under constant surveillance and soon arrested. In 2009, he was convicted of conspiring to import £1m of cannabis into Jersey and jailed for 13 years. Warren was alleged to have invested his wealth in everything from petrol stations to vineyards, football clubs to hotels. A Jersey court ordered him to pay £198m after he failed to prove his business empire was not built on the proceeds of cocaine trafficking. Detectives had secretly recorded him boasting during a 2004 prison visit of funnelling huge amounts of cash via a money launderer. "Fuckin' 'ell, mate, sometimes we'd do about £10m or £15m in a week," he told some of his visitors. "I was bragging like an idiot and just big-talking in front of them," was Warren's explanation later. The Jersey attorney general, Timothy Le Cocq QC, described him as "one of Europe's most notorious organised criminals". His failure to pay the money resulted in a further 10 years' jail time.
He told Guardian journalist Helen Pidd, when she interviewed him in jail in Jersey, that he disapproved of drugs: "I've never had a cigarette in my life or a drink. I've never tasted alcohol or anything. No interest." His ambition after he was freed was to leave England – "and never come back". He added: "I just wish I'd not been such a worry to me mum."
Few people were better qualified to comment on Warren than former NCA man Tony Saggers, who was an expert witness in Warren's trial and proceeds hearing. "Curtis Warren was a forerunner," he said. "You get people like him who come from a tough background, a council-house environment, and he had a sort of bare-faced courage in some respects, to put himself in places like Venezuela and Colombia, which were probably even more dangerous then than they are now. He put himself at the other end of the supply chain, and in a way established that pattern for the elite drug trafficker. But nowadays, high-level, high-profile criminals play less and less of a role, and make use of others below them in a detached way."
Other British criminals have also cast their nets wide during the past two decades. One of the best-known was Brian Wright, once one of Britain's most active cocaine smugglers, who was nicknamed The Milkman – because he always delivered. He operated from both Turkish-controlled Northern Cyprus and Spain. In 1998, he was alleged to have imported almost two tonnes of the drug, with the result, according to one customs investigator, that "the cocaine was coming in faster than people could snort it". The Dublin-born Wright owned a villa near Cadiz, which he named El Lechero – the Spanish for milkman – and had a box at Ascot, a flat in Chelsea's King's Quay and used some of his proceeds to fix races on which he then bet, thus laundering his drug profits. Finally arrested in Spain, he was brought back to England and, in 2007, at the age of 60, found guilty at Woolwich crown court of conspiracy to supply drugs and jailed for30 years .
Some very successful scams have been perpetrated on elderly Britons. John Palmer, who had been involved in the Brink's-Mat bullion robbery (from whence he got his nickname "Goldfinger") made his fortune in a crooked timeshare business in Tenerife. A ruthless operator, he took advantage of thousands of gullible souls, many of them elderly holidaymakers, who believed his spiel about the fortunes they could make by investing in timeshare apartments that were never built. Outwardly, he appeared to have it all: the yacht, the cars with the personalised number plates, dozens of properties. He even made it to No 105 in the Sunday Times rich list. "Remember the golden rule," was the motto he loved to quote, "he who has the gold makes the rules." But in 2001, he was convicted of a timeshare fraud in which 16,000 victims lost an estimated £33m and served eight years in prison.
Then, in 2015, Palmer was shot dead by a hitman in his garden in Essex. There were rumours that he was killed because he might have been cooperating with the Spanish police over another fraud case. His co-accused were convicted in Spain in May this year and the police in Britain have duly issued a fresh appeal for help to find his killer – with a reminder that there is a £100,000 reward on offer in case that tempts an elderly underworld grass.
Any notion that Spain might still be a safe haven for expat criminals was dispelled in 2018 when Brian Charrington – a close associate of Curtis Warren and regarded as one of the major international drug dealers of his generation – was jailed for 15 years for trafficking and money-laundering in Alicante in 2018. Described in the Spanish press as " el narco que escribia en Wikipedia ", because of his reputation for updating and correcting his Wikipedia entry, the former car-dealer from Middlesbrough had been arrested in 2013 at his villa in Calpe, on the Costa Blanca, an area where some estate agents offer bulletproof glass as a special feature along with the spa bath and barbecue area. There had been wild rumours of crocodiles in his swimming pool, but disappointingly, the police found none.
Charrington was alleged to have brought vast quantities of drugs into Spain via a yacht docking in Altea, north of Benidorm. He claimed his money came legitimately. "I buy and sell villas and I pay my taxes," he told the court, but was still fined nearly £30m. Following a lengthy investigation involving Spanish, British, Venezuelan, Colombian and French police, his assets, including a dozen houses and his cars and boats, were impounded. After his sentence, his Wikipedia entry was speedily updated.
T he titles of true crime memoirs published in the past decade or so tell their own tale. The Last Real Gangster by Freddie Foreman came out in 2015; The Last Gangster: My Final Confession by Charlie Richardson arrived just after his death in 2012; The Last Godfather, the Life and Crimes of Arthur Thompson, was published in Glasgow in 2007. A requiem for the old British underworld.
In many ways, it was already slipping into a haze of nostalgia. The television series Peaky Blinders has spawned its own fashion accessory industry. You can now buy Peaky Blinders cufflinks shaped like razor-blades, or wear a Peaky Blinders cap and waistcoat from the new David Beckham clothing line , something that might have prompted a dark smile from the ruthless and acquisitive 1920s Birmingham gang on whom the series was based. The website henorstag.com even recommends "the Peaky Blinders look" as perfect for a stag night: "For a theme the ladies will love, you will need to capture the stylish world of the early 20th century with black peak caps, stylish grey or black suits with waistcoat, as well as a dusty black coat and shoes in order to complete the look." (Add a cosh and a cut-throat razor and you'll really slay 'em.)
While the Kray twins brand continues as the underworld's equivalent of Marks & Spencer – a framed letter from Ronnie Kray in Broadmoor is currently on offer on eBay for £650 – changes in the law have made criminals less prepared to boast about past crimes. In the old days, under the "double jeopardy" rule, once you were acquitted of a murder, you could never be tried for it again. That rule was overturned with the 2003 Criminal Justice Act, so the days when a villain could explain in their memoirs how they got away with a crime have gone. The 2009 Coroners and Justice Act made it an offence for criminals to profit from accounts of their crimes, so they could no longer sell their stories, or at least officially. The 2002 Proceeds of Crime Act and its increasing use against career criminals has meant that illicit incomes can be seized.
No wonder the Hatton Garden burglary of 2015 – that " one last job " carried out by the elderly "diamond wheezers" – received such attention. Even one of the "last of the last", Fred Foreman, was hoping he was going to be offered a role in it. "I heard that Terry (Perkins, one of the ringleaders) was looking for me, not long before the burglary took place, so I presume that would have been what it was about," he says.
ss="rich-link tone-feature--item rich-link--pillar-news"> Organised crime in the UK is bigger than ever before. Can the police catch up? Read more
Perkins died in his cell in Belmarsh prison last year. Foreman, who made his name with the Krays in the 1960s, now lives in sheltered accomodation in west London. He doubts that the current generation of gangsters will ever write their memoirs: "I don't think that anyone who has turned to crime these days is going to live long enough to build up a reputation, are they?"
But the recruiting sergeants of the underworld – poverty, greed, boredom, envy, peer pressure, glamour – will never be short of volunteers, whether they live long enough to make a name for themselves or not.
Underworld : the Definitive History of Britain's Organised Crime by Duncan Campbell is published by Ebury Press on 11 July
• Follow the Long Read on Twitter at @gdnlongread , and sign up to the long read weekly email here .
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Jul 05, 2019 | www.theguardian.com
In the years that followed, the crash, the crisis of the eurozone and the worldwide drop in the price of oil and other commodities combined to put a huge dent in global trade. Since 2012, the IMF reported in its World Economic Outlook for October 2016 , trade was growing at 3% a year – less than half the average of the previous three decades. That month, Martin Wolf argued in a column that globalisation had "lost dynamism", due to a slackening of the world economy, the "exhaustion" of new markets to exploit and a rise in protectionist policies around the world. In an interview earlier this year, Wolf suggested to me that, though he remained convinced globalisation had not been the decisive factor in rising inequality, he had nonetheless not fully foreseen when he was writing Why Globalization Works how "radical the implications" of worsening inequality "might be for the US, and therefore the world".
Among these implications appears to be a rising distrust of the establishment that is blamed for the inequality. "We have a very big political problem in many of our countries," he said. "The elites – the policymaking business and financial elites – are increasingly disliked . You need to make policy which brings people to think again that their societies are run in a decent and civilised way."
That distrust of the establishment has had highly visible political consequences: Farage, Trump, and Le Pen on the right; but also in new parties on the left, such as Spain's Podemos, and curious populist hybrids, such as Italy's Five Star Movement . As in 1997, but to an even greater degree, the volatile political scene reflects public anxiety over "the process that has come to be called 'globalisation'".
If the critics of globalisation could be dismissed before because of their lack of economics training, or ignored because they were in distant countries, or kept out of sight by a wall of police, their sudden political ascendancy in the rich countries of the west cannot be so easily discounted today.
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Jul 04, 2019 | www.theguardian.com
Data is from 2004 to 2017.
Excerpt (first three paragraphs):
Nearly half of all global pay is scooped up by just 10% of workers, according to the International Labour Organization (ILO), while the lowest-paid 50% receive just 6.4%.The lowest 20% – around 650 million workers – get less than 1% of total pay, a figure that has barely moved in 13 years, the ILO analysis found. It used labour income figures from 2004 to 2017, the latest available data.
A worker in the top 10% receives $7,445 a month (£5,866), while a worker in the bottom 10% gets just $22.
Posted by: vk | Jul 4 2019 17:14 utc | 14
jayc @10
As a Can-knucklehead I am sad to say I agree 100%. In 2005, Kurt Vonnegut quoted Susan Sontag: "10 percent of any population is cruel, no matter what, and that 10 percent is merciful, no matter what, and that the remaining 80 percent could be moved in either direction."
Posted by: spudski | Jul 4 2019 17:19 utc | 15
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Apr 10, 2018 | www.theguardian.com
Originally from: Seven signs of the neoliberal apocalypse - Van Badham - Opinion - The Guardian
bryonyed -> slorter , 27 Apr 2018 01:41Both neoliberal-driven governments and authoritarian societies share one important factor: They care more about consolidating power in the hands of the political, corporate and financial elite than they do about investing in the future of young people and expanding the benefits of the social contract and common good.
Michael Yates (economist) points out throughout his book 'The Great Inequality', capitalism is devoid of any sense of social responsibility and is driven by an unchecked desire to accumulate capital at all costs. As power becomes global and politics remains local, ruling elites no longer make political concessions to workers or any other group that they either exploit or consider disposable.
At bottom, neoliberals believe in a social hierarchy of "haves" and "have nots". They have taken this corrosive social vision and dressed it up with a "respectable" sounding ideology which all boils down to the cheap labor they depend on to make their fortunes.
The ugly truth is that cheap-labour conservatives just don't like working people. They don't like "bottom up" prosperity, and the reason for it is very simple. "Corporate lords" have a harder time kicking them around.
Once you understand this about the cheap-labor conservatives, the real motivation for their policies makes perfect sense. Remember, cheap-labour conservatives believe in social hierarchy and privilege, so the only prosperity they want is limited to them. They want to see absolutely nothing that benefits those who work for an hourly wage.
You also need to remember that voting the coalition out, which you need to do, will not necessarily give you a neoliberal free zone; Labor needs to shed some the dogma as well.
Yep! The neolib scum hate poor people and have complexes of deservedness.
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www.linuxtoday.com
Jun 30, 2019 | OffGuardian
... ... ...
Then came Giladgate and the suspension of Labour MP Chris Williamson for defending Israeli Jewish musician – and vehement critic not only of his own state but "a particular subset of Jews" – Gilad Atzmon.
I stress that term, a particular subset of Jews. Those who call Atzmon antisemitic have rarely in my experience troubled to read him in the round, though a few offer cherry-picked quotes. I blame a confusion Atzmon is at pains to disentangle.
In The Wandering Who? he sets out three understandings of Jewishness.
- One refers to those born Jewish
- Another to followers of ethical values and spiritual disciplines encoded in the Torah. To make important generalisations about either is absurd; to make important negative generalisations a double disgrace: a moral affront in and of itself, and a moral affront in light of a thousand years of Western history culminating in Hitler.
- The third understanding, however, refers to "Jews identifying as members of a superior race" . These last, says Atzmon, "are the Jews I speak of in such negative terms, and whom I urge to question their arrogant assumptions" .
If these are the words of an antisemite, call me one too.
I myself have not encountered that third category in personal life. The Jews I know and count as friends are on the left, or at any rate liberal. (Nor do any belong to Atzmon's second category: with a few exceptions I don't much rub shoulders with religious types, whatever brand they smoke). But this reflects the demography of my worlnon-existence the non existence of Atzmon's third category of Jews.
In the Never Again culture of Israel, and the powerhouses of London and New York City, they do exist, and I applaud the man's courageous, principled and costly[ 2 ] stance of calling them out.
Talk of cherry picking brings us, in this context, back to Dame Hodge.
Three nights ago she was on Newsnight to slam the reinstatement of Chris Williamson. In so doing she issued another slander, folded into an aside on the man Williamson had – with guilt by association a standard smear in Stalinist[ 3 ] McCarthyite and other forms of witchhunt – defended at no small cost.
The next day that man responded with clear proof that Hodge, probably through ignorance as much as malice, had profoundly misunderstood a statement he'd made.
Here then, is Gilad Atzmon on the subject of Margaret Hodge on the subject of Chris Williamson.
I offer it not because Hodge is important, though as the above photo shows she still commands respect within the Labour Party. I offer it because great care is called for when examining issues not intrinsically difficult but so buried by obfuscation and mendacity, so emotionally charged and in this case so tightly bound with the quite different agenda of ousting Corbyn.
On these matters, Hodge's interventions are at best crass, ignorant and spiteful. At best – and in this she exemplifies so much that is rotten in our political classes and debased media.
https://www.youtube.com/embed/U0G5ZqO6iJw
You might also read Atzmon's written response of yesterday, addressed more at Lord Falconer than Dame Hodge. After rebutting accusations of holocaust denial, he concludes:
I categorically deny being an anti-Semite. Crucially, I have never been charged or even questioned about anything I said or wrote by any law enforcement authority anywhere in the world. That Lord Falconer accuses an innocent citizen, one with an absolutely clean record, of being "guilty" and the BBC presenter does not challenge or even question Falconer's assertion is a clear indication that Britain is now a lawless place an authoritarian society governed by a compromised political class. Britain has become uninhabitable for intellectuals, truth tellers and peace lovers. Sad it is but no longer a surprise. NOTES:Philip Roddis Scribbler for some sixty years, and for fifteen a photographer too, Philip Roddis began blogging in the early noughties by inflicting film reviews on an unsuspecting public. Soon he was doing the same with illustrated writings on wanderings in Asia and Africa. He writes "to help me think, and because I like to be read", and finds photography's problem solving aspects "a break from those of writing, as well as an aid to writing and to reflective travel". His blog is Steel City Scribblings[1] In this context we should note three ironies. One is that this same Labour right applauded the Maidan Square coup which brought antisemites, the real kind, into the Kiev administration to embolden Ukraine's far and thoroughly antisemitic right (as when in 2017 thousands of nationalists marched in Kiev to celebrate the birthday of Stepan Bandera.) Another, related, is that in devaluing the antisemite term – which is what you do when you call Corbyn one – you let real antisemites off the hook. A third is that like the West at large, Israel – I mention this given how many names on Tom Watson's tweet are in Labour Friends of Israel – has again and again been willing to work with antisemites, also the real kind, in pursuit of its agendas.
[2] The nature of Israel – both as a racist state and, to borrow from a Stephen Gowans book I'll shortly review, as a 'beachhead for imperialism' from which to control the middle east – is obviously relevant in more ways than one. Here I confine myself to the observation that Israeli Jewish critics of Israel, like white South African members of the ANC in the apartheid era, exemplify – whatever other traits they may demonstrate – considerable courage.
[3] I'm aware of a revival, outside the traditional circles of Western Communist Parties, of interest in defending Stalin. At one level this is understandable. Given the corruption of our media and political systems it can be tempting to assume that whomever our rulers and their servants hold up as paragons of virtue, or as monstrosity incarnate, will be the opposite. I'd go so far as to say such reasoning will more often than not deliver broadly accurate results. It's no substitute for proper investigation, however, and I'm planning a post addressing not so much the brutality of Stalin as his criminal incompetence. Facebook Twitter Reddit Pinterest WhatsApp vKontakte Email
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Martin UsherIts the age old trick moving the goalposts to adjust the game so you win. I grew up in a family that was heavily involved in the anti-Fascist movement before the war ( before I was born) and was involved with what could be called "Jewish rescue" -- helping people who had got out of Europe settle in the UK. As such I never really gave the the definition of anti-Semitism any thought, it was obvious.Seamus PadraigRecently I noticed that the definition had changed -- the goalposts had moved -- because of the work of a group I'd never heard of before, the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance. I grew up familiar with the ADL and knew it as relatively non-political organization that went after any sort of anti-someone, not just anti-Semitism, but the IHRA turned out to be not just focused on one issue but also intensely political.
It appears to not only want to redefine the concept but also to reapply it to the modern world as a tool for applying political leverage. Its rather cynically exploiting our revulsion for what happened 80 years ago by using the concept as a way of stifling political dissent, in particular Israel's relations with its neighbors. This is political opportunism of the first order -- and very cynical opportunism at that -- which is likely to backfire since its likely to embrace Fascism rather than oppose it. (Its legislative agenda appears to include outlawing dissent by criminalizing it.)
So I'll just stick with the old school definition and old school organizations, thank you very much. This upstart organization may have traction in government, its got the money, the PR and probably runs a very effective blacklist (which I'm now a member, I'd guess). However, I very firmly believe that we are ultimately obliged to do what's morally right, not what's expedient.
As American writer Joe Sobran once noted, "An anti-Semite used mean someone who hated Jews; now it means anyone that Jews hate."BigB"What is anti-semitism": that is a very good question? The answer is a biased and violent socio-political constructivism a purely politicised terminology – and an intentionally weaponised one at that.TinyThere has been no scientific basis for racial categorisation or discrimination for decades now. Probably not since Lewontin and Jay-Gould critiqued E O Wilson's 'Sociobiology' (see Lewontin's extended essay "Biology as Ideology" from 1991). Since even then; biology has moved on rapidly – genetic determinism is dead.
With it is the 19th century reductive materialist categorisation of population groups as 'objects with particulars' or distinct races with specific quotients of intelligence or other determining biological factors. Every grouping is of individuals who are more alike than any minor differentiations that may be apparent or supposed. No two people are ever the same: right down to the structure and functional neuro-anatomy their brains – as advanced imaging techniques and neuroscience have shown (see Gina Rippon's "The Gendered Brain" for an in-depth discussion of the science.)
So what shapes us if not our genes this does. Our conditioning and environmental reactions. That is this discourse, or any other encountered discourse we are primarily shaped by epigenetic environmental and socio-cultural factors. So much so, epigenetics supersedes genetics – and can even curtail genetic development (see Rippon's discussion of 'Caeusescu's babies').
We are picking up on social cues and other environmental factors all the time. To which we micro-adapt to on an instant by instant socio-interactional basis. This is what shapes identity – the affordances, cues and inter-subjective interaction with culture and the environment – Lewontin's 'Triple Helix'.
So what is anti-semitism: in the light of their being no scientific categorisation of race? The political constructivism of discriminatory social categorisations is an 'imagined sociology'. One that has no basis in either fact or reality. As Lewontin determined: "race is a racist construct".
Everyone knows what anti-semitism is about: the phrase is meaningless – except as a politicised weapon. It is a 'plastic phrase' – like the words 'freedom' and 'democracy' – it's meaning is variable and contestable. It is a 'word to wound' and should be categorised as being hate speech in itself. Anyone who employs AS is a racist themselves, and their discriminatory bias should be exposed by their profane and performative pronunciations.
So why is AS in the political lexicon if it is no longer acceptable in the scientific lexicon? Are we not supposed to have a science based empirical paradigm?
I would say that it's principal usage is as an attack vector on perceived socialism and character masking of capitalism itself – in its current expanded usage and iteration. It is more than just covering the heinous war crimes and apartheid of the Israeli state and Zionist venture. It's usage has been extended (I called it 'definition creep' of the IHRA) to defend the endemic and structural racism of capitalism itself. It is a morbid symptom of the move to curtail free speech, stifle debate and dissensus, and control the public fora which can be extended to 9/11 truth and anti-capitalist critique – specifically of any cabal or oligarchical domination – as well as defending Israel itself. It can basically mean anything: when allied with the pernicious and weasel worded 11 'working definitions'.
For me, the political universe of discourse is largely moribund. It is a capitalist-captured endocolonisation of any real discourse of freedom and liberation. And 'democracy': you can forget democracy policy is about consensus narrative construction, behavioural change, and conformity. There is no such ideology as anti-capitalist ideology any more there is only capitalist obedience conformity or capitalist obedience conformity binary constructivisms to choose from. One where you cannot critically unmask the core truths of capitalist institutional racism without being at risk of being branded a racist.
A smart group or groupings: who wanted to resist the coercive silencing of dissensus – would strategically move to reframe the debate away from the nihilistic concretisation of racism that is the politicised discourse. With education, and the application of the "Pedagogy of the Oppressed" – a whole new dialogic could be created one that circumvents the nihilism of the capitalist-captured racist constructivism of their political debate. After all, we have the science on our side – if we ever want to shift the paradigm. And not just for race: for all discriminations. Capitalism pretends to tackle racism by creating it. It is the commodification and objectification of individual human beings into perceived discriminatory groups that is at fault.
We do not have to follow the framing of the narrative that is a top-down polarising politicised dominion over humanity. Humanists can create their own debate, on their own terms, based on the latest science and information. Racism is defunct and bad education, poor and redundant 19th century classification, and Universal Humanism nihilation. If it is to dominate the politicised universe of discourse – a new paradigmatic universe of non-racist, non-sexist, non-violent, non-discriminatory discourse is easily achievable. Culture is who we are and what we do. Welcome to the micro-evolutionary nexus. Welcome to the future of humanist non-discriminatory thought and socio-cultural recategorisation. Welcome to the socialised redundancy of racism and race.
The Boy Who Cried WolfwardropperAn Aesop fable adapted by Louis Untermeyer
A boy employed to guard the sheep
Despised his work. He liked to sleep.
And when a lamb was lost he'd shout
"Wolf! Wolf! The wolves are all about."The neighbors searched from noon 'til nine
But of the beast there was no sign
Yet "Wolf!" cried the boy the next morning when
The villagers came out again.One Evening around 6 o' clock,
A real wolf fell upon the flock.
"Wolf!" cried the boy." A wolf indeed."
But no one paid him any heed.Although he screamed to wake the dead,
"He's fooled us every time." They said.
And let the hungry wolf enjoy
His feast of mutton, lamb and boy.The moral is this:
A man who is wise,
The Boy Who Cried WolfAn Aesop fable adapted by Louis Untermeyer
A boy employed to guard the sheep
Despised his work. He liked to sleep.
And when a lamb was lost he'd shout
"Wolf! Wolf! The wolves are all about."The neighbors searched from noon 'til nine
But of the beast there was no sign
Yet "Wolf!" cried the boy the next morning when
The villagers came out again.One Evening around 6 o' clock,
A real wolf fell upon the flock.
"Wolf!" cried the boy." A wolf indeed."
But no one paid him any heed.Although he screamed to wake the dead,
"He's fooled us every time." They said.
And let the hungry wolf enjoy
His feast of mutton, lamb and boy.The moral is this:
A man who is wise,
Does not defend himself with lies.
Liars are not believed forsooth,
Even when liars tell the truth.Dame Hodge, as Normal Finkelstein beautifully describes her, is, frankly, not very bright.Louis Proyect
Being bright is no longer a requirement for high political office.
In fact it is screened out at an early stage of a neophyte's career.Atzmon is anti-Semitic. So is fellow Jew Ron Unz, who publishes everything that Atzmon writes. Here's something I wrote about Atzmon 8 years ago: https://louisproyect.org/2011/09/29/the-gilad-atzmon-controversy/Seamus PadraigAnd what if Atzmon is 'anti-Semitic'? I'm not saying he would claim to be; but it stands to reason that he would suit at least some people's definition of an anti-Semite–certainly your definition.DevonSo what about it? If Gilad is critical of Jewish identity (identities?), maybe it's because he knows what he's talking about . Not only was he born in Israel and raised in a very Zionist family, but he has made it his lifelong avocation to study up on the history of Jewishness and Jewish identity. Even if you say his is just an opinion, you still have to admit that his is an extremely well-informed opinion. This is not Dr. Goebbels banging away on his Schreibmaschine here. Gilad certainly has a right to his views.
And what if it were to turn out that he's right, Louis? What if there are real problems with Jewishness that have historically caused gentiles–first Christian and now Moslem–to view Jews generally with suspicion if not contempt? In short: what if the rest of the world isn't just 'crazy'? What if?
I have read Gilad's books and followed his blog for some time now (even before he appeared at Unz), and while I may not agree with every last little thing he says, I find his writing in general very lucid and enlightening. But most of all, I have a lot of respect for the guy because of his integrity and courage; because of his determination to look in the collective mirror, as it were, and honestly report what he really sees–rather than what he wishes he saw.
(Oh: and he blows a mean stax, too! If any of you people here are into the old John Coltrane-style jazz, you really ought to check out Gilad the next time you get the chance. His shows are second to none.)
No one is interested in what others have to say about Atzmon, anymore. We read Atzmon and decide for ourselves.markIt predictably contains something as shallow as your comment, that he is antisemitic. The world, save for a very small group with a sinister agenda, are bored with this stupidity.
Oy vey, goy! The truth is anti semitic!! Shut it down!!!Gilad AtzmonI read your pathetic piece 8 years ago and looked at it again just now. You indeed manage to parrot other people's slander, yet the one thing you failed to do is to point exactly where in my work do i express hatred or call to discriminate Jews for being Jews. I certainly am critical of certain aspects of Jewish politics (in consistance with my opposition to all forms of biologically oriented identiterianism) . In my work I prove beyond doubt that Jewish ID politics is not merely a Zionist symptom but far wider phenomenon. In my work i insist that Jewish poliyics (left, right and centre) must be subject to criticsm I am indeed an opponent of Jewish Marxism as you pointed out in your article My criticism of this tribal phenomenon is identical with Lenin's criticism of the Bund (1903) ,,,I am about to go for a gig but will be interested to see whether you can produce an argument..I expect something slightly more profound that calling Unz or Shamir 'antisemites' or 'white supremacist' I hope that you are up for the challengeLouis ProyectI am indeed an opponent of Jewish Marxism as you pointed out in your article.Gilad--
I imagine that you are referring to Groucho rather than Karl who was actually a Christian. I have to admit that the scene in "The Marx Brothers go West" was a bit troubling when Harpo smashed his harp over the head of a Catholic nun played in this film by Margaret Dumont.
I actually have no issue with Karl Marx but I have a serious issue with the Bund and Bundists and I make this point clear in my work on tribal marxism.. you obviously didn't do your homeworkGilad AtzmonHello everybody, Gilad Atzmon here,,, Just in case you missed it, Here is an expose of caricature Lord Falconer reading a Zionist script in front of a BBC's camera https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fATmjCFckRsFrancis LeeYou think that anti-semitism violence (vintage 1941-45) was bad enough in Ukraine, try the Baltics, now our glorious NATO ally. As far as I know SS Waffen Units still had their reunions in Riga and Vilnius. Given the age profile it would seem that only few of the mass murderers are still alive. But the fact that they were still allowed to parade in an EU country at that late date is extremely disquieting. And it is a fact that the record past and present is studiously unreported. Censorship by omission. You see, Nazis are okay as long as they are own our side.bevinOf course the Baltic locals played their part in the mass murder, one in particular the Kovno garage massacre was so abominable that even the Germans were shocked. Check it out if you have the stomach for it.
In spite of Latvia Prime Minister's Maris Kučinskis disapproval, Riga authorized the March 16 march to honor Latvia's Waffen-SS Volunteer Legion established on that date in 1943. International protests have failed to prevent the march, just as they failed earlier. D uring WW2, some 150 thousand Latvians served on the side of the III Reich. They served in the so-called Volunteer Legion of the SS consisting of the 15th and 19th Grenadier Divisions of the Waffen-SS (or 1st and 2nd Latvian Divisions), the Latvian Luftwaffe Legion, German divisions and police battalions. They are responsible for many war crimes. One of them took place in Podgaje on February 2, 1945. During the breakthrough of the Pomeranian Wall, SS-men of Battle Group Elster which was part of the 15th Waffen SS Grenadier Division murdered 32 Polish POWs from the 3rd Infantry Regiment of the 1rst Infantry Division of the Polish People's Army. They were bound by barbed wire and burned alive in a barn.
Marches honoring Latvian SS-men have been a regular event in Riga since 1990. In 1998, the Latvian government made that date a national holiday, though international protests forced it to be reduced in 2000 to a national day of memory.
It is no different in neighboring Estonia. It celebrates August 28, which is when Waffen-SS began to recruit, in 1942, volunteer for its Estonian Legion which became the 20th Waffen-SS Grenadier Division. It fought at Narva and in Lower Silesia and Bohemia. Estonian SS-men also participated in counter-partisan operations in the rear areas of the Eastern Front, committing mass atrocities on the civilian population. It was commanded by SS-Obergruppenführer Erich von dem Bach-Zelewski, the future butcher of Warsaw. Apart from the 30 thousand Estonians in the Waffen-SS, thousands more served in SS border guard units, security police, and the Wehrmacht.
Lithuania maintains the cult of the so-called Plekhavicius Legion, the Lithuanian Local Corps, or LVR, a criminal collaborationist organization serving the III Reich, and Ukraine worships the 14th Volunteer Grenadier Division of the Waffen-SS Galizien, whose formation's anniversary (April 27, 1943), is loudly celebrated in Lvov and other cities of western Ukraine. Glorifying the SS-Galizien alongside the Banderist OUN-UPA became the foundation on which the post-Maidan Ukraine's national identity is being built.
Croatia honors the Ustasha and the SS-men of the 7th Waffen-SS Volunteer Mountain Division Prinz Eugen, while Bosnia-Herzegovina likewise honors the SS-men of the 13th Waffen-SS Bosnia-Herzegovina Mountain Division Handschar. Hungary and Romania often stage historic reconstructions and other events commemorating these countries participation in World War II on Hitler's side on the Eastern Front.
Finally the Baltic States are fostering a cult of the so-called "forest brothers", or anti-commmunist guerrillas of 1944-1953 consisting of many former SS-men and Nazi collaborators
One of the problems with this campaign is that it has come to be seen as being, basically, about Corbyn and the Labour party whereas in fact it is about expanding the Israeli state's license to kill Palestinians while being rewarded by taxpayers in the UK.Seamus PadraigThe real issue, which particularly interests the UK which is, in historical terms, largely responsible for the existence of this European colony in the Holy Land, is that the peoples of Palestine have been subjected to a series of injustices without parallel in the modern world. And that, at almost every stage of Israel's seventy year descent into fascism-for that is what it is and who Likud and its allies are- it has been supported by the UK and the UK's political master, the United States.
It is this matter- the snipers killing ambulance attendants in Gaza, the burgeoning and appalling crisis caused by the Israeli siege, the inhumane treatment of prisoners, the contempt shown for established international law, a contempt which has been an important factor is reducing the post-war UN system to wreckage and allowing the serial aggressions of imperialist states- it is this matter which ought to be exercising the media, Parliament and, most particularly, the Labour Party.
Members of the party cannot dodge the fact that, when the UK left Palestine, abandoning its mandates and withdrawing its police forces it handed the people of Palestine, whom it had systematically disarmed, over to the offices of the terrorist organisations which formed the Jewish state and perpetrated the Naqba.
And the government of the UK at the time was dominated by the Labour Party. Israel was created by the Labour Party's actions and irresponsible inactions. It weighs on the collective conscience of the party and of the, now shattered remnants of, the Trade Union movement whose leaders treated the working people of Palestine with a cynical indifference which telegraphed the movement's decline
In other words, no party in the world, with the possible exception of the egregious Democrats in the USA, has more reason to be critical of the government of Israel and to insist that that state be sanctioned and boycotted until it is ready to deal honestly with the majority of its subjects, the disenfranchised residents of the state, the occupied areas of Palestine and the millions of descendants of those expelled from their land and homes in 1948. The Party should call a special conference to examine its policies on Israel and to put together a comprehensive plan to reverse the crimes of the past, and present and to bring the justice and fair treatment Britain promised the League of Nations to these victims of the Empire.
And those who protest that Israel should be left alone, and its crimes condoned, its child murders welcomed and its abuse of prisoners approved, ought to be excluded from the Party on obvious grounds with the Whip being withdrawn from all those MPs who have chosen, in being 'Friends of Israel', to be enemies of humanity and advocates of evildoing.
Eloquent! Thanks for the comment.markThis anti Semitism smear campaign serves two purposes. (1.) To criminalise any and all criticism of Zionist atrocities and war crimes, no matter how egregious. (2.) To vilify Corbyn and "drive him out of public life", as openly declared by the Board of Deputies and the Israeli embassy.Philip RoddisI'll say it again, bevin. You should be writing above the lineRhisiart GwilymHear, hear to Philip's comment! Your level of knowledge and perspicacity – with a central core of steely moral honour – isn't all that common in the world. Please don't hide you light, b! Let's hear more of your analyses.Harry StotleThere is a semantic discussion to be had on definition but that is something not even the keenest minds can yet agree on – more importantly, and germane to Phil's article is the weaponisation of antisemitism as a means of exploiting political opponents, in other words hasbara.Ken KennOne of its chilling effects of hasbara is to always put critics of Israel on the backfoot now matter how egregiously Israel or their supporters behave, such as disproportionate violence inflicted on Palestinian civilians, or Labour MPs working hand in glove with Israeli operatives to subvert left wing elements within their own party.
Stephen Sizer discusses the manual explaining how certain hasbara techniques are applied at different stages culminating in accusations of antisemitism designed to bring about personal or professional ruin.
https://www.youtube.com/embed/4Qq257bPZ0c
When consider motive amongst those Labour MPs screaming for the head of Chris Williamson and by extension Jeremy Corbyn several possibilities come to mind.
MPs may be afraid they might be net to be accused so identify with the aggressor rather than the person being vilified (even though those being tainted are invariably left wing with a strong record on anti-racisim)
It may be that some of them are simply ignorant, an idea that cannot be entirely be dismissed given how indoctrianted some of our political class are.
Or it could be they are complicit: in other words they understand how useful hasbara can be, especially as a device to purge the Labour party of socialists and as a means of ushering a new age of Blairism.Incredible as it may seem some Labour MPs still go all misty eyed when the views of Anthony Charles Lynton Blair come up, rather like right wingers in the tory party who still have attachment issues with Pinochets former girlfriend, Baroness Thatcher.
Number 4 is the most interesting tactic. All racism is wrong and hate Speech can be a criminal offence. If the anti semitic accusations are true how is it that, as far as I know from within the Labour Party, no Court cases have ever troubled a Judge? The answer is simple – that would require proof/evidence. The MSM are Judge and Jury and their required standard of proof is zero.SharonMJust add " allegedly " to a quote or " he said/ she said " and that's all they need to bamboozle the masses.
I'll hazard a guess that no-one from the Labour Party will end up in any court on any antisemitic charges in the future either.
Hasn't it got to the point of self-parody? The zionists have even managed to make remembrance of a genocide well overdone. That takes some astonishing exploitation.Bob MarsdenIHRA (International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance) definition of antisemitism.AntipropoAntisemitism is a certain perception of Jews, which may be expressed as hatred toward Jews. Rhetorical and physical manifestations of antisemitism are directed toward Jewish or non-Jewish individuals and/or their property, toward Jewish community institutions and religious facilities.
This definition of anti-semitism doesn't define semite.
If semite is held to be a synonym or euphemism for Jew, [all semites are Jews, all Jews are semites] then the word is redundant and can be removed from the definition of antiJewishness.
If this isn't the sense intended, as is implied by characterising "non-Jewish individuals" as potential victims, then a definition must include procedures for discriminating who is and isn't a semite, to answer such questions as: Is an Ethiopean Jew a semite? Is an Ashkenasi Jew a semite? Is a convert to Judaism a semite? and can non-Jews be semites?. Can a semite be identified by depictions of their facial features, such as the shape of the nose? If so Yasser Arafat was a semite.
In this definition, it seems that semite is an imaginary type or set, with indeterminable tokens or instances. Thus "rhetorical antisemitism" has indefinable, non-existent victims. So any allusion to tabu speaking about Jewishness will be accepted as antisemitic, with no possibility of refutation or defence. The only victim required is the accuser.
So the definition is a prejudicial nonsense, as is manifested in its current usage.
Incidentally:
Basic Law: Israel as the Nation State of the Jewish People
1 -- Basic principles
A. The land of Israel is the historical homeland of the Jewish people, in which the State of Israel was established.
B. The State of Israel is the national home of the Jewish people, in which it fulfills its natural, cultural, religious and historical right to self-determination.
C. The right to exercise national self-determination in the State of Israel is unique to the Jewish people.This omits the fact that the land was home to other peoples, and defines the State in racial terms. So any adverse comment on Israel is automatically anti-Jewish.
You stumble when you say "if so Yasser Arafat is a Semite" because of course ALL Palestinians, in fact all Arabs are semitic. The term Semite and the slander antisemite have been stolen-just as they stole and continue to steal Palestine- by the Jewish zionists and their willing accomplices in the Christian west.Guy" If so Yasser Arafat was a Semite." Yes, as are the Palestinians .I am surprised that Israel , it's occupants ,zionists and all have not been taken to task as to whether they are actually Semitic . It is a canard and we have all fell for it.markPalestinians are the real descendants of the Jews of the Bible. The fake Jews like Nuttyyahoo or Mielkevic, or whatever his name is, all hail from the Khazar kingdom near the Caspian Sea. That is their homeland.GuyI first came across this information many years ago in reading the book "The Thirteenth Tribe " by Arthur Koestler .I have since read much about this hidden peace of historical information from other sources and some from Jewish archives.harry lawhttp://www.fantompowa.info/koestlerindex.htm
Cheers.
Tony Blair was asked at an Israeli University if he believed Jeremy Corbyn himself was anti-Semitic, Blair said yes.different frankBlair's false accusations while presenting no evidence are deeply damaging to Mr Corbyn and hugely damaging to the Labour Party, in fact it brings Mr Corbyn and the Labour Party into disrepute in blatant contradiction to Labour Party rules. A false accusation of Anti-Semitism is just as obnoxious as a genuine accusation, the former made with the intention of harming Jeremy Corbyn and to bring both Corbyn and the Labour Party into disrepute is met with a shrug of the shoulders 'nothing to see here, move along' Similarly Margaret Hodge can say Corbyn is " A fucking Anti-Semite and racist" and nothing happens to her. Hypocrisy of the highest order. Is it any wonder the Party has lost nearly 100,000 members in the past couple of years.
"Formerly an anti-Semite was somebody who hated Jews because they were Jews and had a Jewish soul. But nowadays an anti-Semite is somebody who is hated by Jews." ~Hajo Meyer (born August 12, 1924 – 23 August, 2014) holocaust survivorBrian SteereAnother word for a post truth politics is the psyop. Using the mind as a weapon against itself. My response is to go deeper than the baiting reaction of emotional reaction or rational opposition. The ability of the mind to make special or indeed sacred is to set apart in order to set over and against – with the key being in the ability to seed, set, and enforce a framework of narrative identity.harry lawWorking the polarised identity is not unique to power seeking through Jewish influence but is part and parcel of power set apart and over life as the mind of cunning contrivance or cleverness.
Gilad Atzmon mentions in his book that for around 2000 years, the richest daughters were married to the cleverest sons, and that this worked a measurable eugenic outcome in the population as a whole.
Irrespective of the specific historical context of any particular development of cultural identity is the underlying matrix or mechanism of its assertion and substitution of relational being by managed conflict.
I write to illuminate this towards our re-cognition and re-membering in true relational being and not within the framework of problems that predefine the terms of their own 'answer' such as to protect the problem from resolution and release by means of packaged presentations of complex instruments.
There is another facet of relational being that needs to come in here and that is of resonant communication as distinct from coded symbols and association. Attention focussed within its own 'special' thinking is diverted and in a sense bubbled off from its true relational being. Narcissism in this sense is built into the idea or image of self along with threat of extinction that invokes both terror and rage as polarities of division that generate a progeny of reactive containment under illusion of escape.
The more investment in 'solutions' that displace or dissociate the original error, the more identity is set and subjected under its own original split-word – but projected or assigned to the OTHER – be that G-d or Creation – it is now perceived rather than beheld, and through a lens of separation of the a-tempt to lord it over, along with the fear and hatred of subjection. These two are one error but split the experience of victim and victimiser.
The characteristic signature of the 'ego' or false self is conflict under narrative control. But to maintain continuity (believed survival or sustainability) requires the ongoing inducement to avert the 'greater fear' of humiliation of loss of possession and control by sacrificing through 'lesser evils' or 'necessary lies, wars or sickness by which to repackage and redistribute psychic emotional conflict – AWAY from the 'self-special'.
Everyone protects their investment as they see it and yet the native intelligence by which to re-evaluate a poor choice so as to replace with a more truly aligned outcome, is self-denied by a refusal to look within – under fear of threat or weakness. Thus the clever-minded can seem to look within with astonishing clarity – but only to the weaponisation and marketisation of what is revealed. Which is riding the crest of the wave so as to be in position of control from a segregated sense of self or private agenda that is by definition set apart and over others – on whom one's own motives are projected and attacked there.
Orwell coined 'doublespeak' for self-contradictory mind. this runs deeper than we think, because it provides the very basis by which we seem to think alone. A psyop is a mind-trap that baits reaction by which the unwary is induced to give power away. The idea of deceit is not new – and the notion of a power of deceit as self-destructive illusion is not new.
That we are in a sense living what we take to be life under an already deceit or illusion is not new, nor the recognition that denials come back to the mind that thinks thereby to have become 'more' or 'better' in unexpected ways.
One way of reading the world is to use what comes to our notice as a thread to our own 'unconscious' participation or correspondence so that instead of enacting the mind of judgement and living its script, we observe the mind in act and release investment in conflict identity. If you give willingness for this you will notice the mind in every attempt to re-interject a sense of 'control' or separation. The more you notice the more energy and attention is released from succumbing to a personal sense of power, to an impersonal love. Perhaps 'love' – like 'God' – is too degraded a word to use – but love of power for its own sake is giving all power to powerlessness. What else would so intensely focus in embodying such an idea but a powerlessness in terror of looking within, set in rage on its sense of denial 'without'.
Is is said that all power is of God – but that does not make an illusion of power real. But to participate in an illusion of power is to give unto Caesar what is due unto God.
Releasing the reversal of cause and effect is recognising and aligning in truth we do not manufacture, possess or control – but are at-oned with in sharing. The narrative is shifted in purpose. You are given a special role in the healing and awakening from a collective entanglement. But it is never more or less than to be who you are – as distinct from trying to be what you are not at expense of a full or overflowing awareness.
Hate and guilt can make a world and suffer it real – but do You WANT this?
Who lives by the 'Seperation' word shall die by the S-word. For the true Word is before and after – and in a sense inside time that seems to cover story.
The power that works in darkness of denied conflict, deems light an attack on its power of protection from light. But light simply is awareness. Only an illusion of light can 'attack' an illusion of darkness. In this sense the mind is a trickster when spinning out from the heart's knowing. Entertainment becomes entrainment to an invested identity habit.
Tom Watson put this letter together endorsed by 80 Labour Party MP's. After implying that the changes to the composition of the NEC panel involved corruption. The letter goes on ..Philip Roddis"It is clear to us that the Labour party's disciplinary process remains mired by the appearance of political interference, this must stop, we need an independent process".
Then unbelievably in the very next sentence he contradicts himself by calling for political interference.
"We call on Jeremy Corbyn to show leadership by asking for this inappropriate, offensive and reputationally damaging decision to be overturned".
In his last sentence, after Williamson is allowed back into the party by a properly constituted and legal administrative process overlooked by two Barristers, he throws due process under the bus. People like Margaret Hodge who called Jeremy Corbyn "A fucking Antis-Semite and racist" and who called upon any CLP who minimised Anti-Semitism "that we should just close them down" these people reveal their true nature on free speech, democracy and due process, they are against all three. Here is his last sentence
"Ultimately, it is for Jeremy Corbyn to decide whether Chris Williamson retains the Labour whip, he must remove it immediately if we are to stand any hope of persuading anyone that the Labour Party is taking Anti-Semitism seriously". Can the Labour Party be taken seriously?
Since writing this I've happened on an interview Roger Waters – an exception, alongside Brian Eno, to the rule that rock stars shall not rile the Israeli lobby – gave in 2016 to the Independent. The header says it all: Pink Floyd star on why his fellow musicians are terrified to speak out against IsraelJenIt's mostly British rock stars who have spoken out against Israeli policies and actions that terrorise Palestinians. That may say something about the nature of the music industry in Britain as opposed to its American equivalent.Rhys JaggarThe US music industry, indeed the entertainment industry generally since major record labels these days are owned and run by the same corporations that own and run television and movie studios, book and magazine publishers, and news media, is one where the power of money and to make and break careers is highly concentrated among a few companies and individuals.
Antisemitism is actually a very silly term since it means 'the state of opposing semites and their values'. The first question to ask is who, exactly, the Semites were and are? The definition broadly given is 'those people who speak the semitic languages'.So here is a list of Semitic languages:
1. ARABIC – 300 million speakers. Ho hum, so being anti-semitic means hating arabs does it? Should I call Bibi Netanyahu antisemitic for hating the Palestinians? NAUGHTY BOY! SPANK! SPANK!!
2. AMHARIC – 22 million speakers. This is a bunch of Ethiopians who you may or may not choose to like. But they are most certainly not Jewish.
3. TIGRINYA – 6.9 million speakers. Another Ethiopian group.
4. HEBREW – 5 million native speakers. So rather less than one in sixty Semites are actually Hebrew-speaking Jews. Do 59/60 semites really wish Bibi Netanyahu et al to corral them all under one umbrella with him at the helm? I have my doubts, you know .
5. TIGRE – 1 million speaker. A third small Ethiopian sect.
6. ARAMAIC – 0.5 to 1 million speakers from Assyria.
7. MALTESE – around half amillion speakers.So Jews have appropriated a term for themselves when they represent less than two percent of Semites. What arrogance they possess!
So before we go any further, I suggest Jeremy Corbyn uses as one defensive strand that he likes many arab semites .that should cause unrest with Miluds given orders by the Mossad, Downing Street and GCHQ.
Secondly I suggest that Jews coin a new term referring solely to them as they are not, nor will they likely ever be the overwhelming majority of semites on earth. How about JEW HATER?
Finally I call on all non Jewish semites to disavow the use of the term antisemitic when referring to Jews, expressing outrage that Jews could insult their distinct cultures, traditions and values through insisting on using a term despicably inappropriate for matters at hand.
They could call for Margaret Hodge to be kicked out of the Labour Party for antinonjewsemitic behaviour, but that might be being petty
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Jun 30, 2019 | www.theguardian.com
Little wonder that discussions about politics can leave us feeling that we are banging our heads against a brick wall – even when talking to people we might otherwise respect. Fortunately, recent psychological research also offers evidence-based ways towards achieving more fruitful discussions. Ask 'how' rather than 'why'
Thanks to the illusion of explanatory depth, many political arguments will be based on false premises, spoken with great confidence but with a minimal understanding of the issues at hand. For this reason, a simple but powerful way of deflating someone's argument is to ask for more detail. "You need to get the 'other side' focusing on how something would play itself out, in a step by step fashion", says Prof Dan Johnson at Washington and Lee University in Lexington, Virginia. By revealing the shallowness of their existing knowledge, this prompts a more moderate and humble attitude.
In 2013, Prof Philip Fernbach at the University of Colorado, Boulder, and colleagues asked participants in cap-and-trade schemes – designed to limit companies' carbon emissions – to describe in depth how they worked. Subjects initially took strongly polarised views but after the limits of their knowledge were exposed, their attitudes became more moderate and less biased.
It's important to note that simply asking why people supported or opposed the policy – without requiring them to explain how it works – had no effect, since those reasons could be shallower ("It helps the environment") with little detail. You need to ask how something works to get the effect.
If you are debating the merits of a no-deal Brexit, you might ask someone to describe exactly how the UK's international trade would change under WTO terms. If you are challenging a climate emergency denier, you might ask them to describe exactly how their alternative theories can explain the recent rise in temperatures. It's a strategy that the broadcaster James O'Brien employs on his LBC talk show – to powerful effect.
Fill their knowledge gap with a convincing storyIf you are trying to debunk a particular falsehood – like a conspiracy theory or fake news – you should make sure that your explanation offers a convincing, coherent narrative that fills all the gaps left in the other person's understanding.
Consider the following experiment by Prof Brendan Nyhan of the University of Michigan and Prof Jason Reifler of the University of Exeter. Subjects read stories about a fictional senator allegedly under investigation for bribery who had subsequently resigned from his post. Written evidence – a letter from prosecutors confirming his innocence – did little to change the participants' suspicions of his guilt. But when offered an alternative explanation for his resignation – to take on another role – participants changed their minds. The same can be seen in murder trials: people are more likely to accept someone's innocence if another suspect has also been accused, since that fills the biggest gap in the story: whodunnit.
Facebook Twitter Pinterest Boris Johnson, Jeremy Hunt, Michael Gove, Sajid Javid and Rory Stewart taking part in a BBC TV debate earlier this month. Photograph: Jeff Overs/BBC/PAThe persuasive power of well-constructed narratives means that it's often useful to discuss the sources of misinformation, so that the person can understand why they were being misled in the first place. Anti-vaxxers, for instance, may believe a medical conspiracy to cover up the supposed dangers of vaccines. You are more likely to change minds if you replace that narrative with an equally cohesive and convincing story – such as Andrew Wakefield 's scientific fraud, and the fact that he was set to profit from his paper linking autism to MMR vaccines. Just stating the scientific evidence will not be as persuasive.
Reframe the issueEach of our beliefs is deeply rooted in a much broader and more complex political ideology. Climate crisis denial, for instance, is now inextricably linked to beliefs in free trade, capitalism and the dangers of environmental regulation.
Attacking one issue may therefore threaten to unravel someone's whole worldview – a feeling that triggers emotionally charged motivated reasoning. It is for this reason that highly educated Republicans in the US deny the overwhelming evidence.
You are not going to alter someone's whole political ideology in one discussion, so a better strategy is to disentangle the issue at hand from their broader beliefs, or to explain how the facts can still be accommodated into their worldview. A free-market capitalist who denies global warming might be far more receptive to the evidence if you explain that the development of renewable energies could lead to technological breakthroughs and generate economic growth.
Appeal to an alternative identityIf the attempt to reframe the issue fails, you might have more success by appealing to another part of the person's identity entirely.
Someone's political affiliation will never completely define them, after all. Besides being a conservative or a socialist, a Brexiter or a remainer, we associate ourselves with other traits and values – things like our profession, or our role as a parent. We might see ourselves as a particularly honest person, or someone who is especially creative. "All people have multiple identities," says Prof Jay Van Bavel at New York University, who studies the neuroscience of the "partisan brain" . "These identities can become active at any given time, depending on the circumstances."
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You are more likely to achieve your aims by arguing gently and kindly. You will also come across better to onlookers
It's natural that when talking about politics, the salient identity will be our support for a particular party or movement. But when people are asked to first reflect on their other, nonpolitical values, they tend to become more objective in discussion on highly partisan issues , as they stop viewing facts through their ideological lens.
You could try to use this to your advantage during a heated conversation, with subtle flattery that appeals to another identity and its set of values; if you are talking to a science teacher, you might try to emphasise their capacity to appraise evidence even-handedly. The aim is to help them recognise that they can change their mind on certain issues while staying true to other important elements of their personality.
Persuade them to take an outside perspectiveAnother simple strategy to encourage a more detached and rational mindset is to ask your conversation partner to imagine the argument from the viewpoint of someone from another country. How, for example, would someone in Australia or Iceland view Boris Johnson as our new prime minister?
Prof Ethan Kross at the University of Michigan, and Prof Igor Grossmann at the University of Waterloo in Ontario, Canada, have shown that this strategy increases "psychological distance" from the issue at hand and cools emotionally charged reasoning so that you can see things more objectively. During the US presidential elections, for instance, their participants were asked to consider how someone in Iceland would view the candidates. They were subsequently more willing to accept the limits of their knowledge and to listen to alternative viewpoints; after the experiment, they were even more likely to join a bipartisan discussion group.
Facebook Twitter Pinterest The front pages of two New York newspapers on Friday 2 June 2017, as Donald Trump pledged to withdraw the US from the Paris climate agreement. Photograph: Richard B Levine/AlamyThis is only one way to increase someone's psychological distance, and there are many others. If you are considering policies with potentially long-term consequences, you could ask them to imagine viewing the situation through the eyes of someone in the future. However you do it, encouraging this shift in perspective should make your friend or relative more receptive to the facts you are presenting, rather than simply reacting with knee-jerk dismissals.
Be kindHere's a lesson that certain polemicists in the media might do well to remember – people are generally much more rational in their arguments, and more willing to own up to the limits of their knowledge and understanding, if they are treated with respect and compassion. Aggression, by contrast, leads them to feel that their identity is threatened, which in turn can make them closed-minded.
Assuming that the purpose of your argument is to change minds, rather than to signal your own superiority, you are much more likely to achieve your aims by arguing gently and kindly rather than belligerently , and affirming your respect for the person, even if you are telling them some hard truths. As a bonus, you will also come across better to onlookers. "There's a lot of work showing that third-party observers always attribute high levels of competence when the person is conducting themselves with more civility," says Dr Joe Vitriol, a psychologist at Lehigh University in Bethlehem, Pennsylvania. As Lady Mary Wortley Montagu put it in the 18th century: "Civility costs nothing and buys everything."
• David Robson is the author of The Intelligence Trap: Why Smart People Do Stupid Things and How to Make Wiser Decisions (Hodder & Stoughton, £20). To order a copy go to guardianbookshop.com . Free UK p&p on all online orders over £15
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Apr 18, 2017 | off-guardian.org
First, let's look at Bellingcat involvement in Ukraine.
On July 11th 2014 an event happened that shook my world, literally. Bellingcat reported that the Russians attacked Ukrainian armed forces from across the border in Zelenopillya. The Ukrainians suffered traumatic losses. Once again, Eliot Higgins provides the data to determine this. Once again Bellingcat was wrong about the origin of the attack.
This single battle marked the turning point for the entire war. The Donbass militia went on a large offensive for the first time and destroyed a big Ukrainian encampment with a rocket attack.
How can I afford to be so assertive? At 4:30 in the morning on July 11th every house in my town started shaking because of the massive explosions going on at Zelenopillya. I did say it shook my world, didn't I?
I was between the Russian border and the camp. We could see the smoke from the rockets and the sky was lit with the explosions . The explosions were loud enough to wake the dead that morning. There were no rockets flying over my head. For Russia to fire them, that's exactly where they would have been.
At that point we were under Ukrainian occupation for a couple of months. Two days before the attack on Zelenopillya happened, a Ukrainian army officer told the post master to get the children out of town within 2 days. The army was pulling out and a cleansing battalion (Donbas battalion) was coming in to weed out "separatists and supporters." That was when I came face to face with Mark Paslowsky, the American nazi . The article gives his background and tells what was going on.
Bellingcat misidentifies the weapon as artillery. Grad rockets were fired at Zelenopillya by the Rovenki militia that day. I spoke with the militia that fired them about 1 week after the fact. In the linked articles the Ukrainians state plainly that it was militia using Grad rockets.
The Ukrainians took some of their wounded across the border to Russia. It's not quite something you do if Russia was really attacking you. The worst injuries were treated locally. Donbass people ran there after the battle to help the wounded and the Ukrainian soldiers were treated at local hospitals. Ukraine abandoned them.
The story got a lot of play in the west in the west as a Russian attack on Ukraine thanks to this event. It was added to the list of reasons to sanction Russia. If the attack on Zelenopillya didn't happen, I probably wouldn't be here to write this.
For the third time on an important event, Bellingcat shows it cannot identify the origin or firing location of a weapon and misidentifies both the weapon type and the direction of fire in media.
Getting the facts straight about the MH-17 shoot down is the difference between hundreds of families getting justice and closure for those deaths or never seeing it. Convict the wrong party and justice is never served. New victims are made with false or erroneous evidence.
Bellingcat's importance to the JIT (Joint Investigative Team) investigation of MH-17 is apparent through all the media Higgins and Toler are quoted in media as the independent experts.
That last statement should grab your attention. Bellingcat and its founders Elliot Higgins and Aric Toler's credibility rests on the fact that they are independent researchers. If they are working for an interested party in any investigation, Bellingcat's credibility is destroyed and their research means nothing. After all, it's been paid for.
Bellingcat really grabbed the public's attention and imagination after the shoot down of flight MH-17 over Ukraine. Independent researchers Higgins and Toler went to work to find the missile launch site and the responsible parties, or did they?
As early as February 2014, Higgins showed the beginning of a clear pattern regarding Ukraine. In the tweet below this OSINT expert researcher was linking to a 1 month old blog started by Sviatoslav Yurash . What's special about Yurash at this time is that he was Ukrainian ultranationalist Dimitry Yarosh's English language spokesman. If that well known fact wasn't enough to caution Higgins, what was?
In the next article to follow, starting with Yurash as the first example, I'll show you how all these volunteer experts including Higgins get paid. The article will further cement and establish the relationships between Bellingcat, Weisburd, Watts and other intel and news headline providers with each other as well as their employers.
For now, the admission made by the Ukrainian Information Ministry and Aric Toler will have to be enough.
"September 29 and November 19, 2015 in Kharkov Crisis Infocentre Information Policy Advisor to the Minister Dmitry Zolotukhin conducted trainings on the search for information in open sources for journalists and bloggers in Kharkov.
In addition, already 21 November Dmitry Zolotukhin met with his US counterpart, team representative Bellingcat Arik Toler , who conducted a similar training for journalists in Kyiv on the invitation of Media Development Foundation. They also discussed the possibility of holding a conference in Kiev on thematic instruments OSINT-use techniques in the modern media."One of the Media Development Center's sponsors is NATO . It is a project of the US Embassy in Kiev because of the association with the embassy's diplomatic paper, the Kyiv Post.
If that isn't enough, let's see how close Bellingcat's Aric Toler views the relationship.
According to both Information Policy Advisor Dmitry Zolotukhin and Toler, they are partners. Eric Toler and Eliot Higgins(Bellingcat), along with Aaron Weisburd, Clint Watts, and Joel Harding have been working with the same Ukrainian Information Ministry that started the "Mytorovyets" or Peacekeeper website.
They help the SBU geo-locate people in Ukraine. As shown above, they also train people to geo-locate anyone considered anti-Maidan or anti-nationalist in Ukraine. They didn't disappoint.
The Ministry of Information has been targeting journalists in Ukraine by geo-location for arrest or murder . The first public case was the Ukrainian journalist Oleh Buzina in May 2015. This was one month after my first article about Peacekeeper showed clearly that this was its purpose.
I think this pretty well sums up how independent Bellingcat's investigation has been. To add insult to injury, Higgins and Toler work directly with previously identified Ukrainian Intelligence hackers and Pravy Sektor members (ultra-nationalist Ukrainians) to get Bellingcat "independent research" information.
InformNapalm and its hackers are Ukrainian Intel agents working for the Information Ministry. In their own words – The main activities of the project are collecting and analysing OSINT-information , found in open sources, including social networks. InformNapalm's investigation of 53rd Artillery Brigade commander colonel Sergei Muchkayev, suspected of killing the MH17 passengers, was used in the report of the Bellingcat research team .
Who was the information source for independent researchers at Bellingcat? Dimitry Yarosh's best friend, Valentyn Nalivaychenko was one of them. In the spring of 2014, he replaced SBU(Ukraine's Security Service) personnel with ultra-nationalists because they had the right ideology. Another was Anton Gerashchenko who is responsible for persecuting the press in Ukraine.
In few days and hours after the crash of MH17 Ukrainian officials widely publicly discussed all that data (except the photo of "Paris Match") anonymously downloaded by someone to social nets. For example on July 17 Gerashchenko (The ministry of internal affairs) showed the photo of Buk at Torez; on July 18 Avakov (The ministry of internal affairs) showed the video of Buk at Luhansk; also on July 18 Nalivaychenko (the chief of Ukrainian security service) showed the video of Buk at Snizhne, and on July 19 Vitaliy Naida (Ukrainian security service) showed shot fragment of video frame (not the video itself) from Zugres.Under the best circumstances Bellingcat's research can only be seen as a Ukrainian Intelligence production. If neither Higgins or Toler were actively engaged with Ukrainian operations on the many levels that they are, their source material is still very tainted. When all your research material comes from a party under investigation, you are no longer a neutral party. You can't pee in a blood sample and call it evidence. Are Higgins and Toler credible? You decide.
Max van der Werff has become a go-to resource for understanding information about MH-17. I have spoken at length with Max and his fellow researchers @bellingmouse. This linked article shows the strength of research these REAL volunteers have brought to the MH-17 investigation . I had to ask Max the great who-dun-it question. His response was after thousands of hours of research, he didn't know. Too many people were withholding information and remaining uncooperative on all sides.
What he was sure of is that Bellingcat's research is shoddy and a lot of the evidence appears fabricated.
Max van der Werf has been interviewed by the JIT investigative team on 4 occasions, given over 6 hours of recorded interviews to them, as well as over 14GB of data.
Examples of this include the fact that all of the images and video are such low quality and resolution, it's impossible to make definite determinations from them.
One of the chase vehicles (jeep) in Bellingcat's BUK convoy is driving with the door open. In another image of the BUK transport supposedly taken by a local resident, the apartment was not occupied in the summer of 2014. There was no one there to take the image. It was again so grainy and low quality that even a military vehicle substitution was not noticeable. None of the neighbors that were there saw a BUK on a trailer.
The route of travel according to Bellingcat would have taken the BUK launcher toward the conflict zone twice while battles were being fought across the region. Anyone familiar with the area or that had a map would take a direct route which would have made it much less noticeable driving through unpopulated areas.
Images taken after the shoot down are just as bad. Some unimportant parts of the image are in focus while it's almost impossible to make out the BUK even though it's right beside the photographer.
The so-called wire-tapped conversation was proven to be a Ukrainian SBU production. How is it still a part of the evidence chain?
What van der Werff and @bellingmouse have proven unequivocally is that another investigation needs to take place that looks for real evidence. The JIT, for their part had the impossible task of investigating a hostile shoot-down of a jetliner with no previous airline disaster investigation experience in a war zone that was active. The problem with it is objectivity was thrown out the window as soon as Ukraine got the right to reject evidence and control what would be made public.
What has looking for Ruskies done? In the eyes of Congress it made you and every publication that strives for neutral information or even writing from their political slant a Ruskie. You work for Vladimir Putin.
It has taken away any hope of justice for people in Syria and the families of MH-17 victims unless real neutral investigations take place.
It's taken away real news from the masses and replaced it with policy pieces from people that get paid to hate you. You are after all, the Russian interference that they talk about.
It's time to stop this bs.
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Jul 11, 2018 | off-guardian.org
BigB
The main corroboration for the Steele Dossier was Christopher Steele: briefing the press at the Tabard Inn, Washington – to set up a collaboration loop. Julian Assange tweeted that one of the journalists was Paul Wood who looks like a spook or an asset himself.Einsteinhttps://mobile.twitter.com/JulianAssange/status/976943588394323973
Another journalists was Michael Isikoff. His planted story war used to collaborate the Dossier as the basis of the FBI's FISA warrant to surveill Carter Page.
The Nunes Memo also states that Steele back-chanelled additional allegations into the DOJ via Bruce Ohr.
Another corroboration was the Trump Tower meeting: ostensibly set up by Trump linked Araz Agalarov could verify the piss taking allegations. It's well worth revisiting the Elizabeth Vos Disobedient Media article for background on this meeting set up Mifsud et al: who are linked to London – not Moscow.
Anyway, all these "experts" – and Wikipedia – seem to have got their information from one source – Steele: who both wrote and then corroborated his own dossier. With a little help from his intel friends
"Genuine" in the sense that it was really written by a KGB insider (which Skripal was), NOT in the sense that what he alleged was true. The point is that the source of the Steele-Clinton dossier would have been revealed and, of course, the source would have been a proven consummate liar and traitor. This would blow Mueller's "investigation" out of the water.Thomas PetersonBut I'll not engage with you any further on this, since there's none so blind as those who will not see.
why exactly does it seem likely Skripal was one of Steele's sources? did Steele even need any sources to write his ludicrous 'dossier'?JenPaul Roderick Gregory who has followed Soviet and Russian politics professionally for several decades has this to say about the Steele dossier:
https://www.forbes.com/sites/paulroderickgregory/2017/01/13/the-trump-dossier-is-false-news-and-heres-why/#5a2c34e06867The Orbis report makes as if it knows all the ins-and-outs and comings-and-goings within Putin's impenetrable Kremlin. It reports information from anonymous "trusted compatriots," "knowledgeable sources," "former intelligence officers," and "ministry of foreign affairs officials." The report gives a fly-on-the-wall account of just about every conceivable event associated with Donald Trump's Russian connections. It claims to know more than is knowable as it recounts sordid tales of prostitutes, "golden showers," bribes, squabbles in Putin's inner circle, and who controls the dossiers of kompromat (compromising information).
There are two possible explanations for the fly-on-the-wall claims of the Orbis report: Either its author (who is not Mr. Steele) decided to write fiction, or collected enough gossip to fill a 30-page report, or a combination of the two. The author of the Orbis report has one more advantage: He knew that what he was writing was unverifiable. He advertises himself as the only Kremlin outsider with enough "reliable" contacts to explain what is really going within Putin's office.
As someone who has worked for more than a decade with the microfilm collection of Soviet documents in the Hoover Institution Archives, I can say that the dossier itself was compiled by a Russian, whose command of English is far from perfect and who follows the KGB (now FSB) practice of writing intelligence reports, in particular the practice of capitalizing all names for easy reference. The report includes Putin's inner circle – Peskov, Ivanov, Sechin, Lavrov. The anonymous author claims to have "trusted compatriots" who knew the roles that each Kremlin insider, including Putin himself, played in the Trump election saga and were prepared to tell him.
The Orbis report spins the tale of Putin insiders, spurred on by Putin himself, engaging in a five-year courtship of Donald Trump in which they offer him lucrative real estate deals that he rejects but leaves himself open to blackmail as a result of sexual escapades with prostitutes in St. Petersburg and Moscow (the famous "golden shower" incident). Despite his reluctance to enter into lucrative business deals, Trump "and his inner circle have accepted regular intelligence from the Kremlin, including on his Democratic and other political rivals," according to the Orbis report.
This story makes no sense. In 2011, when the courtship purportedly begins, Trump was a TV personality and beauty pageant impresario. Neither in the U.S. or Russia would anyone of authority anticipate that Trump would one day become the presidential candidate of a major U.S. political party, making him the target of Russian intelligence.
Sergei Skripal could fit the description of the "Russian" referred to in the third paragraph.
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May 17, 2019 | off-guardian.org
In view of the latest revelations from the leaked report, which seem to prove that at least some elements of the Douma "chemical attack" were entirely staged, we want to take look back at the chaotic events of Spring 2018.
- What was the agenda behind the Douma false flag?
- Why was the US response seemingly token and ineffective?
- Why was the Secretary of State Rex Tillerson fired?
- What agenda tied the Skripal case to the Douma attack?
The following is an extract from an article by Catte originally published April 14th last year, which takes on a greater weight in light of certain evidence – not only that the Douma attack was faked, but that the OPCW is compromised.
You can read the whole article here .
Primarily UK initiative?The neocon faction in the US is usually (and reasonably) regarded as the motivator behind much of the western aggression in the Middle East.
Since at least 2001 and the launch of the "War on Terror" the US has led the way in finding or creating facile excuses to fight oil wars and hegemonic wars and proxy wars in the region. But this time the dynamics look a little different.
This time it really looks as if the UK has been setting the pace of the "response".
The fact (as stated above) that Mattis was apparently telegraphing his own private doubts a)about the verifiability of the attacks, and b)about the dangers of a military response suggests he was a far from enthusiastic partaker in this adventure.
Trump's attitude is harder to gauge. His tweets veered wildly between unhinged threats and apparent efforts at conciliation. But he must have known he would lose (and seemingly has lost) a great part of his natural voter base (who elected him on a no-more-war mandate) by an act of open aggression that threatened confrontation with Russia on the flimsiest of pretexts.
Granted the US has been looking for excuses to intervene ever more overtly in Syria since 2013, and in that sense this Douma "initiative" is a continuation of their longterm policy. It's also true Russia was warning just such a false flag would be attempted in early March. But in the intervening month the situation on the ground has changed so radically that such an attempt no longer made any sense.
A false flag in early March, while pockets of the US proxy army were still holding ground in Ghouta would have enabled a possible offensive in their support which would prevent Ghouta falling entirely into government hands and thereby also maintain the pressure on Damascus. A false flag in early April is all but useless because the US proxy army in the region was completely vanquished and nothing would be gained by an offensive in that place at that time.
You can see why Mattis and others in the administration might be reluctant to take part in the false flag/punitive air strike narrative if they saw nothing currently to be gained to repay the risk. They may have preferred to wait for developments and plan for a more productive way of playing the R2P card in the future.
The US media has been similarly, and uncharacteristically divided and apparently unsure. Tucker Carlson railed against the stupidity of attacking Syria. Commentators on MSNBC were also expressing intense scepticism of the US intent and fear about possible escalation.
The UK govt and media on the other hand has been much more homogeneous in advocating for action. No doubts of the type expressed by Mattis have been heard from the lips of an UK government minister. Even May, a cowardly PM, has been (under how much pressure?) voicing sterling certitude in public that action HAD to be taken.
Couple this with the – as yet unverified – claims by Russia of direct UK involvement in arranging the Douma "attack", and the claims by Syria that the perps are in their custody, and a tentative storyline emerges. It's possible this time there were other considerations in the mix beside the usual need to "be seen to do something" and Trump's perpetual requirement to appease the liberal Russiagaters and lunatic warmongers at home. Maybe this time it was also about helping the UK out of a sticky problem.
The Skripal considerationProbably the only thing we can all broadly agree on about the Skripal narrative is that it manifestly did not go according to plan. However it was intended to play out, it wasn't this way. Since some time in mid to late March it's been clear the entire thing has become little more than an exercise in damage-limitation, leak-plugging and general containment.
The official story is a hot mess of proven falsehoods, contradictions, implausible conspiracy theories, more falsehoods and inexplicable silences were cricket chirps tell us all we need to know.
The UK government has lied and evaded on every key aspect.
1) It lied again and again about the information Porton Down had given it
2) Its lawyers all but lied to Mr Justice Robinson about whether or not the Skripals had relatives in Russia in an unscrupulous attempt to maintain total control of them, or at least of the narrative.
3) It is not publishing the OPCW report on the chemical analyses, and the summary of that report reads like an exercise in allusion and weasel-wording. Even the name of the "toxic substance" found in the Skripals' blood is omitted, and the only thing tying it to the UK government's public claims of "novichok" is association by inference and proximity.
Indeed if current claims by Russian FM Lavrov turn out to be true, a "novichok" (whatever that precisely means in this case) may not have been the only substance found in those samples, and a compound called "BZ", a non-lethal agent developed in Europe and America, has been discovered and suppressed in the OPCW report (more about that later).
None of the alleged victims of this alleged attack has been seen in public even in passing since the event. There is no film or photographs of DS Bailey leaving the hospital, no film or photographs of his wife or family members doing the same. No interviews with Bailey, no interviews with his wife, family, distant relatives, work colleagues.
The Skripals themselves were announced to be alive and out of danger mere days after claims they were all but certain to die. Yulia, soon thereafter, apparently called her cousin Viktoria only to subsequently announce, indirectly through the helpful agency of the Metropolitan Police, that she didn't want to talk to her cousin – or anyone else – at all.
She is now allegedly discharged from hospital and has "specially trained officers helping to take care of" her in an undisclosed location. A form or words so creepily sinister it's hard to imagine how they were ever permitted the light of day.
Very little of this bizarre, self-defeating, embarrassing, hysterical story makes any sense other than as a random narrative, snaking wildly in response to events the narrative-makers can't completely control.
Why? What went wrong? Why has the UK government got itself into this mess? And how much did the Douma "gas attack" and subsequent drive for a concerted western "response" have to do with trying to fix that?
Is this what happened?If a false flag chemical attack had taken place in Syria at the time Russia predicted, just a week or two after the Skripal poisoning, a lot of the attention that's been paid to the Skripals over the last month would likely have been diverted. Many of the questions being asked by Russia and in the alt media may never have been asked as the focus of the world turned to a possible superpower stand-off in the Middle East.
So, could it be the Skripal event was never intended to last so long in the public eye? Could it be that it was indeed a false flag, or a fake event, as many have alleged, planned as a sketchy prelude to, or warm up act for a bigger chemical attack in Syria, scheduled for a week or so later in mid-March – just around the time Russia was warning of such a possibility?
Could it be this planned event was unexpectedly canceled by the leading players in the drama (the US) when the Russians called them out and the rapid and unexpected fall of Ghouta meant any such intervention became pointless at least for the moment?
Did this cancelation leave the UK swinging in the wind, with a fantastical story that was never intended to withstand close scrutiny, and no second act for distraction?
So, did they push on with the now virtually useless "chemical attack", botch it (again), leaving a clear evidence trail leading back to them? Did they then further insist on an allied "response" to their botched false flag in order to provide yet more distraction and hopefully destroy some of that evidence?
This would explain why the UK may have been pushing for the false flag to happen (as claimed by Russia) even after it could no longer serve much useful purpose on the ground, and why the Douma "attack" seems to have been so sketchily done by a gang on the run. The UK needed the second part to happen in order to distract from the first.
It would explain why the US has been less than enthused by the idea of reprisals. Because while killing Syrians to further geo-strategic interests is not a problem, killing Syrians (and risking escalation with Russia) in order to rescue an embarrassed UK government is less appealing.
And it would explain why the "reprisals" when they came were so half-hearted.
If this is true, Theresa May and her cabinet are currently way out on a limb even by cynical UK standards. Not only have they lied about the Skripal event, but in order to cover up that lie they have promoted a false flag in Syria, and "responded" to it by a flagrant breach of international and domestic law. Worst of all, if the Russians aren't bluffing, they have some evidence to prove some of the most egregious parts of this.
This is very bad.
But even if some or all of our speculation proves false, and even if the Russian claims of UK collusion with terrorists in Syria prove unfounded, May is still guilty of multiple lies and has still waged war without parliamentary approval.
This is a major issue. She and her government should resign. But it's unlikely that will happen.
So what next? There is a sense this is a watershed for many of the parties involved and for the citizens of the countries drawn into this.
Will the usual suspects try to avoid paying for their crimes and misadventures by more rhetoric, more false flags, more "reprisals"? Or will this signal some other change in direction?
We'll all know soon enough.
andyoldlabour
D S Bailey was interviewed by the BBC after leaving the hospital, but that interview simply raised more questions. Why was his family allowed in the hospital without hazmat suits when the hospital staff were wearing them?RefraktorWe were originally told that Bailey was contaminated whilst wearing police issue gloves, yet the BBC article said he was wearing a hazmat suit.
Nerve toxins kill thousands, yet only three people were initially contaminated and recovered.It's beyond reasonable doubt that there was no Novichok: assuming that substance even exists. It could be that Sergei and Yulia were stooges loyal to MI5. It could be they were whacked with bz or fentanyl (by MI5) in the restaurant. That's all it would take. Of course army heads of nursing and CID officers would be circulating ready get a handle on developments. Perhaps it later became necessary to kill someone after the complete non-lethality of Novichok was revealed. Perhaps this death was really caused by heroin overdose or else something quite natural. Perhaps not. I concur that the most likely motive for this false flag was an attempt to escalate in Syria. Given the total barking insanity of the Skripal Saga it might be that NATO genuinely contemplated war with Russia at this time. When they lobbed those cruise missiles I thought their dreams were about to come true. Maniacs.StonkyNickSpeaking of which, where on Earth IS Sergei Skripal?
Sergei was a double agent who could have had his finger in all sorts of dubious pies. There might easily be logical (if not legitimate) reasons for keeping him under wraps. Surely the more pertinent question is: Where is Yulia?
Because even if you swallow every fragment of the official UK nonsense, you're still left with this oddity:
Yulia Skripal is a young woman who was the completely innocent victim of a dastardly assassination plot masterminded by the evil Vlad. Having survived this attempt on her life, she has responded by deciding that she never again wants to see or speak to anyone at all. Ever.
It seems that everyone is lying about the Skripal affair. The UK govt. version is riddled with inconsistencies. But it does seem that 2 GRU officers were wandering around Salisbury. Why? And the Russians are lying about that.PortonchokNick,StonkyThe likelihood is that the GRU were there to discuss with Skripal his wishes to return to Russia. There is an alternative likelihood that they were there to quiz him on his contribution to the Dodgy Dossier. Both scenarios could well lead to the British secret services deciding to take Skripal out, even down, and blame it on the Russians.
I would suggest that Skripal and his daughter are now either living somewhere else in Natoland under different identities and some money to keep them quiet, or else their existence became too awkward and risky and sadly they have been liquidated.
JenBut it does seem that 2 GRU officers were wandering around Salisbury. .. Why?
Nick, even accepting that the two guys were Russian intelligence operatives, there are a million explanations for their presence in Salisbury that day that make more sense than the official UK explanation: They came to assassinate Sergei Skripal by smearing the world's deadliest nerve agent on his door handle in the middle of a Sunday afternoon, while wearing no protective clothing
There is no proof that the two Russian men Ruslan Boshirov and Alexander Petrov were GRU officers. The so-called "proof" for that line of thinking comes from Bellingcat, a known propaganda outfit, who obtained the "proof" in highly suspect ways that suggest it was given cherry-picked information made to fit the narrative.John2o2oIt is far more likely that out of the many tourists to Salisbury – hundreds perhaps, and many of them from Russia as well – these two men were picked out at random by UK government authorities as targets of suspicion because they happened to be travelling together and must have fit a preconceived template in which secret Russian agents (like Dmitri Kovtun and Andrei Lugovoi before them, when those two fellows were supposed to have poisoned Alexander Litvinenko back in 2006) are believed to travel in pairs.
Two Russians were wandering round Salisbury. That is all we know. Has it never occurred to you that the UK government and/or the people who poisoned the Skripals might be using them as convenient scapegoats? It may even be that they were deliberately lured to Salisbury to be set up in this way and had nothing to do with the poisoning.OffGIs there any solid evidence they were GRU? Has that ever been firmed up beyond Bellingcat's 'data dump' of largely unproven documents?Seamus PadraigThe going theory is that the Russian agents were led into a trap. The GRU may have been made to believe somehow that Skripal intended to re-defect, and that's why they really went to Salisbury–not to assassinate him, but to help him arrange his escape. That's when the MI6 moved in for the kill, hoping to pin the crime on Russia.John2o2oTo be sure, it's hard to get to the bottom of this cloak-and-dagger stuff when all we have access to is open-source information. But one thing is pretty clear to me: the idea that Russia would have allowed Skripal to defect, then waited all those years and taken crazy risks to kill him after having had him in their direct custody in a Russian prison for over 6 years, where they could have easily killed him at any time, is ridiculous.
They are not proven to be Russian agents.RegJohn2o2oJudyJ
No, not proven but is it possible they were low level couriers in a meeting set up by Yulia where information was to be swapped as the price as re-admittance to Russia for Sergei, particularly given Sergei's mothers advancing age.
It would explain the UK's panicked reaction as this was a meeting that must be stopped at all costs. How much would Sergei know of UK security service operations if he was still active? It would also explained why Yulia as also targeted and why there turned off their phones as they sought to shake off their UK handlers. A meeting is more credible in broad daylight than an assassination. An assassination with an escape route involving a train from Salisbury on Sunday is not credible.
It could even be that the UK security services carried out the attack in the hope of blaming Russia if the could convince them it was carried out by Russia. Having kept the OPCW away they could then interfere with the evidence at will with Novachock. They could be filmed propped up in bed blaming Russia (like Litvinenko), but they didn't play ball so have been kept incommunicado ever since apart from a a carefully scripted interview. The attacks on the other two months later could be to add credibility to a narrative that was loosing all credibility even among the general public.Kathy"Having kept the OPCW away "
I always considered it was highly suspicious that the UK was most reluctant to involve the OPCW right from the outset even though that would be the normal internationally accepted practice in the circumstances; and when Russia was imploring them to do so.
Significantly, the UK only brought them into the picture (reluctantly) when they were given legal advice that Russia were entitled to invite the OPCW to investigate, and whoever issued the invitation first would have overall control of the final report (i.e. they could liaise with the OPCW in the drafting, they could redact it, and decide who was to receive copies of the full report as opposed to the summary report).
My suspicion now, knowing what we know about the OPCW Douma scandal, is that the UK were totally in cahoots with the US over the Salisbury events and when the prospect of having no option but to call in the OPCW emerged the US simply said "Don't worry about a thing. Just leave it with us. We'll sort things out".
The British seem to me to act, hide and manipulate from behind the USA.crank
I think that Trump was really not meant to happen. Killery was supposed to take over the reins and continue the waging of wars in the Middle East. Syria being the immediate agenda.
The two above events both link up in an attempt to force Trump into complying. One of the connections is the attempt to try to smear Trump with the dodgy dossier. The chemical false flag was intended to provide the warmongers with enough pressure to force Trump to act and involve America against his better judgement in an all out war in Syria. luckily this became a short term token one off. Much to British annoyance.
It is the connection with the intelligence services that is key. All of these events seem to be designed to push Trump into compliance and conformity. It is the knowledge of /and his probable involvement with Christopher Steele, that suggest poor Sergey knew to much of both events, and so had to be silenced. The Skripal affair was, I think attempting a cherry on the cake demonizing of Russia with the Skripal narrative. A twist of the knife while Trump was under investigation over his supposed puppet status by/ collusion with Russia.
It seems that the latest persecution of Assange is also mostly being pushed by Britain. Assange certainly did play a big part in the narrative not playing out as planned.Remarkable that despite all that is known, an article (well, two really) like this does not meniton Israel once.Dissidents_unit
The extract from Catte's piece last year starts with the sentence, 'The neocon faction in the US is usually (and reasonably) regarded as the motivator behind much of the western aggression in the Middle East.'
The 'neocon faction' means what exactly ? Why not just say it ? It means Israel and the international power bloc aligned with Israel.
Perhaps Douma and Salisbury make more sense if they are put into a context of Israel writing and running US (and by extension, UK) foreign policies. And what of Russia's strange and often unmentioned relationship with Israel?
If anyone is serious about unwrapping the onion of lies and misdirection that passes for 'current events', then its time to consider Israel and its networks of supporters as the central focal point.
9/11 only makes sense, I would say, with this in mind. Ditto the Kennedy killings. If you think these events have significance in our present,and you genuinely stand against racist supremicism and crazed plans for world domination, then speak out about Israel before such speech is criminalised everywhere.Well said Crank. I have always believed Mossad had a hand in the alleged assassination attempt of the Skripals as Israel does have chemical weapons and has refused affiliation with the OPCW in order, I presume, to avoid inspections and having to decommission the chemical weapons they have. If anybody is to be accused of meddling in other nation's elections, politics etc Israel is right up there as the prime suspects – they obviously control Trump, they were caught on Video (at least a non diplomatic representative from the Israeli Embassy in the UK who branded himself as managing 'special projects') offering Joan Ryan – a Labour MP – £1m to run a smear campaign against Corbyn – which she gladly accepted. They have run continuous, spurious, ridiculous anti-Semitism claims against Corbyn and Labour which has only served to turn the public more against them and they are massacring and murdering Palestinians with impunity – all supported by the UK and USA.PortonchokI think Mossad were the Government (UK's) agents with respect to the Skripal affair. I am of the firm belief that the Skripals are both dead – after all, the UK Government cannot afford to release them so to speak. I say this because Sergei used to speak to his elderly mother in Russia if not every day, at least several times a week and he has not been in touch with her neither has Yulia. Yulia had a flat, a fiancé, a job and a wedding to arrange back in Russia – I don't believe she just walked away from all that.
And what of Russia's strange and often unmentioned relationship with Israel?John2o2o
It's not strange at all. By far the largest group of immigrants into Israel are Russians.Jews under the bed? I don't agree with your analysis. Israel has nothing to do with the Skripal poisoning. I understand your mistrust of Israel, but it is not to blame for all the ills of the world.crankHow do you know that 'Israel had nothing to do with the Skripal poisoning' ?mark
You don't.
I know of no connection directly linking the events to agents of the Israeli state, but what does that mean? We don't really know any more than that the UK government story is a transparent fabrication.If you conclude that Israel effectively runs US foreign policy then the Syrian situation has to be considered in that context. (Likewise Iran).
It's not called the Anglo-zionist empire for nothing.Catte's article was basically a theorised link between Douma and Salisbury. Douma is in Syria, which is under attack from Israel, according to a plan drawn up in Israel decades ago, with proxy army from Neocon Washington (i.e. Israel)
That's a good point. But I am struck by the leading role currently played by the UK in the recent litany of false flags and smear campaigns. The UK was a prime mover in setting up the "White Helmets" and the various Syrian gas hoaxes. Litvinenko. Skripal. The Steele Dirty Dossier. The Corbyn anti Semitism hoax. Admittedly probably with a large Zionist element.crankThe Henry Jackson Society would be one obvious hub of neocon organisation within the UK political establishment. There surely are others that we are as yet unaware of (NB the recent Facebook revelations of political interference around the globe.)JudyJ
In much the same way that the 'special relationship' between the US and Britain basically translates into Britain acting as America's de facto diplomatic poodle, HJS has long seen itself as an outpost to disseminate US neoconservative ideology in the British political establishment, media and civil society.http://spinwatch.org/images/Reports/HJS_spinwatch%20report_web_2015.pdf
O/T I know, but on the subject of the esteemed (!) Henry Jackson Society, I had to laugh the other day when I read about the pending departure of Alexander Yakovenko from the Russian Embassy in London.JudyJA Dr Andrew Foxall, who (according to the Daily Mail) is the 'expert' Head of Russian Studies at the HJC, stated that it was clearly a suspicious move because ambassadorial positions are normally held for 5 or 3 years, not for the 8 years that Yakovenko had been there. He even spoon-fed us with the information that "8 is not divisible by 5 or 3" and therefore this has to be a forced move. I suggest that Dr Foxall needs to stop and think just a touch longer if he is ever asked to comment in public in future and not seriously damage whatever reputation he might claim to have. I ask you.
Sorry, should have made better use of my 'edit' time! HJC should of course read HJS. My proof-reading abilities are as questionable as Dr Andrew Foxall's maths!crankIf anyone has not reviewed Christopher Bollyn's case against Israel for 9/11, I would suggest that now is the time.crank
Only a widespread revelation of the role of Israel in 9/11 can stop their war on Iran from proceding.https://www.mintpressnews.com/newly-released-fbi-docs-shed-light-on-apparent-mossad-foreknowledge-of-9-11-attacks/258581/UreKismetThere are only two viable theories about Skirpal IMO. The first is that his daughter had persuaded the old man to come home and the englanders learned this at short notice.Dissidents_unitSergeant Nick Bailey the thug on call that day, really screwed up the attempt to off Skirpal even poisoning himself in order to 'get' Skirpal before he met with the Russian officers who had been sent to negotiate his return home.
Proximity to English chemical weapons determined the method.
The second is also dependent on the proximity of English chemical weapons manufacturing base at Porton Downs. That is the English were responsible for training Syrian headchoppers in chemical warfare and they taught their terrorists about Novichok to false flag in Syria in a way that would make Russia appear culpable.
One of the trainee terrorists went to lunch and overheard the Skripals talking Russian & became so upset the invasion and war had been lost, he decided to poison em.
The latter doesn't fit the known facts as well as the former, but it is more credible than anything the Englander spies have offered.
URKismet – just a comment – it turns out that the first responder apart from Nick Bailey was, in fact, the Head of Nursing of the British Army! No coincidence there I think. Either she or Nick Bailey or both are surely suspects in the administration of the toxic substance?Wilmers31Many people forget that Skripal took (according to wikipedia) approximately 300 other agents down with him when he was busted in Moscow.Seamus PadraigThat makes about 600 individuals (only 1 relative for each) who must be his enemies. Someone was after revenge? Whether that one was in Britain in exile or in Russia we don't know. People ignore such a large group of potential enemies.
So why did the Russians allow the Skripals to emigrate to the UK in the first place? They had Sergei in prison for 6 years; they could have had him bumped off at any time while he was their prisoner. But for some odd reason they chose not to. StrangeWilmers31It was a prisoner exchange before Skripal had completed his sentence. The UK must have had an asset which Moscow really wanted, persons or . don't know. It is now time that these prisoner/spy exchanges no longer happen in secret. Why they let him out earlier is not understandable from what we know at the moment.Wilmers31The one thumb down is surprising. If that is for the idea to cease prisoner/spy exchanges that is somewhat silly as these exchanges do not make for happiness, as we have seen. If exchanges are so good, why not exchange Kevin Mallory with the Chinese? People need to cop the complete punishment for their crimes, you do not exchange murderers or fraudsters, either.davemassIf the criticism is about the hundreds of people who are tempted for revenge after their cover was blown through Skripal then this is bizarre. What purpose does it serve to sweep it under the carpet that Skripal was only one person in a system? Maybe wikipedia's figure of 300 was wrong – let's have the correct figure then.
We can read in memoirs like Brian Crozier's "Free Agent" and "Gold Warriors" (Seagraves) what operations there were in Chile, Africa, Philippines etc but the many people who were involved are never mentioned. The individuals like Skripal or Crozier are the visible tips of the icebergs and it is legitimate to ask who else was involved in the operations, covert or open, legal or illegal, and who funded.
Profumo was jailed for lying to Parliament.wardropper
Surely May, and all accomplices should suffer the samne fate??I expect the US secret service just asked our secret service to take the initiative for once, since the US were beginning to look like the bad guysPaul HarveyI have privately speculated that the raison d'etre of the Skirpal farce was simply to generate the belief system and memetic narrative that Russia is currently producing chemical weapons/ nerve agents and is willing to openly use them on their perceived 'enemies' abroad (and of course that the origin of these chemical weapons, ie Novichok can 'proved' to be exclusively of Russian providence.PanopticonWhy is the above important? Because if there is ever a chemical weapons attack in Syria on civilians and hundreds die and the nerve agent is 'proved' by the OPCW to be Novichok then of course Russia would get the blame for supplying the 'Assad regime' with this chemical agent. (Sarin, anthrax etc cannot be exclusively traced back to Russia, only Novichok and it alone can be, if we believe the prior Skirpal narrative).
As a side note – the story that Trump was shown images of dead English ducks and hospitalised English children in relation to the Skirpal incident makes me wonder if this was an attempt by British psychological warfare operatives to pre-program Trump and his team, so when videos eventually emerge of dead animals and hospitalised Syrian children, the link is already fixed in their mind as to what a Novichok 'attack' looks like).
One has to admit the story that surfaced last month of dead ducks/hospitalised kids images shown to Trump in relation to the Skirpal narrative was very strange to say the least.
Just as the Skirpal case 'fixed' the Novichok narrative in the MSM as exclusively of Russian providence, one can also speculate that the Douma 'Barrel Bomb' meme (and the fake OPCW Report) was another key part of the narrative – if a speculative Novichok attack occurs and footage emerges of similar containers as used in the the fake Douma chlorine attack, the OPCW can already point to the providence of the delivery system as being exclusively of Syrian military origin and the Douma events as simply a precursor to a current 'Novichok' attack (just as the Skirpal events would be used as a precursor to Russian culpability and perhaps even the suggestion of active Russian involvement in a mass chemical attack on Syrian women and children using the agent Novichok.)
Maybe this is what the Russians mean by UK involvement in Douma – maybe they worked out that the Skirpal events were a precursor to a wider false flag event to be staged down the line by elements of British military and state intelligence networks in conjunction with elements within NATO and U.S. intelligence structures.
I know this is total speculation and I provide it as food for thought and grounds for further research in reference to this article.
All you need to know about Skripalgate : )CoryPThis was such a treat. Thanks for sharing!wardropperThat is a tremendous piece of work. It should go down in history, but people are already forgetting Skripal's name. A truly brilliant summary.markChemical weapons have been used against the Syrian military, inflicting casualties. They have also been used routinely by the British taxpayer funded head choppers and throat slitters to terrorise civilians indiscriminately for years. As for "scant evidence of jihadists weaponizing chemicals", they have been arrested in Turkey by the Turkish police in possession of canisters of sarin nerve gas. Just one of many documented instances. But maybe this just comes from a "conspiracist mindset." Maybe it's totally irrelevant to the issue when terrorists are arrested in Turkey in possession of nerve gas.markThe UK taxpayer funded head choppers and throat slitters routinely seize civilians as hostages, then murder them and blame it on Assad. They have massacred entire villages then called in their chums in the BBC to film the evidence of "Assad's latest atrocity." Like they film the devastation in Gaza and try to pass it off as rocket damage in Israel. All in a day's lying for the folks at the Botty Bangers Club.JohnIsn't it odd that you used opcw findings when it matched what you want but it doesn't fit now so you're having a hissy fit! I hope horrid things happen to you fake socialistlundielcrankisn't it odd that sarin gas or even chlorine has only been used to kill their own women and children rather than the Baathist military?
No. Western media aren't going to get in a frenzy if some of Assad's soldiers are killed.
isn't it odd that sarin gas or even chlorine has only been used to kill their own women and children rather than the Baathist military?Loverat– In a word, no. Anyone with even the slightest comprehension of how psychological warfare works would understand this.
Louis Proyec – 'reader'
Maybe read more widely, or start thinking more deeply, or stop bullshitting so lamely.
I came across a similar post Louis made on another topic a while ago.markThe political language and terms used in his posts always suggest his political position is his starting point then arranging selective facts to support it. First, the classic line of attack is accusing others of 'conspiracy theorists' – a tactic used by mainstream journalists and Bellingcat and el against the academics and experts of the Syria Working Group. As said below, that does not cut it – especially now the 'conspiracy theorists' have for the umpteenth time been vindicated.
Louis, comes out with stuff like 'Baathist troops' (he uses the word 'Baathist' three times in his post as if it was somehow relevant) whereas someone normal, of genuine intelligence and independent, would use the description 'Syrian Army'. Why would you say 'Baathist troops' or use other pointless labels unless you are trying to distract from the real issues while attempting to give the impression of having some knowledge. His political posturing offers nothing by way of getting to the truth and he appears to be another self-serving armchair commentator.
Maybe we could get him a job with Bellingcat.OffGYou're embarrassing yourself, Louis. Throwing out stale ad homs like 'conspiracist' isn't enough any more. You need to up your game, deal with the developing reality or retire.JenWe need the other anti-Assad troll back but the danger is I might get sick of hitting him again with Yassin al-Haj's article for the New York Times where the Syrian activist admits to having stayed with the White Helmets in Ghouta in mid-2013 before fleeing to Raqqa and leaving his wife Samira Khalil behind.KenTake it easy on poor old Louis; what can one expect from a fellow who probably believes that 9/11 was not a false flag either? And that one is a complete no-brainer to see.Rhisiart GwilymCome on! Let's encourage the poor old fart to go on posting here. He's always good for an incredulous laugh. And he's a warning too to anyone trying to make sense of Western criminal realpolitik, an object lesson in what happens to a supposed 'radical thinker' – hah! – who drinks too deeply of the Western propaganda kool-aid, and holds the stuff down, too, until it comes time to regurgitate it as if it were 'original thinking', the poor sucker. Don't off him. He's useful as light amusement.JudyJPS: in case you think I'm being a bit ad-hominy, I'm a poor broken down old fart myself. But I still have my wits about me, and I can still smell the stench of the West's Permanent Bullshit Blizzard when I meet it. Catch up soon Louis! Till then – thanks for all the laffs! :O)
WeatherEye" isn't it odd that sarin gas or even chlorine has only been used to kill their own women and children rather than the Baathist military?"No, not at all odd.
1. To be clear, when you say "their own" I presume you mean the Syrian women and children who the (mainly non-Syrian) terrorists hold as captives to ensure their men folk co-operate with them, or to be used in propaganda campaigns including 'false flag' scenarios.
2. In what form would you suggest the Jihadi murderers might be tempted to use chlorine in a way capable of killing opposition soldiers? Chlorine is essentially an unpleasant irritant if misused. To kill, it would have to be administered in an enclosed space where there was no means of escape for the victims.
3. We are constantly being fed the lie that the terrorists don't have sarin so it would be rather foolish of them to deploy it against opposition soldiers. Even they've worked that one out.
4. The terrorists are mercenaries paid by western agencies whose primary function is to carry out acts to discredit the Assad Government, thereby providing an ultimate excuse for military action to overthrow the Assad Government. The most obvious way to do this is to murder, as you so sensitively express it, "a bunch of Syrians" in a way that the West finds appropriate to point the finger at the Assad Government and its Russian allies.
This all makes a lot more sense than the idea that the Syrian Government assisted by the Russians would choose to murder innocent Syrian civilians, not least by using outlawed chemical weapons, and incur the wrath of western powers at the point when they were succeeding in defeating the terrorists with relative ease.
Fantastic piece. The leaked report confirms what many analysts on the left have been saying, including myself. https://flashpointssite.wordpress.com/2019/05/17/chemical-attack-on-dhouma-foam-lies-and-videotape-weathereye/
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Jun 28, 2019 | off-guardian.org
Over the last five pieces ( Part 1 , Part 2 , Part 3 , Part 4 , Part 5 ) I have, slowly but surely, advanced a theory of what happened in the Skripal case. I must confess to having done so with a fair amount of unease. I don't want to believe that my Government has been stating a case that is false. I don't want to believe that the public have been lied to. I don't want to have to think that there has been a lot of effort made to present an explanation that hides the truth.
And yet, given the fact that the Government story contains self-evident fallacies, and cannot be made to add up, I don't think that there's much alternative than to be hugely sceptical about their claims. I stated the two main fallacies in Part 1 , which are the claims that three people were poisoned by the nerve agent A-234, which is 5-8 times more toxic than VX, and that because A-234 was developed in the Soviet Union, the Russian State is responsible for what happened. The first claim cannot be true, because the three people are alive and well and have suffered no irreparable damage. The second claim is palpably untrue, because A-234 has been synthesised in a number of countries.
Yet this is only the tip of the iceberg of the absurdities and anomalies. I don't intend to go through all of them, but would simply point anyone who does believe the official story to concentrate on three words: The Door Handle. This was apparently where the poison was poured, so allow me to pose five questions about this claim to those who believe it to be true:
During the "clean-up" operation, there were lots of military chaps wearing HazMat suits, which are designed to protect against exposure to toxic chemicals. How, then, did the assassin apparently manage to pour this same lethal, military grade nerve agent on a door handle, without wearing a HazMat suit? On the other hand, if he or she was wearing a HazMat suit when performing the operation, wouldn't someone in Christie Miller Road have noticed and found it – shall we say – a bit odd? If the poison was administered to the door handle, how exactly did both Sergei and Yulia Skripal manage to touch it (people don't normally both touch the door handle if they go in the house together), and how did they manage to get exactly the right quantities on their skin so that they collapsed at exactly the same time, some four hours later? The door handle theory only reared its head some three weeks after the poisoning, at which point the substance was said to have been still present in a "highly pure" form. During this three weeks, many people went in and out of Mr Skripal's house using the front door. How did they manage to do so without using the door handle, or if they did, how did they manage not to succumb to poisoning? Part of the Government's alleged evidence pointing at the high likelihood of Russian involvement in the case, is an FSB instruction manual showing – amongst other things – how to assassinate someone by pouring Novichok on a door handle. Suspending our disbelief on this claim for a moment (and admittedly that is hard), did the Government have the manual when they made their accusations against the Russian Government on 12th and 14th March, and if so, why did the door handle theory not surface for more than a week after this?Of course, a few moments consideration about the door handle theory will show that – like the rest of the official story – it is simply wrong. And because it is so plainly wrong, that is why we can safely say that the real explanation lies elsewhere.
Nevertheless, I am aware that in advancing another explanation, there are likely to be many holes in it too. Whilst much of what I have said throughout this series has been based on facts and eyewitness statements, the theory I have advanced from those facts and witness statements remains unproven. And so I would ask that where I have got things wrong, you would forgive me, and where things don't make sense, you would point them out.
Having said that, what I want to do in this final piece it to tie up a few loose ends and – most particularly – attempt to demonstrate how the theory I have advanced explains some of the other anomalies in the case in a far more cogent and rational way than does the official story. So here goes.
The Deafening Silence of Sergei SkripalOne of the least talked about points in the official story, yet one that really is very important, is that if it were a true account, Mr Skripal would almost certainly have no more clue about who poisoned him than the average person in the street. If it were true that an unknown assassin, appointed by the Russian Government, poured military-grade nerve agent onto his front door on 4th March, before fleeing back to the Motherland, Mr Skripal and his daughter, Yulia, would be as much in the dark as to who did it than you or I.
Now, if that were the case, two things would naturally follow. The first is that Mr Skripal would almost certainly be inclined to believe the version of events given to him by the Metropolitan Police. Think about it. He wakes up one morning in a strange hospital bed, and has absolutely no clue why he is there or what happened to him. Then a kindly policeman comes and explains that he was the target of an assassination attempt using a lethal nerve agent, and that the British Government believes that it was ordered by the Russian Government. What is he going to believe? Fairly obvious I would think. At least he would have no reason to disbelieve them.
The second thing that would naturally follow is that, as soon as he was able, he would want to release a statement, either on paper, or in an interview, where he not only pledges his support for the Metropolitan Police and their ongoing investigation, and no doubt hints at involvement of the Russian State, but also – and this is crucial – where he also gives the public some information about what actually happened to him on 4th March: where he went, when he first started to feel ill, and what he last remembers.
Again, think about it. If you were in his shoes, wouldn't you want to catch the people who did it? And wouldn't you assume that the more information you could give to the public, perhaps even clearing up some of the anomalies (such as the reason for the agitation in Zizzis), the more chance there would be that someone's memory might be jogged and vital information given to the police?
Of course you would. And yet so far, Mr Skripal has released no such statement. Why?
It isn't that he is physically or mentally incapacitated. We know from Yulia Skripal's brief call to her cousin on April 5th (which almost certainly wasn't "meant" to happen), that Sergei was by that time fine. In response to Viktoria's question about her father, she said this:
"Everything is ok. He is resting now, having a nap. Everyone's health is fine, there are no irreparable things. I will be discharged soon. Everything is ok."
That was nearly three months ago, and yet the Sergei Skripal who was fine on 5th April, having suffered no irreparable damage from apparently being poisoned by the world's most deadly nerve agent, and who was discharged on 18th May, still has not spoken.
I put it that the theory I have advanced (see Part 5 in particular), suggests an obvious reason for his silence. Were he in the dark about the identity of those who poisoned him, as the official story implies, his silence would be inexplicable. Don't you want to catch the perpetrators of this crime upon you and your daughter, Sergei?
Yet, if we assume that actually he knows exactly who poisoned him and why they poisoned him – as would be the case according to the theory I have advanced – then his silence is very easily explained. He cannot be allowed to be interviewed about what happened, because he would blow the whole wretched business clean out of the water. He cannot be allowed to make an open statement, with the press there to ask free questions, because it would come out that he had been meeting someone at the bench in The Maltings, and that this someone whom he met was the person who poisoned him.
In addition, his (highly likely) authorship of the Trump Dossier would be revealed. And if this were to happen, not only would it be seen that the foundation upon which the whole Trump/Russia collusion hoax was based was made of straw, but it would become clear that the interference in the 2016 US Presidential election was never really about Russian interference to get Trump elected; but rather about British interference to stop Trump getting elected.
The deafening silence of Mr Skripal is therefore strong evidence of a number of things:
That the Government story, in which he was the unsuspecting victim of a Kremlin plot, is without foundation. That he well knows who his poisoners were and why they poisoned him. That he cannot be allowed to speak freely because if he was, a scandal of monumental proportions would be revealed. The Deafening Silence of Yulia SkripalDeafening silence of Yulia? What am I talking about? She has released a number of statements through the Metropolitan Police, and in the statement (not interview) she made to Reuters. So what do I mean?
Many have pointed out a number of remarkable things about her Reuters statement. For one, she looked remarkably well. For another, the language of the statement she read was highly suggestive that it was first written in English – not by her – and then translated into Russian (statements like "I do not wish to avail myself of their services" don't normally trip off the tongue of native English speakers, let alone those who speak it as a second language).
But for me the most remarkable thing about all of her statements are not what they do say, but rather what they don't say. As with Sergei's silence, Yulia has nothing whatsoever to say about the day of the poisoning. Isn't that odd? She notes that she and her father survived an "attempted assassination". She notes that a nerve agent was used to do it. But she says nothing about her and her father's movements that day. Nothing about what they did and where they went. Nothing about when they first succumbed to the effects of the poisoning. Nothing to suggest that her father's agitation in Zizzis may have been caused by poisoning.
In short, she says nothing whatsoever about the poisoning itself. Zero. Diddly squat. Zilch. Nada. Nothing. Why?
As with Sergei's non-statements, this doesn't compute. If you happened to wake up in a hospital to be told that you had been the victim of a nerve agent poisoning, you would almost certainly want to tell people as much as possible about your movements up to the point of the poisoning. Wouldn't you? Of course. Especially if not only you had been poisoned, but also your dad. You'd at least want to sound a bit more interested in actually catching the perpetrators than Yulia, who didn't so much as mention it, and instead sounded like she just wanted to move on and forget it ever happened.
Once again, this total silence on something so crucial just doesn't fit at all with the official story. That narrative suggests that Sergei and Yulia were innocent victims of a Kremlin-hired assassin. That narrative suggests they don't know who that Kremlin-hired assassin was. But it also suggests that they of all people have a huge interest in giving details of what happened to them that day. And yet there is silence.
Does it fit better with the theory I have proposed? You bet it does. If what I have suggested is anywhere close to the truth, just like Sergei, Yulia cannot be allowed the freedom to give a proper interview where any question is allowed. She cannot be given consular access by the Russian Embassy. Why not? Because she knows what her dad was up to; she knows why he was meeting people at a park bench on Sunday 4th March; and she knows that the two of them were poisoned by the people who they were meeting.
Why did she agree to an interview? No doubt she realises what a difficult and vulnerable position she is in. Despite claims to the contrary, she clearly has no contact with her family back in Russia, or indeed any contact with the outside world. She was almost certainly pressured into making a statement, and yet -- as Tony Kevin convincingly argues here -- it has many signs of being a compromise statement. And so she agreed to making a fairly nebulous statement -- one which is almost inconceivable from the point of view of the official narrative, but which fits perfectly with the narrative I have advanced.
The Deafening Silence of Nick BaileyOne final deafening silence that doesn't exactly do wonders for the official narrative, is the silence of Detective Sergeant Nick Bailey. He has always been a big puzzle in this case, for a number of reasons. It was first said that he was poisoned at The Maltings. However, the problem with this explanation is that there was absolutely no reason for him to have been there. The case was treated by Salisbury District Hospital as a case of Fentanyl poisoning. Why would a member of the Criminal Intelligence Department (CID) be called to a bench to an apparent opioid overdose?
It was then said by none other than Lord Ian Blair that DS Bailey was actually poisoned at Mr Skripal's house. But again, the same question arises. Why would a member of CID be sent to the home of a person in a what looked like a case of opioid poisoning?
The story then swung backwards and forwards a number of times between a poisoning at the Maltings and a poisoning at Mr Skripal's house. These anomalies are very important, but even more important is that they could have been put straight by DS Bailey himself. If the official story was correct, not only would it have been super easy to have verified where DS Bailey was poisoned, but he himself could have testified to it. And yet like the Skripals, there has been nothing!
Given the absurd changes to this particular part of the story – and it is perhaps the easiest of all parts to verify – my assumption is that he was poisoned at neither The Maltings or Mr Skripal's house. Instead, just as I wrote in Part 5 that I believe it likely the Skripals were poisoned by an incapacitating nerve agent in the red bag that was then seen next to the bench, I think it highly likely that DS Bailey was poisoned from the same source.
But where? The red bag was removed from the scene by a police officer and placed in an evidence bag. Why would this have been done? Because the pair on the bench were suspected of overdosing on an opioid, and the bag would naturally be removed by police so that its contents could be examined. And whereas I think it unlikely that someone from CID would be called to the scene of a drug overdose, it seems quite likely that they might receive and handle evidence taken from such a scene. Therefore my guess – and I stress that it is only a guess – is that DS Bailey was the man who received the bag, and whilst looking inside to see its contents, was poisoned by the same incapacitating agent as the Skripals (possibly something like 3-Quinuclidinyl Benzilate (BZ), but definitely not A-234).
Again, if the official story were true, what would prevent DS Bailey from giving a brief statement or interview, confirming exactly what happened to him? But if the red bag theory is close to the mark, then it becomes plainly obvious why this hasn't yet happened.
Smokes and MirrorsWhich actually brings me on to the penultimate point I want to make in this piece, and indeed in this 6-part series. Everything in the official story, no matter how absurd, seems designed to point our attention away from the most probable source, place and type of poisoning: The red bag, at the bench, and an incapacitating nerve agent. And it does so because if our attention is focused on them, then a very different story begins to emerge. Which cannot be allowed to happen.
As stated above, claims about A-234 being used just don't add up. Neither the time delay, nor the symptoms, nor the recovery of the Skripals with no irreparable damage match up to what this deadly, military grade, high purity, lethal nerve agent that is so much more toxic than VX, is meant to do. What the claim does, however, is points our attention away from what is far more likely – an incapacitating agent administered to the Skripals between 3:45 and 4:00pm on 4th March.
As stated above, claims about the door handle just don't add up. Neither the fact that both Sergei and Yulia were poisoned, nor the fact that others went in and out of the house before the door handle theory was put forward and didn't succumb, nor the fact that the substance on it apparently remained of "high purity" weeks later – none of these things make any sense. What the claim does, however, is directs our thoughts away from what is far more likely – that the substance used to poison the Skripals was administered at the bench, and probably via the red bag.
The apparent motive put forward in the official narrative doesn't add up either. There is a general agreement among countries that you do not target spies who have been part of a swap. Why? Because if you do, you can kiss goodbye to ever getting any other spies swapped in the future. It's called shooting yourself in the foot big time! But what this frankly risible explanation for the apparent motive behind the poisoning does, however, is to point our attention away from what Mr Skripal was really up to. And as I set out in Part 4 , this was very likely something to do with authoring the Trump Dossier.
Nothing about the official story makes sense. None of it adds up. It is riddled with holes. But I would submit that the only thing that does make sense about it, is that the parts that go to make up the sum are all desperate attempts to divert attention. They are smokes and mirrors, designed to stop us from considering some of the more obvious aspects of the case, and some of the more startling aspects of the case – Mr Skripal's involvement with MI6; his likely involvement in or authorship of the Trump Dossier; the likelihood that he was due to meet people at the bench in The Maltings; the probability that this is why he was agitated and in a hurry in Zizzis; the likelihood that he knows who poisoned him and why.
And of course the reason that these things are not supposed to be considered is that if – and I acknowledge it is a big if – the alternative explanation I have advanced is true, and if it became generally known, then it would cause just about the biggest political crisis in British political history.
And FinallyHaving said that, I have to say that I don't believe it at all likely that the British Government knew about any of this before it occurred. I get the impression that the intelligence agencies on both sides of the Atlantic are a law unto themselves, and I think it likely that some of their number wanted to send Mr Skripal a message, one which would look like an opioid overdose, one which he would recover from reasonably quickly, and one which would be forgotten very soon.
However, I don't think that the poisoning of DS Bailey was meant to happen, but when it did, it set off a series of events that quickly got out of control. I don't think the identity of Sergei Skripal as a Russian involved in a spy swap was ever meant to make it into the press, but it did and very soon what looked like some kind of opioid poisoning quickly became an international spy saga.
The British Government's reckless and extraordinarily quick reaction to the case was, apart from being a travesty of the rule of law, one of the biggest clues that the official narrative was not true. If it were true, they could have took their time, acted calmly, and let the investigation run its course. Instead, what we got was a lawless, irrational and absurd response. It all smacked of a panicked reaction, and whilst it made no sense in terms of the story they sold us, it makes perfect sense if the truth was that they were desperate to prevent news getting out about who Skripal really was, what he had been up to, and how the poisoning might well be connected with that work. And indeed the D-notices they slapped on the reporting of that stuff, and of Mr Skripal's connections to Christopher Steele and Pablo Miller, are further evidence that it is so.
And so they very quickly decided to turn attention away from the big clues of the case, by invoking the scary sounding "Novichok" and pinning the blame – without any evidence – on the Russian State. To this date, they have given us no evidence to back up their claim, much less a suspect, but have unwittingly given us a bunch of absurdities that can be blown out of the water through the use of simple reason and logic.
They should have remembered this:
"Do not be deceived: God is not mocked, for whatever one sows, that will he also reap" (Galatians 6:7)
But I have a feeling they don't believe it applies to them. I have a feeling that it does.
And so there's my case. As I say, there are bound to be a good many holes and no doubt many errors and inconsistencies in it. Please do forgive me for those. As for the rest of it -- Make of it what you will.
' On Friday, Salisbury District Hospital's director of nursing Lorna Wilkinson announced Mr Rowley had been discharged and Public Health England said he posed no risk to the community She said "I would also like to reassure everyone that, despite many people seeking advice following these incidents, there have only ever been a total of five people who have been exposed to this nerve agent and admitted to hospital for treatment"'.JudyJThis whole Salisbury saga is a complete riddle. The A&E consultant wrote to the Times saying nobody had ever been treated for nerve agent poisoning, yet here we are months later and the director of nursing is totally contradicting him. Don't they talk to each other at Salisbury District Hospital? Or, more likely, was the consultant going off-script?
I was puzzled at this. I remarked to a family member that it looks as if either somebody at Porton Down has been very careless, or the spooks don't understand subtlety.
That's interesting. I hadn't known that. Curious though: if the authorities incinerated the table at which they had lunch, how is it that the front desk – where presumably they paid the bill – wasn't also incinerated? Come to that, what about whatever was on the table: cloth, utensils, plates and so on. Also waitstaff and kitchen staff: surely they'd have been contaminated as well?
Truly, the more we're told about this incident, the more farcical it sounds. Ditto the incident with the unfortunate couple in Amesbury. None of it makes sense.
If Ms. Skripal indeed underwent surgical tracheotomy, our thought that the neck scar was the result of a covert conspirator surgeon's making a simple incision and immediately sewing it up – to appear as if Ms. Skripal underwent a lifesaving surgical procedure -, goes out the window.
Can anyone help in clarifying this? Has it been verified Ms. Skripal underwent the procedure and that her neck scar should not be perceived as anything other than from a truly necessary lifesaving action?
Thank you.
Dr. John Kelly, RIP. Assassinated by MI6 by order of Prime Miniister TB.Liar of Dodgy Dossier, interred without mandatory Crown Coroners Inquest with Case Sealed for 70 years by order of Lord "Safe Pair of Hands"Hunt of Bloody
Sunday fame, and Dr.Kelly's bodily remains subsequently dug up and incinerated to destroy chemical evidence by order of Prime Minister St Theresa of Porton Down."Second to none" in what?
This is a domestic UK issue about MI6 being out of control.
https://mobile.twitter.com/JulianAssange/status/976943588394323973Another journalists was Michael Isikoff. His planted story war used to collaborate the Dossier as the basis of the FBI's FISA warrant to surveill Carter Page.
The Nunes Memo also states that Steele back-chanelled additional allegations into the DOJ via Bruce Ohr.
Another corroboration was the Trump Tower meeting: ostensibly set up by Trump linked Araz Agalarov could verify the piss taking allegations. It's well worth revisiting the Elizabeth Vos Disobedient Media article for background on this meeting set up Mifsud et al: who are linked to London – not Moscow.
Anyway, all these "experts" – and Wikipedia – seem to have got their information from one source – Steele: who both wrote and then corroborated his own dossier. With a little help from his intel friends
The point is that the source of the Steele-Clinton dossier would have been revealed and, of course, the source would have been a proven consummate liar and traitor. This would blow Mueller's "investigation" out of the water.
But I'll not engage with you any further on this, since there's none so blind as those who will not see.
https://www.forbes.com/sites/paulroderickgregory/2017/01/13/the-trump-dossier-is-false-news-and-heres-why/#5a2c34e06867The Orbis report makes as if it knows all the ins-and-outs and comings-and-goings within Putin's impenetrable Kremlin. It reports information from anonymous "trusted compatriots," "knowledgeable sources," "former intelligence officers," and "ministry of foreign affairs officials." The report gives a fly-on-the-wall account of just about every conceivable event associated with Donald Trump's Russian connections. It claims to know more than is knowable as it recounts sordid tales of prostitutes, "golden showers," bribes, squabbles in Putin's inner circle, and who controls the dossiers of kompromat (compromising information).
There are two possible explanations for the fly-on-the-wall claims of the Orbis report: Either its author (who is not Mr. Steele) decided to write fiction, or collected enough gossip to fill a 30-page report, or a combination of the two. The author of the Orbis report has one more advantage: He knew that what he was writing was unverifiable. He advertises himself as the only Kremlin outsider with enough "reliable" contacts to explain what is really going within Putin's office.
As someone who has worked for more than a decade with the microfilm collection of Soviet documents in the Hoover Institution Archives, I can say that the dossier itself was compiled by a Russian, whose command of English is far from perfect and who follows the KGB (now FSB) practice of writing intelligence reports, in particular the practice of capitalizing all names for easy reference. The report includes Putin's inner circle – Peskov, Ivanov, Sechin, Lavrov. The anonymous author claims to have "trusted compatriots" who knew the roles that each Kremlin insider, including Putin himself, played in the Trump election saga and were prepared to tell him.
The Orbis report spins the tale of Putin insiders, spurred on by Putin himself, engaging in a five-year courtship of Donald Trump in which they offer him lucrative real estate deals that he rejects but leaves himself open to blackmail as a result of sexual escapades with prostitutes in St. Petersburg and Moscow (the famous "golden shower" incident). Despite his reluctance to enter into lucrative business deals, Trump "and his inner circle have accepted regular intelligence from the Kremlin, including on his Democratic and other political rivals," according to the Orbis report.
This story makes no sense. In 2011, when the courtship purportedly begins, Trump was a TV personality and beauty pageant impresario. Neither in the U.S. or Russia would anyone of authority anticipate that Trump would one day become the presidential candidate of a major U.S. political party, making him the target of Russian intelligence.
Sergei Skripal could fit the description of the "Russian" referred to in the third paragraph.
There's a stink of Ukraine about it.
I mentioned Paul Roderick Gregory and Craig Murray as two people who dismissed the dossier as fraudulent. What "experts" can you put forward, GB, who support the dossier's contents as genuine or accurate? I suppose you think Luke Daniel Harding and Eliot Higgins might qualify as experts supporting the dossier's contents as more or less accurate?
Or perhaps, it's not the world but you?https://www.youtube.com/embed/LbbxNkPDNrQ?version=3&rel=1&fs=1&autohide=2&showsearch=0&showinfo=1&iv_load_policy=1&wmode=transparent
https://www.youtube.com/embed/LbbxNkPDNrQ?version=3&rel=1&fs=1&autohide=2&showsearch=0&showinfo=1&iv_load_policy=1&wmode=transparent
Published on 10 Jul 2018
Three miles from Amesbury, six miles from Salisbury. 'Porton Down is the elephant in the room': former British ambassador who visited Nukus plant where Novichok was tested, Craig Murray dismantles Amesbury poisoning story on BCFMradio,
Porton Down : What is the experimental government facility in Wiltshire at the centre of recent poisonings?
The secretive laboratory has unintentionally become key in political developments and international relations
The major incident in Amesbury saw two people poisoned by the same nerve agent that almost killed the Skripals, government scientists have confirmed. The attack turns attention once more to Porton Down, the mysterious laboratory that has unintentionally become central to the response to the attacks.
The secretive government facility at Porton Down has been used for experiments involving deadly and often undisclosed weapons, and in the wake of the Salisbury attack has become indelibly associated with the nerve agent used in the attack. The Met – whose counter-terror police are now leading the investigation – confirmed that samples had been tested at the facility and that they showed "show the two people have been exposed to the nerve agent Novichok".
Porton Down is often talked about in the singular, but is actually a site located near Porton village that is host to a whole group of different organisations. The two key ones are the Defence Science and Technology Laboratory, which is run by the Ministry of Defence and usually referred to as Dstl, as well as Public Health England – both bodies have been involved in the response to the recent poisonings, though it is the former laboratory whose activity is most mysterious.
Bullingdon Boris resigns, feigns matters of principle, limbers up for the top job he was promised at Eton. As 1922 committee cheers for Theresa May ring out to the rafters, British government prepares for controlled demolition.
https://www.youtube.com/embed/LbbxNkPDNrQ?version=3&rel=1&fs=1&autohide=2&showsearch=0&showinfo=1&iv_load_policy=1&wmode=transparent
Published on 10 Jul 2018
Three miles from Amesbury, six miles from Salisbury. 'Porton Down is the elephant in the room': former British ambassador who visited #Nukus plant where #novichok was tested, Craig Murray dismantles #Amesbury poisoning story https://youtu.be/LbbxNkPDNrQ on @BCFMradio
Porton Down: What is the experimental government facility in Wiltshire at the centre of recent poisonings?
The secretive laboratory has unintentionally become key in political developments and international relations
The major incident in Amesbury saw two people poisoned by the same nerve agent that almost killed the Skripals, government scientists have confirmed. The attack turns attention once more to Porton Down, the mysterious laboratory that has unintentionally become central to the response to the attacks.
The secretive government facility at Porton Down has been used for experiments involving deadly and often undisclosed weapons, and in the wake of the Salisbury attack has become indelibly associated with the nerve agent used in the attack. The Met – whose counter-terror police are now leading the investigation – confirmed that samples had been tested at the facility and that they showed "show the two people have been exposed to the nerve agent Novichok".
Porton Down is often talked about in the singular, but is actually a site located near Porton village that is host to a whole group of different organisations. The two key ones are the Defence Science and Technology Laboratory, which is run by the Ministry of Defence and usually referred to as Dstl, as well as Public Health England – both bodies have been involved in the response to the recent poisonings, though it is the former laboratory whose activity is most mysterious.
Bullingdon Boris resigns, feigns matters of principle, limbers up for the top job he was promised at Eton. As 1922 committee cheers for Theresa May ring out to the rafters, British government prepares for controlled demolition.
A doctor was reported (by the BBC on 8th May) to have given CPR to Julia for 30 minutes without being contaminated by the "novichok". Indeed, the doctor reported to the BBC that she 'felt fine' afterwards.
No-one has seen nor heard from this doctor since, yet a doctor should be easy enough to trace.
http://zersetzen.wikispaces.com/file/view/Gerald+Reaveley+James.pdfI personally do not believe that any of these 5 people had been poisoned by a nerve agent. And by that I mean an organophosphate compound. BZ is not that class of compound. (I have a degree in chemistry).
Those compounds are exceedingly toxic. If their use (or rather non-use) is military then they must kill enemy troops quickly and with minimal amount. Speed is crucial. Semi conscious enemy soldiers are dangerous.
What I find frustrating is that – because we are being so cynically lied to by our government – we have been seriously misled about the toxicity of these chemicals. You really don't stand any sort of chance if you are poisoned by them.
Who 'identified' the supposed Novichok? Porton Down.
Who provided the sample for the OPCW? Porton Down.
Who has stocks of all known nerve agents? Porton Down.
Can the OPCW be trusted? No.
Can Brad Pitte II be trusted? No."The Russian forces conspired to do it" = "not conspiracy stuff".
When is a conspiracy not a conspiracy?
As to'precedent' the number of assassinations carried out abroad by Russian intelligence pales in comparison with those carried out by Military Intelligence in the UK, the CIA and Mossad.
You are reduced to citing the very unlikely 'precedent' of Litivenko which every effort of The Establishment has failed to produce anything more than a meaningless finding by a tame High Court judge. No legal proceedings have discovered any connection between the death and the Russian state.
On the other hand 'western' intelligence agencies are notoriously engaged in assassinations and have been on an industrial scale for seventy years. Cf The Committee chaired by Senator Church.As for his daughter, is that the same Yulia Skripal in the pictures after the event as the one in the restaurant before the event?
"Steele's already dim view of the Kremlin darkened in November, 2006, when Alexander Litvinenko, a former Russian K.G.B. officer and a Putin critic who had been recruited by M.I.6, suffered an agonizing death in a London hospital, after drinking a cup of tea poisoned with radioactive polonium-210. Moscow had evidently sanctioned a brazen murder in his own country. Steele was put in charge of M.I.6's investigation. Authorities initially planned to indict one suspect in the murder, but Steele's investigative work persuaded them to indict a second suspect as well."
https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2018/03/12/christopher-steele-the-man-behind-the-trump-dossier
News for mass consumption is a sideshow but also a conditioning to remain inside the framing of a narrative identity. The 'Western intelligence' could not do a better job of damaging their credibility by the WAY they operate as well as the what of it.
However "No one understood better than Stalin that the true object of propaganda is neither to convince nor even to persuade, but to produce a uniform pattern of public utterance in which the first trace of unorthodox thought immediately reveals itself as a jarring dissonance." (Alan Bullock, in Hitler and Stalin: Parallel Lives).
While the what of it can be tested to some degree for congruency with itself and with all the factors involved, the WAY of it speaks of either desperation of from a conviction that intellectual criticism is powerless in a post truth coup.
My sense is of either the leadership class being captive to powers they do not feel able to challenge or are cornered in some way by their circumstance so as not to have any other recourse than – in this case – stirring up hatred in incitement to violence with Russia. This could all be a brinkmanship of geopolitical 'poker' or it could be that the only 'escape' from such a mess as we inherit and persist in is war.
My sense is that when we cannot or will not embrace change somewhat 'gracefully' or in some willingness – then we give power to whatever external 'crisis' ripens to force it – and seek to 'survive' at the expense of those we abandoned or indeed conscripted or made into targets for WMD.
Dictating terms to a world of 'united states' under broad spectrum dominance of a tyrannous rule is not justified by 'symbols and stories' of freedom.
National and International security rests on honest communication, backed by supporting deeds so as to grow trust in place of treachery. No one has a clean past, but if we persist in re-enacting it, we will forsake the presence of mind by which to choose not to.
The nature of politics has had all its goalposts moved to a rigged system of finance and law that pre-empt any movement of cultural development apart from corporate capture – and allow that corporations have only the power given them by such a systemic 'development'. No one HAS power but for an agenda larger than their own usefulness.
Worldly power has always operated a narrative control at some level – but technology has 'outsourced' our own will and consciousness to systems and machinery of our own attempt and intent to replace Life with our own making. I see a larger 'script' than power struggle – or rather I see an awakening 'script' running beneath the narrative identity conflict.
Whether we have a fated outcome or make our own (under a fatal condition), the framing of the physicalised sense of self is the 'life in the world'. But this framing is not itself physical so much as conditioned association and reflex that is hidden from sight while we engage within its framing as a sense of personal struggle under and driven by 'necessity' of survival in the terms we set or are forcefully and fearfully identified in.
Deceit is simply a weapon in a world of war – including the claiming of a moral high ground whenever it suits an invalidating of the 'other'. Loss of communication, trust and therefore integrity is the state of a lack of substance. However, 'claiming the moral high ground' as a personal right to power is the same old story. The complexities of deceits and entanglements increase with the persistence of identities and investments in them – which of course run as 'self-evident reality' by reactions that embody the beliefs.
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Jun 26, 2019 | off-guardian.org
Minutes of Ministry of Defence (MoD) meetings have confirmed the role of Britain's Guardian newspaper as a mouthpiece for the intelligence agencies.
Last week, independent journalist Matt Kennard revealed that the paper's deputy editor, Paul Johnson, was personally thanked by the Defence and Security Media Advisory Notice (or D-Notice) committee for integrating the Guardian into the operations of the security services.
Minutes of a meeting in 2018 read [You can read the full document here, or embedded below – OffG Editor] :
The Chairman thanked Paul Johnson for his service to the Committee. Paul had joined the Committee in the wake of the Snowden affair and had been instrumental in re-establishing links with the Guardian.D-Notices are used by the British state to veto the publication of news damaging to its interests. The slavish collusion of the mainstream media ensures that such notices function as gag orders.
Johnson joined the committee in 2014 and evidently excelled in his performance. A separate set of minutes from the first meeting attended by Johnson records the Guardian 's close collaboration with military officials.
Under a section detailing "advice" given by the intelligence agencies to the media, the document reads: most of the occurrences and requests for advice were related to further publications by The Guardian of extracts from the Snowden documents. The Secretary reported that the engagement of DPBAC [Defence Press and Broadcasting Advisory Committee] Secretariat with The Guardian had continued to strengthen during the last six months, with regular dialogues between the Secretary and Deputy Secretaries and Guardian journalists.
The secretary and deputy secretaries were Air Vice-Marshal Andrew Vallance CB OBE, Air Commodore David Adams and Brigadier Geoffrey Dodds OBE. The chairman was Peter Watkins CBE, the MoD's director general of Strategy, Security and Policy Operations.
Under the direction of these military intelligence handlers, the Guardian played a role in bringing other newspapers internationally to heel. The minutes note, because of an agreement between The Guardian and allied publications overseas to coordinate their respective disclosures of Snowden material, advice given to the Guardian has been passed on to the New York Times and others, helping guide the disclosures of these outlets.
In September 2014, the Guardian allowed the former head of GCHQ (Government Communications Headquarters) Sir David Omand to publish an article titled, "Edward Snowden's leaks are misguided -- they risk exposing us to cyber-attacks .
He declared:
"Journalists are not best placed to identify security risks; we have to trust those who oversee the intelligence-gathering."
In 2016, Paul Johnson used an unprecedented interview with a serving head of MI5, Andrew Parker, to propagandize for the antidemocratic, warmongering interests of British imperialism.
These facts are damning proof of the Guardian 's total integration into the propaganda wing of the MoD following its involvement in the WikiLeaks and Snowden files releases. Indeed, the work of WikiLeaks and its founder Julian Assange has served to expose and confirm the deep ties of the entire mainstream media to the military-intelligence complex.
The Guardian has been viewed historically as the voice of British liberal dissent, critical of the worst excesses of British capitalism at home and abroad. But it has always acted as a political policeman -- filtering the news "responsibly" and channelling the resulting anger into impotent moral appeals to the state and other authorities.
Its dealings with Assange and Snowden transformed political allegiance into direct subservience. Its liberal, critical pretensions unravelled in a matter of a few months.
When Assange looked to the Guardian and other papers internationally such as the New York Times to publish the Afghan and Iraq war logs and secret US diplomatic cables in 2010, the editors' main concern was damage control. Within a month of an initial publication of documents, the Guardian had broken off relations with Assange -- publishing an infamous December 17 editorial WikiLeaks: the man and the idea.
It stated that the Guardian had only agreed to publish "a small number of cables" to control the political fall-out from the details of murder, torture, espionage and corruption they revealed and give it the opportunity of "editing, contextualising, explanation and redaction."
The main purpose of the editorial was to support Assange's extradition to Sweden on trumped-up allegations of sexual misconduct relating to a trip to that country a few months earlier.
In an op-ed piece published last month by former Guardian editor Alan Rusbridger, he assumes to take the moral high ground by claiming that WikiLeaks issued leaks unredacted, and wanted to continue this practise, in contrast with his "responsible" journalism.
An editorial published immediately prior to Rusbridger's article, again supporting Assange's extradition to Sweden to face "charges" that don't exist, stated:
The Guardian disapproved of the mass publication of unredacted documents and broke with Mr. Assange over the issue."
This is a self-serving lie. WikiLeaks has pointed out that the editorial "conveniently leaves out" that it was the Guardian -- through a book authored by David Leigh and Luke Harding -- that disclosed the password to the digital file Assange had given them in confidence. The book was a hatchet job on WikiLeaks. The rights to it were sold, becoming the basis of a slanderous Hollywood movie. When NSA contractor Edward Snowden leaked files detailing blanket state surveillance of the world's population in 2013, the Guardian set out to play the same "responsible" role.
Asked afterwards if the paper had held back from publishing anything about GCHQ and UK security services because of "worries about national security," the ever-pliant Mr. Rusbridger replied, "Yes, we've held back a great deal, we've published a small amount of what we have read."
This time, however, the Guardian was told by the security services that even rigorously filtering the Snowden's revelations was not good enough. It must stop publishing immediately.
The country's top civil servant, Cabinet Secretary Sir Jeremy Heywood, called the Guardian 's offices to pass on the demands of then Prime Minister David Cameron that the Snowden material either be returned to the government or destroyed. Editors were threatened with legal action if they did not comply.
Rusbridger later explained, "The tone was steely, if cordial, but there was an implicit threat that others within government and Whitehall favoured a far more draconian approach."
This is a masterpiece of understatement. Emails obtained by the Associated Press in 2014 showed that this was an operation conducted in intimate collusion between the government, the British security services and the US National Security Agency, including then Director of National Intelligence James Clapper.
In the end, two GCHQ security officials directly oversaw the Guardian ' s destruction of its own material. Three Guardian staff members, including Paul Johnson himself, destroyed the hard drives in the Guardian 's possession with angle grinders and other equipment provided by GCHQ officials.
The Guardian had been put in a position it never wanted. Its liberal reputation, and previous disclosures, had made it the newspaper of choice for WikiLeaks' and Snowden's revelations. But the scale of what had been uncovered threatened the fundamental interests of British and US imperialism. It therefore rolled over when the government told it to cease and desist, before taking its place alongside the rest of the right-wing media on the secret committee responsible for press censorship and propaganda dissemination.
One of Assange's persecutors-in-chief, Luke Harding, enjoys the most intimate relations with the security services. His notorious November 2018 fabrication, claiming Assange held meetings with US President Donald Trump's former campaign manager Paul Manafort, was published in the Guardian just two weeks after Johnson was thanked for "re-establishing links" with the MoD.
The story was widely cited and formed a keystone of the efforts, spearheaded by the Democrats in the US, to present WikiLeaks and "Russian interference" as the causes of Trump's 2016 election victory.
Harding played a central role in silencing questions over the UK government's bogus account of the Skripal affair in mid-2018. These events were the subject of at least one D-notice, issued while Paul Johnson was on the responsible committee.
An unintended but valuable consequence of the WikiLeaks exposures has been to explode the fraud of the Guardian 's claim to any critical independence from the state. The crimes of the major imperialist powers against the world's population made available by WikiLeaks were so great that they could not be neutralised, even by the Guardian 's professional gatekeepers of the "truth."
Not a word published in this imperialist propaganda sheet can ever be taken at face value.
Originally published by World Socialist Web Site
E L T
Working for the war department makes The Guardian's workforce soldiers. They ar defending the unelected Oligarchy with their pens/keyboards and greedy obsequiousness.TomBut shouldn't we give the Guardian's soldiers a well-deserved credit for the hard work in 'Extreme Logic Twisting' (ELT) as they rely on diehard lefitism to justify and achieve NeoCon/far-right agenda ?
It must be really tough for them, unless they are gaining Artificial Intelligence assistance which it seems they are using in replacing the forcibly-retrenched traditional commenters with Establishment-friendly bots.
And all the while the rest of the media collude in the deception of the public by labelling the Guardian at every opportunity as "left-wing". Exactly the same conspiracy exists involving the BBC.SavMichaelKWorking with intelligence agencies plays to the egos of these 'journalists'. Anything that makes them feel important. The Guardian prints for Radio Free Europe/ Radio Liberty. Enough said. Intelligence: "Russia is doing X,Y and Z. This is strictly off the record."
Make a load of posts on Guardian comments with spoofed Russian IP addresses
Intelligence: "We've got information Russian intelligence is influencing article comments with bots"
Guardian "Oh my God..you're right. We're being attacked by Russia. God save the Queen"
Rusbridger could of course have given a few concrete, specific, examples of where exactly the Guardian and Assange clashed about what texts should be released for publication, along with their reasoning. This would have allowed readers to see for themseleves and make up their own minds.wardropperThe gap between Assange and the Guardian is precisely founded on this difference. The Guardian doesn't want people to have the opportunity to make up their own minds. They just want people to trust the Guardian to tell them what they need to know. This, of course, is the very reason Wikileaks came into existance, in opposition to this journalistic, priestly, set of liberal dogmas.
Exactly right. If the guardian had even pretended that it seriously knew what it was talking about, people might have had a smidgeon of trust in its articles. In its current state, it might as well be Mickey Mouse Weekly.Rhys JaggarClearly there should not be any future involvement of the MSM in exposing scandal. They are Establishment tools, not defenders of the public interest.DanielThe question is how Wikileaks could reveal such damning evidence using independent websites, run by individuals utterly divorced from Establishments.
What is needed is an education of ordinary folks not to read the MSM and find new sites they can trust, however transiently.
The lesson of history is that as soon as independent sites gain traffic, they are 'approached' by Security Services, heavy hitters etc. It may be financing, it may be threats. But it happens so regularly that it is clearly an arm of Establishment policy.
Fully agree, but I think it goes much deeper than that. Agree that "ordinary folks" should be informed that the MSM are establishment tools, but 'ordinary folks' in general don't care in the slightest about such things and are mostly only interested in what will maximize our personal pleasure (usually through seeking to make money in any way possible, that will allow us to generate as much status and power and pleasure as possible). All else be damned.Steve HayesThat is the zeitgeist these days among vast portions of 'ordinary folks' who are plugged into the cultural matrix, it seems
"WikiLeaks has pointed out that the editorial "conveniently leaves out" that it was the Guardian -- through a book authored by David Leigh and Luke Harding -- that disclosed the password to the digital file Assange had given them in confidence." So Luke Harding isn't just an asset of state security services, he's an incompetent asset. How ironic.markYou have to make some allowance for poor old Luke. He's still deeply traumatised from the time the KGB broke into his Moscow flat and tampered with his alarm clock and turned off his central heating.markPeople mistakenly claim that the Guardian was once a creditable serious newspaper of some integrity. This is wrong. It was never more than a piece of Zionist toilet paper, going back to the days of the old Manchester Guardian. It was shilling for Israel even before it existed.AntonymThe Manchester Guardian was a response to the Peterloo massacre in 1819 where the British establishment treated a GB crowd as they did protesting natives of their colonies, with the sword. The six acts was follow up to legally tie loose strings up. All pure British actions, zero (proto)Israeli. Next Mark will blame Jews for 1066.AntonymBefore the Snowden files drama (2013) the Guardian produced many articles critical of Israel: Just study their response to "Cast Lead" after January 2009. They were one of the first to focus on "child victims" to invoke sympathy for Gaza, a different form of child abuse from grooming kids as suicide bombers.HaltonbratCP Scott introduced Weizman to Lloyd George and the used his columns to support the Zionists.
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May 30, 2019 | www.theguardian.com
Bill Clinton and Tony Blair represented neoliberalism with a human face but remained beholden to an expired ideology. Photograph: Mark Lennihan/AP W hat kind of economic system is most conducive to human wellbeing? That question has come to define the current era, because, after 40 years of neoliberalism in the United States and other advanced economies, we know what doesn't work.The neoliberal experiment – lower taxes on the rich, deregulation of labour and product markets, financialisation, and globalisation – has been a spectacular failure. Growth is lower than it was in the quarter-century after the second world war, and most of it has accrued to the very top of the income scale. After decades of stagnant or even falling incomes for those below them, neoliberalism must be pronounced dead and buried.
Vying to succeed it are at least three major political alternatives: far-right nationalism, centre-left reformism and the progressive left (with the centre-right representing the neoliberal failure). And yet, with the exception of the progressive left, these alternatives remain beholden to some form of the ideology that has (or should have) expired.
The centre-left, for example, represents neoliberalism with a human face. Its goal is to bring the policies of former US president Bill Clinton and former British prime minister Tony Blair into the 21st century, making only slight revisions to the prevailing modes of financialisation and globalisation.
Meanwhile, the nationalist right disowns globalisation, blaming migrants and foreigners for all of today's problems. Yet as Donald Trump's presidency has shown, it is no less committed – at least in its American variant – to tax cuts for the rich, deregulation and shrinking or eliminating social programmes.
By contrast, the third camp advocates what I call progressive capitalism , which prescribes a radically different economic agenda, based on four priorities. The first is to restore the balance between markets, the state and civil society. Slow economic growth, rising inequality, financial instability and environmental degradation are problems born of the market, and thus cannot and will not be overcome by the market on its own. Governments have a duty to limit and shape markets through environmental, health, occupational safety and other types of regulation. It is also the government's job to do what the market cannot or will not do, such as actively investing in basic research, technology, education and the health of its constituents.
The second priority is to recognise that the "wealth of nations" is the result of scientific inquiry – learning about the world around us – and social organisation that allows large groups of people to work together for the common good. Markets still have a crucial role to play in facilitating social cooperation, but they serve this purpose only if they are governed by the rule of law and subject to democratic checks. Otherwise, individuals can get rich by exploiting others, extracting wealth through rent-seeking rather than creating wealth through genuine ingenuity. Many of today's wealthy took the exploitation route to get where they are. They have been well served by Trump's policies, which have encouraged rent-seeking while destroying the underlying sources of wealth creation. Progressive capitalism seeks to do precisely the opposite.
There is no magic bullet that can reverse the damage done by decades of neoliberalism
This brings us to the third priority: addressing the growing problem of concentrated market power . By exploiting information advantages, buying up potential competitors and creating entry barriers, dominant firms are able to engage in large-scale rent-seeking to the detriment of everyone else. The rise in corporate market power, combined with the decline in workers' bargaining power, goes a long way toward explaining why inequality is so high and growth so tepid. Unless government takes a more active role than neoliberalism prescribes, these problems will likely become much worse, owing to advances in robotisation and artificial intelligence.
The fourth key item on the progressive agenda is to sever the link between economic power and political influence. Economic power and political influence are mutually reinforcing and self-perpetuating, especially where, as in the US, wealthy individuals and corporations may spend without limit in elections. As the US moves ever closer to a fundamentally undemocratic system of "one dollar, one vote", the system of checks and balances so necessary for democracy likely cannot hold: nothing will be able to constrain the power of the wealthy. This is not just a moral and political problem: economies with less inequality actually perform better . Progressive-capitalist reforms thus have to begin by curtailing the influence of money in politics and reducing wealth inequality.
There is no magic bullet that can reverse the damage done by decades of neoliberalism. But a comprehensive agenda along the lines sketched above absolutely can. Much will depend on whether reformers are as resolute in combating problems like excessive market power and inequality as the private sector is in creating them.
A comprehensive agenda must focus on education, research and the other true sources of wealth. It must protect the environment and fight climate change with the same vigilance as the Green New Dealers in the US and Extinction Rebellion in the United Kingdom. And it must provide public programmes to ensure that no citizen is denied the basic requisites of a decent life. These include economic security, access to work and a living wage, health care and adequate housing, a secure retirement, and a quality education for one's children.
This agenda is eminently affordable; in fact, we cannot afford not to enact it. The alternatives offered by nationalists and neoliberals would guarantee more stagnation, inequality, environmental degradation and political acrimony, potentially leading to outcomes we do not even want to imagine.
Progressive capitalism is not an oxymoron. Rather, it is the most viable and vibrant alternative to an ideology that has clearly failed. As such, it represents the best chance we have of escaping our current economic and political malaise.
Joseph E Stiglitz is a Nobel laureate in economics, university professor at Columbia University and chief economist at the Roosevelt Institute. Project Syndicate
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Mar 06, 2012 | discussion.theguardian.com
SteB1 -> MickGJ , 6 Mar 2012 07:37
Really? Cameron is too far to the left to even get on the Democratic ticket in America: if he proposed his healthcare reforms in the States he'd probably be assassinated.
I think you are mistaking what Cameron says, with what he does. Cameron has obviously realised that in the UK the frothing at the mouth bonkers ideology of the new right in the US wouldn't go down too well with the public, and would make the Tories toxic and unelectable. So he has chosen the strategy of speaking as though he were a woolly "wet" Conservative, whilst actually following the agenda of the new right.
One of the things about psychopaths, is that because they have no real values, they are very good at using charm and disingenuous specious arguments to justify their agenda. You appear to fail to take into account how the healthcare issue is seen very differently in the UK than the US. If Cameron had a US style healthcare policy, our current PM would probably be Gordon Brown, facing a minority Conservative opposition.
This is the whole thing about this psychopathic worldview, it aims to achieve its objectives by hook or crook. So with a more receptive public it will be more open about its objectives, whereas in a culturally different environment, it will use stealth to achieve its aims.
This is how psycopaths operate, they are all things to all people, even though the agenda they follow is the same.
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Apr 11, 2019 | discussion.theguardian.com
Schools are teaching to the test. As someone who recently retrained as a secondary science teacher - after nearly 30 years as a journalist - I know this to be true.Olympia1881 -> Centrecourt , 11 Apr 2019 05:46Education is a prime example of where neoliberalism has had a negative effect. It worked well when labour was pumping billions into it and they invested in early intervention schemes such as sure start and nursery expansion. Unfortunately under the tories we have had those progressive policies scaled right back. Children with SEND and/or in care are commodities bought and sold by local authorities. I've been working in a PRU which is a private company and it does good things, but I can't help but think if that was in the public sector that it would be in a purpose built building rather than some scruffy office with no playground.DrMidnite , 10 Apr 2019 17:04The facilities aren't what you would expect in this day in age. If we had a proper functioning government with a plan then what happens with vulnerable children would be properly organised rather than a reactive shit show.
"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, just a right way for your business, at a specific point in time.
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. We have always been at war with Eastasia...
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Jun 23, 2019 | discussion.theguardian.com
I always view Ayn Rand as someone who most right wing dictators would place themselves somewhere to the left of.I have no idea how she became the poster child for the libertarian movement, I can only assume that, as with so many of their other ideas, the internet / radio hosts promoting her ideas as the solution to the worlds problems have never actually read anything she said, or did, or possibly if they had, they have not understood it.
Usually, with philosophers, you can see how it is not their words, but that someone has interpreted them for their own ends (Nietzsche etc), but in the case of Rand, no mis-interpretation is required, unless you are trying to portray her views as anything other than deeply misanthropic.
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Mar 06, 2012 | discussion.theguardian.com
UnknownGunman -> johncj , 6 Mar 2012 05:42
The degree of statism in a country's political system, is the degree to which it breaks up the country into rival gangs and sets men against one another. When individual rights are abrogated, there is no way to determine who is entitled to what; there is no way to determine the justice of anyone's claims, desires, or interests. The criterion, therefore, reverts to the tribal concept of: one's wishes are limited only by the power of one's gang.
Such a black and white view of reality. This is the entire problem with Rand's worldview, reality is far too complex. Here, you talk about the level of "statism" - there are many different methods of using the state to achieve goals which help improve your life and those in the society around you.
For example, in Scandanavian countries, and other northern European ones, the state is used to make up for distribution deficiencies in the market system - that is, to reign in those at either end of the socio-economic scale to make the distribution more equal, which has been scientifically shown to reduce all manner of social ills caused by a large amount of economic inequality.
They do this whilst minimising the impact on economic freedom.
So it's erroneous to think statism = soviet russia style dictatorships.
As for individual rights - well, these are clearly important, but certainly not as a blanket ideology behind society. Negative sides to individual rights are things like:
• Educational freedom - 2 + 2 can equal 5!
• Parenting - society has to deal with bad parenting as the child reaches adulthood, so society deserves an equal say: I don't have to vaccinate my kids! (recent MMR jab a prime example)
• I'm free to pollute the environment, make excessive noise because the government has no place stopping me.As a society, a balance needs to be maintained. A balance between a person's individual liberty and the impact on the society around them. This is the main area where Rand's philosophy fails - she simply does not acknowledge the very complex relationship humans have with each other, with society as a whole, and the world around them.
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Mar 06, 2012 | discussion.theguardian.com
HarryTheHorse , 6 Mar 2012 10:41
HarryTheHorse -> johncj , 6 Mar 2012 10:33The basic axiom of libertarian political theory holds that every man is a self-owner, having absolute jurisdiction over his own body. In effect, this means that no one else may justly invade, or aggress against, another's person. It follows then that each person justly owns whatever previously unowned resources he appropriates or 'mixes his labor with'. From these twin axioms -- self-ownership and 'homesteading' -- stem the justification for the entire system of property rights titles in a free market society."
That's all very well, but without the means to protect, defend and preserve these things that one "owns", it amounts to very little. And that is where collectivisation comes in. For what is the law but a series of codes that we collectively as a society agree to abide by. Without the rule of law to protect me, whatever I own will soon be taken by someone stronger and more aggressive that me. Individuals cannot assert their rights as individuals, for they are not strong enough to do so. The irony, which is lost on libertarians, is that for individual rights to be preserved we must sacrifice a little of our individualism to collectively band together to defend those rights.
Then don't pay if you don't want to, that's my point. If you want police pay a subscription. I suppose this is floating away from objectivism and more into libertarianism. The principle is the same how ever.
This is the reduction ad absurdum that libertarianism is always reduced to. A subscription police force is an an idiocy, a bit like a subscription fire service.
Even by the 18th Century, people had figured out that made no sense. How on earth could it work? A private police force would be beholden to its paymasters and no one else.
Presumably there would be multiple such police forces - for free-market competition, of course. These police forces would become de facto private armies. And from where would they derive their authority? From he who pays them the most?
As I have said many times, a pure libertarian society would be a warlord society, with the feeble or non-existent state unable to restrain the richest and most powerful people in that society. Truly a hell on earth.
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Jun 23, 2019 | discussion.theguardian.com
While there is certainly an element of Paul supporters, in my experience here in the Bay/Central Coast is that it is predominantly Dems, liberals, progressives, socialists and a surprising number of anarchists (many of which are not the typical window-breaking stereotype).
I would guess its all of us who are suspicious of hierarchical state capitalism - whether of the left or the right. Many Anarchists have a libertarian mindset, and seek cooperation (rather than a competition in who can break the most windows), but reject the dominance and structures of the elite, which are usually completely undemocratic.
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Apr 11, 2019 | discussion.theguardian.com
BeenThereDunThat -> apacheman , 11 Apr 2019 05:16
People think of anarchy as equating with lawless selfishness because that's how it works in real life.No, that is not anarchy. That is a load of selfish bastards claiming to be anarchists and using this as a justification for their being selfish bastards. I remember only too well the cry of no small number of the trendy fashion-punk-anarchists of the 1980's to justify their hedonism and lack of responsibility " I'm an Anarchist, me: I can do anything! ".And my response to them? " Are you fuck!!! ".
Sadly, however, many like yourself choose to take the definition of anarchy which is a total misrepresentation of it equating to chaos and disorder, and which as I noted in my earlier comment, has been deliberately promulgated and used by the State and its supportive media. And in doing so, you do the philosophy a disservice, as you only help spread this representation, which eventually becomes the accepted understanding. And this is what the State and the oligarchs desire most, as it keeps people away from those most dangerous of thoughts, about actually trying to control their own lives.
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Mar 06, 2012 | discussion.theguardian.com
NotWithoutMyMonkey , 6 Mar 2012 06:27
@johncjSo easy to say when you so blithely ignore the historical injustices, the inequality of opportunity and the theft - the first person to claim a parcel of land as their own exclusive property was committing an act of theft.
It's not entrepreneurial; it's base rent-seeking and it was a violent act of forced approbriation by denying natural rights to others.
The subsequent claims to title are enforced by the threat of violence through the emergence of a pervasive state.
A modern example is the oligarchs who carved up the commons in a collapsing and disintegrating Soviet Union. Their's was an act of theft committed against society and the common good. Your definition of freedom is predicated on theft and is a denial of natural freedoms,
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Apr 10, 2019 | discussion.theguardian.com
Listen, in the computer age, I can find FACTS in seconds.
Here are some FACTS !
------------------------------------------
Trump says he will create 25 million jobs,--REALLY ???
-5 GOP presidents have NOT created 25 million jobs in 57 YEARS !
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Clinton created almost as many jobs as 5 GOP presidents.
Let's cut to the chase. According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, here are the net increases in private-sector employment under each president, chronologically by party since 1961--
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Republicans---Richard Nixon: Increase of 7.1 million jobs
Gerald Ford: Increase of 1.3 million jobs
Ronald Reagan: Increase of 14.7 million jobs
George H.W. Bush: Increase of 1.5 million jobs
George W. Bush: Decline of 646,000 jobs
---Total:-------------- Increase of 23.9 million jobs under Republican presidents-Democrats---
John F. Kennedy: Increase of 2.7 million jobs
Lyndon B. Johnson: Increase of 9.5 million jobs
Jimmy Carter: Increase of 9.0 million jobs
Bill Clinton: Increase of 20.8 million jobs
Barack Obama: Increase of 14,332,000 jobs---
Total: Increase of 56.3 million jobs.
--------------------------------------------------------
It is a fact of history that nine of the ten economic recessions since 1953, when Dwight D. Eisenhower became President, have come under Republican Presidents as follows:
- July 1953 to May 1954–Eisenhower
- August 1957 to April 1958–Eisenhower
- April 1960 to February 1961–Eisenhower
- December 1969 to November 1970–Nixon
- November 1973 to March 1975–Nixon/Ford
- January 1980 to July 1980–Carter (Democrat)
- July 1981-November 1982–Reagan
- July 1990-March 1991 -- HW Bush
- March 2001-November 2001–W Bush
- December 2007-June 2009–W Bush/Obama–last five months under Democrat
----
The longest recessions were under W Bush and Obama; Reagan; and Nixon/Ford, with the unemployment rate reaching 10 percent, 10.8 percent, and 9 percent respectively in those recessions. The shortest recession was under Jimmy Carter, six months in 1980, but the only Democrat to have a recession begin while in office, and suffered at the polls partially on that fact, that it was in an election year!
Eisenhower had three recession periods, while Nixon had two, and W. Bush had two.
-----------
http://www.theprogressiveprofessor.com/?p=26206
-----------------------------------------------------------------------When conservatives/neoliberals/GOP are in charge the economy and jobs GO TO SHIT -- !!!
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Mar 06, 2012 | discussion.theguardian.com
NotWithoutMyMonkey , 6 Mar 2012 06:18
@Sonofrex
For starters, try reading David Graeber's 'Debt: The first 5000 years' for a comprehensive account on concepts of money, property, debt and obligation from an anthropological perspective which soundly buries your cherished assumptions and beliefs about the primacy of private property and it's conflation with freedom. Perhaps one of the most compelling book I've read in recent times.For a review:
http://thenewinquiry.com/blogs/zunguzungu/david-graebers-debt-my-first-5000-words/
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Mar 06, 2012 | discussion.theguardian.com
bonefisher -> Livemike , 6 Mar 2012 06:52
Great postThe problem is that as De Toqueville realises (his quote below) most of the people commenting here are simply living a parasitic existence benefiting from state largesse - sucking the teat of a bloated and overburdened state caring not whether their sustenance is remotely sustainable and just voting for ever more
"A democracy cannot exist as a permanent form of government. It can only exist until the voters discover that they can vote themselves largesse from the public treasury. From that moment on, the majority always votes for the candidates promising the most benefits from the public treasury with the result that a democracy always collapses over loose fiscal policy" - Alexis de Toqueville
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Jun 23, 2019 | discussion.theguardian.com
Imagine being stuck in a fall out shelter or an underground bunker during some apocalypse with a devoted Ayn Rand follower or followers. Gurantee they would be killed and eaten with in the first few hours.Rand followers remind me of my little neices and nephews when they fight over candy and toys. You tell them they have to share and they say no mine mine it's all mine. Now imagine a grown man or woman doing the same exact thing except they run a major corporation or worse are an elected official. They have tried to make money off of every crisis in the past thirty years.
Rands followers are selfish greedy, most likely insane, jackles who have destroyed and plundered the American and world economy for thier own ends. Usually so they can have the most toys like cars, houses, hot tubs, private jets, viagra and wild sex parties Mind you they most likely have to pay people to have sex with them. I have nothing against capitalism but they need to reeled in at some point. Sadly goverment does not do it's job by looking after the public but after their own wallets. The people who view her has a sage and goddess are seriously out of touch with reality.
Honestly her idea's are failures, the west is in debt up to it's eyeballs, Asia is rising and Latin America is telling America and Europe to collectively go and screw ourselves. I am not happy about this but apart of me is a bit amused by it.
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Jun 23, 2019 | discussion.theguardian.com
Rozina -> tom1832 , 5 Mar 2012 22:15
The intellectual antecedents of the new right go back to Leo Strauss and the University of Chicago among others. Canadian academic Shadia Drury wrote two books critical of Straussian philosophy: "Leo Strauss and the American Right" (1999) and "The Political Ideas of Leo Strauss" (first published 1988, revised 2005). Counterpunch.org carries a number of articles by Gary Leupp, Francis Boyle and others also castigating the influence of Leo Strauss and his followers on US foreign policy. Seymour Hersch also took a blowtorch to Strauss in an article for The New Yorker many years ago when George W Bush was US President (link: http://www.newyorker.com/archive/2003/05/12/030512fa_fact?currentPage=4#ixzz1437Z8MNs).truebluetah -> Callaig , 5 Mar 2012 17:57SEP provides a decent summary of Rand's reasoning.
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Mar 06, 2012 | discussion.theguardian.com
NotWithoutMyMonkeyIndeed! I attended a public lecture by Thomas Frank (former young conservative-now left wing) at the LSE, and he was even describing Tea Party Placards, reading: (paraphrase) 'government get your hands off my Medicare'!
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Mar 06, 2012 | discussion.theguardian.com
murielbelcher , 6 Mar 2012 09:41
PSmd , 6 Mar 2012 09:27Over the years, the Koch brothers have spent millions of dollars trying to undo both social security and medicare!AKA the founders of the egregious getting turkeys to vote for Xmas Tea Party!
It's not just Rand, seemingly, who was a hypocrite. After all, the Kochs owe their family wealth to the Stalinist USSR...
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Jun 23, 2019 | discussion.theguardian.com
NotWithoutMyMonkey , 6 Mar 2012 09:34
@Fissile
I've seen that before. Although hardly an anarcho-capitalist, my uncle in Australia; a music teacher in a private school would alway rail against unions and so-called union-power at every opportunity. The moment his job came under threat, he'd signed up for membership forthwith.
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Mar 06, 2012 | discussion.theguardian.com
murielbelcher , 6 Mar 2012 09:40
Friedrich von Hayek, one of the creed's most revered economic gurus, spent his productive years railing against government old age pension and medical insurance schemes. When he became old and infirm, he signed on for both social security and medicare.Love it. When push comes to shove all those ideologies and beliefs crumble into the dust of practical needs. Another individual who cloaked the self-interest of the rich and powerful into some kind of spurious ideology.
George wrote a rather good article about Von Hayek a few years ago I seem to remember.
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Jun 23, 2019 | discussion.theguardian.com
It's no wonder the US is so screwed up these days. Somehow the NeoCons, before and after stealing the 2,000 election for Bush, with the help of abundance of Liars 4 Hire think tanks like CATO, CEI, AEI, Heritage Foundation blah, blah, blah, bankrolled by the likes of the Koch Bros, The Scaifes, Exxon, Monsanto, Dow, Dupont the Nuke Industry etc. were, and are still able to convince low intelligence people that wrong is right, bad is good, meanness is "compassion" and abuse is "tough love".But it only works if those being duped are already predisposed to hateful philosophy, and that they got in spades with careful conditioning (brainwashing) from bastards like Rush Limbaugh and Rupert Murdoch, people with no moral scruples whatsoever.
Thus the right today (actually for a long while now) is no more than a collection of racists and bigots, pathological liars and scammers, charlatans and greedmeisters.
It's why they care nothing for the poor, nothing for protection the environment, nothing for anyone or anything but themselves. They are the cult of mean.
As former right-wing operative Allen Raymond famously said: "this is not about morality, this is about winning"
http://www.democracynow.org/2008/1/8/how_to_rig_an_election_convicted
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Jun 23, 2019 | discussion.theguardian.com
earweego -> GeorgeMonbiot , 6 Mar 2012 13:23
"Marx/dialectical materialism...reduces humanity's complex social and political relations to a simple conflict between the "bourgeoisie" and the "proletariat"; ie the owners of property and the workers, by which Marx and Engels meant, basically, factory workers. Any class which didn't tick one of these boxes was either, like the peasants, shopkeepers, artisans and aristocrats, destined to "decay and finally disappear...
I don't read Marx quite like that:
"The lower strata of the middle class -- the small tradespeople, shopkeepers, and retired tradesmen generally, the handicraftsmen and peasants -- all these sink gradually into the proletariat, partly because their diminutive capital does not suffice for the scale on which Modern Industry is carried on, and is swamped in the competition with the large capitalists, partly because their specialized skill is rendered worthless by new methods of production.
Thus, the proletariat is recruited from all classes of the population." (Communist Manifesto)
"Marx... entirely trusted to the intellectual development of the working class, which was sure to result from combined action and mutual discussion." (Engel footnote)
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Mar 06, 2012 | discussion.theguardian.com
pbrennan -> GeorgeMonbiot , 6 Mar 2012 07:21
"Any class which didn't tick one of these boxes was either, like the peasants, shopkeepers, artisans and aristocrats, destined to "decay and finally disappear in the face of modern industry", or, like the unemployed, was "social scum, that passively rotting mass thrown off by the lowest layers of old society", with no legitimate existence in a post-revolutionary world."Bobbydazzler123 -> Kyza06 , 6 Mar 2012 07:18
You are describing here Marx's predictions about the consequences of the processes of capital, not necessarily what he would have wanted to happen. As Fredric Jameson suggests in his recent Representing Capital, Capital can be read as despairing dissection of an economic juggernaut indifferent to everything other than satisfying its own accumulative drive, one that leads inevitably to the polarity of vast wealth on the one hand and unemployment and immiseration on the other. If anything has ever been prescient, that was.It's also abundantly clear from Capital that Marx believed just as much that capitalism deprived life and work of satisfaction, meaning and pleasure as he welcomed the progress of modern industrial technological civilisation.
Also, if you think Marx lacked humanity you should take a look at the 'Working Day' chapter of Capital, Volume One and the final Book, 'On So-Called Primitive Accumulation.'
It's a mistake to believe that Marx thought that socialism would inevitably follow capitalism and that history was working to a neat plan.
Marx entertained many (sometimes contradictory) possibilities about alternatives to capitalism, including ones involving other classes that the proletariat. See his letter to Vera Zasulich of 1881:
http://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1881/03/zasulich1.htm
Underflow -> GeorgeMonbiot , 6 Mar 2012 07:00Some might do, but the main Marxist critique of social democracy is that, by providing a safety net for the poorest in society and potentially creating limited meritocracy it creates the conditions for continued false consciousness and doesn't allow for class consciousness to form, which is one of the main pre-conditions (along with a fully developed capitalist industrial economy) for revolution to begin. The most successful examples of this can be seen in countries like Germany where many will angrily insist that their countries exist in a state of post-class politics thanks to their social-democrat systems.
Classic Marxist dualism of proletariat-bourgeois broke down once the ownership and control of capital started to diverge with the employment of a vast managerial class. It s quite possible today even for 'proletariat' to own more of their company though stock than the middle manager above them. On top of that we now produce consumerism in the west and ideas over what you might call industry. Lots of stuff we produce is just aesthetic, surface, ephemeral, and useless. :)
But I do agree the social democratic model is essentially conservative and protects an elite though, but anyway that system is changing now as we have identity politics, activism, globalisation etc, the nation state is withering and has been for years, it's attacked from without and within.
... the Manifesto contains in theoretical form many of the horrors later visited upon the people of the Soviet Union and some other communist nations. Dialectical materialism reduces humanity's complex social and political relations to a simple conflict between the "bourgeoisie" and the "proletariat"; ie the owners of property and the workers, by which Marx and Engels meant, basically, factory workers.
I think the first thing Marx would have said, in fact almost by definition, the first thing he wanted to say, was that every consciousness is a product of its surroundings. And likewise, Marx's criticism of capitalism was in every way a product of his understanding of the economic realities in the middle of the nineteenth century. In other words, if your going to talk about 'dialectical materialism' you shouldn't neglect the second word.
Given that Das Capital was always a critcism of capitalism, and given also that since the end of the Cold War, capitalism has been claimed the victor, (and has led to another economic recession as a result)isn't Marx as relevent to day as he ever was?
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Mar 06, 2012 | discussion.theguardian.com
colacho -> AllyF , 6 Mar 2012 02:50
Marxism is a humane and noble system in theory, which turns out to be savage barbarism when put into practice.
Read some Marx, or a least some serious analysis of Marx. Getting past chapter one is the challenge - try following David Harvey's online course. Marx's work constitutes a brilliant critique of capitalism rather than a blueprint for a socialist society (there is some of this but it's pretty sketchy). He had some marvellous insights, though being human he got stuff wrong, too.
It was people like the Bolsheviks who turned Marx and then Lenin into unassailable authorities justifying just about anything.
But Marx's work continues to provide an important perspective on how capitalist societies work and why they stagger from crisis to crisis.
The difference between Marx and Rand is that the former was a profound thinker and deeply humane man. He could be turgid but also had moments of coruscating literary brilliance.
Rand was a fifth-rate apologist for plutocracy, followed by cryptofascists all over America, from republican politicians to a whole gaggle of Hollywood hacks.
Google suggests the weak-minded include Angelina Jolie, Brad Pitt, Vince Vaughan, Charlize Theron, Rob Lowe and Eva Mendes. Who knows? If they really are Rand fans they should be held up to public ridicule. It's a nice irony, though, all of those ordinary people rushing off to spend their dollars watching celebrities who secretly despise them.
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Mar 06, 2012 | discussion.theguardian.com
JohannesL , Mar 6, 2012
It never stops to amaze me how the American Republican Right claims to be Christian. Have you noticed that they NEVER quote the words of Jesus Christ? I don't blame them, Republicanism and true Christianity are mutually exclusive. There is nothing for them to quote. Sharing your wealth? Giving to the poor? Egalitarianism? Loving your neighbour? The Good Samaritan?Dirty words all. Best to pretend that Christianity is about extreme right wing economic policy (and fascist social mores), even though it is the opposite.
If Jesus came to the US today, he would not like Republicans and they would not like him. Santorum, Palin, Limbaugh etc. would strap him to the electric chair and pull the lever if they could, no doubt.
And Tea Partiers like Ayn Rand? The most anti-Christian and anti-American lunatic you can find? The corporate agenda and Wall Street interests trump everything else. No news there.
acorn7817 -> PeaceGrenade , 6 Mar 2012 06:21
The most bizarre aspect of the rights infatuation with Ayn Rand is that she was an ardent Atheist who's beliefs are diametrically opposite to those of Jesus & the Bible.
A lot of these people describe themselves as Christian, makes you wonder which part of Jesus' message they loved more, the part that said the poor should rot without help, or the part where he said violence was justified and the chasing of wealth is to be lauded.
richmanchester -> anindefinitearticle , 6 Mar 2012 05:40
"the only way you're gonna be able to sleep at night (and go to heaven in the afterlife) is to believe that the system has some moral justification based on the laws of nature"I think this is one of the drivers in the shift from Catholicism to Protestanism, especially in Northern Europe.
For Medieval Catholics everyone was where God had put them, so the rich were rich and the poor poor as part of Gods plan, and anyone trying to change it was going against God.
Which is handy if you are a Baron or Bishop living the high life surrounded my thousands of starving peasants (having armed retainers also helped).
Come the industrial revolution and the rise of the business and trade classes that's not so appealing, so now God rewards the virtuous and hard working, who naturally rise to the top.
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Apr 11, 2019 | discussion.theguardian.com
Olympia1881 -> GeorgeMonbiot , 11 Apr 2019 05:37
I've always said that brexit is the shock doctrine in the UK. They tried it in unstable societies and now they are doing it to us.
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Jun 23, 2019 | discussion.theguardian.com
Ayn Rand and Friedrich Hayek, both worshipped by their Libertarian and conservative followers, and both massive hypocrites.KarenInSonoma , 6 Mar 2012 00:49http://www.thenation.com/article/163672/charles-koch-friedrich-hayek-use-social-security
Rand used Medicare under her husband's name (to evade being found out), while Hayek took hypocrisy to a whole new level; he not only had state provided healthcare in his native Austria, but also used it in the USA, too, after Charles Koch (who paid Hayek to advocate the abolition of such welfare) urged him to. So, Hayek is a far bigger welfare sponger than the people the Right so loves to deionize. Again, like Rand he did this secretly, never acknowledging that he used the system which he wished to deny to others. That is obscene dishonesty and conceitedness.
Then there's Milton Friedman, who, in the documentary The 1% , declared, with a straight face, that the wealthy could not bribe politicians and thus that there was no corruption in politics!
In the face of such hypocrisy and stupidity one can only assume their followers are egotists who only hear what they want to hear.
I can hardly write, I'm so angry! This disgusting, and digustingly influential, woman signed on for Medicare and Social Security? I wish my husband could! He has suffered two massive strokes and is so severely cognitively impaired that I am dreading his return home from the hospital (where he's entitled to be right now because I pay nearly $2,000 a month in "Cobra" healthcare insurance). At 59, he's too young for Medicare, and because we were saving out of modest incomes for our pension-less retirement, we have more than the pitiful $3,000 in the bank that Medicaid (Medi-Cal in California) allows. He needs to be watched 24 hours ALL the time. I won't go on; I feel guilty taking time out to read & comment.HolyInsurgent -> Lollywillowes , 5 Mar 2012 23:27Fascinating analysis. The fascist/dominatrix, messianic, and stereotype
(of people and the public and private sectors) in the writing dovetail into
a seemless motif. Quite a new perspective on niche-marketing. One can
see the market that the writing is being directed to and ultimately respected
by: people who demand simple solutions for complex problems.There is the sense of her own triumphalist infallibility in the writing. Positively
creepy and eventually off-putting. Even Nietzsche had a sense of humour.
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Jun 23, 2019 | discussion.theguardian.com
The popularity of Ayn Rand?When less than half the eligible population votes, the most easily-led, easily-frightened, easily-lied-to segment of the population is an intrinsically much more valuable political asset.
The whole of North American right-wing thought is organised around this concrete, inescapable fact. It's become the solid framework around which an entire conservative culture, from media to religion to education policy, has crystallised.
This is why it really isn't always possible to make a great deal of sense of North American conservative culture -- a lot of it is simply redundant and empty, as inherently meaningless as a flag or national anthem shorn of all their ignoble associations.
The division of labour between leaders hungry to lead and followers desperate to be led is simply that well-entrenched. The meaning of texts and symbols -- arbitrarily and randomly seized upon and misrepresented by third rate intellects with enough of the psychopath in them to seem charismatic to suburban dullards and bigots -- is simply assumed ('x said it, so...'). Then meaning and context are left behind, while the tropes and images survive in the hearts of those for whom they're simply reassuring -- points of reference in a world they've been raised not to understand.
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Jun 23, 2019 | discussion.theguardian.com
Millions of copies of Atlas Shrugged are purchased but very few are read and virtually all of them become landfill after a single college semester. Like every other college student I purchased the book because it was required reading and like 98% of U.S. college students I ignored the book and cribbed my assignments out of Cliff Notes.Yevgeny , 6 Mar 2012 12:52It's drivel. It's beyond moronic because even the most cursory examination provides examples of inherited wealth and advantage that are almost impossible to overcome by labor and talent alone.
Even the "great" Bill Gates had the almost unique position of access to computers in his teens that most graduate students of the time would have envied and two parents working for IBM that fed him the critical contract that made him rich.
The book, the philosophy, the author, and the followers are all frauds.
She's not even original. Her novella anthem is a complete rip off of a much better book "We" by Zamyatin
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Jun 23, 2019 | discussion.theguardian.com
Could it be that Langley and Jina Haspey are admirers of Ayn Rand?tlsmith63 , 6 Mar 2012 12:19Ayn Rand's philosophy is sick. I would say that it is just as sick as fascism. We on the left must do everything we can to stop the spread of this vile philosophy.
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Jun 23, 2019 | discussion.theguardian.com
People please realize that these are the views of the real ruling elite. Wonder why the world is so fucked up? Psychopaths are in charge.FarEasterner , 6 Mar 2012 12:31One has to admire Rand for stating what Western government and large corporations are mafia par excellence but never admit this in public - their philosophy, their creed.JoeStarlin , 6 Mar 2012 12:43This mafia rules Western world through sham elections, putting copycat parties against each other on the ring while rooting out any viable alternatives. This mafia also wants to dominate the whole world via interventions, sanctions, threats. They diligently check voting track record of third world countries in UN and cruelly punish those who voted independently.
This plutocratic clique has monopolized media, controls largest social networks, through intelligence agencies organize bogus propaganda campaigns against dissidents
jessthecrip
6 March 2012 4:36PM
If Rand's ideas continue to spread I have little hope for the survival of the human race. Without co-operation our species will die out, probably taking many others with it.Crap, Rand never proposed that people should not co-operate with each other. Only an absolute fool would say such a thing. Ayn Rand was many things, some of them very nasty indeed, but foolish was most certainly not one of them.
She claimed that people should do what they liked free from force as much as is practical, if that meant freely choosing to co-operate with others for mutual benefit, then so be it. I hope you can see that this is a completely different kettle of fish. Co-operation is indeed what actually happens far more then it does not, even more so when the government is not forcing people to do things by the use of the criminal law.
This must be the case otherwise mankind would have always lived in isolated chaos, the evidence for which has never been found.
Have you ever tried to have sex without co-operating with someone else?
Oh yes, I am sorry, of course you have. Well, try not to do it anywhere near as often, you may go blind, or gain more hairy palms.
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Mar 06, 2012 | discussion.theguardian.com
Rand thought Kant to be "the most evil man in history".Hellzapoppin , 6 Mar 2012 12:12Kant believed in the absolute wrongness of coercion and deception. Kant believed in never treating people as a means to your end. Kant believed reason and rationality to be the foundation of morality, and morality to apply to all people as rational agents.
What's so wrong with that?
ChristianBenson , 6 Mar 2012 12:07Kant's idea of obligation is important. Humans have an evolutionary tendency for selfishness; to compete. But that is not to say what is natural is moral.
There is also evidence for an evolutionary tendency to alturism. I'm not sure you need even get as far as Kant, much of what Rand's arguing seems fundamentally unscientific, let alone immoral.
Should Rand have devoted any time/effort to the study of morality, she may have found the writings of Kant most useful; if not alternative .Kant's idea of obligation is important. Humans have an evolutionary tendency for selfishness; to compete. But that is not to say what is natural is moral .
Kant argued that a moral act is one where the subject is obliged to do so - not where one does it for personal gain or enjoyment. This is not to say that morality should not be enjoyed per se but one should not solely act on the premise of enjoyment.The prolific socialist and thinker, George Bernard Shaw, said An Englishman is only moral when he is uncomfortable'
There is some truth in this; Rand's idea that morality is selfishness, virtue is self interest and good is personal accumulation denies the collective nature of humanity.
Man is not an island.
Humanity has an obligation to others. The capitalist crowd purport that one is solely responsible for one's won gain. Not so. We live in a country that provides opportunity, those who succeed by that opportunity have not done so merely off their own back. They have done so in a particular society. You need look no further than the African continent to see that personal/material gain is not subject solely to the individual. The repressive and tyrannous society much of Africa plays down the effort of the individual, regardless of their admirable effort and determination.
I hope Kant may agree with me that Rand, the republicans and the ideological conservatives has an obligation to be quiet and sit down.
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Jun 23, 2019 | discussion.theguardian.com
sirmoonface , 6 Mar 2012 09:29
...Ayn Rand was a bitter, unhappy and twisted individual. That so many follow her is testament only to the power of the propaganda machine controlled by the elite.This says it all:-
"I wonder how many would continue to worship at the shrine of Ayn Rand if they knew that towards the end of her life she signed on for both Medicare and social security. She had railed furiously against both programmes, as they represented everything she despised about the intrusive state. Her belief system was no match for the realities of age and ill health."It would be hard to find a better metaphor for our banking system.
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Jun 23, 2019 | discussion.theguardian.com
GeorgeMonbiot, 6 Mar 2012 09:19
One reason why Ayn Rand may be popular is that unfortunately to an increasing extent in Western philosophy today individualism is necessarily equated with selfishness. This is not axiomatic. Individualism would literally not exist and would be ineffectual in practice without the support of others, whether family and/or friends, education, technology, work and society and the state in general. Rand did not see the contadictions in her own life and not just at the end of it.epicurean27 , 6 Mar 2012 09:07Although being Jewish and brought up in anti-Semitic Tsarist Russia (a prejudice not unknown in Bolshevik Russia to) she was allowed on the principle of all individuals have rights and was well off enough to go to university in what was then Petrograd.
Rand supported what was probably the most popular party in Russia, the Social Revolutionaries led by Alexander Kerensky.
If only he had been successful rather than Lenin the hard pressed Russian peoples may have been saved from all sorts of evils and the West too?
On emigrating to America she worked in Hollywood so benefiting from the new technology of film making, the climatic conditions that California provided so necessary for the industry's success, and capitalism that funded it. Capitalism cannot exist without myriad social interactions between individuals; even the self-employed need customers.
Rand as George Monbiot points out lacked subtely, irony and doubt that is essential for philosophical, political and social and economic analysis. Just like the Neo-Cons and their knee jerk opponents today.
Her theories are based in her social class she never truly had to suffer it appears even in Russia. I do not call her a philosopher she is no true philosopher simply a rich person trying to work her views for the betterment of her social class.I have read many of the Greek thinkers from Plato to Epicetius and no Greek thinker ever removed Ethics entirly from their systems. The Stoics for example taught Phyisics, Logic, and Ethics. Ethics is in fact a major part of Plato, Airstotle and the two other schools of Hellenstic times though the Skepics are an ouliner.
In my opinion Ryan had no true understanding of the point of philosophical debate or that a system is meant to have a practical effect on all Society I mean that is the entire point of Plato in his Republic is to build a Just Society.
I am a life long philosopher in training and I agree with Epicurus that a philosophy is truly worthless unless it heals your mind and your soul from misconceptions and false beliefs.
There was a essay I read at University that Rand makes me think about. It was titled Life Boat Ethics. It was an argument for the rich nations not supporting the poorer nations. The Argument was like this.
1st Principle Our world is limited in Resources.
Prismse A
Imagine all the world is made up of life boats. The rich have the best life boats in the seas of fate. They made them they protect them and improve them and attempt to keep them afloat through stopping infighting on board and keeping steady crew without over crowding.
Primse B
While the poor nations have basic life rafts that are made of the lowest quality and are sinking and leaving their crews and the mercy of nature.
Because of their lack of strict work ethic and willingness to trade long term goas for short term enjoyments and constant infighting for anamialistic lusts they are unwilling to create better life boats like the rich nations and control their populations on broad.Primse C
Helping the poorer nations might seem face of it to be good but it is really fighting nature and that is truly wrong.
Primse D
The wise course is to allow the poorer nations to sink in th ocean and give the richer and indeed superior peoples more room to sail these harsh seas. To found new boats and new lives for they are the people that matter anyways.
Concluision
Rich nations out to have self interest as their drive for all things and ought to not care about those problems that do no directly effect their personal lives.
This essay I believe has become reality we here in Europe and accross the Sea in America are seeing this logic working out in real life and I believe the Left s no way to stop it at present but we better not stop or we will be the kids on a raft just wanting in a boat for simply a better life.
Philosophy as true power people ought to learn to resepect its force in our world I do.
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Jun 23, 2019 | discussion.theguardian.com
murielbelcher , 6 Mar 2012 08:36
This is where Rand kicks in, I have no interest in your health and nor do I have a responsibility for it no matter what your chosen group of penny loafer-ed box checkers sayI have no interest in purchasing your latest nuclear weapons, defending your country, subsidising your royal family, bailing out your bankers, constructing and maintaining the pavements outside your house, lighting your street, subsidising your MPs, paying for your police call out when you've been burgled, sweeping your streets, subsidising the collection of your rubbish, oh and paying for that fire in your house to be extinguished no matter what your box checkers say. No interest whatsoever. This precisely is where Ayn Rand kicks in.
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Mar 06, 2012 | discussion.theguardian.com
Curious that the Ayn Rand's of this world are always very keen on a socialized police force and armed services. Presumably, they consider these services the first line of defense against the starving mob.According to Ayn Rand, we are supposed to consider the rich and successful as supreme individualists who are simply the fittest to lead in a dog eat dog world.
However, looking at powerful individuals with their soft pudgy faces, their paunchy bodies and carefully groomed hair it is obvious that these people are not born to rule. Curiously, when they are threatened by an outside force, it is never them who serve but the useless poor who are expected to develop a sense of community, quaintly called patriotism, and defend them. Does anyone really imagine that in a true meritocracy these same people would survive and prosper.
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Mar 06, 2012 | discussion.theguardian.com
ArchibaldLeach , 6 Mar 2012 02:39
Rand is the Republican God...well, her and Jesus. They just love her love of selfishness. It's what the GOP thinks makes America great. They talk about individualism, freedom, and so on but it's really all about the rich getting to keep all their money. People who are drawn to Rand are drawn to her because they want to excuse their own selfishness as some sort of ideal.redshrink , 6 Mar 2012 02:35To describe Ayn Rand's ideas as philosophy really is gilding a turd. She may have called it "objectivism", but the -ism suggests an intellectual stringency, which it simply lacks. "Atlas Shrugged" is a work of badly written fiction, or propaganda rather, not a philosophical text, but that distinction is easily lost on a gullible American public. While it may now play the role of guiding text of the American right as opposed to Marx' writings for the left, Rand's preposterous ideology is more the intellectual and moral equivalent to "Mein Kampf" than to "Das Kapital". That such a nasty and amoral doctrine should find favour with a nation, which sees itself as "Christian", underlines how hollow that particular brand of Christianity has become.
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Jun 23, 2019 | discussion.theguardian.com
ohcomeoffit , 6 Mar 2012 08:36
"Almost one third of Americans, according to a recent poll, have read Atlas Shrugged"Subs: surely that should be "... have read about Atlas Shrugged". What are the chances that almost one third of Americans have read a book?
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Mar 06, 2012 | discussion.theguardian.com
Aeschyluss48 , 6 Mar 2012 04:32
Policies like this will produce 1 rich person and approximately 999,999,999 poor people-if put into effect, yet remarkably are popular! I can understand millionaires and billionaires liking this philosophy but what about the normal people, the middle-classes who flock to this?Either they think they are richer than they are-in which case a wake-up call is coming! Or they think they themselves will never need society's safety-net-in which case for many a wake-up call is again coming! Or they think that if they pull with the system one day they too will be rich-sadly becoming rich in Western society (US/UK) is like winning the lottery-"it could be you!"-yes it COULD be you, it probably won't be you, in fact it will almost certainly not be you-but yes we can't rule out the statement "it COULD be you!"-hoping for a 1 in a million, million chance in effect.
Unrestrained selfishness is like allowing people in a room to slash each other's throats-eventually the room ends up full of dead people-forgive the sarcam but is this a fantastic outcome that we should all aspire to! Condemning the majority of society to misery so a very few can live the high-life is no way to run a world-yes it is true that we in the west do this all the time-today countless unseen millions live on less than 2 dollars per day-human life and pecious (literally once in a lifetime) human potential wasted-utterly wasted!
As for the quote that Rand went onto Medicare etc towards the end of her life-if true this is yet another example of something I've often considered to be true-that those of extreme political views (be it right-wing or left-wing) are invariably selfish, egocentric hypocrites-and when you come to see this it is an ugly world! The bank-bail-outs are a prime example-we are preached about "taking responsibility" by our leaders but this only applies to unemployed people and the poor (or "feckless" to use the common parlance)-when very rich bankers mess up as a result of their own poor decisions they are bailed out by the very same government they previously professed to despise-yes that it taking responsibility in action isn't it?, that is being morally virtuous?-pure and utter distilled hypocrisy in action! As for Rand coming from a rich family-is thre anybody of a right ing viewpoin that wasn't born into money-have any of them knon the poverty (at first hand) that they are so quick to describe in unflattering terms!
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Jun 23, 2019 | discussion.theguardian.com
pretzelberg , 6 Mar 2012 07:49
Rand, Weiss argues, provides the unifying ideology which has "distilled vague anger and unhappiness into a sense of purpose".
And don't forget: resentment.
Nietzsche would have had a field day with the superficial likes of Rand.
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Jun 23, 2019 | discussion.theguardian.com
Although I find the basic Objectivist philosophy objectionable there is one part of Atlas Shrugged that has always puzzled me.Rand praises her creative geniuses as men who always pay their workers well in order to attract into their employment the best workers in the industry. This idea seems reasonable so why don't the current Randian devotees within capitalist corporations do it?
Anyway, the difference between Rand's capitalism and what we have today is that all her genius's own their own companies whereas that can't be said for most of the CEO s in the modern world. Arguably the working class now includes the highest levels of the boardroom and the directors are as much in thrall to their bosses as are the company cleaners.
Modern capitalism's fatal flaw is the shareholder who, in many cases, doesn't even know which company their investment/pension fund has invested in. We, the public, are the owners of these companies and it is up to us whether we ask our investments to behave as ethical organisations or whether we continue to let them pressure the boards of directors of the world into producing greater and greater returns.
Unless you own no products based on shares then YOU are the new boss and arguably you are worse than the old boss.
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Mar 06, 2012 | discussion.theguardian.com
Ayn's ideas - imo - were just elitist sentiment that leaned toward fascism, clearly she was watching to many movies (even way back then).http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Dictator_charlie5.jpg
Thats Chaplin in 'The Great dictator'.
"Don't give yourselves to these unnatural men - machine men with machine minds and machine hearts! You are not machines, you are not cattle, you are men! You have the love of humanity in your hearts! You don't hate! Only the unloved hate; the unloved and the unnatural. Soldiers! Don't fight for slavery! Fight for liberty! " -Chaplin. (entire quote can be found here - http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0032553/quotes )
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Mar 06, 2012 | discussion.theguardian.com
inappropriate , 6 Mar 2012 07:32
The central flaw of objectivism - a kind of wishful-thinking moral alchemy where base selfishness somehow turns into something better - isn't unique to the 'right' by any means. identity politics is riddled with it, although they call it 'empowerment'.
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Jun 23, 2019 | discussion.theguardian.com
Hellzapoppin , 6 Mar 2012 12:08
Hellzapoppin , 6 Mar 2012 12:01have no problem with Rand accepting social security payments, if she was legally entitled to them. That's what they are there for. But I wonder why she chose to do so under an assumed name, if that is correct. If she had wanted to make the point that she was taking back some of her own money, surely that point would have been better made by being open about it.
The obvious reason why she did it under an assumed name is that she knew perfectly well it wouldn't sit with the bollocks about 'rugged individualism', and wouldn't be seen as 'taking back her own money' (what if her medical care amounted to more than the portion of her taxes assigned to medicare?), but as ranky hypocrisy.
Not to mention it would be an intellectualy circle she could never square.
Bourdillon , 6 Mar 2012 09:25Rand was a woman who, on her death bed, praised wealth and independence, while simultaneously begging charity and succor from the state.
That would be a flaw in the woman, not the ideology, lets stick to that eh?
No, absolutely a flaw in in the ideology. If it's creator wasn't prepared to see it through to the then, why think anyone would?
Any ideology that so fundamentally fails to understand human nature, our needs and desires, our flaws, our alturism, and that we're fundamentally social animals, shouldn't even be begun to be taken seriously.
The rank hypocrisy aside, what she did on her death bed was far more rational than the nonsense she'd been preaching her whole life.
I wonder how many would continue to worship at the shrine of Ayn Rand if they knew that towards the end of her life she signed on for both Medicare and social security. She had railed furiously against both programmes, as they represented everything she despised about the intrusive state. Her belief system was no match for the realities of age and ill health.
Probably wouldn't change anything. Cameron claimed the same Disability Living Allowance for his son that he is now taking away from disabled and terminally ill people in this country.
Greed is slowing evolution. We are deliberately cultivating a generation whose only purpose is to pay off the debts of the last one. Progress has stopped, so why are we continuing on the same course?
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Jun 23, 2019 | discussion.theguardian.com
iwouldprefernotto , 6 Mar 2012 11:33
Brilliant piece. Rand's philosophy is the philosophy of the psychopath, but you can see its appeal: it absolves her acolytes of the need to care. It must feel tremendously liberating, if you're that way inclined (i.e. a self-proclaimed ubermensch with a serious empathy deficit.)OldHob -> postcolonial , 6 Mar 2012 11:32I remember reading an interview with Harry Stein, author of 'How I Accidentally Joined the Vast Right-Wing Conspiracy: And Found Inner Peace'. He said that becoming right-wing made him realise that he didn't have to worry about everything constantly. I'm fairly sure that you can be a liberal without perpetually flagellating yourself for the sins of the world.
Her writing may as well be used to legitimise the business methods of Montana in Scarface, and a loveley example of the Rand thought processes, here now, in the present day - The Russian version of capitalism......Gangsterism is about right. The morals of the shark tank.tomcmc , 6 Mar 2012 11:22"Rand's is the philosophy of the psychopath, a misanthropic fantasy of cruelty, revenge and greed."butchluva -> EnglishroG , 6 Mar 2012 11:13In a nutshell, Mr Monbiot.
Her definitions and descriptions are certainly consistent with a clinical diagnosis of psychopathy.
Chilling to think that some policymakers treat this poison as a bible to inform their world view.
I think she just hated herself and never grew up and projected that onto everyone else. (The teenage boys analogy is apposite.) It is central to right-wing (and ultra-religious) mindsets that everything that happens in the world is somebody else's fault, never theirs, they relinquish any responsibility for or role in any social problems or dynamics, especially and ironically those things to do with the way they are. They are the ultimate victims and this is a kind of psychosocial infantilism. They talk a lot about the need for 'personal responsibility' (in theory) because they don't have any, and act the opposite. They need a spurious 'objectivism' to hide behind, a 'reality' separate from human consciousness (as another contributor correctly identified) because of a crushing insecurity. Their superiority complexes are an ultra transparent and futile warding off of crippling feelings of inferiority. It is an abject, and dangerous state of mind. Fortunately many people who go through this phase grow out of it, they have a dark night of the soul, flashes of insight into themselves, are forced to face their shit and become better people or whatever. People like Ayn Rand, err, don't. Sad.gixxerman006 -> Kairolocus , 6 Mar 2012 10:56Opps, I'll try that again....weathereye -> Kairolocus , 6 Mar 2012 10:49
6 March 2012 1:55PM
Rand was a creep. Her personal life was a train wreck. Described in biographies as cruel, megalomaniacal, ungrateful and tasteless, she surrounded herself with a cult of loyal followers. She made a cuckold of her husband and humiliated him in public when he began suffering from dementia. She was addicted to amphetamines. By all accounts, she was not a very nice person. After William Edward Hickman kidnapped and dismembered a 12-year-old girl, she wrote admiringly of the state of mind that could engage in such an atrocity:"Other people do not exist for him, and he does not see why they should". Hickman had "no regard whatsoever for all that society holds sacred, and with a consciousness all his own. He has the true, innate psychology of a Superman. He can never realize and feel 'other people."
This echoes almost word for word Rand's later description of her character Howard Roark, the hero of her novel The Fountainhead: ' He was born without the ability to consider others .'"
It's amazing that this drug-addled, adulterous, cruel & utterly graceless individual is held in such regard by a significant chunk of right-wing America.
Her athiesism alone would bar anyone else from a moments consideration nevermind such veneration.Her appeal it seems to me is in offering superficial answers in an utterly certain way that allows for no question or time spent (in Objectivist terms 'wasted') considering alternates (ie the pure demigogue).
Sadly that sort of rubbish has an appeal to a certain (usually male) adolescent mindset......and in a nation where the media is devoted to treating its populace as if they were late teen/early 20-somethings all their lifes it doesn't surprise me she has a small but noteable following.Given the way the UK is being pushed to discard our own & embrace American 'pop' culture I wouldn't be surprised to see something similar begin here either.
Sadly.Kairolocus , 6 Mar 2012 08:55she wrote admiringly of the state of mind that could engage in such an atrocity:
it is striking that the human population appears to maintain a level of psychopathy, rather as some deleterious genes are persistent despite their selective unfitness for the group and their prtogressive removal and disappearance being advantageous. I guess that rather like e.g. haemophilia, psychopathy needs to be recognised for what it is, and its maladaptiveness treated and contained as well as possible. There is a lot of rather florid social-behavioural/economic-political disorder around at present in a very chaotic human environment. There are plenty more Rands waving their GOP flags right now.Rand was a creep. Her personal life was a train wreck. Described in biographies as cruel, megalomaniacal, ungrateful and tasteless, she surrounded herself with a cult of loyal followers. She made a cuckold of her husband and humiliated him in public when he began suffering from dementia. She was addicted to amphetamines. By all accounts, she was not a very nice person. After William Edward Hickman kidnapped and dismembered a 12-year-old girl, she wrote admiringly of the state of mind that could engage in such an atrocity:"Other people do not exist for him, and he does not see why they should". Hickman had "no regard whatsoever for all that society holds sacred, and with a consciousness all his own. He has the true, innate psychology of a Superman. He can never realize and feel 'other people."
This echoes almost word for word Rand's later description of her character Howard Roark, the hero of her novel The Fountainhead: 'He was born without the ability to consider others.'"
Nice!
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Mar 06, 2012 | discussion.theguardian.com
For all you Randians replying on this thread, here is your 'philosophy' at it's ultimate conclusion:http://dloosely.tumblr.com/post/90113480/bob-the-angry-flower-atlas-shrugged-2
Good luck with the digging
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Jun 23, 2019 | discussion.theguardian.com
There's a good review of Atlas Shrugged by Whittaker Chambers in the National Review in 1957, available here . Extract:
Out of a lifetime of reading, I can recall no other book in which a tone of overriding arrogance was so implacably sustained. Its shrillness is without reprieve. Its dogmatism is without appeal.
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Jun 23, 2019 | discussion.theguardian.com
I read Ayn Rand over fifty years ago "Atlas shrugged" I found herhappyworker , 6 Mar 2012 08:41
writing criminal and still think the sameThe problem with Atlas Shrugged is that no government is as bad as she portrayed and no billionaire as good.weathereye , 6 Mar 2012 08:47acorn7817 , 6 Mar 2012 08:39This holds that the only moral course is pure self-interest. We owe nothing, she insists, to anyone, even to members of our own families.
The persistence of such wrong-headed and dangerous stupidity in humankind, despite all the objective evidence underpinned by the clearest understanding of how and why reciprocal altruism works so well, is one of the most threatening characteristics of our species. Rand has much to answer for as we now struggle to shake off such a malign and damaging doctrinal idiocy as hers and all that has followed from it..The ideology of greed and selfishness always devours itself in the end, sadly though, not before it's devoured everything else.peterNW1 , 6 Mar 2012 08:47This cartoon cat was a sweet tabby before he started reading Ayn Rand. Now look what it's done to him ...
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Mar 06, 2012 | discussion.theguardian.com
RicardoFloresMagon, 6 Mar 2012 01:25
I once tried reading Atlas Shrugged, I really really tried... But only got 300 pages in, then had to give up.It wasn't the brutal politics/economics, I knew that in advance.
It wasn't the inability to write a flowing sentence, I knew it was more political fiction, rather than literature.
It wasn't even the ridiculous plot, which requires a suspension of disbelief as if it is situated in a bizarro world.
It was the distinct feeling I was seeing the world through the eyes of a sociopath, where "other people" are despicable alien others, and only other sociopaths exist, admire and recognize each other. Very unsettling. The inability of the protagonists to connect with people or understand their motivations was so unbearable I had to put it aside.
Bitter lady, Ayn.
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Mar 06, 2012 | discussion.theguardian.com
Amusingly, Wikipedia notes on the film of Atlas Shrugged:More than 100,000 DVD inserts were recalled within days due to the jacket's philosophically incorrect description of "Ayn Rand's timeless novel of courage and self-sacrifice.
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Mar 06, 2012 | discussion.theguardian.com
Christopher Hitchens on Ayn Rand ..."I care very much about literature as the place where real ethical dilemmas are met and dealt with, so to have novels as transcendentally awful as 'Atlas Shrugs' and 'The Fountainhead' sort of undermines my project."
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Jun 23, 2019 | discussion.theguardian.com
She is a hilarious read, and quite disturbing.
I read The Fountainhead a few years ago. I agree the dialogue was hilarious(ly bad).
Other than that, it was less hilarious than just embarrassingly dreadful. Ironically, the novel was a wonderful reductio ad absurdum of her entire philosophy.
Presumably unintentionally.
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Mar 06, 2012 | discussion.theguardian.com
Have just finished The Fountainhead and was, like a lot of people, almost shocked by what 'appear' to be the tenets.However, and as usual, people have read it with their own political agenda and especially the Republicans who are bereft of anything remotely resembling a coherent intellectual agenda, grab on to it and manipulate it for their nasty little purposes.
The central themes of her philosophy appear to be her idea of selfishness which people all too often transfer into their own concepts. If we look deeper we can see quite another message which rings true for all people and this is that we should be true to ourselves and not take on other people's values, philosophies, idea and tastes etc. In other words her 'second handers'. I agree with her. A closer read also sees her describing the sterile poverty of acting for power and money. Where does that fit in to the Republican philosophy?
She also has many valid points in the individual's ideas of 'selflessness' which are all too often born of misguided adoption of someone else's values, not of deep and stable understanding of the human condition.
I don't want to appear to be defending someone who I am sure would vote Republican but the gushing of ridiculous judgmental reactions based on probably a quick read is just silly. She deserves to be read properly, by everyone!
Sean Hodges
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Jun 23, 2019 | discussion.theguardian.com
Excellent piece as ever George. The BBC need to repeat Adam Curtis' All Watched Over by Machines of Loving Grace . Brilliant and shocking.Irishscouser , 6 Mar 2012 06:10
If you watch Curtis' excellent 'All watched over by Robots of loving grace' you can see how utterly fraudulent Rand comes across, she seemed a bitter, lonely and pathetic creature whose petty and vindictive asides at society was one built on a complete insecurity complex, she was just acting out her own debauched fantasies and she found the right home (the US) to fulfill them.It says something of a society, and inparticularly the utterly nutty 'Tea Party' to see Rand as champion of 'free will' and ' deregulation' in fact only in the US could her views be actually takens seriously, so much so they named a corporation after her.
Now that's scary!!!
NotWithoutMyMonkey , 6 Mar 2012 05:59
@romantotale17Frighteningly I suspect that the autocrats-in-planning are reading Kurzweil lately, who combines the New Right with the Randian Silicon Valley cyber-utopianism of which Curtis describes in his doco.
Kurzewil is Rand's John Galt as cyborg.
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Jun 23, 2019 | discussion.theguardian.com
oneworldlemon , 5 Mar 2012 20:11
Great article, George. Some superb posts here, very intelligent. Beautiful demolition of Rand - always worth repeating ( I remember an Adam Curtis BBC2 documentary being particularly good too). And good to see Erich Fromm mentioned, an important thinker who grappled with the origins of fascism.Maybe Rand did have NPD. NPD - Narcissistic Personality Disorder - it is close to psychopathy in many ways. Extremely predatory, master spinners. There are plenty of them in Canary Wharf and the City, and apparently it takes on average two years to find them and remove them, as they can destroy companies. Unfortunately over the years I have had to cope with several, and they scar you for life. They are quite infantile in many ways. There is a very weak signal between certain parts of their brain (hippocampus ?) and they are as cold and callous as the Waffen SS. Psychologically, one must avoid any criticism of them, never play their games or argue with them and placate them while you gather evidence. Forget about any normal human values like empathy, it's just not there. You have to lie in wait until they expose a weakness, then suddenly go for the jugular with terminal velocity using hard evidence of their savagery - anything less will result in your destruction.
Now back to Cameron, Osborne and the rest of the Tory fascists. We have to use similar techniques.
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Mar 06, 2012 | discussion.theguardian.com
johnwhoever , 6 Mar 2012 04:35
If you can't be bothered with the books, there's an interesting film about Ayn Rand starring Helen Mirren, who does the accent brilliantly. I don't know how accurately the events are portrayed, but the film does play up the idea of Rand as a cultish figure who manipulates her adoring followers, throws hissy fits, causes schisms, etc.There's a brilliant scene where she persuades her (happily married and much younger) second-in-command into having an affair with her because it is 'objectively' the right thing to do. Both the young wife and Rand's own husband are utterly humiliated.
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Jun 23, 2019 | discussion.theguardian.com
justaname -> EnglishroG , 6 Mar 2012 13:12
Rant's work has a special appeal to obnoxious teenage boys; friendless and unappreciated, toxic to girls, they take a special comfort in identifying with Rant's socially crippled isolated misunderstood geniuses and enjoy the rape scenes in the novels where the heroine enjoys the whole experience.
Interesting, and I'd say important comments... I think sexual selection is basically the issue. As much as I didn't like the film Happy Go Lucky I thought the Scott character was interesting http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=40Dw1Q2jvsY
how many 'creeps' are marginalised by crude sexual selection, blatant cruel discrimination, the willful flaunting of what is essentially genetic luck; what better to engender a zero sum sense of a world based on unfairness?There have been experiments with depressed subordinate monkeys (Alpha males removed), one of which is given a serotonin boosting drug... (like MDMA I think) that monkey quickly rises to alpha male status.
If people, as they're so inclined to do, identify with their sexuality to the exclusion of virtue (after all what better than virtue, a conscience, to pour cold water on casual sex? hence the problem of binge drinking) they will in many cases derive enough narcissistic confidence to be 'successful' - in exactly the way that unscrupulous bankers would wish.
Many of the losers will turn to Rand... and far worse, I fear.
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Mar 08, 2012 | www.theguardian.com
JohannesL -> murielbelcher , 6 Mar 2012 14:27"Free society" is for these righty-wingers a society with unregulated corporate rule where democratic rule by the people for the people ("government") does not exist.Kikinaskald , 6 Mar 2012 14:23The slave owners' freedom, in other words.
In short, according to Mettler, the rich complain about the state while taking most of the benefits that the state provides.murielbelcher , 6 Mar 2012 14:23Watching her 1959 interview, I am convinced that her extreme ideology is tangled up with her personal experiences and other psychological factors. She came across as cold and seemingly detached from the humanity around her.weathereye , 6 Mar 2012 14:22She also appeared entirely untroubled by the fact that others might hold different views, so convinced was she of her rightness.
The Tea Party loonies are modern ' Randies', and idolize John Galt [hero of Atlas Shrugged ]. Like malaria, this disease is highly resistant to eradication and still kills millions.Kikinaskald , 6 Mar 2012 14:21I didn't read the read I mentioned above. According to the book description and an article I read earlier about the book (as far as I remember), the book doesn't show simply that the state is good while the lack of state is bad and so contradict Rand directly.gixxerman006 -> EconomicDeterminist , 6 Mar 2012 14:13It proceeds in a more subtle way, showing that the rich and the affluent benefit from the state and benefit even more than the poorer. It's the rich that use the state for their benefit, not the poorer.
This doesn't mean that the absence of a state would be the ideal situation. The rich want a state that works only for their benefit, what is necessary is a state that works for everybody, that diminishes inequality.
Mankini -> Spoonface , 6 Mar 2012 14:10EconomicDeterminist 6 March 2012 6:57PM Response to tom1832, 5 March 2012 8:35PM
The left is obsessed with trying to find the intellectual antecedents of the new right. Intellectual?
Indeed. I'm reminded of the outrageously behaved (& therefore isolated by the other kids) sociopathic brat continually being told by its doting mother "there there there, nevermind, don't listen to a word of it, they're only jealous"
Quite how the right-wing imagines anyone on the left does anything but point & laugh at their 'philosophical heroine' (!!?) beggars belief. Rand is simply a damaged intellectual pygmy offering a deeply unoriginal juvenile nonsense so obviously born out of her own refugee experiences.
"Rand grew up to be a selfish individualist who claimed both that altruism is harmful, and that human beings are fully rational, with infant and childhood experience exerting no influence on adult behaviour."Spoonface -> Jaiysun44 , 6 Mar 2012 14:06TempleCloud -> noiraddict , 6 Mar 2012 14:03I think Rand's addiction to amphetamines over decades is a partial explanation for her sociopathic nature, or perhaps a symptom of it.
Another good explanation is the childhood trauma she experienced when her mother took away her toys for a year (to toughen her up or somesuch). At the end of the year, Rand, still a young child, expected her toys back, only for her mother to tell her that she'd given the toys to the local orphanage. Rand grew up to be a selfish individualist who claimed both that altruism is harmful, and that human beings are fully rational, with infant and childhood experience exerting no influence on adult behaviour.
Not that there's any connection, of course.
totemic , 6 Mar 2012 14:02The lies she told came around and bit her in the arse.
A wonderful image. Do you think that's how she met her doom? Cause of death: Bitten to death on the arse by lies.
Pragmatism , 6 Mar 2012 14:00"The worker becomes all the poorer the more wealth he produces, the more his production increases in power and range. The worker becomes an ever cheaper commodity the more commodities he creates. With the increasing value of the world of things proceeds in direct proportion to the devaluation of the world of men. Labor produces not only commodities; it produces itself and the worker as a commodity -- and does so in the proportion in which it produces commodities generally."
Marx's, Labour Theory of Value. An outstanding contribution to how social relations are corrupted within the social economy, through capitalist exploitation. But, communism meant elite prescription - social tyranny.
Ayn Rand's objectivized nonsense, sought to treat humans as objects - see the experience of the farmed animal (similarly prosocial animals).
All I wish to say is, thanks for the universal principle of human rights. And down with Financialization. Another thought provoking article from Mr Monbiot.
I have not read Rand's work but the impression I get from your account of it is that it is a joke to take fools in much as Hubbard did when he created the Scientology cult.tsubaki , 6 Mar 2012 13:59and yet even Ayn Rand didnt think the police should be privatized. Well done, Dave!paulc156 , 6 Mar 2012 13:57HarryTheHorse -> DaveG333 , 6 Mar 2012 13:57Almost one third of Americans, according to a recent poll, have read Atlas Shrugged
...According to a Gallup poll done at the end of the twentieth century, about one third of Americans believe aliens have visited us. Hmm.
NotWithoutMyMonkey , 6 Mar 2012 13:56Fine, I'll call it "Randism" and now she is all fine and Dandy too.
What are you talking about?
Democratic socialism has long been practiced and until the ascent of destructive neo-liberalism, was the pre-eminent political philosophy from 1945.
Randism is atavistic gobbledegook, that has never been implemented. In the degree to which it has influenced far right politicians in the US and UK, it has proved to be wholly negative.
@DaveG333TempleCloud -> NotWithoutMyMonkey , 6 Mar 2012 13:55"Capitalists believe economically that people should be free to choose how to use their capital, free movement of money, for both worker and owner." A position as idealistic and impractical as Rand's. It presupposes that both worker and owner as individuals have equal strength in any negotiation. It presupposes that ownership in itself is moral irrespective of how it was obtained.
Suraklin , 6 Mar 2012 13:55...if she we're alive she wouldn't last five seconds on CiF. By modern standards, ironically, she's a light weight.
Funny how those supporting this sort of 'philosophy' always see a role for a state to have an army and police force to protect their wealth - surely the true believer in Objectivism would not need such things and any person of money who was unable to protect themselves with their own resources would deserve whatever was coming to them?RobspierreRules -> softMick , 6 Mar 2012 13:46"Many of us it seems can no longer differentiate between 'right' and 'wrong' or see the importance of defending a sense of common humanity, with those who seek to protect the poor and vulnerable in society scorned and berated,..."Well said, well written - but in order to turn this around we have to remember we are faced with the dictum "There is no society." The absolute belief in that nihilistic proposition leaves no ground for negotiation. Once again we ask, "What is to be done?"
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Mar 06, 2012 | discussion.theguardian.com
And Ayn didn't dig her way out from underneath the Iron curtain. No daring escape - she was granted an exit visa in 1925.
A staggering act of negligence for which I can never forgive the Soviets.
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Mar 05, 2012 | www.theguardian.com
Her psychopathic ideas made billionaires feel like victims and turned millions of followers into their doormats Comments 1,227 Illustration by Daniel Pudles I t has a fair claim to be the ugliest philosophy the postwar world has produced. Selfishness, it contends, is good, altruism evil, empathy and compassion are irrational and destructive. The poor deserve to die; the rich deserve unmediated power. It has already been tested, and has failed spectacularly and catastrophically. Yet the belief system constructed by Ayn Rand , who died 30 years ago today, has never been more popular or influential.Rand was a Russian from a prosperous family who emigrated to the United States. Through her novels (such as Atlas Shrugged) and her nonfiction (such as The Virtue of Selfishness) she explained a philosophy she called Objectivism. This holds that the only moral course is pure self-interest. We owe nothing, she insists, to anyone, even to members of our own families. She described the poor and weak as "refuse" and "parasites", and excoriated anyone seeking to assist them. Apart from the police, the courts and the armed forces, there should be no role for government: no social security, no public health or education, no public infrastructure or transport, no fire service, no regulations, no income tax.
Atlas Shrugged, published in 1957, depicts a United States crippled by government intervention in which heroic millionaires struggle against a nation of spongers. The millionaires, whom she portrays as Atlas holding the world aloft, withdraw their labour, with the result that the nation collapses. It is rescued, through unregulated greed and selfishness, by one of the heroic plutocrats, John Galt .
The poor die like flies as a result of government programmes and their own sloth and fecklessness. Those who try to help them are gassed. In a notorious passage, she argues that all the passengers in a train filled with poisoned fumes deserved their fate. One, for instance, was a teacher who taught children to be team players; one was a mother married to a civil servant, who cared for her children; one was a housewife "who believed that she had the right to elect politicians, of whom she knew nothing".
Rand's is the philosophy of the psychopath, a misanthropic fantasy of cruelty, revenge and greed. Yet, as Gary Weiss shows in his new book, Ayn Rand Nation, she has become to the new right what Karl Marx once was to the left: a demigod at the head of a chiliastic cult. Almost one third of Americans, according to a recent poll, have read Atlas Shrugged, and it now sells hundreds of thousands of copies every year.
Ignoring Rand's evangelical atheism, the Tea Party movement has taken her to its heart. No rally of theirs is complete without placards reading "Who is John Galt?" and "Rand was right". Rand, Weiss argues, provides the unifying ideology which has "distilled vague anger and unhappiness into a sense of purpose". She is energetically promoted by the broadcasters Glenn Beck, Rush Limbaugh and Rick Santelli. She is the guiding spirit of the Republicans in Congress.
Like all philosophies, Objectivism is absorbed, secondhand, by people who have never read it. I believe it is making itself felt on this side of the Atlantic: in the clamorous new demands to remove the 50p tax band for the very rich, for instance; or among the sneering, jeering bloggers who write for the Telegraph and the Spectator, mocking compassion and empathy, attacking efforts to make the word a kinder place.
It is not hard to see why Rand appeals to billionaires. She offers them something that is crucial to every successful political movement: a sense of victimhood. She tells them that they are parasitised by the ungrateful poor and oppressed by intrusive, controlling governments.
It is harder to see what it gives the ordinary teabaggers, who would suffer grievously from a withdrawal of government. But such is the degree of misinformation which saturates this movement and so prevalent in the US is Willy Loman syndrome (the gulf between reality and expectations) that millions blithely volunteer themselves as billionaires' doormats. I wonder how many would continue to worship at the shrine of Ayn Rand if they knew that towards the end of her life she signed on for both Medicare and social security. She had railed furiously against both programmes, as they represented everything she despised about the intrusive state. Her belief system was no match for the realities of age and ill health.
But they have a still more powerful reason to reject her philosophy: as Adam Curtis's BBC documentary showed last year, the most devoted member of her inner circle was Alan Greenspan , former head of the US Federal Reserve. Among the essays he wrote for Rand were those published in a book he co-edited with her called Capitalism: the Unknown Ideal . Here, starkly explained, you'll find the philosophy he brought into government. There is no need for the regulation of business – even builders or Big Pharma – he argued, as "the 'greed' of the businessman or, more appropriately, his profit-seeking is the unexcelled protector of the consumer". As for bankers, their need to win the trust of their clients guarantees that they will act with honour and integrity. Unregulated capitalism, he maintains, is a "superlatively moral system".
Once in government, Greenspan applied his guru's philosophy to the letter, cutting taxes for the rich, repealing the laws constraining banks, refusing to regulate the predatory lending and the derivatives trading which eventually brought the system down. Much of this is already documented, but Weiss shows that in the US, Greenspan has successfully airbrushed history.
Despite the many years he spent at her side, despite his previous admission that it was Rand who persuaded him that "capitalism is not only efficient and practical but also moral", he mentioned her in his memoirs only to suggest that it was a youthful indiscretion – and this, it seems, is now the official version. Weiss presents powerful evidence that even today Greenspan remains her loyal disciple, having renounced his partial admission of failure to Congress.
Saturated in her philosophy, the new right on both sides of the Atlantic continues to demand the rollback of the state, even as the wreckage of that policy lies all around. The poor go down, the ultra-rich survive and prosper. Ayn Rand would have approved.
Twitter: @georgemonbiot. A fully referenced version of this article can be found at www.monbiot.com
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Apr 11, 2019 | discussion.theguardian.com
Communism and neoliberalism were never as far apart as people imagined. Two sides of a coin. A theological dispute.
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Mar 06, 2012 | discussion.theguardian.com
Another very informative article from one of the few writers with any sense of having a 'finger on the pulse.'It's sad that it's taken over 30 years for the real shaping influences behind the current system to be identified and discussed outside the boundaries of a few university conferences.
The Right have been absolutely brilliant at media control and obfuscation. Their gurus have been camouflaged and the whole process of influencing Reagan and Thatcher's governments from the late 1970's has escaped exactly the kind of scrutiny that George gives Rand.
We might also investigate the influence of John Nash's (A Beautiful Mind) 'Gameplay' experiments in a similar fashion along with the economic gurus who followed Hayek so slavishly.
It has been known for years that the neo liberal project was designed not just to under mine democracy and convert people into passive cloned market junkies, but to put an end to the whole of the Enlightenment Project, which perhaps naively saw human development,. growth and other human qualities totally savaged and defeated by this poisonous evil, which emulates all the worst aspects of Fascism without the flags and theatre.
Sadly, this is not a 'this is happening' phenomenon; it's a 'this has happened phenomenon.' The taint and viral effect of its impact on uk and usa political structures has already caused major damage. All three major political parties in the uk have for 30 years subscribed to its tenets though they were no doubt not presented in such a flagrant form as Rand's writing.
How problematic is it to now look at the polity and rescue it from such a major ideological shift? Certainly, the major parties cannot shuck off the cape of their key beliefs after promoting Right wing ideologies for so long, and the traditional Left is no more.
However, it is good to see some pithy journalism that goes to the heart of the matter - those of us who have been pleading for less x factor celebrity worshipping of politicians can at least feel as though this shifts the spectrum to real and significant issues that have affected the lives of everyone for so long.
Spot on George; one of your best.
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Jun 23, 2019 | discussion.theguardian.com
Kikinaskald , 6 Mar 2012 14:14
I wonder how many would continue to worship at the shrine of Ayn Rand if they knew that towards the end of her life she signed on for both Medicare and social security.
In case nobody mentioned this book before, which is relevant to the theme:
The Submerged State by Suzanne Mettler
From the Amazon book description:
These submerged policies, Mettler shows, obscure the role of government and exaggerate that of the market. As a result, citizens are unaware not only of the benefits they receive, but of the massive advantages given to powerful interests, such as insurance companies and the financial industry. Neither do they realize that the policies of the submerged state shower their largest benefits on the most affluent Americans, exacerbating inequality.
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Apr 11, 2019 | discussion.theguardian.com
What has been very noticeable about the development of bureaucracy in the public and private spheres over the last 40 years (since Thatcher govt of 79) has been the way systems are designed now to place responsibility and culpability on the workers delivering the services - Teachers, Nurses, social workers, etc. While those making the policies, passing the laws, overseeing the regulations- viz. the people 'at the top', now no longer take the rap when something goes wrong- they may be the Captain of their particular ship, but the responsibility now rests with the man sweeping the decks. Instead they are covered by tying up in knots those teachers etc. having to fill in endless check lists and reports, which have as much use as clicking 'yes' one has understood those long legal terms provided by software companies.... yet are legally binding. So how the hell do we get out of this mess? By us as individuals uniting through unions or whatever and saying NO. No to your dumb educational directives, No to your cruel welfare policies, No to your stupid NHS mismanagement.... there would be a lot of No's but eventually we could say collectively 'Yes I did the right thing'.promisingproper -> Dianeandguy , 11 Apr 2019 08:00Staff distress? Cleaning ( in another county) was privatised to make profit in Thatcher times.The work of two cleaners became the task of one person. Extra duties were loaded on -serving meals and drinks, fetching blankets and equipment. Wages dropped by a small degree -but important when we ere earning, say, £65 a week. Indemnity/insurance against catching infections was withdrawn. Firstly owned by Jeyes and then sold on to Rentokill ,obviously good for shareholders. A new 'manager' appeared with their own office.fairshares -> rjb04tony , 11 Apr 2019 07:17'The left wing dialogue about neoliberalism used to be that it was the Wild West and that anything goes. Now apparently it's a machine of mass control.'It is the Wild West and anything goes for the corporate entities, and a machine of control of the masses. Hence the wish of neoliberals to remove legislation that protects workers and consumers.
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Apr 10, 2019 | discussion.theguardian.com
, 10 Apr 2019 17:26No-one.They're businesses, therefore by definition efficient and responsible. Haha.
The assessment and monitoring are for the little people - teachers and children, as they can't be trusted.
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Apr 10, 2019 | discussion.theguardian.com
Quantomania -- this is the word I have been needing for some time now! So much better than having to say "obsession with quantity" all the time.Would it be useful to add quantism and quantist too? Maybe even quantistic and quantistical ?
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Apr 10, 2019 | discussion.theguardian.com
izaakwalton , 11 Apr 2019 00:55
As someone who thinks von Mises and Hayek made invaluable contributions to economics I was surprised to see such a ringing endorsement for Mises's ideas in the Guardian:"Public-service workers are now subjected to a panoptical regime of monitoring and assessment, using the benchmarks von Mises rightly warned were inapplicable and absurd."
That is spot on. Yes, Mises thought that workers should no more be allowed to corner a market in labour than companies should be allowed to create monopolies in products, and this is certainly a point where he can be criticized. Using the name "neoliberal" to cover
such very different ideas as Milton's and Hayek's though is absurd - they had completely opposite ideas about vast government spending to recover from recession. Try looking up John James Cowperthwaite, who oversaw post-war development in Hong Kong by getting government out of the way.He forbade the use of any performance targets of the type Blair brought in, and refused to compile GDP statistics, thinking the government would game them.
Both von Mises and Hayek would be horrified at the money printing of modern central banks, especially since 2008. To ascribe modern policy to their ideas is simply nonsense - they did not (as far as I know) ever suggest central control of interest rates , stock buying by central banks or saving a bank that has failed through fraud and greed.
If "neoliberalism" is our present dominant ideology, then please do not use the word to describe their work.
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Apr 10, 2019 | discussion.theguardian.com
As a matter of semantics, neo-liberalism delivered on the promise of freedom...for capitalists to be free of ethical accountability, social responsibility, and government regulation and taxes...
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Jun 23, 2019 | discussion.theguardian.com
economicalternative , 11 Apr 2019 20:42
Finally. A writer who can talk about neoliberalism as NOT being a retro version of classical laissez faire liberalism. It is about imposing "The Market" as the sole arbiter of Truth on us all.Only the 'Market' knows what is true in life - no need for 'democracy' or 'education'.
Neoliberals believe - unlike classical liberals with their view of people as rational individuals acting in their own self-interest - people are inherently 'unreliable', stupid.
Only entrepreneurs - those close to the market - can know 'the truth' about anything.
To succeed we all need to take our cues in life from what the market tells us. Neoliberalism is not about a 'small state'. The state is repurposed to impose the 'all knowing' market on everyone and everything. That is neoliberalism's political project. It is ultimately not about 'economics'.
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Jun 23, 2019 | discussion.theguardian.com
HolyInsurgent -> GeorgeMonbiot , 5 Mar 2012 22:44
But the world didn't work like that, and the people who didn't fit had to be shoved under the wheel of history.
This is a remarkably similar summation of Rand's worldview of entire classes of people: if you are poor, you deserve it. Expect nothing from the State to raise you from the cycle of poverty. The State is evil and should be eliminated. No evil can come from the Business Culture (or more accurately the Business Cult). The U.S. Republican worldview summed up right there.
The only sane response to Ayn Rand is the creation of the Human Values Project , where creating a better world for all is its manifesto and mandate.
Many thanks for the article. The Right keep erecting her on a pedestal and saying her ideas are infallible like the Pope. She can't be pulled down off that pedestal enough times.
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Apr 12, 2019 | discussion.theguardian.com
wariquari -> Pushers11 , 12 Apr 2019 16:56
Your claim is not that people decide rights via participation in political process (social contract), it is that there are universal natural individual rights that cannot be violated based in... something; there is no negotiability like there is with the social contract. Your apparantly foundationless rights cannot be changed by political process - so where do they come from?Pushers11 -> wariquari , 12 Apr 2019 10:44Your claim is that some quality of people grants immutable rights, not that rights are decided by people. Are you of the strain that thinks we should be allowed to starve our kids (Rothbard)? Or that non-capitalist societies are fair game to be killed and enslaved, to have thier land put to 'better' use (Locke)? Perhaps that latter one underlies the feeling that it would be easy to up sticks and move to some undefined piece of land.
You have changed the nice things you listed now, you said maternity leave/pay, weekends, etc. Those were granted by collective potitical action, not the generosity of the capitalists. If Jeff Bezos could hire 1st graders he obviously would.
So you having to leave because you don't wamt to participate in tax paying is coercion, but people having to leave because they don't want to live under Libertarianism isn't?
Incidentally, which countries at the top of the PISA or OECD rankings do not have massive state education?
As for Hong Kong, its entire existence is predicated on extreme acts of aggression by the British. The opium trade and its profits started the ball rolling after an aggressive war. The Hong Kong authority also owns most of the land, leasing it; they therefore have massive influence on who gets what and what they do with it - more so than most other nations.
"As you are free to leave, no individual state institution is is forcing you to participate under pain of violence. If the fact you have no place to go that does not take tax means that you are coerced, then someone who cannot live but by participation in free-market capitalism would also be coerced into participation"
I think we won't agree on this because we have a fundamentally different understanding of coercion. The way I see it, I should not have a leave the place I live in to not have coercive action taking away my money. I should be able to say, no thanks. It is the difference between my willingly purchasing something and a mugger taking my money at gunpoint. The State is the gun. Always has been, always will be. And yes, there is a place for the gun in society - defence - but not in extorting money from peaceful people.
And people can and do live without being part of the capitalist system. They can live off the land. They can set up communes. They can use a barter system if they want. Capitalism just gives people more opportunities, but they can opt out if they want. Or move to a place that doesn't have capitalism, like many places in Africa or South America or Cuba. Funny who must people try to leave those places though. Millions do not flock there. They do the other way round.
"In your opinion."
Yes, true. In my opinion. But I have backed that opinion up with a well reasoned argument for my position. It didn't just come out of thin air. It comes from recognising the nature of government is force, violence and coercion. Again, it is the gun in society. And in my opinion, I think it is wrong, immoral and will always lead to bad outcomes to use the gun to solve societies more tricky problems. And we can clearly see the bad results of public / State education, socialised healthcare, welfare, government involvement in the economy, etc, etc, etc. All do badly.
"Did I? I didn't sign up before birth to participate, and I have no other options but to participate or die."
You have other options, as previously mentioned. Live off the land, move to a non-capitalist country, set up a commune, etc.
"Still unsure upon what these rights are based. The mere fact that people can reason does not necessarily instill or ground right."
Where else can they come from? If you say "government". Well when does government get its power and decide on your rights? From the people that make up government. So we are back to people again.
"You tell us elsewhere that we don't really have capitalism, the state and other actors dominate and fiddle etc. Now you clam capitalism has provided all these nice things* - pick one."
No. It is not a case of picking one. It is not an "either / or" situation. Economic freedom and economic oppression exist on a sliding scale. You have more free economies, like the US (especially prior to 1913) and you have less free economies, like the USSR or Cuba. The parts of freedom we have, give us the good stuff, gives us innovation and allows society to grow richer and lift more people out of poverty. The more bad stuff that gets involved, the less we have, the more society stagnates. The USSR was a lot poorer and dirtier (environmentally) and had a lot more famine and waste because it was highly centrally controlled.
"So it had nothing to do with quasi-British authorities selling narcotics to mainland China then?"
Not much. There may have been some of that but nowhere near enough to explain the explosion of wealth in HK.
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Mar 06, 2012 | discussion.theguardian.com
@silverwhistleWe ARE social animals. Which is why I laugh when I hear right-wing opinions compared to the laws of the jungle. As far as I can gather, in the jungle, there are no such things as property laws, inheritance, land enclosure, or indeed money! Humanity's development is as socialised societies, with surpluses, consent, and so on.
And there has never been free-market capitalism. A misnomer if ever there was one.
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Apr 10, 2019 | discussion.theguardian.com
Brexit is the spawn of neoliberalism....Holding up the EU as the root of all woes, while at the same time dominating political discourse and deflecting the blame from the real culprits.
All at a time when public spending cuts in the name of austerity (itself a direct reaction to the failings of the neoliberal economic system) are spreading untold misery. At a time when we finally have an opposition ready to challenge the policies of austerity, the issue has been conveniently brushed under the brexit rug.
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Jan 10, 2019 | discussion.theguardian.com
Apomorph -> GeorgeMonbiot , 10 Apr 2019 18:19
Right-wing ideology is often presented as a natural state and not ideological at all. This denial is a central feature, acting as a way of abdicating responsibility for harmful and selfish actions and providing means of fostering intellectual suspicion to prevent challenges or structured and coherent critiques like your own.The right engenders coalitions of people disinterested in politics and distrustful of politicians with those who feel intellectually superior but see politics as an amoral game in the pursuit of "enlightened" self-interest.
As a result, everything about it is disingenous.
There is no alternative (that we want you to choose). It's not racist to (constantly, always negatively and to the expense of everything else) talk about immigration. Cutting taxes for the rich reduces inequality (because we change the criteria to exclude the richest from the calculations). This is also because there are dualities at play. Neoliberalism relies on immigration to increase worker competition and suppress wage demand but courts the xenophobic vote (which is why even with reduced EU migration Brexit has so far increased overall immigration and would continue to do so in the event of no deal or May's deal). Both Remainers and Leavers have accused the other of being a neoliberal project, and in certain aspects -because of these dualities - both sides are correct.
I also believe the disdain for "political correctness" is somewhat a result of neoliberalism, since marketisation is so fundamental to the project and the wedge of the market is advertising, the language of bullshit and manipulation. People railing against political correctness feel judged for their automatic thoughts that they identify as natural instead of culturally determined. Behavioural advertising encourages these thoughts and suppresses consideration. It is a recipe for resentment.
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Jun 23, 2019 | discussion.theguardian.com
The other point to be made is that the return of fundamentalist nationalism is arguably a radicalized form of neoliberalism. If 'free markets' of enterprising individuals have been tested to destruction, then capitalism is unable to articulate an ideology with which to legitimise itself.Therefore, neoliberal hegemony can only be perpetuated with authoritarian, nationalist ideologies and an order of market feudalism.
In other words, neoliberalism's authoritarian orientations, previously effaced beneath discourses of egalitarian free-enterprise, become overt.
The market is no longer an enabler of private enterprise, but something more like a medieval religion, conferring ultimate authority on a demagogue.
Individual entrepreneurs collectivise into a 'people' serving a market which has become synonymous with nationhood. A corporate state emerges, free of the regulatory fetters of democracy.
The final restriction on the market - democracy itself - is removed. There then is no separate market and state, just a totalitarian market state.
Pinkie123 -> economicalternative , 12 Apr 2019 02:57
Yes, the EU is an ordoliberal institution - the state imposing rules on the market from without. Thus, it is not the chief danger. The takeover of 5G, and therefore our entire economy and industry, by Huawei - now that would be a loss of state sovereignty. But because Huawei is nominally a corporation, people do not think about is a form of governmental bureaucracy, but if powerful enough that is exactly what it is.economicalternative -> Pinkie123 , 11 Apr 2019 21:33Pinkie123: So good to read your understandings of neoliberalism. The political project is the imposition of the all seeing all knowing 'market' on all aspects of human life. This version of the market is an 'information processor'. Speaking of the different idea of the laissez-faire version of market/non market areas and the function of the night watchman state are you aware there are different neoliberalisms? The EU for example runs on the version called 'ordoliberalism'. I understand that this still sees some areas of society as separate from 'the market'?economicalternative -> ADamnSmith2016 , 11 Apr 2019 21:01ADamnSmith: Philip Mirowski has discussed this 'under the radar' aspect of neoliberalism. How to impose 'the market' on human affairs - best not to be to explicit about what you are doing. Only recently has some knowledge about the actual neoliberal project been appearing. Most people think of neoliberalism as 'making the rich richer' - just a ramped up version of capitalism. That's how the left has thought of it and they have been ineffective in stopping its implementation.subtropics , 11 Apr 2019 13:51Neoliberalism allows with impunity pesticide businesses to apply high risk toxic pesticides everywhere seriously affecting the health of children, everyone as well as poisoning the biosphere and all its biodiversity. This freedom has gone far too far and is totally unacceptable and these chemicals should be banished immediately.Pinkie123 , 11 Apr 2019 13:27The left have been entirely wrong to believe that neoliberalism is a mobilisation of anarchic, 'free' markets. It never was so. Only a few more acute thinkers on the left (Jacques Ranciere, Foucault, Deleuze and, more recently, Mark Fisher, Wendy Brown, Will Davies and David Graeber) have understood neoliberalism to be a techno-economic order of control, requiring a state apparatus to enforce wholly artificial directives.Also, the work of recent critics of data markets such as Shoshana Zuboff has shown capitalism to be evolving into a totalitarian system of control through cybernetic data aggregation.
Only in theory is neoliberalism a form of laissez-faire. Neoliberalism is not a case of the state saying, as it were: 'OK everyone, we'll impose some very broad legal parameters, so we'll make sure the police will turn up if someone breaks into your house; but otherwise we'll hang back and let you do what you want'.
Hayek is perfectly clear that a strong state is required to force people to act according to market logic. If left to their own devices, they might collectivise, think up dangerous utopian ideologies, and the next thing you know there would be socialism.
This the paradox of neoliberalism as an intellectual critique of government: a socialist state can only be prohibited with an equally strong state. That is, neoliberals are not opposed to a state as such, but to a specifically centrally-planned state based on principles of social justice - a state which, to Hayek's mind, could only end in t totalitarianism.
Because concepts of social justice are expressed in language, neoliberals are suspicious of linguistic concepts, regarding them as politically dangerous. Their preference has always been for numbers. Hence, market bureaucracy aims for the quantification of all values - translating the entirety of social reality into metrics, data, objectively measurable price signals. Numbers are safe. The laws of numbers never change. Numbers do not lead to revolutions. Hence, all the audit, performance review and tick-boxing that has been enforced into public institutions serves to render them forever subservient to numerical (market) logic. However, because social institutions are not measurable, attempts to make them so become increasingly mystical and absurd. Administrators manage data that has no relation to reality. Quantitatively unmeasurable things - like happiness or success - are measured, with absurd results.
It should be understood (and I speak above all as a critic of neoliberalism) that neoliberal ideology is not merely a system of class power, but an entire metaphysic, a way of understanding the world that has an emotional hold over people. For any ideology to universalize itself, it must be based on some very powerful ideas. Hayek and Von Mises were Jewish fugitives of Nazism, living through the worst horrors of twentieth-century totalitarianism. There are passages of Hayek's that describe a world operating according to the rules of a benign abstract system that make it sound rather lovely. To understand neoliberalism, we must see that it has an appeal.
However, there is no perfect order of price signals. People do not simply act according to economic self-interest. Therefore, neoliberalism is a utopian political project like any other, requiring the brute power of the state to enforce ideological tenets. With tragic irony, the neoliberal order eventually becomes not dissimilar to the totalitarian regimes that Hayek railed against.
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Apr 10, 2019 | discussion.theguardian.com
hartebeest -> consumerx, 10 Apr 2019 19:24
...with Trump the ideological patina of faith in free markets has gone and he's more or less just engaged in an asset stripping exercise. Thing is, though, you can't get away with that without some kind of distraction, and in Trump's case it's his country club racist's understanding of geopolitics converted into campaign rhetoric and immigration policy.consumerx -> hartebeest , 10 Apr 2019 18:57I don't think this is some masterplan -- he just happened to stumble into the stage at a point where there was an opening for his kind of rhetoric. I'm just amazed someone smarter didn't see it earlier and capitalise.
Disagree,Under Trumps tax plan, a single mother with 2 kids working fulltime at minumum wage gets 75 dollars a YEAR in childcare, about $-1.50 per week.
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While the rich, those making up to 400,000 per year get 2000.00 per year child credit off their taxes.
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Name a benefit for the poor, that the recent tax bill passed by Trump and GREEDY GOP.
-----------------------------------------------------In his first speech to a joint session of Congress, President Trump promised to deliver on his populist campaign pledges to protect Americans from globalization. "For too long," he bemoaned, "we've watched our middle class shrink as we've exported our jobs and wealth to foreign countries." But now, he asserted, the time has come to "restart the engine of the American economy" and "bring back millions of jobs."
To achieve his goals, Trump proposed mixing massive tax-cuts and sweeping regulatory rollbacks with increased spending on the military, infrastructure and border control.
This same messy mix of free market fundamentalism and hyper-nationalistic populism is presently taking shape in Trump's proposed budget. But the apparent contradiction there isn't likely to slow down Trump's pro-market, pro-Wall Street, pro-wealth agenda.
His supporters may soon discover that his professions of care for those left behind by globalization are -- aside from some mostly symbolic moves on trade -- empty.
Just look at what has already happened with the GOP's proposed replacement for Obamacare, which if enacted would bring increased pain and suffering to the anxious voters who put their trust in Trump's populism in the first place.
While these Americans might have thought their votes would win them protection from the instabilities and austerities of market-led globalization, what they are getting is a neoliberal president in populist clothing.
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Jun 23, 2019 | discussion.theguardian.com
OceaneBorgia , 6 Mar 2012 08:06
I adore the ill educated, unintentional, satirical nature of some of the Rand supporters comments here - unsurprisingly predominantly American. Who appear to have a tenuous grasp on the nature and meaning of philosophy. Who replace rational thought with cod philosophy and hysterical rants, - that would embarrass your average cargo cult worshiper - as a justification for their own sociopathy and intellectual inadequacy. Take a bow... MoreThanExists and the even more comic BruceMajorsIronic isn't it, America may end up becoming the Western world's first failed state? A kind of Somalia with hamburgers,obesity and better drainage; ruled by Christian fundamentalist neo liberal warlords and Ayn Rand inspired gangsters, funded by Wall Street parasites, with the Tea Party as the Sturm Abteilung (SA), and "Atlas Shrugged" as their most sacred holy text written by a third rate Sadeian dominatrix.
Remember the fascist war cry as they went into battle against Republican troops during the Spanish Civil War, "Death to the intellect! Long live death!". How appropriate?!! Maybe Rand's disciples could work that into a revised version of "The Star-Spangled Banner.?"
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Apr 11, 2019 | discussion.theguardian.com
twiglette -> apacheman , 11 Apr 2019 05:19
"Liberal" originally meant the freedom to trade and do business. Before liberalism trade was controlled by cartels, guilds and gifted by prerogative. The freedom to trade is not the root cause of our problems. The drift to monopoly and the legal enforcement of it is new and should be resisted. But the freedom to do business is a freedom for us all.
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Apr 11, 2019 | discussion.theguardian.com
mi Griffin , 11 Apr 2019 01:15
2 simple points that epitomize neo liberalism.1. Hayek's book 'The Road to Serfdom' uses an erroneous metaphor. He argues that if we allow gov regulation, services and spending to continue then we will end up serfs. However, serfs are basically the indentured or slave labourers of private citizens and landowners not of the state. Only in a system of private capital can there be serfs. Neo liberalism creates serfs not a public system.
2. According to Hayek all regulation on business should be eliminated and only labour should be regulated to make it cheap and contain it so that private investors can have their returns guaranteed. Hence the purpose of the state is to pass laws to suppress workers.
These two things illustrate neo-liberalism. Deception and repression of labour.
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Apr 10, 2019 | discussion.theguardian.com
1000100101 -> sejong , 10 Apr 2019 17:53
Neoliberalism/'free enterprise' is techno-feudalism.
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Apr 11, 2019 | discussion.theguardian.com
Brightdayler -> fakeamoonlanding, 11 Apr 2019 03:15
Neoliberalism is not an ideology in its practical application. It is a business model for structuring the economy for rent seeking or wealth extraction: turning everything into a cash cow to be milked until it's dry and then move on to the next one.Brightdayler, 11 Apr 2019 03:13I agree, although a few points need to be added.First, neoliberalism, to those who understand how finance works (no mainstream economist, then) was never an economic theory, but rather a business model: essentially it describes how to structure an economy for rent seeking.
Michael Hudson describes it as "pro-finance". His definition of austerity, which is part and parcel of the neoliberal business model, is also worth quoting: "austerity is what a good economic policy looks like to a creditor [rentier]"; in other words, it has nothing to do with the economically meaningless notion of good housekeeping (state finances are radically different from household finances).
Second, the freedom that Adam Smith talked about was freedom for the real economy from rent seeking, from wealth extraction - freedom, in modern parlance, from the neoliberal business model.
fakeamoonlanding -> rjb04tony , 11 Apr 2019 03:04
I think you are confusing the state with the ideology. Neoliberalism is an ideology that has become embedded in the state. Of course it is the state that privatises public services to private firms. But the ideology behind that policy is what George Monbiot is writing about.I work for the NHS myself. Take for example, the policy of foundation trusts bidding to run services hundreds of miles from their bases, etc. It may be state policy, but it is a neoliberal nonsense. You would find the NHS littered with bureaucracy that would not be there if the neoliberal ideology of trying to foster "competition" had not become a state policy.
zootsuitbeatnick , 11 Apr 2019 01:58
"Neoliberalism promised freedom – instead it delivers stifling control"The term "neoliberal" is misleading. Neoliberals put capital above people. Neoliberals are the next-worst thing to neoconservatives. That said, why would anybody trust a pols promise?
imo
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Apr 11, 2019 | discussion.theguardian.com
Only the greedy, selfish, well off, egotistical and share holders believe that Public Services should, could and would benefit from privatisation and deregulation.Education and Health for example are (in theory) a universal right in the UK. As numbers in the population rise and demographics change so do costs ie delivery of the service becomes more expensive.As market force logic is introduced it also becomes less responsive - hence people not able to get the right drugs and treatment and challenging and challenged young people being denied an education that is vital for them in increasing numbers.
Meanwhile - as Public Services are devalued and denuded in this system the private sector becomes increasingly wealthy at the top while its workers become poorer and less powerful at the bottom.
With the introduction of Tory austerity which punishes the latter to the benefit of the former there is no surprise that this system does not work and has provided a platform for the unscrupulous greedy and corrupt to exploit Brexit and produce conditions which will take 'Neoliberalism' to where logic suggests it would always go - with the powerful rich protected minority exerting their power over an increasingly poor and powerless majority.
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Apr 10, 2019 | discussion.theguardian.com
Monkeybiz -> dd34342 , 10 Apr 2019 20:27
The competitive tender approach ensures the cheapest bids get the contracts and the cheapest bids are those most likely to employ exploited labour and cheap materials as well as cutting corners. Result? a job of sorts gets done, but the quality is rubbish, with no investment or pride in the product. Look at Hong Kong where this is longstanding practice: new tunnel, half the extractor fans do not work correctly because they were poorly installed. I once spoke to the Chief Engineer of the Tsing Ma bridge, he was stressed out of his socks for the whole construction period trying to monitor all the subcontractors who had bid so low they had to cheat to make a profit with the result that they would try to cut corners and avoid doing things if they thought they could get away with it. Good job that engineer was diligent. Others may be less able or willing.Monkeybiz -> dd34342 , 10 Apr 2019 20:20BTW: I seldom find comparisons in UK-media to other countries when those countries are better.
I think that's because most of the UK media is propaganda for the established system, which they rely on for advertising revenue and access to information. If an outlet's journalists start seriously questioning the existing system, a few things happen: 1. the journo doesn't get promoted within the system; 2. their access to information is curtailed (they are not invited to briefings etc., and; 3. advertising revenue drops. As the business model of most mainstream media is to present consumer audiences to advertisers, this is not going to sit well with the owners, see 1 and 2 above leading to poor evaluations. Any journo with half a brain quickly learns this and fits in. Only so far and no further.
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Apr 10, 2019 | discussion.theguardian.com
Richard Burston , 10 Apr 2019 17:11
As a Tory for most of my longish life, I have to agree that whilst some things have flourished once privatised, certain services must remain in public ownership and control to enable governments to improve or reduce, depending on national taxation and expenditure - if people want better services then they must be prepared to pay for them, and of course the long-term pensions of the workforce. Managers should be subject matter experts before running departments, not just accountants or management consultants, so they can improve delivery not just constantly re-structure or carp on about 'efficiency savings'.Having worked in shipping, that industry has oscillated several times but rail is an interesting example - a disaster in the dying days of national ownership, the private world started well improving safety, reliability and capacity but has gone downhill in recent years, not helped by the track management system. Again, the airlines started well but now several have gone into administration and BA has 'down-qualitied' itself to become one of the worst.
Some parts of the NHS can be provided by private industry but limited to service provision and collective buying only - certainly NOT cancer screening.
Then, when you look at private providers who go bust and completely fail to provide any acceptable capability - jails, probation, social care etc. one wonders when, if ever, politicians will realise that it costs them, the civil service and commercial management an incredible amount of time, effort and cost just to fail!
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Apr 10, 2019 | discussion.theguardian.com
MichaelAnthony , 10 Apr 2019 17:31
Outsourcing government work is the most inefficient way of getting it done for the benefit of taxpayers. When the profits private companies make from it are added to what economies must invest to pay the taxes for it it's astonishing how popular it has become throughout the world, something only explicable if those authorising it are amongst the most stupid of financial administrators or the most corrupt.
Outsourcing for example £1m worth of work requires that amount to be paid in taxes, which needs about £5m to be earned in wages and profits to pay £1m in taxes, which in turn needs an investment of perhaps ten times that amount, when the £1m is borrowed by debt laden governments to be repaid by over-borrowed and overtaxed economies.
If the outsourced company is not profit-making it will borrow the capital to be able to deliver what's required and that in turn will raise the amount it will want for future work, which is what I think accounts for Carillion and the other outsource giants going to the wall.
The process is generally the fault of governments failing to adhere strictly to the necessity of only paying its workforce on average the same as the private sector pays its workers, which in democracies is not an unfair requirement demanded by equality legislation. Many would claim that such was why Margaret Thatcher decided on privatising so many public utilities especially after the miners' strike in Ted Heath's government and why it gained so much support and popularity when wages and benefits for similar skill levels seemed so much better and jobs more secure for many public sector workers involved than they were in the private sector. Now of course, the high costs of private necessary public services are making life unbearable for the majority of workers and welfare recipients while profits are going abroad to those who own them and the EU in getting the flak – courtesy of the media - for the resultant poverty and austerity, allowed the false £350m a week to win the referendum. The £4 billion a week worth of exports to the EU paid most of that and the way companies are relocating to hedge against Brexit means a lot of lost jobs will go with them – some earlier estimates but it at more than 100,000 - which doesn't seem to deter those determinedly wanting out of the EU one little bit.
This is a blessing for the low labour cost Member States, who being in the populous markets the multinationals need, can attract the UK industries looking to further cut costs and freight charges so those that go will never come back because higher costs in the Brexit UK will not be compensated for easily with uncompetitive price hikes for EU customers, unlike CAP payments that have been promised to farmers by the government proBrexit Minister.
The doom and gloom felt by many I think is well justified when sovereign debt and bank credit is considered relative to taxes. While sovereign debt is regarded as an asset and future taxes are acceptable for bank credit and both can be securitized by banking systems to borrow even more capital that will be acceptable to central banks as QE, it's not surprising that sovereigns don't need to worry about economies being unable to provide the taxes their governments unlawfully spend even when leaving it for future generations is also unlawful i.e. is a crime, since if they don't, their central banks and bond holders covered by them will. When the cost in trillions since 2016 already spent by government in preparing for Brexit is included one can't help but think that the financial economy has made a proverbial killing from UK incorporated and now owns most if not all of it. If most of the finance for Brexit came from its financiers and investors is it possible that after Brexit they'll pour trillions back into the economy to make it capable of not only surviving but also competing favourably with the EU, Japan, China, and the US?
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Apr 10, 2019 | discussion.theguardian.com
makingalist -> Richard Burston , 10 Apr 2019 18:06
I have to disagree. Hardly anything has flourished after privatisation. The big failures, which get all the publicity, were generally basket case private businesses which had to be nationalised to save them from collapse.Sometimes they are stuffed with public money and sold at a loss to the public, like the Tory nationalisation of Rolls Royce, or deprived of funds like British Rail to provide an excuse to liberate thousands of square miles of real estate
This latter is the scheme for the NHS with hospitals and other property provided at great public expense sold off to any shark who says he has the money, and once it's private load the enterprise with debt and walk away.
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Apr 10, 2019 | discussion.theguardian.com
hartebeest , 10 Apr 2019 18:42
Back in the Thatcher/Reagan years there were at people around who genuinely believed in the superiority of the market, or at least, made the effort to set out an intellectual case for it.Now we're in a different era. After 2008, hardly anyone really believes in neoliberal ideas anymore, not to the point that they'd openly make the case for them anyway. But while different visions have appeared to some extent on both left and right, most of those in positions of power and influence have so internalised Thatcher's 'there is no alternative' that it's beyond their political horizons to treat any alternatives which do emerge as serious propositions, let alone come up with their own.
So neoliberalism stumbles on almost as a reflex action. Ben Fine calls it a 'zombie' but I think the better analogy is cannibalism. Unlike the privatisations of the 80s and 90s there's barely any pretence these days that new sell-offs are anything more than simply part of a quest to find new avenues for profit-making in an economy with tons of liquid capital but not enough places to profitability put it. Because structurally speaking most of the economy is tapped out.
Privatising public services at this point is just a way to asset strip and/or funnel public revenue streams to a private sector which has been stuck in neoliberal short-term, low skill, low productivity, low wage, high debt mode for so long that it has lost the ability to grow. So now it is eating itself, or at least eating the structures which hold it up and allow it to survive.
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Apr 10, 2019 | discussion.theguardian.com
lollipops42 , 10 Apr 2019 18:49
The central premise used by Governments for privatising public servcies seems to have been that publicly run services are inefficient compared to private companies; that the need to turn a profit means wasteful systems and behaviours are minimised. Therefore, money can be saved by outsourcing as private companies can provide the same or better service more cheaply.I think this is very disrespectful to all those who work in public service, many of whom are dedicated to their jobs to provide care or a good service to members of the public. The idea that making money is the only motivating force that can make someone do their job well seems flawed. Further, if efficiency gains alone are not enough to make a profit, then the only recourse for companies is to provide a poorer service or be more exploitative of their employees, which is regularly played out.
This central premise is not widely challenged by politicians. It seems accepted as fact. I wonder if there have been any studies to either support or challenge this idea.
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Mar 06, 2012 | discussion.theguardian.com
NotWithoutMyMonkey , 6 Mar 2012 04:22
The likes of BruceMajors here don't get it.'Big-gubment' exists to enforce property-rights. Libertarians bleat on about how freedom is founded in the right own to property and yet fail to realise that these so-called 'rights', which are a negation of natural rights (the world and it's resources belongs to all equally, and that lands to land, water and seed are in essence premised on theft) requires a large, powerful and authoritarian apparatus capable of effectively projecting violence to enforce property rights. claims to property are premised on violence.
Your so-called philosophy fails on first premises.
And in case you don't get it, the threat of a worker revolution saw the welfare state arise as a carrot to complement the stick. With the stick becoming increasingly ineffective in the earlier part of the 20th century, the disquiet needed to be quelled through other means. That method was the social democratic welfare state. The collapse of Communism as an existential threat, followed by the emergence of economic globalisation (shopping around for the cheapest labour), consumerism and automation have all effectively eroded class solidarity amongst those most disenfranchised by a state enforced inequality and eroded the value of labour. The beneficiaries of the state as a mechanism for enforcing their claims to property no longer need the working classes.
Hence we find that around the world, western democracies are withdrawing the carrot and reasserting the stick.
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Jun 21, 2019 | discussion.theguardian.com
Interesting opinion about Warren 'the wonk' in the Washington Examiner:LinusL -> LinusL , 3d ago"She's got a (borrowed) plan for that: The media myth of Elizabeth Warren the wonk"
Also, where are her positions on military budgets, Empire and foreign policy?Vassili555 -> LinusL , 3d agoAnd why hasn't she come out strong for Medicare for All?
Actually Warren has come out strong in favor of Medicare for All and the Green New Deal in every public speech I've seen.LinusL -> Vassili555 , 3d agohttps://jacobinmag.com/2019/06/elizabeth-warren-medicare-for-all-health-care-policy
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Jun 21, 2019 | discussion.theguardian.com
Clinton said vote for me because I am a woman, Warren says vote for me because I am a potential leader who happens to be a woman. Good luck to her and the USDargyva -> aussiecharlie , 2d agoShe's not saying anything like that, at all! She's all about economic justice policy. You noticed she's female without her even telling you.TempsdesRoses , 2d agoDon't get me wrong. I would certainly vote for her, if needed. I believe she's quite green behind the ears on foreign policy and how inequality is a global issue. Her backing of our entitled neoliberal wife of an ex-president & neocon dismayed me.Thomas1178 -> TempsdesRoses , 2d agoSanders gets the bigger picture on poverty, race, and war/ neocolonialism:
if you wish: MLK Jr's take on "The Three Evils".And yet Warren was the one censured for reading Coretta Scott King's condemnation of Jeff Sessions in the Senate while Bernie sat on his ass.Herr_Settembrini -> TempsdesRoses , 2d ago"Her backing of our entitled neoliberal wife of an ex-president & neocon dismayed me."TempsdesRoses -> Herr_Settembrini , 2d agoSanders supported Clinton too in the general election. He also actively campaigned for her.
apples and oranges, Thomas and Herr, Would you care to defend her "posture" on NATO? Ditto, for her contributing to the "Evil Vlad" narrative? Israel?? Wiki: Warren states she supports a two state solution, but she believes Palestinian application for membership in the UN isn't helpful.[63]zuftawov943 , 2d agoIn a town hall meeting in August 2014, Warren defended Israel's shelling of schools and hospitals during that summer's Israel–Gaza conflict, stating that "when Hamas puts its rocket launchers next to hospitals, next to schools, they're using their civilian population to protect their military assets. And I believe Israel has a right, at that point, to defend itself". She also questioned whether future US aid to Israel should be contingent on the halting of Israeli settlements in the West Bank.[64] In addition she defended her vote in favor of granting Israel $225 million to fund the Iron Dome air defence system.[65]
Nobody ever got elected by over-estimating the good sense of the American public.MeRaffey , 2d agoWhile the 2020 election feels critical, the 2024 election will decide the future. Like Trump himself, his base is filled with old people who are still loyal to Ronald Reagan's Republican Party. Old people watch FoxNews, old people vote, old people love Trump and in 2016, old people decided the election.kapsiolaaaaa -> MeRaffey , 2d agoYounger people do NOT vote. The younger someone is, the less likely they are to vote. However, young people voted for Obama, twice, but when Hillary came along, they stayed home and let the old people choose the president.
And then, in 2018 the young voted again and we learned the next generation plans to take this country into the future. If the young vote in 2020, Trump is toast. If the young stay home, Trump will see a second term.
However, by 2024 the young will assume their rightful place in history and the age of old white men running the country, and the world will come to an end.
You are making assumptions that old people are idiots. Making assumptions that middle aged people do not exist or are small in numbers. Trump gets 200 or so electoral votes. He loses. I don't see any case he wins. He is past his 'used by date' even for Republicans. You loose Tx to the Ds its game over, add PA and OH to the list. It doesn't even matter what crazy FL man thinks.zuftawov943 -> MeRaffey , 2d agoDon't forget modern geriatric medicine, by which the dinosaurs in the senate and elsewhere in the hardening arteries of the US body politic will live - and hold ofice - for even longer than Strom Thurmond. They can afford the private medical insurance to pay for it.Mujokan , 2d agoBy the way, MeRaffey , I hope you meant to omit to punctuate in your last phrase so that it would read: ... the age of old white men running the country and the world will come to an end . Your comma has me worried.
Warren/Harris, said it before but it makes sense. I would've preferred Biden to Clinton but I can't see him getting the same turnout as Warren. Opinions on Trump are now fixed, it's a red herring to worry about "firing up" Trump supporters, they are already as fired up as they can get. Swing voters are probably going to vote by where the economy is which is out of our control. Ideally Democrats will be just as fired up as Trumpists, the investigations will suppress their enthusiasm somewhat (though they wouldn't care if he killed someone so...) and the coming Trump recession will be brought on by his trade wars and the blame will therefore fall where it should.lightchaser , 2d agoWarren lied about her ancestry to circumvent diversity quotas. Why should anyone believe anything she has to say? Furthermore, What exactly is she promising that is any different then any of the other radical leftists running right now? It's all "Free Stuff" that she's going to make the rich pay for. Um..yeah, that always works out doesn't it? Who needs real math when fuzzy math makes us believe the combined wealth of the richest Americans will finance all this "free" stuff to say nothing about why so many Americans feel entitled to the earnings of others. Remember folks, if a politician says 2+2=6 then it must be true.Mujokan -> lightchaser , 2d ago"Warren lied about her ancestry to circumvent diversity quotas. Why should anyone believe anything she has to say?" You are going to be told this a million times before 11/20 but that's bullshit. It's been well established that she didn't get any job because of that.lightchaser -> Mujokan , 2d agoShe claimed Native American ancestry on her application to Harvard, a job she got and it wasn't the first time she played this card either. But hey, in a political party that loves to change races and genders and expects everyone else to go along with the charade by all means go ahead and believe what you want to believe.Thomas1178 -> lightchaser , 2d agoA lie, see Snopes, see any link you've been given each time you post this lie. She got it on merit.BaronVonAmericano , 2d ago"In the most exhaustive review undertaken of Elizabeth Warren's professional history, the Globe found clear evidence, in documents and interviews, that her claim to Native American ethnicity was never considered by the Harvard Law faculty, which voted resoundingly to hire her, or by those who hired her to four prior positions at other law schools. At every step of her remarkable rise in the legal profession, the people responsible for hiring her saw her as a white woman."
With Warren and Sanders talking complete sense about our oligarchy, the electorate's expectations are going to improve. Nothing could be better. We've been asked to settle for Republican-lite servants of mammon for too long in the Democratic Party and that's going to change.tigerfisch , 2d agoThe danger, of course, is that in this transition period Biden gets nominated. However much centrists will clamor for voters to hold their nose and vote for him, that's not an electoral strategy. Trump's best chance of winning is that Biden gets nominated and the progressive base of the Democratic Party is totally demoralized and lacking energy by late 2020.
After the US public allowed themselves to be hypnotized by Trump's campaign of fatuous lies, empty promises and racist dog whistles, I doubted the electorate possessed the wit to understand actual policies. Maybe they've finally woken up - time will tell.Jdivney -> tigerfisch , 2d agoDo you understand how elections work? The US public were hypnotized? He lost the popular vote. The fault lies with the Republican establishment for letting him put the R after his name. Perot ran on essentially the same ticket back in 92 as a third party candidate. He got 18% of the vote. Had he run as a Republican he could well have won.tigerfisch -> Jdivney , 2d agoOh dear. The question is, do you know how US elections work? The popular vote is irrelevant. He's the 5th POTUS who lost the popular vote. Almost 63 million hypnotized dolts voted for him, and he won - that's why he currently resides in the WHThomas1178 -> tigerfisch , 2d agoOr neither "hypnotized" nor "dolts." The people I knew who voted for him in North Carolina thought he was an asshole. But they wanted a conservative Supreme Court for the next two decades and he has delivered that for them. Why do you assume that people on the right are idiots who don't know what they want? That essential presumption by the left is one of the reasons the left lost last time.Thomas1178 , 2d agoAs one who used to be a Warren supporter, I think she is both patronizing voters and pandering to them. These policies have some detail, sure, but they don't deal with the consequences that Warren knows very well lurk in the wings and as a result they don't necessarily make sense.Thomas1178 -> Thomas1178 , 2d agoHer proposal for free college is one example – sounds great, while in reality it would benefit the better-off middle class at the expense of the most vulnerable students and create a cascade of problems that she has no plans to fix.
Again, fining companies for data breaches? Surely we should fine them *if* they don't immediately report data breaches to their customers– or maybe if they haven't maintained appropriate data security, although I'd love to see proving that one to a court. Hell, if we're going to fine them for data breaches, do we start with the DNC?
PS To be clear, I'd still take her in a second over Fat Nixon, I just wish she would pander less and keep her plans to the sensible and achievable, like her consumer protection bureau, which was a fantastic idea.cheryl kimble -> Thomas1178 , 2d agocorps get fined for data breaches today. ever heard of a hippa violation?Thomas1178 -> cheryl kimble , 2d agoYes, (politely) do you? The fines for HIPAA violation have to do with noncompliance with the act, not with an uncontrollable data breach. The fines increase on a sliding scale if "willful neglect" has been found (the data were not properly secured) or if the company delays in reporting a data breach/violation.PaulOram , 2d agoWhich is pretty much exactly what I said above.
Yep - No more old white guys - just being disgusted by Trump is not enough - people want new ideas. EW all the way - with AOC by her side as well hopefully.Thomas1178 -> PaulOram , 2d agoThere is nothing Trump fears more than the stigma of being a one term pres - his ego would implode.
Oh, I think he fears going to prison more. Michael Cohen was right – the minute Trump is no longer protected by the presidency he is going to be facing charges, on tax evasion if nothing else. He will do anything to keep his protection for more years. He's probably hoping to die in office. (I'd add something to that, but I don't want the Secret Service visiting me!)MeRaffey -> outkast1213 , 2d agowhat did she do in 2016?HobbesianWorlds , 2d agoThe DNC is again placing it's foot on the scale in favor of Biden. I believe that they know Bernie is less likely to win because of America's irrational fear of the word, "socialism." That's why they put Biden and Sanders on the stage together and pushed out Elizabeth Warren to the other debate with lesser known and less popular candidates. They do not what her, with her solid plans, to confront Biden, which would give her a greater boost in the polls and more recognition across the nation.Jdivney -> HobbesianWorlds , 2d agoIt was a random drawing. No one has disputed that.HobbesianWorlds -> Jdivney , 2d agoAnd who was watching the drawing? Who set up the drawing? Are you saying that there was independent oversight on its setup? Or do you just take the DNC's word for it?Jdivney -> HobbesianWorlds , 2d agoAn inability to believe in coincidence will take you to some strange places. If Sanders and Warren drawn the same night you could make an argument that Biden was getting set up to look good against the lightweight opponents. Or had Sanders drawn the undercard that he was being marginalized. Warren will do fine either way. She's a great candidate. Biden isn't.HobbesianWorlds , 2d agoBiden rides high on President Obama's very long coat tails and Wall Street money even without detailed plans that actually help the working class and the poor. Bernie is riding high on his honest fight for the working class and the poor.malapropriety -> HobbesianWorlds , 2d agoElizabeth Warren is rising fast because she not only agrees with Bernie on fighting for the working class and the poor, but she has detailed plans that are holding up to independent economic scrutiny.
Both Warren and Sanders are honest in their fight for economic justice for all and recognize that the root cause of poverty and lower middle class' struggle is corporate and wealthy-individual money in politics. They aim to stop it.
Biden claims he can negotiate with McConnell. Obama reached out to McConnell his entire term and drew back a nub. The same will be true of Biden. For the Republicans and Trumpians, it's all about making Democrats fail no matter how much it hurts the working class and the poor. Their propaganda network will always assist and sustain them by appealing to the emotions and prejudices of millions of Americans.
HobbesianWorlds -> malapropriety , 2d agoBiden claims he can negotiate with McConnell. Obama reached out to McConnell his entire term and drew back a nub. The same will be true of Biden.
The same will be true of any Democrat though. There is no way around it except by expanding the powers of the office of the President, which is what has given Trump such a wide ability to repeal Obama-era policies.
Any Democrat coming up against a Republican Senate will have the same thing happen to them, although I can imagine the Republicans will hate Biden marginally less than Obama given that he's not black.
Haigin88 , 2d agoThere is no way around it except by expanding the powers of the office of the President, which is what has given Trump such a wide ability to repeal Obama-era policies.
Not the first year of his presidency. His Republican Party controlled Congress and they mostly hated Obama as well. As long as there was full control of congress, it was easy. It was not easy to remove the ACA because so many Americans liked it.
Now remember that the reasons Trump was appointed to office by the EC, was that enough far-right people voted, together with the "conservative" media adding to Russia's concentration of propaganda in the key states (stats provided to the Russians by the Trump campaign) and lifted him just enough to overcome the votes of ~3 million voters. Far more voters are now counting on voting against him and for the best Democratic candidate.
Progressives do not want to expand the powers of the Oval Office. That is the wrong thing to do. True change for the better can only come through the ballet box and by educating the voters to exactly why our government is dysfunctional and is replete with corruption.
I think the most popular message to all voters (from farmers to all others in the working class) is that corporate and private money in politics is the root cause of government corruption and dysfunction and why the collective wealth of the working class is steadily redistributing to the uber-wealthy.
The only candidates who what to change the economy to a DEMAND-side economy is are those who actually and loudly advocate it.
But just voting for a progressive president while putting the "conservative" obstructionists (those who maintain the high capacity money pipeline that runs from Wall Street to their pockets) back into Congress will mean the corruption and dysfunction will continue. Voters must be replaced by a super-majority liberal/progressive Congress, and with that, Elizabeth Warren will make that change.
I think she also knows that she should've and easily could've been president right now. That strange piece yesterday, talking about Biden and Sanders standing in front of good female candidates of today: leaving aside a keen Biden getting bullied out of 2016 by Clinton already having things sewn up, Sanders was notoriously late jumping into 2016 because he was waiting on Warren. If Warren was going to run against the wretched Clinton, he wouldn't. Warren choked so Sanders had to do it himself. Warren must know that she would have dismantled Crooked H and, seeing as Clinton was the only person who could've lost to el diablo naranja, Warren would've hammered Trump too. Hence, Warren's got some making up to do and seems very determined.Johnnybi , 2d agoShe's always been my tip. If I was an American, I would vote for Tulsi Gabbard in a second but Warren is a strong candidate and I always thought that her announcing on the last day of last year was going to give her licence to say to other candidates: "I've been running since 2018!". Warren is the candidate that liars for Clinton tried to pretend that Clinton was. A note of caution, though: someone posted a Republican survey of exactly four years ago yesterday. Bush was on 22%, Trump was polling 1%. Long time to go yet.
JudeUSA -> Johnnybi , 2d agoIn a poll last week of 2,312 registered voters in South Carolina, Warren gained nine points to reach 17% compared to Biden's 37%. Among 18-34 year olds, Warren is leading 24% to Sanders' 19% and Biden's 17%.
I keep hearing from the mainstream media that Biden is leading in the polls. But we ought to note that Biden's up against a group including Warren, Sanders, Harris etc who are pushing a progressive policies, and if you take their percentages together, Biden cannot compete. Once one of these progressive takes the lead in the group, and hires all the others as running mate, cabinet members etc, he or she will be unbeatable against both Biden and Trump.
There is no sure way of knowing how that would play out. You may be interested in looking at the Morning Consult Poll, which comes out weekly. If you scroll down to Second Choices... it gives possible outcomes for where votes may fall. According to MC poll the 2nd choice for Sanders voters is Biden, 2nd for Biden is Sanders, 2nd for Warren is Harris, 2nd for Buttigieg is Biden, and 2nd for Harris is Biden. The poll also shows results for early primary states, if you click on "Early Primary States".Thomas1178 -> Johnnybi , 2d ago
https://morningconsult.com/2020-democratic-primary /Only one question: are these the same polls that were running in ninth 2016? And if they are why do we give a crap what any of them say since we know they are all horribly wrong?Johnnybi -> JudeUSA , 2d agoThe latest of that polling features Sanders and Biden nearly neck and neck as far as approval goes. Funny you don't hear about that on CNN or MSNBC.decisivemoment -> kejovi , 2d agoIt's clear to me that the US public want action, and that means progressive policies. They were conned last time into thinking Trump represented change. But a Hillary Mark II candidate such as Biden will lead to another Trump victory.
American voters have spent so long being treated like idiots by politicians and to an even greater extent the press that Warren comes across as something new and interesting by comparison.AdamCMelb , 2d agoThere is no doubt that Warren is the best policy brain in the Democratic Party. She also has some good ideas, and some not so good ones.Jdivney -> AdamCMelb , 2d agoWere I American, I would be tempted to vote for her. But her candidacy is hopeless. It may be unfair, but the Pocahontas issue will kill her bid stone dead in the general election. Trump would be licking his chops over a Warren run.
This election won't be decided by defecting Trump voters.uraniaargus -> AdamCMelb , 2d agoThose who would be swayed by Trump using "Pocahontas" as a slur or would even pay attention to it wouldn't vote for Warren anyway. He's not going to change any minds with it, just rile up his existing sheep.BaronVonAmericano , 2d agoWhen it comes to economic regulation, Warren is second to none.Thomas1178 -> BaronVonAmericano , 2d agoHer defense of Israeli strikes on Gaza and general support for an internationalist militaristic status quo is morally blind, at best.
I think she would be an excellent Secretary of Treasury or Commerce, but needs evolution elsewhere before I'd want to see her as president.
(Of course, I'll vote for her in the general if she gets the nomination.)
That's a very narrow view of her position on Israel. She also supported the Iran treaty, boycotting Netanyahu's speech to the Senate, called on Israel to stop colonizing the West Bank and to recognize the right of Palestinians in Gaza to peaceful protest – her comments about aggression toward Gaza were about Israeli response to missiles fired by Hamas. I don't mind her having a nuanced response to what is in fact a very complex situation.petersview , 2d agopascald -> petersview , 2d agoIf talking sense and enunciating real policies is regarded as "wonky"and "nerdy"in the USA then Warren doesn't have a hope and Trump is a shoe-in.Warren has treated voters as adults, smart enough to handle her wonky style of campaigning. Instead of spoon-feeding prospective voters soundbites, Warren is giving them heaps to digest – and her polling surge shows that voters appreciate the nerdy policy talk.
Nerd used to be just an insult, aimed at anyone more intelligent, thoughtful or better-informed than the speaker. But I think now, like 'queer' and other words, it has been reclaimed and repurposed in a much more positive light.
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Aug 01, 2014 | discussion.theguardian.com
The1eyedman , 1 Aug 2014 10:11
...The CIA and security services have every right to know who is who on all and every politician and their staff. That's why we are safe. :-)freeandfair -> Woodby69 , 1 Aug 2014 10:04...They are so brave, they are pathologically afraid of everyone. And want to be "protected".
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Jun 18, 2019 | www.theguardian.com
n Friday, the Massachusetts senator Elizabeth Warren co-sponsored a bill to impose mandatory fines on companies that have data breaches. It was the kind of consumer welfare legislation that in the past would have been unremarkable. But in an era when Congress has consistently shirked its duty to shield consumers, the bill stood out.The legislation capped a week in which Warren surged in the polls. Less than eight months before the Iowa caucus, Warren is making strides in 2020 primary polls. According to an NBC News/Wall Street Journal survey of 1,000 adults, 64% of Democratic primary voters in June were enthusiastic or comfortable with Warren, compared with 57% in March. Fewer of these voters were enthusiastic or comfortable with Joe Biden and Bernie Sanders, who have lost 11 and six points, respectively, since March.
There's more. In a poll last week of 2,312 registered voters in South Carolina, Warren gained nine points to reach 17% compared to Biden's 37%. Among 18-34 year olds, Warren is leading 24% to Sanders' 19% and Biden's 17%.
There's a simple reason for Warren's sudden rise in the polls: the public has an appetite for policy
There's a simple reason for Warren's sudden rise in the polls : the public has an appetite for policy. Of all the Democratic candidates, Warren's campaign has been by far the most ideas-driven and ambitious in its policy proposals. And voters love it.
Rather than condescend to voters, like most politicians, Warren has treated voters as adults, smart enough to handle her wonky style of campaigning. Instead of spoon-feeding prospective voters soundbites, Warren is giving them heaps to digest – and her polling surge shows that voters appreciate the nerdy policy talk.
Indeed, since Warren declared her candidacy for president, she has been offering policy prescriptions for our country's most pressing ailments – and she hasn't been brainstorming in a bubble.
Week in and week out, she has been crisscrossing the country to tell receptive voters her ideas for an ultra-millionaire tax, student debt cancellation and breaking up big tech. She has also weighed in on reproductive rights, vaccines, the opioid crisis and algorithmic discrimination in automated loans. Her bevy of white papers demonstrates that there isn't a policy area Warren won't touch and she isn't worried about repelling anyone with hard-hitting proposals.
Better than any other candidate, Warren has articulated a connection between her personal and professional struggles and her ideas, lending an air of authenticity to her campaign. Her backstory – teacher turned reluctant stay-at-home mom turned Harvard Law School professor – clearly resonates with voters in important states such as Iowa and South Carolina.
That sense of reciprocity has turned Warren into a populist rock star. Instead of appealing to the lowest common denominator among the voting public, she's listening to and learning from voters in an ideas-driven campaign that doesn't take voters for granted.
The strategy is paying off – and proving wrong the outdated political wisdom that Americans don't care about the intricacies of government.
In May, Warren traveled to Kermit, West Virginia, the heart of Trump country, to pitch a $2.7bn-a-year plan to combat opioid addiction.
"Her stance is decisive and bold," Nathan Casian-Lakes told CBS News . "She has research and resources to back her ideas."
Jill Priluck's reporting and analysis has appeared in the New Yorker, Slate, Reuters and elsewhereElizabeth Warren's economic nationalism vision shows there's a better way Robert Reich
I've decided that I want to see Warren as President. She is honest and has many good ideas about the economy and offering a leg up to minorities and the poor. Her integrity is unimpeachable. I have donated small sums to her campaign. Bernie has not spoken in detail the way Warren has although his democratic socialism goes in a positive direction. There are many voters who feel that he is too old. I hope that he will approve Warren as the best candidate in the running. Biden's moment is long gone. For now I believe that another recession lurks in the near future and Warren, as a wonk, is the best person to deal with it.GWreader , 20h agoShe also does not take a dime of PAC money, which helps keep her mind cleared of hidden agendas. Because of that, she is the first candidate who campaign I've donated to.shooter gavin , 1d agoRule of thumb that is true for all politicians regardless of party. Most of what they promise they will do will never happen and much of does happen does not occur in the way they promised when they campaigned.JayThomas -> shooter gavin , 1d agoIn the case of Sen Warren she talks a lot of wonderful stuff, paid by rich people. Expect the same results. The courts will probably shoot down the wealth tax as described by Warren anyway which means everything she promises just dies.
Then she'll pull an Obama and blame the Republicans.
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Jun 21, 2019 | discussion.theguardian.com
Technocratic, neoliberal, Clinton Democrat ideas which have already proven to fail. She's for the working class, so long as that working class wears a white collar.Thomas1178 -> shaunhensley , 2d agoThe $14.5 million in emergency relief she obtained for Massachusetts fishermen says different.PhilosophicalSquid -> shaunhensley , 2d agoYouve left something out, that should be 'Neo Liberal Elite' shouldnt it?Janet Re Johnson -> shaunhensley , 2d agoShe's no neolib. They hate her, and with good reason.
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Jun 21, 2019 | discussion.theguardian.com
curiouswes -> JohnLG , 2d ago
but she declared that she will take "the money" in the general election if she wins the nomination. Do you expect that money to come with no strings attached. Clearly this video implied that she knows differently.This video shows that as a member of Congress she is cognizant of the "as Senator Clinton, the pressures are very different"
Warren knows EXACTLY what she is doing when she says she will take the money in the general if nominated.
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Jun 21, 2019 | discussion.theguardian.com
Okay, Warren made a mistake in claiming Native American heritage, which enabled her to advance professionally as a "diversity" candidate. But that would have to count as a venial not mortal sin. She is doing considerable good on the campaign trail, and I believe that she means to try to follow through on her detailed promises.PepperoniPizza -> Blackorpheus , 2d agoCan't wait to see her debate Trump.Thomas1178 -> Blackorpheus , 2d agoShe didn't, as multiple links below will show she never used that claim for any kind of professional gain. Same troll, different clothes.PhilosophicalSquid -> Blackorpheus , 2d agoNow you know its a lie, please will you stop spreading it and correct it when you see it.
Thanks
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Jun 21, 2019 | discussion.theguardian.com
Jdivney -> JayThomas , 1d agoHer backstory – teacher turned reluctant stay-at-home mom turned Harvard Law School professor – clearly resonates with voters in important states such as Iowa and South Carolina.
Working people who are struggling in Iowa and South Carolina say: "She's just like us!"
Good thing US politics isn't the bucket of crabs and feudal resentments that is the UK.ildfluer -> JayThomas , 23h agoFunnily enough, Iowans like her more every day.Jdivney -> shooter gavin , 1d agoShe's popular in South Carolina too:
Biden still leads in both Iowa and SC. But he was a very visible VP.
Please expand upon the "Constitutional issues of a wealth tax".SolentBound -> Jdivney , 23h agoLooks pretty clear to me.
Article I, Section 8, Clause 1: The Congress shall have Power to lay and collect Taxes, Duties, Imposts and Excises, to pay the Debts and provide for the common Defence and general Welfare of the United States; but all Duties, Imposts and Excises shall be uniform throughout the United States.
"Please expand upon the "Constitutional issues of a wealth tax".Waynem Rogers , 2d ago"Looks pretty clear to me."
The point is that the question would go to a Republican Supreme Court which could indeed find a wealth tax unconstitutional. If you want to know why, do a search. There's lots written on it.
Her problem is the American media who's only interested in sound bites. Policy, plans we don't have time for that. Call someone a nasty nameronnewmexico -> Waynem Rogers , 2d agoI don't know. Seems a lot more substance this go round than the last, near as I can tell. Last go round climate change got one question and 45 seconds in response, by both candidates in the general. The media certainly wants and will allow that to happen, but any dem who does would be a idiot.ronnewmexico -> ronnewmexico , 2d agoSeems last go round gender preference was a main thing. Warren will I think not fall into that trap. White male midwestern industrial voters are at large, what lost HRC key states, she took for granted. White male voters and usually their spouses, will not have a part of a program that seems to leave them out of things.
Substance is the name of the game for warren, but to counter Trump one needs to throw out the barbs as well, as she did in her twitter post on not being on his propaganda outlet Fox.
"I won't do a town hall with Fox News because I won't invite millions of Democratic primary voters to tune in, inflate ratings, and help sell ads for an outlet that profits from racism and hate. If you agree, sign our petition.
Yes that is Elizabeth Warren calling them racists and haters. A guy like Trump calls names and it is par for the course. A woman who conducts herself as your local librarian or grade school teacher, and you have to take pause and listen, is there substance to this? Seems there is.curiouswes -> ronnewmexico , 2d agoThis new Elizabeth Warren, name calling and all, I find must more to my liking than that before. Which is the why to her newfound popularity. Substance and calling a pig a pig not a dog or some other thing.
I think you made a good case. she isn't my favorite but still acceptable. In no particular order, for me it is Gabbard, Sanders, Williamson, Warren or Yang. the other 18 would be like voting for the GOP with some protection against the conservative slant on social issues.LiberalCurmudgeon , 2d agoThe right wingers that post here won't debate me because I'll expose them. They know how the system works and they use it to their advantage. Socialism is about getting free stuff but the issue here is who gets the free stuff. Supply side econ says that the rich are entitled to the free stuff and the less fortunate aren't entitled to it. this is killing upward mobility.
the masses want answers
Iceland, Denmark and Sweden repealed their wealth taxes because they don't work. The Scandinavian countries pay for their safety net by embracing capitalism and taxing the hell out of everyone. Maybe we should embrace that model? Or does Warren's base simply all of the benefits of that system without paying for it?ildfluer -> LiberalCurmudgeon , 2d agoThey're not similar countries to the USA, at all. US citizens are taxed no matter where they choose to live on earth. This is not the case in most countries.MikeSw -> LiberalCurmudgeon , 2d agoronnewmexico -> MikeSw , 2d agoIt would be a hell of a lot better than the government acting as the paymaster for large corporations - paying their workers with food stamps because the corporations don't pay them sufficiently to live on.The Scandinavian countries pay for their safety net by embracing capitalism and taxing the hell out of everyone. Maybe we should embrace that model?
You do know that is how the US works, right? Corporations don't pay their workers enough, so the government (i.e. taxpayers) pick up the tab.
To add the average family of four, assuming one stays with the kids so they do not pay day care costs, at Walmart earning a average salary , is eligible for federal food assistance and in most states, Medicaid.HollowayHaines , 2d agoCalifornia for several decades paid for most of kids college education and even today, New Mexico does the same. New Mexico is indeed one of the poorest states, and if they figured out how to do that(under a republican governor years ago), most places could. The tax rate here is about on average, no higher than most.
780 billion per year on defense without a enemy in sight, and no nation spending a tenth that, seems to be a place one could get a dollar or two.
To quote one of the Guardian's post picks:ildfluer -> HollowayHaines , 2d agoI'd extent that from "The USA" to "The USA & the editorial staff of most papers in England", and include some writers for this paper in that catchall.Smart and lucid. All the right ideas, without using the " S " word that people in the USA do not really understand, and have a big fear of
'Socialist' Sanders and 'Left Wing' Labour as personified by Corbyn are all very well as useful poles to beat the Right with in polemics, but when it looks like they might actually gain access to the corridors of power, suddenly they become villains that have to be defeated so that sensible 'moderates' can retain power....
Warren was receiving more support from this particular paper even before she announced her candidacy than Sanders has or I suspect will even if he gains the nomination.
As Chomsky notes in 'manufacturing consent', the mass media that is not 'Right' is 'Centrist' and will support a centrist candidate over one advocating more radical change.
Those labels are totally irrelevant in the USA. Calling someone 'right' or 'left' or 'socialist' in the USA has nothing to do with dictionary definitions. They all mean to say one thing: I disagree with them because they're wrong.StephenO , 2d agoildfluer -> StephenO , 2d agoOn Friday, the Massachusetts senator Elizabeth Warren co-sponsored a bill to impose mandatory fines on companies that have data breaches.
Warren is the politician who operates like a blind-folded person desperately trying to hit a pinata. In her political realm, such companies simply twist in the wind and make easy targets. Her policy is equivalent to any store or home being burglarized and then being fined by government for being a victim of crime. Complete mindlessness describes the policy.
Yes. Of course every politician should simply lie down and let the corporations get away with every damn thing. I mean, that's worked really well for most Americans since Reagan.Ginen -> StephenO , 2d agoAgreed that is a stupid policy. If the company suffers a data breach owing to poor security or conceals or unduly delays disclosure of the data breach, then it would make sense to fine the company or to hold the company civilly liable to those injured by the data breach. But a blanket fine for any company that suffers a data breach is dumb.MatchYou , 2d agoIf you want ideas, check out Andrew Yang's website. He has over 100+ intricate ideas laid out in the "policy" tab.ildfluer -> MatchYou , 2d agoWhich means nothing if he's only polling at <1%.Ginen -> ildfluer , 2d agoWhat's Warren polling nationally against the other Democratic candidates? The article doesn't say, instead cherry-picking selected polling.ildfluer -> Ginen , 2d agoAround 16% now in some polls. And polling against Trump - 47% v Trump's 42%. Economist/YouGov poll, she came second behind Biden: https://twitter.com/gelliottmorris/status/1138799359930318848Guy Littleford , 2d agoThe Labor party in Australia surprised me with the boldness and coherency of their plans and it was a great thing to see a party running a campaign on ideas and principles. They lost the election.irenka_irina -> JayThomas , 2d ago....the electorate was conned by spin...outright lies and the Murdoch press.NeverForever , 2d agoHere's an idea. If Warren was a true progressive she wouldn't have been a registered Republican for 5 years, and she would have endorsed Bernie over Hillary in the 2016 primaries.MVOregon -> NeverForever , 2d agoWhat a really stupid thing to write and think. Do you have any inkling of the history of the Republican and Democratic parties? I was born in a Republican household (progressive) and it took me living overseas for 20 years to realize what a nasty little insurgency had taken the Republicans from what Teddy Roosevelt championed to what he described as swine; the Dixiecrats. Ignorance is not bliss no matter how hard you try to pretend.Machiavelli20 , 2d agoOne thing that needs to be done involves an honest discussion about the costs of Warren's proposals and the fact that the US already has a $22 TRILLION national debt with more than $1 TRILLION being added each year at a minimum. A former US Comptroller General stated in 2015 that even the official National Debt figure is a misrepresentation and that taking into account an honest understanding of the nation's actual legal obligations the figure was actually $65 TRILLION.Guy Littleford -> Machiavelli20 , 2d agoIf anyone wants to see it even worse just look at economist Lawrence Kotlikoff's infinite horizon estimates that placed future already promised commitments at $220 TRILLION. My point is that Warren and everyone else in the DC political establishment, is "blowing smoke" and that the US is bankrupt and needs a serious strategy to mitigate that fact rather than reckless proposals aimed to attract votes.
That is not going to happen and the country is in a fundamental financial crisis.
Its repinlicans who increase your deficits. Reagan believed deficits don't matter. The bush tax cuts...and now Trumps tax cuts and QE. He's expanding credit, which looks like real growth, but is it? Only the US can do this, because it runs the global dollar. We should have had the Bankor. But the yanks ensured that did not happen.EdChamp -> JayThomas , 1d agoJanet Re Johnson , 2d agoTrue. We use to call it "obstructionist" when the other party in congress unreasonably opposed a president's proposals. We no longer use that term, though. Now we call it "resistance". I'm sure there are at least a few republicans who see being part of the "resistance" exciting if Warren wins the White House.Nobody expects Congress to deliver on a president's campaign promises. That's not how the system works.
At first I thought she must be mad, running for president. Then I started listening to her ideas and looking at how they were being received.EdChamp -> JayThomas , 2d ago
There are millions of young people, youngish people, and parents whose lives would actually be changed by her college loan plan. Even conservatives admit that "her math is correct" and "it's doable."Then I started watching her in town halls and found her to be VERY different from that awkward lady in the kitchen having a beer. She's warm, direct, funny, casually self-deprecating, and easily able to translate complex ideas into readily understood ones.
EdChamp -> Jdivney , 2d agoWell, since you asked. I don't have any student debt and I don't need any more health care. If we are buying votes with "free" stuff, what do I get for free?Free college and health care, and the rich pay. Who wouldn't get on board with that?
I do like a good brisket. Can we carve out some of that tax on those nasty millionaires for my grocery fund?
WeAreNotJustAMarket , 2d agoNot applicable since I'm not a republican. I did vote for Trump, after voting for Obama twice. I'm an independent, and we outnumber either republicans or democrats.Well, as a rock ribbed Republican, you only one choice.
For me it's a toss-up between Warren and Sanders. When it comes to who will actually get to run against Trump, if a dining room set and 4 chairs gets the Democratic nomination, they get my vote in the general election.PepperoniPizza -> WeAreNotJustAMarket , 2d agoThe fix is already in I think. Your table and chairs name is Sleepy Joe Biden. Of course, it's still a long time to the election and mortality rates may kick in.MsEvenstar , 2d agoWarren is rising fast because A) she stands for something and B) she does an excellent job of explaining how America can make the journey from where it is (including rampant inequality) to where it needs to be to offer a future to all its people, not just to those who are white, rich and privileged! Plus, she is super smart & sassy!
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Jun 18, 2019 | www.theguardian.com
President Trump claims he doesn't want conflict, but his actions could accidentally trigger another Middle East war
Grainy video images can be seen to justify escalatory US actions that might previously have appeared unreasonable and provocative.'
Washington, at times of stress, international crises play out in black and white. As in a flickering newsreel from a former age, complex events are reduced to symbolic emblems of right and wrong. Grainy video images of "evil-doers", George W Bush's favoured term, purport to show faceless Iranians acting suspiciously around a burning oil tanker in the Gulf last week. As new Middle East troop deployments are announced, US battleships are pictured bravely patrolling freedom's frontline.
Monochromatic simplifications of this type suit multiple purposes. In the present US-Iran crisis, they supposedly provide official "proof" of nefarious intent. They can be seen to justify escalatory US actions that might previously have appeared unreasonable and provocative. They place pressure on reluctant allies to fall in behind the advancing American columns. Most of all, since democratic consent apparently still counts for something, they are intended to rally public support.
We have seen this badly made movie before. And today, as in 2003, it presents a shadowy, unconvincing picture that no amount of White House manipulation and rhetoric can clarify. The fact is, the current crisis was conceived, manufactured and magnified in Washington. It has been whipped up by a group of hawkish policymakers around Donald Trump whose loathing for the Tehran regime is exceeded only by their recklessness.
The crisis has been building inexorably since President Trump's foolish renunciation last year of the 2015 nuclear deal with Tehran, his imposition of swingeing sanctions , and a campaign of "maximum pressure" to isolate and weaken Iran's leadership. It looks and smells like a crude bid for regime change. And although Trump insists he does not want it, his actions could soon trigger another calamitous Middle East war .
That's not a risk most people or states are ready to countenance. And so far, at least, Washington's parallel, virtual battle for consent and support is not going the way American hawks hoped. Mike Pompeo , the bully-boy evangelist who doubles as US secretary of state, rarely loses an opportunity to demonise Iran. Aware of post-Iraq scepticism over US intelligence claims, he noisily insists, with a creeping tinge of panic, on the accuracy and veracity of his "evidence".
Yet the problem for Pompeo, and fellow Iranophobe, national security adviser John Bolton, is that while most western governments probably believe that hardline elements within Iran, or Iranian-backed proxy forces, initiated last week's tanker attacks and similar incidents last month, they also believe gratuitous US provocations may have forced Iran's hand. They don't believe Trump when he says he merely wants Iran to act "normal" . But they do suspect the ultimate Bolton-Pompeo aim is a putsch.
The foreign secretary Jeremy Hunt, to Britain's shame , has tamely applauded Washington's dodgy video dossier. But the Europeans, rightly, don't buy it. The EU backs diplomacy , not sabre-rattling, and is still pursuing alternative barter arrangements to circumvent US sanctions. Russia, naturally, opposes the US. But China, in an unusually outspoken rebuff, said Washington's destabilising, unilateral behaviour "has no basis in international law".
Iran's neighbours have serious misgivings too. The impulsive and autocratic crown princes who run Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates, Mohammed bin Salman and Mohamed bin Zayed, are the local equivalent of Bolton and Pompeo. Like them, Israel's Benjamin Netanyahu is egging the Americans on. But next-door Iraq has zero interest in a renewed conflict, likewise Turkey and weaker Gulf states.
Nor is the US public, despite years of White House fearmongering, fully aboard the "Get Iran" bandwagon. A Reuters/Ipsos survey last month found that nearly half of Americans – 49% – disapprove of Trump's handling of Iran. Just over half – 53% – saw Iran as a "serious" or "imminent" threat. But 60% said they wouldn't support a pre-emptive US military strike on the Iranian military.
Resistance to the US hawks' pell-mell rush to confrontation is coming most strongly from within Iran itself. Its foreign minister, Mohammad Javad Zarif, cuts a cool and thoughtful figure in contrast to Pompeo. He stresses how unilateral US sanctions, especially on oil exports, do unjustifiable harm to Iran's people and the international economy. His is an effective pitch to global opinion.
Iran also points out that, unlike the US, it is in full compliance with the 2015 nuclear deal. This week's warning from Tehran that it may soon breach enrichment limits is a calibrated response. It's unfortunate. But it does not amount to "nuclear blackmail", as the US claims, since Iran has no bomb and, according to the UN, is not seeking one . What it does amount to is diplomatic leverage with third-party states fearful of more Middle East chaos.
Iran is highlighting the unintended consequences of any conflagration, and the precedent-setting illegitimacy, both legal and moral, of threatened US actions. And then, more dangerously, there is its apparent, increasing willingness to employ a measure of physical resistance, be it through military proxies or, for example, hardliners in the Revolutionary Guards Corps. This is potentially explosive.
It would be a mistake to think Iran is totally in control of its responses to this unfolding crisis any more than the US. There are bellicose hawks in Iran's national security council, clerical establishment and the supreme leader's office, just as there are in the White House. Hassan Rouhani's pragmatic presidency, the majlis (parliament), the merchant class and state-controlled media all represent rival power centres with differing views on what to do next.
Iran's is a society under extreme duress. Sanctions are undoubtedly biting deep and patience with the west is waning. The risk is growing that, in extremis, some regime elements will hit out forcefully – and there is no doubt they have the ability to do so, in the Gulf, in Lebanon, in Gaza, and on the Israel-Syria and Saudi-Yemen borders. US hawks would say that's exactly why Iran must be contained, and very possibly it should. But do they really believe, after serial past failures, they have the power, the will, the backing and the mandate to do so?
Reducing conflict to black and white images of good and evil is not only misleading. It is also delusional. Some now recall the Gulf " tanker war " during the Iran-Iraq conflict that culminated, in 1988, with brief US "surgical strikes" on Iranian oil rigs and ships. In US lore, those strikes taught Iran a swift lesson, obliging it to back off. In truth, Iran was already on its knees after eight years of war with Saddam Hussein. That is absolutely not the situation now.
Unnecessarily aggressive, ill-considered – and deceptively presented – US policies have once again brought the Middle East to the brink of an accidental war very few want. America's European friends, including Britain, have an urgent responsibility to talk it down – and drag it back from the abyss.
• Simon Tisdall is a foreign affairs commentator
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Jun 10, 2019 | off-guardian.org
Every empire is a dictatorship. No nation can be a democracy that's either heading an empire, or a vassal-state of one. Obviously, in order to be a vassal-state within an empire, that nation is dictated-to by the nation of which it is a colony.
By contrast, 'enemy' nations are ones that the imperial power has placed onto its priority-list of nations that are yet to become conquered. There are two main reasons to conquer a nation. One is in order to be enabled to extract, from the colony, oil, or gold, or some other valuable commodity. The other is in order to control it so as to be enabled to use that land as a passageway for exporting, from a vassal-nation, to other nations, that vassal-nation's products.
International trade is the basis for any empire, and the billionaires who own controlling blocs of stock in a nation's international corporations are the actual rulers of it, the beneficiaries of empire, the recipients of the wealth that is being extracted from the colonies and from the domestic subjects. The idea of an empire is that the imperial nation's rulers, its aristocracy, extract from the colonies their products, and they impose upon their domestic subjects the financial and military burdens of imposing their international dictatorship upon the foreign subjects.
Some authors say that there is a "Deep State" and that it consists of (some undefined elements within) the intelligence services, and of the military, and of the diplomatic corps, of any given dictatorship; but, actually, those employees of the State are merely employees, not the actual governing authority, over that dictatorship.
The actual Deep State are always the aristocrats, themselves, the people who run the revolving door between 'the private sector' (the aristocracy's corporations) and the government. In former times, many of the aristocrats were themselves governing officials (the titled 'nobility'), but this is no longer common. Nowadays, the aristocracy are the individuals who own controlling blocs of stock in international corporations (especially weapons-making firms such as Lockheed Martin and BAE, because the only markets for those corporations are the corporation's own government and its vassal states or 'allies'); and such individuals are usually the nation's billionaires, and, perhaps, a few of the mere centi-millionaires.
A small number, typically less than 100, of these extremely wealthy individuals, are the biggest donors to politicians, and to think tanks, and to other non-profits (these latter being also tax-write-offs to their donors, and so are tax-drains to the general public) that are involved in the formation of the national government's policies.
Of course, they also are owners of and/or advertisers in the propaganda-media, which sell the aristocracy's core or most-essential viewpoints to the nation's subjects in order to persuade those voters to vote only for the aristocracy's selected candidates and not for any who oppose the aristocracy. These few, mainly billionaires, are the actual Deep State -- the bosses over the dictatorship, the ultimate beneficiaries in any empire. In order to maintain this system, of international dictatorship or empire, the most essential tool is deceit, of the electorate, by the aristocracy. The method of control is: the bought agents of the Deep State lie to the public about what their polices will be if they win, in order to be able to win power; and, then, once they have won power, they do the opposite, which is what they have always been paid by the Deep State (the aristocracy) to help them to do. Thereby, elections aren't "democratic" but 'democratic': they are mere formalities of democracy, without the substance of democracy.
All of the well-financed candidates for the top offices are actually the Deep State's representatives, and virtually none are the representatives of the public, because the voters have been deceived, and were given choices between two or more candidates, none of whom will represent the public if and when elected. Here are some recent examples of this system -- the imperial system, international dictatorship, in action: During Donald Trump's Presidential campaign, he said :
The approach of fighting Assad and ISIS simultaneously was madness, and idiocy. They're fighting each other and yet we're fighting both of them. You know, we were fighting both of them. I think that our far bigger problem than Assad is ISIS, I've always felt that. Assad is, you know I'm not saying Assad is a good man, 'cause he's not, but our far greater problem is not Assad, it's ISIS. I think, you can't be fighting two people that are fighting each other, and fighting them together. You have to pick one or the other."Assad is allied with Russia against the Saudis (who are the chief ally of the U.S. aristocracy), so the U.S. (in accord with a policy that George Herbert Walker Bush had initiated on 24 February 1990 and which has been carried out by all subsequent U.S. Presidents) was determined to overthrow Assad, but Trump said that he was strongly opposed to that policy. Months before that, Trump had said :I think Assad is a bad guy, a very bad guy, all right? Lots of people killed. I think we are backing people we have no idea who they are. The rebels, we call them the rebels, the patriotic rebels. We have no idea. A lot of people think, Hugh, that they are ISIS. We have to do one thing at a time. We can't be fighting ISIS and fighting Assad. Assad is fighting ISIS. He is fighting ISIS. Russia is fighting now ISIS. And Iran is fighting ISIS. We have to do one thing at a time. We can't go -- and I watched Lindsey Graham, he said, I have been here for 10 years fighting. Well, he will be there with that thinking for another 50 years. He won't be able to solve the problem. We have to get rid of ISIS first. After we get rid of ISIS, we'll start thinking about it. But we can't be fighting Assad. And when you're fighting Assad, you are fighting Russia, you're fighting -- you're fighting a lot of different groups. But we can't be fighting everybody at one time."In that same debate (15 December 2015) he also said:In my opinion, we've spent $4 trillion trying to topple various people that frankly, if they were there and if we could've spent that $4 trillion in the United States to fix our roads, our bridges, and all of the other problems; our airports and all of the other problems we've had, we would've been a lot better off. I can tell you that right now. We have done a tremendous disservice, not only to Middle East, we've done a tremendous disservice to humanity. The people that have been killed, the people that have wiped away, and for what? It's not like we had victory. It's a mess. The Middle East is totally destabilized. A total and complete mess. I wish we had the $4 trillion or $5 trillion. I wish it were spent right here in the United States, on our schools, hospitals, roads, airports, and everything else that are all falling apart."Did he do that? No. Did he instead intensify what Obama had been trying to do in Syria -- overthrow Assad -- yes.As the U.S. President, after having won the 2016 Presidential campaign, has Trump followed through on his criticism there, against the super-hawk, neoconservative, Republican U.S. Senator Lindsey Graham? No. Did he instead encircle himself with precisely such super-hawks, such neoconservatives? Yes.
Did he intensify the overthrow-Assad effort as Graham and those others had advocated? Yes.
Did America's war against Syria succeed? No.
Did he constantly lie to the voters? Yes, without a doubt.
Should that be grounds for impeaching him? A prior question to that one is actually: Would a President Mike Pence be any different or maybe even worse than Trump? Yes.
So: what, then, would be achieved by removing Trump from office? Maybe it would actually make things a lot worse. But how likely would the U.S. Senate be to remove Trump from office if the House did impeach Trump?
Two-thirds of the U.S. Senate would need to vote to remove the President in order for a President to be removed after being impeached by the House. A majority of U.S. Senators, 53, are Republicans. If just 33 of them vote not to convict the President, then Trump won't be removed. In order to remove him, not only would all 47 of the Democrats and Independents have to vote to convict, but 20 of the 53 Republicans would need to join them. That's nearly 40% of the Republican Senators.
How likely is that? Almost impossible.
What would their voters who had elected them back home think of their doing such a thing? How likely would such Senators face successful re-election challenges that would remove those Senators from office? Would 20 of the 53 be likely to take that personal risk?
Why, then, are so many Democrats in the House pressing for Trump's impeachment, since Trump's being forced out of the White House this way is practically impossible and would only install a President Pence, even if it could succeed? Is that Democratic Party initiative anything else than insincere political theater, lying to their own gullible voters, just being phonies who manipulate voters to vote for them instead of who are actually serving them?
Is that what democracy is, now: insincere political theater? Is that "democracy"? America's voters are trapped, by liars, so it's instead mere 'democracy'. It's just the new form of dictatorship. But it's actually as ancient as is any empire.
There's nothing new about this -- except one thing: the U.S. regime is aiming to be the ultimate, the last, the final, empire, the ruler over the entire world; so, it is trying especially hard, 'to defend freedom, democracy and human rights throughout the world', as Big Brother might say.
Trump's Democratic predecessor, Barack Obama, was just as evil, and just as insincere, as Trump, but only a far more skillful liar, who deceived his voters to think that he would fight corruption , work to improve relations with Russia , provide a public option in his health-insurance plan , and otherwise work to reduce economic inequality , to improve the economic situation for disadvantaged Americans , and to prosecute banksters .
He abandoned each one of those stated objectives as soon as he won against John McCain, on 4 November 2008, and then yet more when he defeated Mitt Romney in 2012.
And aren't some of those promises the same ones that candidate Trump had also advocated and then abandoned as soon as he too was (s)elected ?
THE THREAT TO THE EMPIREThe heroic fighters for the freedom of everyone in the world are the whistleblowers, who report to the public the corruption and evil that they see perpetrated by their superiors, their bosses, and perpetrated by people who are on the public payroll or otherwise obtaining increased income by virtue of being selected by the government to become government contractors to serve an allegedly public function.All liars with power hate whistleblowers and want to make special examples of any part of the press that publishes their truths, their facts, their stolen documents. These documents are stolen because that's the only way for them to become public and thereby known to the voters so that the voters can vote on the basis of truths as in a democracy, instead of be deceived as in a dictatorship.
Even if the truth is stolen from the liars, instead of being kept private ("Confidential") for them, are the whistleblowers doing wrong to steal the truth from the liars? Or, instead, are the whistleblowers heroes: are they the authentic guardians of democracy and the precariously thin wall that separates democracy from dictatorship?
They are the latter: they are the heroes. Unfortunately, the vast majority of such heroes are also martyrs -- martyrs for truth, against lies. Every dictatorship seeks to destroy its whistleblowers. That's because any whistleblower constitutes a threat to The System -- the system of control. In all of U.S. history, the two Presidents who pursued whistleblowers and their publishers the most relentlessly have been Trump and Obama.
The public are fooled to think that this is being done for 'national security' reasons instead of to hide the government's crimes and criminality. However, not a single one of the Democratic Party's many U.S. Presidential candidates is bringing this issue, of the U.S. government's many crimes and constant lying, forward as being the central thing that must be criminalized above all else, as constituting "treason."
None of them is proposing legislation saying that it is treason, against the public -- against the nation. Every aristocracy tries to deceive its public in order to control its public; and every aristocracy uses divide-and-rule in order to do this. But it's not only to divide the public against each other (such as between Republicans versus Democrats, both of which are actually controlled by the aristocracy), but also to divide between nations, such as between 'allies' versus 'enemies' -- even when a given 'enemy' (such as Iraq in 2003) has never threatened, nor invaded, the United States (or whatever the given imperial 'us' may happen to be), and thus clearly this was aggressive war and an international war-crime, though unpunished as such.
The public need to fear and hate some 'enemy' which is the 'other' or 'alien', in order not to fear and loathe the aristocracy itself -- the actual source of (and winner from) the systemic exploitation, of the public, by the aristocracy.
The pinnacle of the U.S. regime's totalitarianism is its ceaseless assault against Julian Assange, who is the uber-whistleblower, the strongest protector for whistleblowers, the safest publisher for the evidence that they steal from their employers and from their employers' government. He hides the identity of the whistleblowers even at the risk of his own continued existence.
... ... ...
On 20 May 2019, former British Ambassador Craig Murray (who had quit so that he could blow the whistle) headlined "The Missing Step" and argued that the only chance that Assange now has is if Sweden refuses to extradite Assange to the US in the event that Britain honors the Swedish request to extradite him to Sweden instead of to the US (The decision on that will now probably be made by the US agent Boris Johnson instead of by the regular Tory Theresa May.)
How can it reasonably be denied that the US is, in fact (though not nominally) a dictatorship ?
All of its allies are thus vassal-nations in its empire. This means acquiescence (if not joining) in some of the US regime's frequent foreign coups and invasions; and this means their assisting in the spread of the US regime's control beyond themselves, to include additional other countries.
It reduces the freedom, and the democracy, throughout the world; it spreads the US dictatorship internationally. That is what is evil about what in America is called "neoconservatism" and in other countries is called simply "imperialism." Under American reign, it is now a spreading curse, a political plague, to peoples throughout the world. Even an American whistleblower about Ukraine who lives in the former Ukraine is being targeted by the US regime .
This is how the freedom of everyone is severely threatened, by the US empire -- the most deceitful empire that the world has ever experienced. The martyrs to its lies are the canaries in its coal mine. They are the first to be eliminated.
Looking again at that rank-ordered list of 23 countries, one sees the US and eight of its main allies (or vassal-nations), in order: US, UK, Canada, Poland, Belgium, Saudi Arabia, Japan, France, Indonesia. These are countries where the subjects are already well-controlled by the empire. They already are vassals, and so are ordained as being 'allies'.
At the opposite end, starting with the most anti-US-regime, are: S. Africa, India, Russia, Spain, Argentina, Mexico, S. Korea, Turkey. These are countries where the subjects are not yet well-controlled by the empire, even though the current government in some of them is trying to change its subjects' minds so that the country will accept US rule.
Wherever the subjects reject US rule, there exists a strong possibility that the nation will become placed on the US regime's list of 'enemies'. Consequently, wherever the residents are the most opposed to US rule, the likelihood of an American coup or invasion is real. The first step toward a coup or invasion is the imposition of sanctions against the nation. Any such nation that is already subject to them is therefore already in danger.
Any such nation that refuses to cooperate with the US regime's existing sanctions -- such as against trading with Russia, China, Iran, or Venezuela -- is in danger of becoming itself a US-sanctioned nation, and therefore officially an 'enemy'. And this is why freedom and democracy are ending. Unless and until the US regime itself becomes conquered -- either domestically by a second successful American Revolution (this one to eliminate the domestic aristocracy instead of to eliminate a foreign one), or else by a World War III in which the US regime becomes destroyed even worse than the opposing alliance will -- the existing insatiable empire will continue to be on the war-path to impose its dictatorship to everyone on this planet.
ANDREW CLEMENTS
This should be taught in schools'Ramdan
I will get my coat"Our only hope is to organize the overthrow of the corporate state that vomited up Trump. Our democratic institutions, including the legislative bodies, the courts and the media, are hostage to corporate power. They are no longer democratic. We must, like liberation movements of the past, engage in acts of sustained mass civil disobedience and non-cooperation. By turning our ire on the corporate state, we name the true sources of power and abuse. We expose the absurdity of blaming our demise on demonized groups such as undocumented workers, Muslims, African-Americans, Latinos, liberals, feminists, gays and others. We give people an alternative to a Democratic Party that refuses to confront the corporate forces of oppression and cannot be rehabilitated. We make possible the restoration of an open society. If we fail to embrace this militancy, which alone has the ability to destroy cult leaders, we will continue the march toward tyranny." Chris HedgesAndrew PaulSurely, as well as some billionaires and centi-millionaires, there are other perhaps more institutionalised individuals with power to dispose of much even more clandestine wealth hidden in black budgets operated by and for the interests of unaccountable military and intelligence services in the putative empire, and there is also 'organised crime' and there are wealthy religious organisations, and these too can strongly influence politicians and the public opinion-forming 'narrative' shaping this false 'democracy' in the name of an elitist, highly hierarchical, socially as well as environmentally destructive global empire under full spectrum dominance.YarkobAt the global level the most viable alternative to this, I suggest, and barring destructive world war (but perhaps following a US and even a UK civil war, unfortunately), will be a world federation or confederation with a high council at which all cultures and social interest-groups, great and small, of this world are properly, and preferably directly democratically, represented.
Many thanks for the food for thought here.
"So: what, then, would be achieved by removing Trump from office? Maybe it would actually make things a lot worse."markSee: Saddam Hussein
We could get President Pocahontas or President Buttplug instead.ANDREW CLEMENTSPresident silence of the pestilentWilmers31We see a merger today between Raytheon and United Technologies. Here one para from 0hedge:mark"Of course, there is a simpler way to boost profit margins that avoids cutting costs – just boost revenue, which of course would require war. Luckily, the Trump admin's neocon hawks are doing everything in their power to make sure that that's precisely what happens as the stock of the combined company will continue its relentless levitation."
Don't let them use you – don't enlist. Freedom might still be ended, but less profitable for them.
As another man at another time asked, "What is to be done?"Frank PosterThe power of the billionaires, their bought and paid for politicians, and their servile media need to be broken.
In living memory, tax rates in the UK and US reached 98% and 91% respectively. There's no need to go back anywhere near those confiscatory levels, just ensure those people do actually pay SOME taxes. Last year, Amazon and Netflix should have paid over $16 billion in taxes. They paid nothing – they were actually given rebates of over $4 billion. Boeing hasn't paid a cent in taxes for 15 years. The same applies to a rogues' gallery of all the big boys, Google, Starbucks, General Electric, Boots, to name but a few. Profits are made to disappear and turned into losses by financial sleight of hand. An inflated level of debt is incurred to finance share buy backs instead of R&D, reinvestment and training. Trillions are salted away illegally in tax havens. The working and middle classes, 99.9% of the population, endure decades of austerity, declining wages, salaries and benefits, disappearing pensions, endemic insecurity. Rocketing house prices, £500,000 for a crappy one bed London flat. Children unable to leave home. Education and health privatised or becoming so. All public services or formerly public services declining to third world standards. A level of inequality not seen since Dickensian times. A financialised, spiv and shyster economy. A parasitic financial elite bleeding productive businesses dry, committing crime with impunity, and looting the public Treasury of untold trillions. Criminal wars of aggression abroad, taking the lives and destroying the future of tens of millions.
All this and much more needs to be changed.
But how?
Easier said than done. But is it?We have seen what happens when anger and outrage are mobilised into an irresistible force.
This can happen surprisingly easily.
Things like the MPs expenses scandal, the Gilets Jaunes in France, Brexit in the UK, Trump in the US, political chaos in the EU. whatever you think of those developments, one way or another. The elites have a very tenuous grip on power, which can be broken quite easily.
All of the above characteristics of our present system can be changed by public pressure. It can be done.
Tax avoidance and tax havens can be closed down. If the big boys can't see which way the wind is blowing, they will do after a few of them are jailed. Anything that works against the public interest targeted for radical change. Public utilities and rail companies that fail to clean up their act properly regulated and if necessary nationalised. Housing and health treated as human needs and human rights. The NHS and a massive post war social housing programme went ahead though the country was completely bankrupt. It is a question of will and priorities. All this can be done. It is doable. All it needs is the mobilisation of sufficient outrage. And there are many recent examples of this."The elites have a very tenuous grip on power, which can be broken quite easily.mark
All of the above characteristics of our present system can be changed by public pressure. It can be done."Easily? Sorry Mark, I agree with your sentiments but there's nothing easy about it whatsoever, and you must be living on a different planet to me, sorry to say – let's examine each of your examples –
MPs expenses scandal : minimal effect, the buggers carry on, and with a self-appointed overseer.
Gilets Jaunes : smashed, sadly.
Brexit : this is not democracy, it's a US / neocon hijack of Britain.
Trump : Enriching the rich even more.
Political chaos in the EU : it's a US tactic to "shake the tree" and knock the confidence in the EU, it became too strong a competitor for the US. Divide and conquer is their game with the EU. Tariffs will follow, and they are doing exactly the same to China, and indeed Russia.
It's sad that the most common social purpose in European modern history is being attacked not only by the right wing nutters, but also the blinkered Trotskyists on the left.
You're right about some of the outcomes. The point I was trying to make is that it's not possible to paper over the cracks any more. People realise that they have been lied to and the system does not work for them, if it ever did. This may sound nebulous, but it has an effect. The credibility and influence of the MSM has been shredded by its own mendacity and lack of integrity. This has far reaching consequences which may not be readily apparent on a day to day basis. But it is important. The same applies to all the institutions and organs of the state. The world is becoming increasingly turbulent and unstable, and support for elites and the systems they represent is dwindling rapidly. The whole economic and financial system is like a house of cards. At such times, change that had previously been inconceivable becomes inevitable. Of course, there is no guarantee that these changes will be positive, like Russia in 1917 or Germany in 1933.Frank PosterPfff, what happened to the new OffG function to be able to edit one's posts, it's disappeared!OffGIt vanished during our DoS attack – we haven't managed to get it back yet. Infuriating, I know.Gezzah PottsClearly explained analysis of the deep shit we're all in. Unfortunately tho I don't see a second American revolution breaking out anytime soon. I think the large majority have been too crushed by the system; many working 2 or 3 jobs just to survive, many a couple paychecks away from being homeless, many living in cars or under bridges, and sadly, the large large majority lap up the propaganda spewed out by the stenographers. And believe it. Which leaves us with the next option for stopping this evil blood drenched Empire. And that is probably where we're heading. Scary times Eric.markYou may be right, GP. When I lived in America I was quite shocked by the low standard of living of very many people. Working 2 or 3 jobs, unable to run a car, health care completely out of their reach, living in houses like wooden shacks. Even buying food a problem. Completely ignorant of the outside world.GeorgeHalf a million are now homeless, with third world shanty towns next to the gated developments of the rich, the streets covered with human faeces, TB, typhoid and tapeworm becoming major problems.
What I see is this becoming worse and forming a critical mass, when it can no longer be ignored. As such, there are grounds for optimism. Things becoming so bad that they can no longer be tolerated. Perhaps that is unrealistic, I don't know.
"Working 2 or 3 jobs, unable to run a car, health care completely out of their reach, living in houses like wooden shacks. Even buying food a problem. Completely ignorant of the outside world."Gezzah PottsHey – but haven't you heard? That's FREEDOM!
Appreciate both your comments Mark, and yes, the Gilets Jaunes are probably the best current example of people fighting back against the system and saying Enough. I've never been to the UK so can't really judge from first hand experience, know the situation in United States by a fair bit of reading on the levels of poverty and precariousness state many live in, tho here in Australia the levels of cognitive dissonance, apathy and groupthink (derived from mainstream media) seem very high, and I speak to lots of people while out selling The Big Issue mag. About the angriest people get here is griping about Aussie politicians. I don't get any sense of anger or disgust at the Actual economic system.wardropper"Things becoming so bad that they can no longer be tolerated" ?mark
Nothing a couple more wars couldn't fix, MarkYou may be right, but the outcome of any wars that are currently being threatened, Iran, Venezuela, DPRK, Russia, China, would be the final nail in the coffin of the AngloZionist Empire.wardropperMy greatest worry is that this AngloZionist Empire doesn't care about anything at all – not even the nails in their own coffin.nwwoods
They fondly imagine some kind of capitalistic "rapture" is going to whisk them off to "Money Heaven" and we will be left with their crap and their puke all over our planet.
I no longer think it's exaggerated to talk of demonic beings here, and if they are not demonic, then why are they acting as if they were?FWIW, Tulsi Gabbard uttered a full-throated defense of both Assange and Manning.SteveIt has to be remembered that Assange is an Australian and Manning was born in West Wales to a UK mother. These countries must stand up for their citizens.nwwoodsGiven the recent federal police raids on Australian journalists, it seems unlikely that Australia will be coming to the aid of Julian Assange any time soon.TutisicecreamYes this is true. Tulsi Gabbard is the real deal and a bellwether of the current corrupt system and its stupefying echo chambers. She has no chance at the moment, but that's not the point. She exposes the corruption of the aristocracies and their corrupt system and shills.Frank PosterAs we are here. Take the Fruadian Tulsi ticks all their supposed PC boxes and yet their is no mention of her anywhere. But "Creepy Joe" Biden who epitomises the corrupt entitlement the system offers is reported on add nauseum.
As the Fraud, can't attack her it appears they can't report on her either. So her good campaign work is reported on the alt media, you know where the fake stuff is!
So there you have it, a perfect example of a faux feedback loop
Oh, and excellent article by Eric as well.
She won't last long then, unfortunately.nwwoodsNo, I am hoping that the DNC doesn't change the rules in order to block her from at least the first round of televised debate. But I'm not holding my breath.RamdanBTW, I read somewhere that DNC intends to split the first (D) debate into two groups, ostensibly because of the ridiculous number of candidates, which stands at 24, last I looked.
DNC is going to make certain that only centrist liberals are on the same debate stage with Joe Biden, "the only real progressive in the race" (in his own words).
Bernie and Tulsi will probably be dining at the kids table, if at all.Frank Poster
Good point, I agree with you.der einzigeIf these sentences of Mr. Eric are trueEinsteinOf course, they also are owners of and/or advertisers in the propaganda-media, which sell the aristocracy's core or most-essential viewpoints to the nation's subjects in order to persuade those voters to vote only for the aristocracy's selected candidates and not for any who oppose the aristocracy.
These few, mainly billionaires, are the actual Deep State -- the bosses over the dictatorship, the ultimate beneficiaries in any empire.
the rest of Assange is a lie
What Mr. Mossange did in these media which promoted him? Who he worked for? for Arab Springs? for Rothschilds? What he did on tea in The Economics, Guardian, NYT, The Bild etc.? What?
Excellent piece.DunGroaninJA is a thorn in their side.wardropper
JC is a stake through their heart.The v'empires fear is palpable.
Neither the throwing of the book or the kitchen sinks full of shit at their nemesises is working, as these polls demonstrate.
Hillarious. Bring on the much delayed GE.
Sorry to be a wet blanket, but, frankly, it's been a long time since a GE fixed anythingSteve
Elections, as I think George Carlin said, are only there to make us think we have a voice.If the UK elect Jeremy Corbyn all bets are off, he will expose ALL corrupt politicians media and foreign powers. Why do you think there is such a concerted effort to prevent him gaining office, even Pompeo has said "the US will prevent him becoming PM"wardropperI think there is a misunderstanding here, Steve. I couldn't agree with you more, especially about the concerted efforts (which I noticed a long time ago) to prevent Corbyn from gaining office.Rhisiart GwilymMy "wet-blanket" point is really only connected with your last quote from Pompeo, "The US will prevent him becoming PM". Surely no one today is under any illusions as to whether Pompeo means what he says, much as I would love to throw a spanner in his works.
Nothing would please me more, either, than to learn that I had been overly pessimistic. But I still have no doubts that Pompeo could and would fix any election that suited him. He has already admitted, in another context, to lying, cheating, stealing and killing.
Pompous Hippo, TIGW – The Insane Geriatric Walrus, Donny Les Tweets, Elliott Demon, Veryfew Pence and the rest of the delusional criminal inadequates of the DCSwamp may be against JC and wish to stop him, but – judging by their steadily-increasing ineffectualness on the world stage (how're those regime changes in Syria and Venezuela going? how's the bankrupting-Russia-with-sanctions going?) – they may not be too effective at preventing his entry to Downing Street.wardropperI pray you're right. Those dull-witted thugs may indeed be increasingly ineffectual, but the fact that they are still committed to their insane agenda continues to cost the world a great deal of suffering.different frankPeople will be the good sheeple that the establishment want them to be.kevin morris
They will vote who they are told to vote for.
Hate who they are told to hate.
Fear who they are told to fear.Devoid of all independent thought. Forever sleeping. Always conforming. Always consuming. The sheeple serve their establishment masters well. maybe a crumb will fall from the big table. They can fight each other for that. good sheep. baaa
We're all sheeple!wardropperAssange isn't.Annie BesantI will first quote the final passage from your tract which reads "Unless and until the US regime itself becomes conquered -- either domestically by a second successful American Revolution (this one to eliminate the domestic aristocracy instead of to eliminate a foreign one), or else by a World War III in which the US regime becomes destroyed even worse than the opposing alliance will -- the existing insatiable empire will continue to be on the war-path to impose its dictatorship to everyone on this planet." Whist it has not yet sunk in to the heads of the faceless perpetrators within the Hegemon, it is true to say that a much greater proportion, the greater percentage of humanity are now enlightened to the truth that should a global nuclear conflict break out, either by accident or design, there would be no living person remaining to gloat over the spoils.wardropperThis is where "American Exceptionalism" meets its nemesis, for at that moment all their power, influence, wealth, and vanity would evanesce as the towers of Mammon are reduced to rubble. Even their nuclear bunkers would provide no safe haven and there would be even less time for them to come to their senses, for we are contemplating the total extinction of the human species here.
Even in the face of an almost overwhelming resignation to fate, I am well aware that I am not alone in the belief that our planet will survive until that time when our sun ceases to exist. Perhaps we can share Mr Zuess's suggestion that the key to our survival here is by "domestic revolution" whereby within national limits, any country can create a groundswell of solidarity working to find a humane fix for the broken socio-economic system which thrives on the incompetence of dysfunctional leaders. This can be brought about by de-centralisation in matters of how our citizens are governed, rather than the current situation where our citizens are controlled and monitored, both in public and in private.
Localised government, informed by local people, can address all the issues in respect of which there are many who currently feel disempowered and thereby render themselves vulnerable to the general apathy and malaise that is fertile ground for the mischief of authority. This is a matter of systemic transformation and it is taking place right now with innumerable (largely unreported) peace, education, economic and apolitical bodies. Working together on a global basis, realising the interconnectedness of our lives, we will replicate the chain reaction of an atomic device. However, in our case it will be the gradual acceleration of our energies, all directed towards the betterment of all our mothers, fathers, brothers and sisters on this planet who ask for one thing, and one thing only – that being an end to all this narcissism, cowardice, arrogance and greed, that are the dramatic personae for this litany of misery which has been inflicted by devilish forces upon the masses of humanity over centuries. No matter how small or insignificant my personal effort is here, I am now convinced that there are millions of others who feel the same. This is why the movement is growing at such a pace. When all our creative, and positively directed energies eventually coalesce we will approach the point of critical mass. At that time we will see the brainwashed troops of the military hegemon suddenly attain enlightenment and throw down their weapons – and the cowards who have previously been in control will flee to exile on some nice sunny beach. This is going to happen because I have already seen it.
BigBBut they won't LET you decentralize, Annie. It doesn't suit them. Millions of others do indeed share your concern, but merely imagining a better system doesn't make it happen. It doesn't get through the layers and layers of entrenched investment in the current system, or through the layers and layers of ruthless militarism protecting it. Our enemy will never step aside and voluntarily make way for something worthy of the name, "society".
Somebody, somewhere, sometime, is going to have to insist.
Annie is absolutely right: I think we need to start looking ahead. Neoliberal capitalism is dead: it cannot be revived because there are neither the mineral or energy primary resource assets left for permanent expansionism. Monetizing debt is short term firefighting – fighting fire with fire, debt with debt. We need to stop thinking like capitalists: assessing consciousness and wellbeing against fake GDP and monetized debt prosperity and start thinking as humanists. Like Annie.wardropperBy all measures: capitalism is due another crisis Taleb's Black Swan is in clear view we can expect the unexpected. No one can predict the timing or severity: but the debt hangover from GFC 1 makes GFC 2 look potentially worse.
Then capitalism has one more shot of adrenaline (more easing; ZIRPS; savings 'haircuts'; going cashless; potentially a change in reserve) then what? Fascism or socialism. Angry people make for fascism. Peaceful people make for socialism. Materialism won't be that much of an option: apart from the grotesque levels of conspicuous ersatz wealth that will build up in the meantime.
Capitalism is time-limited and finite: humanism is time-independent and limitless. We chose to measure our wealth and happiness in terms of finite resources that were bound to run short. Perhaps now we can turn to the one non-finite resource we have overlooked – ourselves?
Philosophically, I'm with you 100%, BigB.harry lawBut it's also the crux of your own matter as to where the mechanisms for choosing either fascism or socialism really are in our current system.
Many of us here want to know what to DO, rather than merely pass judgment on what is wrong.For example, by nature, I am very inclined to follow Annie's path, but we have to know exactly what is the nature of the colossal resistance we will definitely encounter. Will we be stuck in jail, or even "permanently disappeared", because we can think for ourselves?
Or will the media simply keep up their current assault on our intelligence and education until, after a decade or two, nobody is left who could rub two coherent sentences together?
Trumps promises before the election about the trillions wasted in futile wars, and promising to redirect those trillions into US infrastructure etc, turned out to be outrageous lies. Here are some quotes from HL Mencken which in my opinion sum up the passengers in the out of control US clown car, Trump, Bolton, Pence and Pompeo.
- The men the American people admire most extravagantly are the most daring liars; the men they detest most violently are those who try to tell them the truth.
- The urge to save humanity is almost always only a false-face for the urge to rule it.
- The most dangerous man to any government is the man who is able to think things out for himself, without regard to the prevailing superstitions and taboos. Almost inevitably he comes to the conclusion that the government he lives under is dishonest, insane, and intolerable.
- Every normal man must be tempted, at times, to spit on his hands, hoist the black flag, and begin slitting throats.
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Sep 06, 2017 | www.theguardian.com The Guardian
Navient, spun off from Sallie Mae, has thrived as student loan debt spirals across the US. Its story reveals how, instead of fighting inequality, the education industry is reinforcing it
Nathan Hornes: 'Navient hasn't done a thing to help me. They just want their money. And they want it now.' Photograph: Fusion
A mong the 44 million Americans who have amassed our nation's whopping $1.4tn in student loan debt, a call from Navient can produce shivers of dread.
Navient is the primary point of contact, or the "servicer", for more student loans in the United States than any other company, handling 12 million borrowers and $300bn in debt. The company flourished as student loan debt exploded under the Obama administration, and its stock rose sharply after the election of Donald Trump.
But Navient also has more complaints per borrower than any other servicer, according to a Fusion analysis of data. And these mounting complaints repeatedly allege that the company has failed to live up to the terms of its federal contracts, and that it illegally harasses consumers . Navient says most of the ire stems from structural issues surrounding college finance – like the terms of the loans, which the federal government and private banks are responsible for – not about Navient customer service.
Navient has positioned itself to dominate the lucrative student loan industry in the midst of this crisis, flexing its muscles in Washington and increasingly across the states. The story of Navient's emerging power is also the story of how an industry built around the idea that education can break down inequities is reinforcing them.The tension at the center of the current controversy around student loans is simple: should borrowers be treated like any other consumers, or do they merit special service because education is considered a public good?
Often, the most vulnerable borrowers are not those with the largest debt, but low-income students, first-generation students, and students of color – especially those who may attend less prestigious schools and are less likely to quickly earn enough to repay their loans, if they graduate at all.
Last year, Navient received 23 complaints per 100,000 borrowers, more than twice that of the nearest competitor, according to Fusion's analysis. And from January 2014 to December 2016, Navient was named as a defendant in 530 federal lawsuits. The vast majority were aimed at the company's student loans servicing operations. (Nelnet and Great Lakes, the two other biggest companies in the student loans market, were sued 32 and 14 times over the same period, respectively.)
Many of the complaints and lawsuits aimed at the company relate to its standard practice of auto-dialing borrowers to solicit payments.
Shelby Hubbard says she has long been on the receiving end of these calls as she has struggled to pay down her debt. Hubbard racked up over $60,000 in public and private student loans by the time she graduated from Eastern Kentucky University with a basic healthcare-related degree.
"It consumes my every day," Hubbard said of the constant calls. "Every day, every hour, starting at 8 o'clock in the morning." Unlike mortgages, and most other debt, student loans can't be wiped away with bankruptcy.
These days, Hubbard, 26, works in Ohio as a logistics coordinator for traveling nurses. She's made some loan payments, but her take-home pay is about $850 every two weeks. With her monthly student loan bill at about $700, roughly half her income would go to paying the loans back, forcing her to lean more heavily on her fiancé. "He pays for all of our utilities, all of our bills. Because at the end of the day, I don't have anything else to give him," she said. The shadow of her debt hangs over every discussion about their wedding, mortgage payments, and becoming parents.
The power and reach of the student loan industry stacks the odds against borrowers. Navient doesn't just service federal loans, it has a hand in nearly every aspect of the student loan system. It has bought up private student loans, both servicing them and earning interest off of them. And it has purchased billions of dollars worth of the older taxpayer-backed loans, again earning interest, as well as servicing that debt. The company also owns controversial subsidiary companies such as Pioneer Credit Recovery that stand to profit from collecting the debt of loans that go into default.
label="How the Trump administration is undermining students of color | Mark Huelsman and Vijay Das" href="https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2017/jul/15/trump-administration-students-color-debt">
And just as banks have done with mortgages, Navient packages many of the private and pre-2010 federal loans and sells them on Wall Street as asset-backed securities. Meanwhile, it's in the running to oversee the Department of Education's entire student debt web portal, which would open even more avenues for the company to profit from – and expand its influence over – Americans' access to higher education.
The federal government is the biggest lender of American student loans, meaning that taxpayers are currently on the hook for more than $1tn . For years, much of this money was managed by private banks and loan companies like Sallie Mae. Then in 2010, Congress cut out the middlemen and their lending fees, and Sallie Mae spun off its servicing arm into the publicly traded company Navient.
Led by former Sallie Mae executives, Navient describes itself as "a leading provider of asset management and business processing solutions for education, healthcare, and government clients." But it is best known for being among a handful of companies that have won coveted federal contracts to make sure students repay their loans. And critics say that in pursuit of getting that money back, the Department of Education has allowed these companies to all but run free at the expense of borrowers.
"The problem is that these servicers are too big to fail," said Persis Yu, director of the National Consumer Law Center's Student Loan Borrower Assistance Project. "We have no place to put the millions of borrowers whom they are servicing, even if they are not doing the servicing job that we want them to do."
In its last years, the Obama administration tried to rein in the student loan industry and promoted more options for reduced repayment plans for federal loans. Since then, Donald Trump's education secretary, Betsy DeVos , has reversed or put on hold changes the former education secretary John B King's office proposed and appears bent on further loosening the reins on the student loan industry , leaving individual students little recourse amid bad service.
In late August, DeVos's office announced that it would stop sharing information about student loan servicer oversight with the federal consumer watchdog agency known as the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, or CFPB.
Earlier this year, as complaints grew, the CFPB sued Navient for allegedly misleading borrowers about the repayment options it is legally obligated to provide.
A central allegation is that Navient, rather than offering income-based repayment plans, pushed some people into a temporary payment freeze called forbearance. Getting placed into forbearance is a good Band-Aid but can be a terrible longer-term plan. When an account gets placed in forbearance, its interest keeps accumulating, and that interest can be added to the principal, meaning the loans only grow.
Lynn Sabulski, who worked in Navient's Wilkes-Barre, Pennsylvania, call center for five months starting in 2012, said she experienced first-hand the pressure to drive borrowers into forbearance.
"Performing well meant keeping calls to seven minutes or under," said Sabulski. "If you only have seven minutes, the easiest option to put a borrower in, first and foremost, is a forbearance." Sabulski said if she didn't keep the call times short, she could be written up or lose her job.
Navient denies the allegations, and a spokeswoman told Fusion via email seven and a half minutes was the average call time, not a target. The company maintains "caller satisfaction and customer experience" are a significant part of call center representatives' ratings.
But in a 24 March motion it filed in federal court for the CFPB's lawsuit, the company also said: "There is no expectation that the servicer will act in the interest of the consumer." Rather, it argued, Navient's job was to look out for the interest of the federal government and taxpayers.
Navient does get more per account when the servicer is up to date on payments, but getting borrowers into a repayment plan also has a cost because of the time required to go over the complex options.
The same day the CFPB filed its lawsuit, Illinois and Washington filed suits in state courts. The offices of attorneys general in nine other states confirmed to Fusion that they are investigating the company.
At a recent hearing in the Washington state case, the company defended its service: "The State's claim is not, you didn't help at all, which is what you said you would do. It's that, you could've helped them more." Navient insists it has forcefully advocated in Washington to streamline the federal loan system and make the repayment process easier to navigate for borrowers.
And it's true, Navient, and the broader industry, have stepped up efforts in recent years to influence decision makers. Since 2014, Navient executives have given nearly $75,000 to the company's political action committee, which has pumped money mostly into Republican campaigns, but also some Democratic ones. Over the same timespan, the company has spent more than $10.1m lobbying Congress, with $4.2m of that spending coming since 2016. About $400,000 of it targeted the CFPB, which many Republican lawmakers want to do away with.
Among the 22 former federal officials who lobby for Navient is the former US representative Denny Rehberg, a Republican, who once criticized federal aid for students as the welfare of the 21st century. His fellow lobbyist and former GOP representative Vin Weber sits on a board that has aired attack ads against the CFPB, as well as on the board of the for-profit college ITT Tech , which shuttered its campuses in 2016 after Barack Obama's Department of Education accused it of predatory recruitment and lending.
In response to what they see as a lack of federal oversight, California, Connecticut, Massachusetts, and the District of Columbia recently required student loan servicers to get licenses in their states. Not surprisingly, Fusion found a sharp increase in Navient's spending in states considering such regulations, with the majority of the $300,000 in Navient state lobbying allocated since 2016.
In Maine and Illinois, the legislatures were flooded with Navient and other industry lobbyists earlier this year, after lawmakers proposed their own versions of the license bills. The Maine proposal failed after Navient argued the issue should be left to the federal government. The Illinois bill passed the legislature, but the Republican governor, Bruce Rauner, vetoed it in August following lobbying from an industry trade group . Rauner said the bill encroached on the federal government's authority.
Researchers argue more data would help them understand how to improve the student loan process and prevent more people from being overwhelmed by debt. In 2008, Congress made it illegal for the Department of Education to make the data public, arguing that it was a risk for student privacy. Private colleges and universities lobbied to restrict the data. So, too, did Navient's predecessor, Sallie Mae, and other student loan servicing companies.
Today, companies like Navient have compiled mountains of data about graduations, debt and financial outcomes – which they consider proprietary information. The lack of school-specific data about student outcomes can be life-altering, leading students to pick schools they never would have picked. Nathan Hornes, a 27-year-old Missouri native, racked up $70,000 in student loans going to Everest College, an unaccredited school, before he graduated.
"Navient hasn't done a thing to help me," Hornes told Fusion. "They just want their money. And they want it now."
label="The US cities luring millennials with promises to pay off their student debts" href="https://www.theguardian.com/world/2016/mar/10/the-us-cities-luring-millennials-with-promises-to-pay-off-their-student-debts">
Hornes' loans were recently forgiven following state investigations into Everest's parent company Corinthian. But many other borrowers still await relief.
Better educating teens about financial literacy before they apply to college will help reduce their dependence on student loans, but that doesn't change how the deck is stacked for those who need them. A few states have made community colleges free , reducing the need for student loan servicers.
But until the Department of Education holds industry leaders like Navient more accountable, individual states can fix only so much, insists Senator Elizabeth Warren, one of the industry's most outspoken critics on Capitol Hill.
"Navient's view is, hey, I'm just going to take this money from the Department of Education and maximize Navient's profits, rather than serving the students," Warren said. "I hold Navient responsible for that. But I also hold the Department of Education responsible for that. They act as our agent, the agent of the US taxpayers, the agent of the people of the United States. And they should demand that Navient does better."
Laura Juncadella, a production assistant for The Naked Truth also contributed to this article
The Naked Truth: Debt Trap airs on Fusion TV 10 September at 9pm ET. Find out where to watch here
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Jun 15, 2019 | off-guardian.org
Milton
Interesting that this Israeli-First traitor Clawson mentions Lincoln and Ft. Sumter. He finally admits what genuine historians of the Civil War long knew: Lincoln was a warmonger and tyrant, not an emancipator. The Civil war was fought to eliminate true freedom and equality in this country and it has been downhill ever since. The working class and soldier-class in America today are slaves in every sense of the word. Slaves to Zion. No wonder the certified warmonger and racist Lincoln is worshiped equally by Left and Right today, whilst genuine American patriots like Robert E. Lee have their legacy torn down. Lincoln was the proto-Neocon. Tom Dilorenzo summed up the real Lincoln when he wrote in Lincoln Unmasked:mathias alexand"Imagine that California seceded from the union and an American president responded with the carpet bombing of Los Angeles, San Diego, and San Francisco that destroyed 90 percent of those cities. Such was the case with General Sherman's bombardment of Atlanta; a naval blockade; a blocking off of virtually all trade; the eviction of thousands of residents from their homes (as occurred in Atlanta in 1864); the destruction of most industries and farms; massive looting of private property by a marauding army; and the killing of one out of four males of military age while maiming for life more than double that number. Would such an American president be considered a 'great statesman' or a war criminal? The answer is obvious.
A statesman would have recognized the state's right to secede, as enshrined in the Tenth Amendment, among other places, and then worked diligently to persuade the seceded state that a reunion was in its best interest. Agreat statesman, or even a modest one, would not have impulsively plunged the entire nation into a bloody war.
Lincoln's warmongering belligerence and his invasion of all the Southern states in response to Fort Sumter (where no one was harmed or killed) caused the upper South -- Virginia, North Carolina, Tennessee, and Arkansas -- to secede after originally voting to remain in the Union. He refused to meet with Confederate commissioners to discuss peace and even declined a meeting with Napoleon III of France, who offered to broker a peace agreement. No genuine statesman would have behaved in such a way.
After Fort Sumter, Lincoln thanked naval commander Gustavus Fox for assisting him in manipulating the South Carolinians into firing at Fort Sumter. A great statesman does not manipulate his own people into starting one of the bloodiest wars in human history."
Here's a man who holds a press conference to announce a secret plan. Only in America.Gezzah PottsFalse flags here, false flags there, false flags everywhere. All too further the aims of the 'masters of the universe'. We know who was responsible for the tanker attacks. Who are the 3 countries absolutely desperate to take Iran down and install a completely pliant puppet regime answerable to Washington, Tel Aviv and to a lesser extent Riyadh. And creatures like Clawson, and all the other vermin can only see $$$$. Thats all they care about. Opening up more markets to further enrich themselves. I echo the other commenters also. The evil men stoop to for greed, power and control. Psychopaths.harry lawThe Foreign Office issued a statement saying: "It is almost certain that a branch of the Iranian military – the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps – attacked the two tankers on 13 June. No other state or non-state actor could plausibly have been responsible."Gezzah Potts
Unbelievable, The UK vassal will use this to as one more reason to evade their responsibilities in implementing the JCPOA.Well they would say that, wouldn't they. The UK vassal state will spout any peice of crap in their assigned role as vassal state. Australia is just as gushingly sycophantic and cravenly jellified.markMaybe it's "highly likely."Gezzah PottsLike an apple is green? They must think we're complete amoeba's to believe this. Sigh.William HBonneyA Riyadh/Tel Aviv conspiracy. Genius!Gezzah PottsEr . just a rough guess Bill going on the belligerent foaming at the mouth by people in those places along with the likes of Bolton and Pompeo. In fact, you can probably go all the way back to about 1980 or so.markI think the real giveaway was when all three rogue states openly stated their intention of doing this 1,000 times over the past 10 years. That was the crucial clue Sherlock Holmes was looking for.Wilmers31And who funds the Washington Institute? Last time I looked the International Crisis Group existed thanks to Soros and is usually treated like a serious organisation.wardropperMany Europeans are not in love with the idea of war with Iran, just to achieve obedience to the US. 90 million people is bigger than Germany.
These are the shysters, the spivs and the con men of bygone times. They are the ones who lurked at street corners, waiting for someone to come along who was gullible enough to buy the Moon from them.wardropper
But, for some reason, they are all in politics today.
Now how could that be?Only because there are people whom it currently suits to use shysters, spivs and con men in order to create enough chaos for us to want to give up and just let those people have their way.
I agree with Rhys below. There is no more disgusting example of sub-humanity to be found on earth than these warmongers.
To deal with them, however, we will have to realize that their "philosophy", if you can call it that, runs very deep. It didn't just enter their heads last week.
They are reared and trained in it.It will be a tough battle.
I should add that, in bygone times, the police and the law were usually able to deal with the shysters, spivs and con men, since their lack of conscience often gave them away.Rhys Jaggar
The modern version, however, which has moved into politics, was shrewd enough to use a few decades of bribery and threats in order to build around itself a nice little shell, through which the law simply cannot penetrate, except on special occasions, mainly for show.There is a big cabal of warmongers who stoke the fuel but never see action. I find those people more disgusting than anyone on earth.markDraft dodgers, academics, 'historians' etc etc.
Ball-less pricks is what I call them .
All fully paid up members of the Bill Clinton Light Infantry.William HBonneyYeah, well I'm not a great fan of those who would appease Assad, Putin, Hussein, GaddafiandyoldlabourYou must be so proud.
The appeasers would include the US who fully supported Saddam Hussein in his war against Iran, who provided him with chemical weapons and logistical help in using those weapons, which killed around 50,000 Iranian troops and Kurdish civilians.William HBonney
The same appeasers armed and funded the Taliban (Mujahideen) against the Soviets.
The US are the single largest force for terrorism the World has ever seen.The easiest, and perhaps best metric by which to judge a country, is 'do people aspire to live there? '.axisofoilI see you admire the Soviet Union, but at its dissolution, people were queuing to leave. And yet the US, and the UK, according to you, iniquitous places of tyranny, are oversubscribed. Could it be, that for all your implied erudition, you are merely a bellend?
You must be a big fan of CNN and the NYT. Ignorance is bliss, isn't it?BigBWell, even as a pacifist: if that is his sentiment – I hope he has sons or daughters in the military stationed in CENTCOM in Qatar. I bet he hasn't, though.Rhisiart GwilymHe should be right there on the frontline himself. That would straighten the disgusting creep's ideas out about the 'usefulness' of deliberately provoking war
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Jun 14, 2019 | off-guardian.org
WATCH: US economist urges covert violence to provoke war with Iran "I mean look people, Iranian submarines periodically go down – someday one of them might not come up." Admin
Many believe war with the Islamic Republic of Iran has been the dream of some hardcore neocons in Washington since at least 2001. Back in 2012 former employee of the IMF and current economist for the World Bank, Patrick Clawson , provided fuel for this belief when he was videoed obliquely advocating using covert violence so that the US president "can get to war with Iran."
In a startlingly frank speech, Clawson makes it clear he believes (and apparently approves) that the US has a history of seeking war for profit, and of using provocations to goad its perceived enemies into starting such wars. Clawson highlights in particular the Confederate attack on Fort Sumter in 1861 , which, he says, was deliberately engineered by president Lincoln in pursuit of an excuse to launch a war on the Southern secessionist states.
In light of the recent alleged attacks on two tankers in the Gulf of Oman, timed to coincide with the visit of the Japanese prime minister to Iran, and in light of Secretary of State
CaponePompeo's precipitate and predictable claim the attacks were likely perpetrated by the Iranian Revolutionary Guard, this is an apposite time to recall this telling little incident.Below see the transcript of Mr Clawson's remarks
Transcript"I frankly think that crisis initiation is really tough and it's very hard for me to see how the United States president can get us to war with Iran which leads me to conclude that if in fact compromise is not coming that the traditional way of America gets to war is what would be best for US interests
Some people might think that mr. Roosevelt wanted to get us in to the World War two as David mentioned. You may recall we had to wait for Pearl Harbor.
Some people might think mr. Wilson wanted to get us into World War One. You may recall he had to wait for the Lusitania episode
Some people might think that mr. Johnson wanted to send troops to Vietnam. You may recall they had to wait for the Gulf of Tonkin episode.
We didn't go to war with Spain until the USS Maine exploded, and may I point out that mr. Lincoln did not feel he could call off the federal army until Fort Sumter was attacked which is why he ordered the commander at Fort Sumter to do exactly that thing which the South Carolinians had said would cause an attack.
So if in fact the Iranians aren't going to compromise it would be best if somebody else started the war
But I would just like to suggest that one can combine other means of pressure with sanctions. I mentioned that explosion on August 17th. We could step up the pressure. I mean look people, Iranian submarines periodically go down – someday one of them
might not come up.Who would know why?
We can do a variety of things if we wish to increase the pressure. I'm not advocating that but I'm just suggesting that a it's this is not a either-or proposition of, you know, it's just sanctions has to be has to succeed or other things.
DunGroanin
"Imagine that California seceded from the union and an American president responded with the carpet bombing of Los Angeles, San Diego, and San Francisco that destroyed 90 percent of those cities. Such was the case with General Sherman's bombardment of Atlanta; a naval blockade; a blocking off of virtually all trade; the eviction of thousands of residents from their homes (as occurred in Atlanta in 1864); the destruction of most industries and farms; massive looting of private property by a marauding army; and the killing of one out of four males of military age while maiming for life more than double that number. Would such an American president be considered a 'great statesman' or a war criminal? The answer is obvious.
A statesman would have recognized the state's right to secede, as enshrined in the Tenth Amendment, among other places, and then worked diligently to persuade the seceded state that a reunion was in its best interest. Agreat statesman, or even a modest one, would not have impulsively plunged the entire nation into a bloody war.
Lincoln's warmongering belligerence and his invasion of all the Southern states in response to Fort Sumter (where no one was harmed or killed) caused the upper South -- Virginia, North Carolina, Tennessee, and Arkansas -- to secede after originally voting to remain in the Union. He refused to meet with Confederate commissioners to discuss peace and even declined a meeting with Napoleon III of France, who offered to broker a peace agreement. No genuine statesman would have behaved in such a way.
After Fort Sumter, Lincoln thanked naval commander Gustavus Fox for assisting him in manipulating the South Carolinians into firing at Fort Sumter. A great statesman does not manipulate his own people into starting one of the bloodiest wars in human history."
Unbelievable, The UK vassal will use this to as one more reason to evade their responsibilities in implementing the JCPOA.Many Europeans are not in love with the idea of war with Iran, just to achieve obedience to the US. 90 million people is bigger than Germany.
But, for some reason, they are all in politics today.
Now how could that be?Only because there are people whom it currently suits to use shysters, spivs and con men in order to create enough chaos for us to want to give up and just let those people have their way.
I agree with Rhys below. There is no more disgusting example of sub-humanity to be found on earth than these warmongers.
To deal with them, however, we will have to realize that their "philosophy", if you can call it that, runs very deep. It didn't just enter their heads last week.
They are reared and trained in it.It will be a tough battle.
The modern version, however, which has moved into politics, was shrewd enough to use a few decades of bribery and threats in order to build around itself a nice little shell, through which the law simply cannot penetrate, except on special occasions, mainly for show.Draft dodgers, academics, 'historians' etc etc.
Ball-less pricks is what I call them .
The same appeasers armed and funded the Taliban (Mujahideen) against the Soviets.
The US are the single largest force for terrorism the World has ever seen.I see you admire the Soviet Union, but at its dissolution, people were queuing to leave. And yet the US, and the UK, according to you, iniquitous places of tyranny, are oversubscribed. Could it be, that for all your implied erudition, you are merely a bellend?
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Jun 13, 2019 | www.theguardian.com
Looks like firms like 23andMe opened the can of worms... Use of genetics to substantiate racist stereotypes
For almost two decades, Farber and his colleagues have advocated for this immigrant community in the face of what they see as targeted discrimination. In cases of marriage, Farber acts as a type of rabbinical lawyer, pulling together documentation and making a case for his clients in front of a board of rabbinical judges. He fears that DNA testing will place even more power in the hands of the Rabbinate and further marginalize the Russian speaking community. "It's as if the rabbis have become technocrats," he told me. "They are using genetics to give validity to their discriminatory practices."
Despite public outrage and protests in central Tel Aviv, the Rabbinate have not indicated any intention of ending DNA testing, and reports continue to circulate in the Israeli media of how the test is being used. One woman allegedly had to ask her mother and aunt for genetic material to prove that she was not adopted. Another man was asked to have his grandmother, sick with dementia, take a test.
Boris Shindler, a political activist and active member of the Russian speaking community, told me that he believes that the full extent of the practice remains unknown, because many of those who have been tested are unwilling to share their stories publicly out of a sense of shame. "I was approached by someone who was married in a Jewish ceremony maybe 15, 20 years ago, who recently received an official demand saying if you want to continue to be Jewish, we'd like you to do a DNA test," Shindler said. "They said if she doesn't do it then she has to sign papers saying she is not Jewish. But she is too humiliated to go to the press with this."
What offends Shindler most is that the technique is being used to single out his community, which he sees as part of a broader stigmatization of Russian speaking immigrants in Israeli society as unassimilated outsiders and second-class citizens. "It is sad because in the Soviet Union we were persecuted for being Jewish and now in Israel we're being discriminated against for not being Jewish enough," he said.
As well as being deeply humiliating, Shindler told me that there is confusion around what being genetically Jewish means. "How do they decide when someone becomes Jewish," he asked. "If I have 51% Jewish DNA does that mean I'm Jewish, but if I'm 49% I'm not?"
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Jun 11, 2019 | www.moonofalabama.org
Ghost Ship , Jun 11, 2019 11:01:51 AM | 134That arsehole Luke Harding is back with one of his bullshit exclusives in the Guardian .Leaked documents reveal Russian effort to exert influence in AfricaThe only thing you really need to know about the exposé:
Exclusive: Kremlin ally Yevgeny Prigozhin leading push to turn continent into strategic hub, documents show
by Luke Harding and Jason BurkeThe leaked documents were obtained by the Dossier Center, an investigative unit based in London. The centre is funded by Mikhail Khodorkovsky, the Russian businessman and exiled Kremlin critic.The Guardian obviously has no shame for publishing such an article but then it has never explained the claims of Manafort meeting with Assange in the Ecuadorean embassy. As for the article, my reaction was "so fucking what?".The British French and Americans have fucked up large parts of Africa while the Soviet Union/Russia was indirectly responsible for eradicating that cancerous growth, the apartheid state of South Africa, a single act that was better than all the good things that the United Kingdom, France and the United States have ever done in Africa
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Jun 09, 2019 | www.theguardian.com
The senator's 'I have a plan' mantra has become a rallying cry as she edges her way to the top – but is it enough to get past the roadblocks of Biden and Sanders?
Elizabeth Warren at a campaign rally in Fairfax, Virginia, on 16 May. Photograph: Cliff Owen/AP Plan by plan, Elizabeth Warren is making inroads and gaining on her rivals in the 2020 Democratic race to take on Donald Trump.
The former Harvard law professor's policy heavy approach made an impression among activists at the She the People forum in Texas last month and was well-received at the California state party convention earlier this month.
Elizabeth Warren's economic nationalism vision shows there's a better way Robert Reich
This week a Morning Consult poll saw Warren break into the double digits at 10%, putting her in third place behind Bernie Sanders and Joe Biden. A recent Economist/YouGov poll found Warren was making gains among liberal voters, with Democrats considering the Massachusetts senator for the Democratic presidential nomination in nearly equal measure with Sanders.
Her intense campaigning on a vast swathe of specific issues has achieved viral moments on the internet – even including one woman whom Warren advised on her love life – as well as playing well during recent television events.
At a televised town hall in Indiana this week, Warren listened intently as a woman who voted for Trump in 2016 described her disillusionment – not only with a president who failed to bring back manufacturing jobs as he said he promised but with an entire political system stymied by dysfunction.
"I feel duped," said the voter, Renee Elliott, who was laid off from her job at the Indianapolis Carrier plant. "I don't have a lot of faith in political candidates much anymore. They make promises. They make them and break them."
Warren rose to her feet. "The thing is, you can't just wave your arms," the she said, gesturing energetically. "You've really got to have a plan – and I do have a plan."
That mantra – a nod to the steady churn of policy blueprints Warren's campaign has released – has become a rallying cry for Warren as she edges her way to the top of the crowded Democratic presidential primary field.
But despite the burst of momentum, Warren's path to the nomination has two major roadblocks: Sanders and Biden. Her success will depend on whether she can deliver a one-two punch: replacing Sanders as the progressive standard bearer while building a coalition broad enough to rival Biden.
Warren began that work this week with a multi-stop tour of the midwest designed to show her strength among working class voters who supported Trump. Ahead of the visit, Warren unveiled a plan she described as "economic patriotism", which earned startling praise from one of Trump's most loyal supporters.
"She sounds like Donald Trump at his best," conservative Fox News commentator Tucker Carlson told his largely Republican audience as he read from Warren's proposal during the opening monologue of his show this week. The plan calls for "aggressive intervention on behalf of American workers" to boost the economy and create new jobs, including a $2tn investment in federal funding in clean energy programs.
Fox News host Tucker Carlson praises Elizabeth Warren's economic policies
His praise was all the more surprising because Warren has vowed not to participate in town halls on Fox News, calling the network a "hate-for-profit racket that gives a megaphone to racists and conspiracists".
The debate over whether Democrats should appear on Fox News for a town hall has divided the field. Sanders, whose televised Fox News town hall generated the highest viewership of any such event, argued that it is important to speak to the network's massive and heavily Republican audience.
As Warren courts working-class voters in the midwest, she continues to focus heavily on the early states of Iowa and New Hampshire. After jumping into the race on New Year's Eve 2018, Warren immediately set to work , scooping up talent and building a massive operation in Iowa. Her campaign is betting a strong showing in the first in the nation caucuses will propel her in New Hampshire, which neighbors Massachusetts, and then boost her in Nevada and South Carolina.
But as Warren gains momentum, moderate candidates are becoming more vocal about their concern that choosing a nominee from the party's populist wing will hand Trump the election.
"If we want to beat Donald Trump and achieve big progressive goals, socialism is not the answer," former Colorado governor John Hickenlooper told Democrats in California last weekend. Though his comments were met with boos and jeers among the convention's liberal crowd, his warning is at the heart of the debate over who should be the Democratic presidential nominee.
Warren has pointedly distinguished herself as a capitalist as opposed to a socialist or a democratic socialist, but she has not backed away from a populist platform that embraces sweeping economic reforms.
In her address to the California Democratic party, Warren rejected appeals for moderation.
"Some say if we all calm down, the Republicans will come to their senses," she said. "But our country is in a time of crisis. The time for small ideas is over."
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off-guardian.org
On June 4th the Chinese government issued a travel alert for Chinese tourists thinking of visiting the United States, a day after it issued a similar advisory to Chinese students thinking of studying in the US over concerns for their safety and security.
Chinese in the US are reporting harassment and interrogations by US immigration authorities and many now have the impression they are not welcome in the US.
The Global Times , speaking on behalf of the government stated:
The Chinese people find it difficult to accept the fact that they are being taken as thieves. The US boasts too much superiority and has been indulged by the world. Due to its short history, it lacks understanding of and respect for the rules of countries and laws of the market. The Americans of the early generations accumulated prosperity and prestige for the US, while the current US administration behaves like a wastrel generation by ruining the world's respect for the US."
It seems to me they are being generous to the US since the "early prosperity" of the US was built on the backs of slave labour, extermination of the indigenous peoples and theft of their lands, colonization and exploitation of other countries, including China, and two hundred years of continual warfare to secure the resources and markets of first the western hemisphere, then the world.
Their "prestige" comes out of the barrel of a gun. The US economic and military aggression against those nations that refuse to obey American demands to serve their interests ever increases and never abates.
A few days ago Mike Pompeo stated, with feigned innocence, that the US was willing to talk to Iran "without preconditions" when the real conditions Iran faces include an almost total embargo of its trade and threats of immediate attack by US forces, including nuclear attack. The Iranians quickly rejected this hypocrisy.
In the Balkans the US and its NATO war machine have again stirred up problems in Serbia where, in the NATO occupied province of Kosovo-Metohija, Serbs and Russians were detained and beaten up by Albanian security forces designed to put further pressure on Serbia to fall into the NATO camp so that the NATO machine will have complete control of the Balkans to complete the encirclement of Russia.
The war goes on in Syria, goes on in Ukraine, goes on in Afghanistan. The terrible situation of the Palestinians becomes even worse as the US plans the final solution for them-their disappearance as a people to be absorbed as citizens of other states, while Israel continues its aggressive expansion and acts as agent of the US bully in the region; the threats against Venezuela, Cuba and North Korea continue.
But the principle preoccupation of the US is still China and Russia.
On May 30th the US Department of Defense released its strategy paper for the Indo-Pacific region in which, after several pages of lies about its role in the world as savior and benefactor, set out America's intentions to dominate China and Russia.
It is another item of evidence that the United States government and its allies are conspiring to commit crimes against peace by planning, initiating and waging wars of aggression against those nations.
These designs by the American leadership reflect not only the desire of the owners of capital in the US to dominate the world. They also reflect the Americans' preoccupation with themselves as "exceptional" people, as the "exceptional" nation, above all others, answerable to none, which has been a characteristic of their culture since its foundation.
The aggressive objectives of the successive American governments were and are not accidents or mistakes arising out of immediate political circumstances but are a deliberate and necessary part of American foreign policy.
From its inception the American political leadership has claimed to unite the American people with a consciousness of their mission and destiny to dominate the world. War is seen as inevitable or highly probable to accomplish these objectives where intimidation and bribery fail.
To accomplish its objectives the United States has done all it can to disrupt the world order established after World War Two when world nations joined together for world peace in the United Nations Charter in 1946.
Within 3 years the US set up the NATO military alliance to threaten the Soviet Union, soon waged wars across south east Asia and overthrew governments the world over.
The rise to power of President Trump has resulted in the United States withdrawing from a series of treaties designed to reduce the threat of war and of nuclear armaments, or promote free trade, in order to free the United States from its obligations under the treaties involved to allow it to pursue its objectives using any means necessary. They have rejected international law and diplomacy in interstate relationships and now rely on threats and violence.
The Indo-Pacific Strategy Report , of June 1, 2019 begins with the claim that:
Inter-state strategic competition, defined by geopolitical rivalry between free and repressive world order visions, is the primary concern for U.S. national security. In particular, the People's Republic of China, under the leadership of the Chinese Communist Party, seeks to reorder the region to its advantage by leveraging military modernization, influence operations, and predatory economics to coerce other nations."
Time and again the Report ascribes to China the actual behavior of the United States for is it not the United States that has sought to reorder the world since it became a world power; has it not used all these methods and more to coerce other nations? The world knows it. Yet once again their sense of being exceptional makes them blind to their stupefying arrogance and hypocrisy.
The Report then warns that,
We will not accept policies or actions that threaten or undermine the rules-based international order – an order that benefits all nations. We are committed to defending and enhancing these shared values".
What they mean by "rules based international order" is not the order of international law as accepted by the world governments in the United Nations Charter and other international agreements but a US imposed international order, – an order that does not yet exist except in the fantasies of these gangsters-but which they never stop trying to impose on the world, an order of militarism, fear, and tyranny for the rest of the world.
The balance of the Report sets out their strategy of building up a "networked region" that is, a US controlled system of vassal states to prepare for war with China by prepositioning ammunition, equipment, logistics supplies, transportation networks, intelligence sharing and rapid deployment of forces to threaten China.
The vassal states; Japan, South Korea, Australia New Zealand, Canada, Indonesia, The Philippines, Thailand, Singapore, Taiwan, are all patted on the head for assisting the United States and promised they will be rewarded with peace and prosperity so long as they accept their subservient role to the saintly United States.
Other southeast Asia nations are referred to as potential "partners" for the future as they try to brag that they have Vietnam, India, Malaysia, Bangladesh, Laos and Cambodia on their side when all they have are courtesy arrangements and cooperation on a low level that all nations have with each other. Their vision of their influence is greater than the reality.
But the three targets remain the same for according to the Report, China is a "Revisionist Power" , Russia is a "Revitalized Malign Actor," while the DPRK, keeps its status as a "Rogue State," all of which the Americans claim are intent on challenging their fictional "rules based order."
There then follows, in each case, paragraph after paragraph of distortions of the facts about the nature and behavior of these three nations so that one feels compelled to break into laughter when reading these ludicrous labels that seem to come from a very bad 1950's Hollywood film script.
But finally, after all the verbiage, they get down to it and set out their real objectives by referencing the US Defense Strategy of 2018 which sets out the four pillars of their hegemonic designs:
1. Defend the Homeland;
This is a curious phrase we have been seeing the past number of years in American parlance, this concept of 'homeland," but in contradistinction to what is never stated. Well, the to the rest of the world, of course, which they now consider their lands as well, their outlands, and so the need for a phrase to identify the US as the "homeland". What could more display their colonial mindset than the use of this phrase?
2. Remain the preeminent military power in the world;
This is a threat to the world, to humankind, and can only be maintained by the pauperization of its own people.
3. Ensure the balances of power in key regions remain in our favour;
Meaning that they intend to keep playing one nation off against another and create chaos where necessary, to play both sides against the middle, whatever it takes so that the United States maintains the ruling hand,
4. Advance an international order that is most conducive to our security and prosperity
And here we have their principle objective, meaning that, despite all the rhetoric about shared values, shared goals and friendships with its vassal allies, the world is meant to enrich and serve the United States.
To make sure the world knows of their power and what they are willing to do with it the Report states:
In the region, US INDOPACOM currently has more than 2,000 aircraft; 200 ships and submarines; and more than 370,000 Soldiers, Sailors, Marines, Airmen, DoD civilians, and contractors assigned within its area of responsibility. The largest concentration of forces in the region are in Japan and the ROK. A sizable contingent of forces (more than 5,000 on a day-to-day basis) are also based in the U.S. territory of Guam, which serves as a strategic hub supporting crucial operations and logistics for all U.S. forces operating in the Indo-Pacific region. Other allies and partners that routinely host U.S. forces on a smaller scale include the Philippines, Australia, Singapore, and the United Kingdom through the island of Diego Garcia".
Other bases are planned in Australia and New Guinea.
In describing its relations and military cooperation with its vassal allies it places special emphasis on Taiwan and uses language that in direct terms violates the One China Policy of China, which the US pays lip service to. It is tantamount to a declaration that Taiwan is a US protectorate instead of an integral part of China.
They state:
The objective of our defense engagement with Taiwan is to ensure that Taiwan remains secure, confident, free from coercion, and able to peacefully and productively engage the mainland on its own terms."
So when US, Australian, French, or British naval forces claim they are traversing the Straight of Taiwan as an exercise in "freedom of navigation" we know that what they are really doing is using force to divide China, to treat it as if it were still the weak China of the 19th century when American gunboats until as late as 1949 ran up and down the Yangtze River as if they owned it; to slap it in the face, to dare it with insults.
The situation has become so tense that the Global Times on June 6,th in an op ed by Wei Jianguo, said:
China is able to withstand US maximum pressure, due to the country's economic resilience, and Chinese people's resolute determination. Suffering from a century of humiliation, the Chinese nation has been accustomed to such pressure, as shown in the War of Resistance against Japanese Aggression, as well as the Korean War or the War to Resist US Aggression and Aid Korea. The unity of Chinese people is a vital reason for the country's fundamental victory in history."
The Peoples' Daily stated, "America is the enemy of the world."
Russia and China, in their defence, are intensifying their economic and military cooperation but the threat remains and is increasing. The answer may lie in the fact that the US strategy is ultimately self-defeating. The more they try to dominate the world, the more intense the resistance becomes.
Even their alliances are coming apart at the seams as the thieves bicker about their share of the loot. But the question remains, what to do about this enemy of the world, this outlaw power.
Originally published by New Eastern Outlook
Christopher Black is an international criminal lawyer based in Toronto. He is known for a number of high-profile war crimes cases and recently published his novel Beneath the Clouds . He writes essays on international law, politics and world events, especially for the online magazine New Eastern Outlook .
Filed under: China , empire watch , latest , Russia , United States Tagged with: china , Christopher Black , Donald trump , imperialism , New Eastern Outlook , russia , Syria , US can you spare $1.00 a month to support independent mediaOffGuardian does not accept advertising or sponsored content. We have no large financial backers. We are not funded by any government or NGO. Donations from our readers is our only means of income. Even the smallest amount of support is hugely appreciated.
I really don't understand the apparent logic of only criticising our own western totalitarian supra-national state and then either keeping quiet, or possibly glorifying, the other totalitarian states dominating much of the other two tri-spheres of our planet.Harry LawTotalitarian regimes in each of the world's tri-spheres are pretty much the same, ultimately, and all are displaying the failings of humanity across millenia. Suggesting that our NATO-centered one is worse than the Russian or Chinese one is rather academic, after all, they are all evil bastards and happy to kill those who disagree with them. Especially if we measure their inhumanity across the last 105 years, each group has probably killed as many innocents as the other, more or less.
Trump also mentioned Asian tech giant Huawei, emphasising that it could be part of a trade agreement between Washington and Beijing. The remark comes at a time when the White House has been lobbying its European allies against granting Huawei access to its networks https://sputniknews.com/us/201906101075775522-trump-china-devalues-its-currency/
Can Trump never cease to be such an arrogant fool, can anyone imagine European countries and others severing trade with Huawei because Trump told them Huawei were a national security risk just last week, then having done so, and having to withstand all the negative blow back from China, for the US to turn around a week later and declare Huawei could be part of a US/China deal. The man is a genuine moron.
The US Cabal is presently driving them in each others arms: stupidity, dumb or clever planned?
China is short of energy and raw materials. Russia can supply these in spades, easily and efficiently as a neighbouring country, for their mutual benefit. Russia is a reliable supplier, China is a reliable customer and partner. This can render any US maritime blockade of China ineffective. It also renders US economic warfare against Russia's energy sector and trade ineffective.
China benefits from Russian high technology products and military equipment that it currently lacks, though it is making rapid progress in these areas. China can supply the investment Russia requires, and all the products previously imported from western countries, consumer goods of all kinds.
Both countries are threatened by US military aggression, economic and financial boycotts, political subversion and terrorism, and propaganda vilification. Washington has provided ample evidence that it cannot and never will be a friend and partner to either. If they stand together, they can neutralise US hostility and aggression. By cooperating in the new Silk Road, they can if necessary completely insulate themselves from the US and its EU satellites.
America has shown itself to be so implacably hostile to both countries that Divide And Rule will never work. It is clearly intent on the destruction of both.
Russia and China signed a friendship treaty way back in 2001.
I have today read quite a disturbing article by Peter Brookes (of the Heritage Foundation – I urge you to read up about this organisation founded in the Reagan years), where he rants about the dangers of WMD's in the Middle East and the threats posed by Iran and Syria.
We know that the three main threats in the Middle East are US, Saudi Arabia and Israel, who all use "terrorist groups" – radical Islam, to sow chaos, death and destruction in the region.
https://nationalinterest.org/feature/syrian-wmd-proliferation-could-set-middle-east-fire-61377
Criticism of China is taboo here: and a blind eye is turned to China's sub-imperial position in the neoliberal global economy. Just some of the facts I have posted to support this empirical position are: China's finance is a sub-imperial extension of the post-BW Washington Consensus; China manipulates its currency daily (despite official denials) to stay 'in band'; the currency differential supports the USD – keeping it over-valued and the CNY (yuan) under-valued – to aid China's export trade-driven economy;
China/Russia are fully committed to the WTO/IMF/WB "rules based global order" – a re-commitment they state on every joint communique (including the recent BRI Forum); the so-called 'BRICS alternative' financial institutions – NDB, AIIB, and CRA – are all dollarised for loans (this is easily verifiable or refutable) [This means sub-imperial loans force poor countries into dollar vassalship and export led production – aka the resource curse];
the BRICS countries refinanced the IMF – easily verifiable; the CRA loans are neoliberal 'strings attached' loans – 30% from the CRA plus a Structural Adjustment Plan from the IMF; the AIIB and IMF co-fund many projects together (11, I think – without checking); the IMF, UNSC, and WB all endorse the BRI as a business opportunity for the neoliberal global economy.
Last but not least, BRIC was a Goldman Sachs alternative globalisation ploy dreamt up by 'Lord Jim' O'Neil – Baron Gatley and ex-Tory Minister all facts that I have linked to multiple times.
So, in fact: I'm just messin' with you. It becomes a lesson in epistemology to see how long people can refuse to accept the facts of the alternative globalisations of the world economy. Intra-neoliberal capitalist squabbles aside: the world economy globalised decades ago. The TNCs have been building up a trans-national powerbase for 70 years. One that is very well established, if not complete. Offshore is where the real global hegemon resides. Check out their BRICS communiques: China/Russsia are committed to 'Global Governance'. One of the tenets of which is Multi-Stakeholder Governance – the TNCs; international CSOs; and local NGOs taking corporate control of global issues – particularly climate change. Anyone who thinks this is desirable is either already on, or is in urgent need of medication.
The US/China Trade War – despite this article – is largely phoney. If it gets real: expect the shortest currency war in history precipitating financial crisis. The yuan and dollar are joined at the hip by the euro$ – they share the same fate. This is all about 'tech transfers' – AI, 5G, cybersecurity, fintech; etc – where China is way ahead of the US and they will not share or budge on US demands to do so. Why should they? But they are not about to go to war over it: and a real trade war would be internecine for the systemically fragile global neoliberal economy [see Jack Rasmus, for instance].
Everyone gets the dollar is toilet paper: the same everyone will argue the yuan is not. This amuses me no end – the fact that people think they are separate. Debts matter. Debts are unrepayable. Paying down debt counter-intuitively reduces economic activity. The size of the debt does not matter: the serviceability – debt management – is all that counts. China – like every other country – subsidises the US national debt and US imperialism: as a sub-imperial vassal. They have to support the euro$ – the world's reserve currency – to support world trade. Whether they like it or not. The fact that they have gone to considerable lengths to jump through Lagarde's hoops to place the yuan in the SDR basket shows they do not like it. But the alternative: the SDR as world reserve with a new centralised reserve bank is the globalists mastubatory dream of TNC self-financing self-governance with a 'Corporate Self-Responsibility' 'voluntarist' ethic aka the NWO. Anyone who thinks this is desirable needs medication and a long holiday in an asylum.
All this Vltchek/Escobar/Korybko crypto-globalism that has colonised the 'progressive' imaginary is, wittingly or unwittingly, globalist NWO propaganda. Yes, Americanism's exceptionalist imperialism is as great an evil as you can find but it is built on sub-imperialism, peripheralisation, and exclusionary tiers of the neoliberal globalised world system. The real powerbase is offshore and trans-national (the TNS = Trans-National Suprastate) – financed by Black Market euro$. I haven't even mentioned the City or the ecological murder by debt money aspect but obsessive focus on America Bad/China Better is proto-globalist and crypto-capitalist in its lack of any real analysis as to why the US can sustain its imperialism. Because the world economy supports the 'exorbitant privilege' afforded by the euro$. To which the globalists of all countries – including China and Russia – want to replace with an even more anti-humanitarian biocidal alternative – the centralised control of the SDR.
Anyone who thinks this is desirable needs medication and a long holiday in an asylum and lobotomising
US investment good, Chinese investment bad!
US investment good, Chinese investment bad!
Four legs good, two legs bad!
Baa! Baa!! Baa!!!I also am uneasy about Andre Vltchek's rose tinted views about countries like China, especially his use of the word 'socialist' to describe them when clearly they're not. Under the Neoliberal economic system, we are well down the path of a corporate fascist dystopia. In fact, we're pretty much there already. And its been integrated right thruout the World's economy for decades, as you point out, along with the relentless propaganda.
People go with 'best option' at hand.
BigB is right, that China-Russia alternative might be a kind of same dog different collar but . All in all, the real options are not even US, China, Russia or Timbuktu .but a deeper personal transformation that moves away from egocentric, materialistic perspective and make room for a new, non-materialistic and really enlightened consciousness.
Glad that you mentioned the "but" But this sort of imagined symmetry touted as existing between different nation states, in this instance, between the Eurasian bloc, and the Anglo-Zionist bloc does not come near to the actually existing asymmetry. The first cold war was not just a war against communism but a war against the right of countries to pursue their own economic goals that might not serve US interests. Communist states were merely the strongest offenders.
To argue that both Russia and China are capitalist economies is true enough, but to say that they are imperialist stretches credulity to breaking point. It was I think Condoleeza Rice who opined that "Russia's interests end at Russia's borders"- pretty much a flat fact, no value-judgement implied. If Russia was ever an empire it has long been stripped of its dominions and economies. Same goes for China whose invasions against neighbouring countries – India 1962, and Vietnam in 1978 – followed by quick withdrawal was about the limits of its imperial ambitions.
Self-evidently, imperial nations have large military machines and a penchant for using them. The sheer asymmetry Russia's military capacity between Russia on the one hand and NATOs on the other is vast. NATOs 28 members operate military bases in 80 countries spanning the world from the South Atlantic to the north Pacific, whilst Russia maintains military facilities, mostly nominal and defensive, in precisely 10 countries. The combined population which adds up to much the same levels as Russia itself, who share borders with it. Does this sound like an imperialist country?
Moreover, in economic terms Russia's GPD is smaller than that of Italy or Brazil and barely bigger than Australia or Spain. This came about due to the loss or productive power which took place during the Yeltsin catastrophe. Russia was forced into a semi-peripheral economic status relying on the extractive commodities of oil and case; some recovery has taken place but this is a slow process given the outflow of capital resulting from the actions of the oligarchic cliques still in evidence despite Putin's efforts at reform. Again, does this sound like an imperialist country? A strong case could be made out for Russia being a semi-peripheral economy, at least in economic terms.
Turning the the bona fide imperialist bloc In order to subordinate any recalcitrant states the empire constructed various institutions -IMF, World Bank and WTO which are under its direct and indirect control. This has been instantiated on more than one occasion. But let's stick to the Russian Loan to the Ukraine which refused to pay back given the support of the IMF.
The IMF broke four of its rules by lending to Ukraine:
(1) Not to lend to a country that has no visible means to pay back the loan (the "No More Argentinas" rule, adopted after the IMF's disastrous 2001 loan to that country). (2) Not to lend to a country that repudiates its debt to official creditors (the rule originally intended to enforce payment to U.S.-based institutions). (3) Not to lend to a country at war – and indeed, destroying its export capacity and hence its balance-of-payments ability to pay back the loan. Finally (4), not to lend to a country unlikely to impose the IMF's austerity "conditionalities.
" Ukraine did agree to override democratic opposition and cut back pensions, but its junta proved too unstable to impose the austerity terms on which the IMF insisted. Nevertheless IMF head Christine Lagarde made a new loan to Ukraine in spring 2015, she merely expressed a verbal hope for peace. Ukrainian President Porochenko announced the next day that he would step.
The IMF is now willing to countenance countries repudiating their official debts to Russia or China. Thus changing its rules to clear a path for making loans to Ukraine, or any other NATO-friendly countries being the latest development in the escalation of the new cold war.
If Russia had been an Imperialist power no doubt a gunboat would have been on its way to recover its pound of flesh.
Russia may be a capitalist country, it may not fully democratic in the full sense of the word (who in this benighted age is?) but it must have the right to be sovereign, self-governing and free to follow its own economic and political policies, and not to be surrounded and threatened by real imperialist powers who seem determined not to let it.
This is an old (rather tedious) debate on the left, particularly the Trotskyist left. as to whether or not the Soviet Union was capitalist and/or imperialist state. The 'state-caps'as they were called, decided that the USSR was capitalist, and not just capitalist, but a particularly pernicious form of capitalism, actually worse than US capitalist-imperialism. Some quite clever polemicists like Sidney Hook. But sadly they many ended up in the neo-con camp. Irving Kristol, Christopher Hitchens, and our own lovely Guardian polemicist, 'Let's bomb Russia' Paul Mason.
"To bring the perpetrators of the war crime in Douma to justice means unblocking the multilateral system at the UN and the International Criminal Court. That in turn means persuading the Russian people to elect a government that does not sanction torture, chemical weapons attack, the assassination of opponents and the conquest of territory by brute force". He should stop running away from the orderlies, they are only trying to help him.I respect your economic knowledge and really appreciate your detailed response. With respect, the state-structuralist view you put forward is exactly the model that needs revision: ecologically and economically – in light of entropy; modern market theory; and the existence of the euro$ markets – that mediate as much as 90% of world trade according to Shaxson. Including extractivism.
Indeed, you reviewed his latest book: so perhaps I should bring the City into consideration as the core of the tributary accumulation of the global neoliberal market fundamentalism?
First: I should make clear that I use the broadest definition of imperialism – of lifestyle; credit; technological, resource, and financialisational and not just military imperialism. Though the main purpose of US imperial might is in the 'global policeman' role: keeping the neoliberal capitalist core, semi-periphery, periphery, and excluded/exploited hierarchical tiers exactly as they are.
So, Russia and China are not traditionally imperialistic: which is why I would prescribe Marini's term 'sub-imperial' terminology extending the credit and financialisation imperialism of the core over the periphery. As academics like Professor Patrick Bond and William I Robinson have detailed.
Above even the core: the Trans-National Suprastate (TNS) – of the uber-capitalist billionaires; the top 140 TNCs (including the worst polluting extractivist corporations); and the trans-national financial institutions (banks; shadow banks; hedge funds; etc) – would rank as ultra-imperialist even though, strictly speaking, they do not even have any guns.
Second: I should include the hegemonic neoliberal extractivist, expansionist, and super-exploitation model the current global world system follows. In line with numerous other comments I have made: I view this materialistic model as lifestyle imperialism – not just for today – but as commodifying and consuming the future. I'd like to keep hope alive, but must nevertheless note that is if the current extractivist oil fueled materialistic paradigm leaves much of a future. Is it not an imperialism to live profligate consumer lifestyles now – expecting the coming 'Z generation' and their unborn children to socialise and foot the bill? I would say it is.
I did not draw any symmetries – or assymetries – I said the world system is falsely conceived of as such. The current world system is not easily bifurcated into neat East or West assemblies: and is best considered as a whole. Elsewhere, I maintain I would much rather focus on world system ecology and economy – and dispose of nation state analysis in general. This makes diagnosis of the world system economy as imperialist and omnicidal all the more easy. And I would say, irrefutably so.
In fact: the whole misconception of two hemispheres, or two contrasting ways of life is generally to refute the irrefutability as when Vltchek builds the imaginary conception of an 'Ecological Civilisation' rising through Eurasian integration into the 'supercontinent' or Mackinder's 'World Island'. Which, as I am sure you know, would peripheralise the US/UK (just the City – extended to 'ZUSUK' to include Zurich and the lowland 'offshore' secrecy jurisdictions – such as Luxembourg, Belgium, Holland, etc in the City's financial sphere). Which would overturn the current hegemonic order. Which is why both countries are ringed by bases: to keep them in their sub-imperial place. As the Atlanticist integration takes place in parallel.
Indeed: Russia is the one country seeking seccession from the current imperial euro$ order. As VVP recently said: "We are not abandoning the dollar: the dollar is abandoning us". Russia dumped the bulk of its Treasuries (USTs) without fuss: the markets did not collapse; the dollar got stronger, in fact. Now they are using yuan as reserves – fearing sanctions – trading in currency swaps. But this is a drop in the ocean of the reserve markets (>2% as far as I am aware). Above the euro and yen – the dollar reigns supreme for a worthless Fiat. [There are smaller 'euro-euro' and 'euro-yen' unregulated markets too: but let's not complicate it].
But Russia is the exception that breaks the rule. I'm sure you are aware Russia is owned offshore – estimated usually at 80% – much of it in Londongrad. Shaxson even uses this as a creation myth for the genesis of the euro$ markets. Russia is still bleeding from capital flight, even though it slowed recently. Michael Hudson puts the figure at $25bn a year since the early 90s – over $1tn total funding Chelsea FC instead of Russian recovery.
As you raised the question – what is the answer? Just who is sovereign? When fealty has to be paid to the dollar; when trade is mediated in a foreign currency – enforcing vassalship and export driven econometrics; when there is a huge unregulated offshore pool of petro- and illicit capital offshore challenging regulated banking onshore; whenthis has given rise to 'casino capitalism' shadow banking; when FTAs, RTAs, customs unions, and regional trading blocs facilitate the borderless flows of goods, services, labour, and capital; when the neoliberal WTO rules in favour of TNCs; when the IMF/WB development loans come with neoliberalising strings attached; when resources are a curse; and financialisation is expanding with fintech to make us all poorer? It is not the people, is it Francis? The offshore TNCs have become highly influential "Shadow Sovereigns" – to coin Susan Georges phrase. And their influence is extending into 'Global Governance'. Where will that leave us?
The world is a rich man's paradise: unionised labour and democracies have been smashed; the world totally re-ordered by class racism and financial imperialism; we have been de-politicised and de-sovereigntised – our rights and freedoms 'offshored'; what labour is left is about to be lost to AI; wages have been stagnabt for decades; the poor are getting poorer, the underdeveoloped more underdeveloped; the extractivism, expansionism, and hyper-exploitation of today and tomorrow is perhaps at its zenith: and the globalist model is killing the host.
I know we realise this: perhaps that makes the 'grass is greener' syndrome explicable? Even though 'over there' is exactly the same model of extractivism, expansionism, and hyper-exploitation. Add in entropic ecological analysis: and that 'greener' is a pseudo-ecological civilisation.
As the global markets – except the magic stock market – invert and implode; the G7 central banks prepare to 'ease' with rate cuts. The extractivist model is broken: capitalism died between 07-09 to be replaced with perpetual debt monetisation and cosmetic 'Global Destruction Protocol' growth. One final point: surely it must have crossed the mind that the assembling armies may not be going to fight each other? Or possibly the parallel globalisations might not be parallel and alternative at all ?
There is nothing I can do, but lament the lack of anti-capitalist, anti-globalist, critique. But I do not have to cheer on the extractivist, expansionist, materialistic oppressors as they debt-fund the anti-future. Making the case that China/Russia's neoliberal extractivist methodology is slightly more humane and humanitarian when, in the meta-analysis, it is just as quickly killing the planet seems somewhat unnecessary, don't you think? It is all part of the lifestyle imperialism we are witnessing over today and tomorrow. Modernity is murder by debt money East and West.
For me the choice is simple: Peace and no-violence, no plaundering and respect for life in all its forms. With that inside, you can not be manipulated or make to buy "humanitarian interventions", defense of human rights through bombings and coupe de etat. Nor with being free because you can wear Prada or have access to so call "advance" gadgets .
Ultimately, the actual revolution, change, has to happened within ourselves, inside a change from self-centered, materialistic, idiotic consumption to a more spiritual-based conception that sees reality beyond any and all man-created categories. We are all one and the same. This life is not a possibility to achieve anything material but just a learning path, a liberating path.
https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2013/08/jfk-vs-the-military/309496/
Americans should be made to bicker with each other and left unable to unite to attack the world again.
Israel can turn Gaza into an open air prison camp while murdering Palestinian children in front of the cameras yet the vast majority of those in the west simply haven't got a clue what is going on there (because of an orchestrated news blackout).
Or if we turn back the clock the US can drop atom bombs on defenseless citizens and it isn't regard as a crime, or even as an immoral thing to do.
It goes without saying they will keep getting away with it until the first western leader is hung from a lampost but as it stands they are more likely to be given regular columns in the Guardian or invited to prestigious speaking events while being paid handsomely for inane homilies about world peace.
The MSM play an important part in promoting this lurch away from democracy – except, of course, when the state turns around and bites THEM (whereupon they expect our support for "freedom of the press").
What pure evil resides in the United States. All for us and a few crumbs for you as long as you follow orders. Living in Australia, its shameful how low the Australian Govt will bow and grovel to their masters in Washington. And the total mind numbing hypocrisy .
China just blocked On-Guardian and would not blink an eye to do cut of Off-Guardian too; self censorship is deadly in the long run.
No other country/empire in the history of the World has come anywhere near the crimes committed by the US.
The now discarded Westphalian principles about non-interference in the internal affairs of sovereign nations is now unfortunately defunct. This means that war becomes inevitable if this path continues to be pursued by the AZ empire. Russia and China are obliged to defend themselves and are doing so.
BTW, how are your 16 spy agencies working out for you, there in the 'land of the free' ?
Why try to counter balance biased Western MSM with pro "poor" China stuff? That comes close to fake news and too many have had enough of that. Show both side of this coin.
Maybe the Pentagon planners are writing a script for a sequel to Dr Strangelove, because the characters today are far more convincing, both funnier and scarier than Peter Sellers et al 55 years ago. Pompeo and Pence are 'end time' believers who think that Trump might be on a mission from God. Thankfully we have two first class cowards in Commander- in -Chief Donald 'bone spurs' Trump and his advisor John Bolton, the former said that his reasons for avoiding service in Vietnam were his feet, and that his personal Vietnam at the time was his ability to avoid sexually Transmitted diseases. John Bolton said "I confess I had no desire to die in a southeast paddy" "I considered the war in Vietnam already lost", what he probably omitted to say was I am at ease with others going to die in Vietnam, just so long as it is not me. Must not forget Elliot Abrams struggling to get a part in this new production a convicted war criminal who presided over the 1980s 'dirty war' era, when US-backed death squads murdered hundreds of thousands in Latin America. You could not make it up.
Trump is acting like a mafia boss, the problem is when one nation big or small decides not to pay 'protection money', Germany is continuing with the Nord Stream 2 gas Pipe line despite threats of sanctions, it is not buying the F35 lemon, nor is it contributing 2% of GDP [Trump wants 4%] to NATO. Trump is going ape shit about this, but what can he do?
Turkey are withstanding the threats [so far] by buying Russia's S400 anti aircraft system, same with India, how long can the Empires credibility be tested before those states get more than a severed horses head placed in their beds? Russia/China and most of the world seem to have the measure of the beast, the US empire is still powerful and can do a lot of harm, what is at stake is the independent sovereignty of and self respect of nations, if that is lost, all is lost. My advice to nations who want to keep their self respect, is when they are told to 'follow the leader of the free world' and told to do something that damages the interests of their own country, is to say Go Fuck Yourselves. Diplomatically of course.
Admittedly, as with most Sellers movies, things do get funny, but Kubrick's message is, to me, 100% prophetic and shows us more than half a century later exactly what we should be scared of.
Yet the thugs in today's Washington have probably never even seen the movie, let alone understood its excoriating satire.
And it's still a damning criticism.Frankly, it's a relief to read amidst our daily rations of American exceptionalism.
Forever.
Hug your loved ones now.
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Jun 10, 2019 | off-guardian.org
alt media-verse is currently on fire with the news that the US State Dept's answer to Al Capone, Mike Pompeo, has been caught promising "Jewish leaders" to send the boys round to Jeremy Corbyn if he should get elected and subsequently prove to be uppity and out of line. According to the WaPo , who broke the story:
The remarks, which are contained in audio of a private meeting leaked to The Washington Post, make Pompeo the second senior U.S. official to comment on Britain's turbulent leadership succession in the past week.During his meeting with Jewish leaders in New York, Pompeo was asked if Corbyn "is elected, would you be willing to work with us to take on actions if life becomes very difficult for Jews in the U.K.?"
In response, Pompeo said, "It could be that Mr. Corbyn manages to run the gantlet and get elected. It's possible. You should know, we won't wait for him to do those things to begin to push back. We will do our level best," he said to fervent applause from attendees.
"It's too risky and too important and too hard once it's already happened," he said.
Of course the idea the "Jewish leaders" harbor any real fear that Jeremy Corbyn (Jeremy Corbyn!) is going to make life "difficult" for British Jews if elected is simply risible. They know, just as every moderately informed person knows, that that's absurd. They know Corbyn has no wish to make life difficult for anybody – except possibly the uber wealthy and the profiteer class.
They know the "antisemitism" fear is just a cover for the very very real fear that a Corbyn government will break the unwritten rules of modern western governance and reject the agenda of austerity, exploitation and perpetual war that has been creating huge profits and ideological thrills for the blessed few over the last twenty years.
They know that what Pompeo is promising is action to prevent this possibility coming about.
People are up in arms about this, and some seem quite shocked. Apparently the idea the neoliberal elites would try regime change or regime-control on a relatively prosperous western country was something they didn't previously think possible.
Unfortunately it's more than possible. The state apparatus of the different western nations are a tight bond of mutual regard and interest, just as likely to foment regime change on their own or their allies' elected representatives as on those of impoverished or "developing" countries, if they believe those representatives threaten the perceived interests of the state. Of course it isn't too often necessary, since the same western state apparatus also works to ensure that only governments that don't threaten perceived state interests manage to get elected. But, when the unthinkable happens, MI5 and the CIA are quite happy to step up to the plate and throw their own or their allies' democratic governments out the window. It's happened – or nearly happened – at least twice in the last fifty years.
In the 1960s the UK security agencies, senior military and members of the royal family were apparently contemplating a fullblown coup against Labour prime minister Harold Wilson.
In 1975 it was Australia's turn , when democratically elected reforming prime minister Gough Whitlam was overthrown in a bloodless constitutional coup organised jointly by the US and UK .
The old empire and the new have form in this regard, and this means no one should take Pompeo's words (spoken in private let's not forget) lightly.
It's also interesting to look at how the WaPo frames the revelation. There's no sense of outrage or surprise there. In fact it's an almost matter-of-fact piece, written with no awareness of its potential impact. Even those in the comments who object in some form are mostly doing it within the permissible current language of dissent – blaming Trump , because in these identity politics-saturated times, your morality resides in who or what you are NOT in what you do.
To the WaPo – and many of its readers – there's nothing intrinsically either wrong or surprising in the idea a US secretary of state should be overtly promising to interfere in the democratic governance of another country.
It's just what they do when they need to.
See Caitlin Johnson’s piece: https://caitlinjohnstone.com/2019/06/10/uh-what-did-pompeo-mean-when-he-vowed-to-push-back-against-corbyn/
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Jun 08, 2019 | off-guardian.org
On June 4th the Chinese government issued a travel alert for Chinese tourists thinking of visiting the United States, a day after it issued a similar advisory to Chinese students thinking of studying in the US over concerns for their safety and security.
Chinese in the US are reporting harassment and interrogations by US immigration authorities and many now have the impression they are not welcome in the US.
The Global Times , speaking on behalf of the government stated:
The Chinese people find it difficult to accept the fact that they are being taken as thieves. The US boasts too much superiority and has been indulged by the world. Due to its short history, it lacks understanding of and respect for the rules of countries and laws of the market.
The Americans of the early generations accumulated prosperity and prestige for the US, while the current US administration behaves like a wastrel generation by ruining the world's respect for the US."
... ... ...
The situation has become so tense that the Global Times on June 6,th in an op ed by Wei Jianguo, said:
China is able to withstand US maximum pressure, due to the country's economic resilience, and Chinese people's resolute determination. Suffering from a century of humiliation, the Chinese nation has been accustomed to such pressure, as shown in the War of Resistance against Japanese Aggression, as well as the Korean War or the War to Resist US Aggression and Aid Korea. The unity of Chinese people is a vital reason for the country's fundamental victory in history."
The Peoples' Daily stated, "America is the enemy of the world."
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Jun 08, 2019 | discussion.theguardian.com
Originally from: CIA admits to spying on Senate staffers Page 5 of 11 Discussion The Guardian
cashedupbogan -> fringe_perception , 31 Jul 2014 19:15
Scandal?
JFK went against the flow of the good old boys and their networks.
'Bay of Pigs' was a disaster but did JFK really have that much input into the planning of that mess?
He stopped it, eventually, probably because he thought it might escalate into a full blown war with Russia.
He did some amazing stuff during the Cuban crises.
He kept his rabid war hawks at bay until a resolution was worked out with Russia.
Khrushchev did should be thanked too by keeping his military maniacs leashed too.
What's with the tea baggers redefining history?
You guys have started burning books over there yet? and
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Jun 08, 2019 | discussion.theguardian.com
consciouslyinformed -> Befogged , 31 Jul 2014 18:44
You are very wrong when you assert that most American citizens want this and are as blood lust as these agencies and other government and military leaders.We are appalled by these actions of the military and government officials. You are being unfair, totally inaccurate and perpetuating a false notion, as to how the great majority of citizens feel about all that is happening around the world, with those who are involved with the pathos that is being experienced by other human beings.
It is a constant never ending source of pain, frustration, rage and disbelief that our nations leaders are acting the way that we are now all very aware of, thanks to those who have exposed the travesty.
What in God's name do you expect from the citizens who are also suffering extremely dire circumstances because of how the greedy criminals have left many homeless, hungry and dying because of not having enough money for healthcare. We are also being abused, abandoned, and marginalized into oblivion.
Many who are well off enough, are trying to appeal to the government to take control of their part of any global and national crises. It is all everyone is capable of doing to bring about change.
We are not " them, " so stop making such reprehensible comments about an entire nation of mostly good people who care very deeply, and are effected very grievously.
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Jun 08, 2019 | discussion.theguardian.com
David Egan , 31 Jul 2014 20:23
These people should all be in prison. The preposterous theory that government officials have immunity from prosecution is absolute B.S. How do they get away with these treasonous acts!!?? When "commoners" (average Americans) break the law we go to prison. This "too big to fail" and individuals "too important" to prosecute mentality of Erich Holder just proves beyond a shadow of a doubt that "the United States Government has become an entity by itself, for itself and of itself and could care less about the American people"
(the quotations are mine).The USG spends close to a TRILLOIN DOLLAS A YEAR on the so called "Black Budget" so they can fund private armies that act outside the law to go around the globe and kill anyone that disagrees. This is an ongoing criminal enterprise, and the taxpaying citizens are footing the bill.
I reality think that the RICO. (racketeer influenced corrupt organization act) law fits them perfectly: 1) they are organized in subverting the Constitution, committing crimes around the world breaking international law, 2) they are definitely corrupt, 3) they just happen to run the country and think they are "immune" to prosecution. If they do get caught they spend a couple years in a "club-fed" prison, then go on the talk show circuit and make millions of dollars like Ollie North.
How do "We the people" prevail against this rampant evil? Where are we to go to get justice when the ones entrusted to be the champions of the people, are the perpetrators of the problem?
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Jun 07, 2019 | www.theguardian.com
There should be no discussion about this! However just like Mockingbird, National Students Ass., Tailwind, PBSUCCESS,and so many others, they will stall until they get it dropped from the media and we will forget again.williamdonovan , 1 Aug 2014 10:45Get Smart Amarica
John Brennan's next job should be in a orange jump suit earning pennies and hour. But we all know that this will never happen. Brennan is the right hand of the commander and chief of death, destruction and torture. and has been for a long time. This is the work of evil, plain and simple.Timelooper , 1 Aug 2014 10:41How can you have any faith or trust in a government like this? It's one damn thing after another. The Executive branch, the Congress, the high courts, the Justice Dept. are all corrupt. Laws are broken, constitutional protections are laughed at, we are constantly being spied on. No charges are brought. Nobody goes to jail.The1eyedman , 1 Aug 2014 10:11But Snowden is a traitor for revealing the truth.
A minor detail? The CIA and security services have every right to know who is who on all and every politician and their staff. That's why we are safe. :-)freeandfair -> Woodby69 , 1 Aug 2014 10:04And the brave.freeandfair -> whatdidyouexpect , 1 Aug 2014 10:03They are so brave, they are patologically afraid of everyone. And want to be "protected".
Other than it is against the law for CIA to spy in the US. It is FBI's job. And Brennan lied to Congress under oath, a crime for which Clinton was impeached. And the fact that if they are coneding this crime, they must've been caught on something even bigger.J. Alberto Perez Zacarias , 1 Aug 2014 09:40Sure, everything else is just fine. As far as we know, that is.
They are way out of control. They need to take a step back and reevaluate their reason for being and their goals. You can't protect the people if you see them as the enemy.rickmcq , 1 Aug 2014 09:38So it appears that some in Congress will get upset if a Executive agency misuses its powers? Are these the same folks who seem to be okay with the IRS focus on Conservative 501(c)(3) applicants?rickmcq -> Trevor Alfred , 1 Aug 2014 09:35Um, no, Trevor Alfred, "the REAL terrorists" are still the folks who deliberately bomb civilians in areas where peace is supposed to exist.altoclef , 1 Aug 2014 09:28The intelligence agencies are civil servants who need to be reigned in whenever they exceed the instructions given to them by their civilian bosses.
And the CIA torture?hhhobbit , 1 Aug 2014 09:03Who ever was over the hacking of the Senator's computer and the Senator's staffers computers should be invited to leave. If that extends all the way up to Brennan, so be it.MuppetPilferR -> PJKatz , 1 Aug 2014 08:38Unfortunately, that corrective action has to come from those who are perpetrating these crimes in order for it to be legal. It's the classic Catch-22 of political corruption.DaoTe , 1 Aug 2014 08:28Don't fire Brennan. Arrest him and charge him violating the prohibition against domestic surveillance, lying under oath and, arguably, treason. Maybe there is space in Guantanamo for him to reflect upon the meaning of the Constitution and the rule of law.DhammaRider -> Texascelt , 1 Aug 2014 08:10And the reason that we never hear of these supposed 'facts' is what? That we're all too dumb to know? Dumbing down America is getting mighty costly of late, n'est-pas?DhammaRider , 1 Aug 2014 08:06Just because they say you're paranoid doesn't mean they're not out to get you. Remember: America is not a democracy. That's a sideshow. It's an oligarchy and don't you forget it.magzie01950 , 1 Aug 2014 08:05We need less government with less power. They are parasites sucking off there host, us!heleninc , 1 Aug 2014 07:40You can always trust some govts/agencies/people to always take the wrong path/back door. It would simply never occur to them to take the right one. This is who they are.Nad Gough -> TomG , 1 Aug 2014 07:32"What might a government of the people that does not trust the people it governs be properly called?"Nad Gough , 1 Aug 2014 07:30scared sh&#less?
Don't worry it wasn't official, just "staff". lolMarkenstein -> Piet Van Der Riet , 1 Aug 2014 07:28Staffs carry out directives. I'm not buying that staff had cause to go looking otherwise.
Feinstein has problems with being spied on, yet heads the Intelligence Committee who for several years has been authorizing spying on - well, everybody.
Feinstein shouldn't worry about spying, unless she's doing something wrong. Isn't that the proposition?
They certainly are most transparent to the 'Company'!TomG , 1 Aug 2014 07:08So why is it scandalous for public officials in our supposed western liberal democracies to spy on officials in other agencies, and deserving of an apology, but it's Okay for officials to spy on fellow citizens?Texascelt , 1 Aug 2014 06:54What might a government of the people that does not trust the people it governs be properly called?
Perhaps we all need to stop making sense.
I would like to point out that beyond what is touted in the press as "the story" the nature of these sorts of things can remain hidden for many years. Recent events in Germany and in Washington, if viewed from a different perspective may be connected. In the past when such revelations come to light it is resultant from security issues that are of such magnitude that those tasked with intelligence responsibilities remain in power because they are simply doing their job and are doing so at the command of elected officials, who when made aware of covert matters go all quiet and allow the chips to fall as they may. Seldom does the public ever hear of the actual facts in a timely way, and by the time that does happens they have long since moved on to more pressing matters.diddoit , 1 Aug 2014 06:50Has any politician asked them to explain why they spied, in terms of their motivations ? It seems the 'why' is surely more damaging than the act of spying itself?Trevor Alfred -> Hottentot , 1 Aug 2014 06:38What else is new!...Corruption / deceit / fraud / theft, at the highest level of tax payers money is being conducted..War criminals being sponsored by their own corrupt government ministers / agencies, to create carnage, by divide & rule tactics...Its a fatal backfiring failure / disaster which is causing their downfall.Trevor Alfred , 1 Aug 2014 06:19Not surprising...All these out of control "rogue agencies" I.E. CIA / NSA / MI5 / MI6 / GCHG / MOSAD, must be brought to book for their corrupt / deceitful / fraudulent workings...Their most senior officers are involved in a worldwide cover up into illegal involvement of creating criminal wars around the world, by using spying techniques upon government institutions & citizens...The recent scandal of phone tapping / voice mail / email interception, goes to show the lengths they are prepared to conduct / cover up their own war criminality acts. They are the REAL terrorists !!NhaNghi , 1 Aug 2014 06:14I'm American but I live in a communist country. I hate these security thugs no matter what country they live in. They're all the same.BarrieJ -> worldperspective , 1 Aug 2014 05:48"They have plundered the world, stripping naked the land in their hunger they are driven by greed, if their enemy be rich; by ambition, if poor They ravage, they slaughter, they seize by false pretences, and all of this they hail as the construction of empire. And when in their wake nothing remains but a desert, they call that peace." ― Tacitus (AD56 to after AD117) The Agricola and the GermaniaDavid Garrison , 1 Aug 2014 05:41
He could have been writing today.I kid you not, In the start menu, I typed "bullshit" , pressed enter and got Milton Friedman.Bardamux -> CornsilkSW , 1 Aug 2014 05:37Which US-President was any better ?padatharasuresh , 1 Aug 2014 05:36Wow! It will be easier for them to say who they did not spy on.donkiddick , 1 Aug 2014 05:36They'll even eat their own... How this behaviour doesn't equate to criminal actions is part of the disgrace. The US government have morphed in to a dystopian movement.BarrieJ -> freeandfair , 1 Aug 2014 05:34So true. At least the people of Russia knew they were under a yoke, American citizens were led to believe they lived in the land of the free.BarrieJ -> Darius Las , 1 Aug 2014 05:26At least the Chinese know what they've got and know that it's dangerous to discuss it.NhaNghi , 1 Aug 2014 05:22But they're such kind, gentle people . . .BarrieJ -> pa2013 , 1 Aug 2014 05:219/11 Synthetic Terror: Made in USA by Webster Griffin Tarpley (ISBN: 9780930852375) another good read and makes a plausible case for a coup carried out on America.BarrieJ -> orwellrollsinhisgrav , 1 Aug 2014 05:17Less than 10%?BarrieJ -> fringe_perception , 1 Aug 2014 05:16Us Brits have led the field for centuries.BarrieJ -> eldudeabides , 1 Aug 2014 05:03In the reign of Elizabeth 1st a blacksmith was executed for treason because he was overhead saying that he believed the uncrowned King Edward V was still alive.
A quick search on Sir Francis Walsingham, Elizabeth's Secretary of State will reveal for just how long and how sophisticated state spying on state has been.
Yes, they don't like others to be in a position to know of their venality, their sexual deviances and assorted other human failings. Else that knowledge be used to control them...............BarrieJ -> consciouslyinformed , 1 Aug 2014 04:58The problem of how the rest of the world views the actions of the US is exacerbated by the seeming inability or disinterest of its citizens in doing anything about it. Admittedly, a frustration shared by many citizens/subjects in Western countries, that pretend to be functioning democracies but are in fact anything but.fireangel , 1 Aug 2014 04:51The problem with political power is that it proves to be a magnet to those with sociopathic/psychopathic tendencies and they are easily corrupted.
We are politically and economically very poorly educated and are daily fed propaganda and mind filling mush by media that are 'on message'.
The media ownership needs to be broken up but politicians, corporations and the media are one self serving body and would resist that and have the power to do so.
Back in the day, the people of Russia knew that what they were being fed was propaganda, in the US and the UK we thought it was news.
Intelligence Agencies have their own Agenda. The CIA spy on everyone including the Senate it seems. Meanwhile the Israeli Intelligence Agencies spy on many people Including the USA,the very people who give them the money...SteveBiko187 -> EndersShadow , 1 Aug 2014 04:27
(Out of Control is the thought that springs to mind)Whereas in reality it's only the whistleblowers who lose their job and pension.spartacute , 1 Aug 2014 04:26If the CIA are Spying on the Senate you have to ask the Question who are they working for ? Is it the American Government ? Is it the American Military? Is it The American Citizen ? Or are we seeing the henchmen of the illuminati in action here !BarrieJ -> David Egan , 1 Aug 2014 04:24
Their fingers seem to be in every pie and no one seems to be able to control them .You've just about hit the nail on the head but what to do about it?DaniJV , 1 Aug 2014 04:22US democracy is simply a joke.
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Jun 07, 2019 | www.theguardian.com
BarrieJ -> fringe_perception , 1 Aug 2014 04:21
Yeah and let's take a look at the CIA's backing for Operation Gladio in post WW2 Europe.BarrieJ -> johhnybgood , 1 Aug 2014 04:10Yeah, you Americans were there but you certainly weren't saving lives or making the aftermath bearable for the victims.
A sincere question: who is running the CIA and on whose behalf?BarrieJ -> jma123 , 1 Aug 2014 04:08They consider us the people, their enemy. We are the 'enemy within', because as we become increasingly aware of our politicians' criminality any action we take may threaten the status quo.Alex Robinson , 1 Aug 2014 03:45They should rename the CIA the KGB or the GestapoSelfServingShite -> cashedupbogan , 1 Aug 2014 03:44leaders haven't been voted into office for a while now - they're rigged into office - from the lowly dog catcher to the president - and its happening all over the world.lsfischer -> Kaitain , 1 Aug 2014 03:29If you take the easy way now, you will take the easy way in the future. This not a sandlot baseball game here. These are high- powered people , who are responsible for matters extremely operant to the people of our country, and it must be admitted, the world.Dutchgirl88 -> fringe_perception , 1 Aug 2014 03:28To simply brush off these serious breaches of Government procedure (law) would serve to perpetuate the Executive Branch intrusions into the business of the Legislative Branch.
Separation of the powers is a time-honored method of setting up a government that has kept us 'moving along' for quite awhile now. Most of its problems stem from the populace placing too much trust in their elected officials .
It is everyone's responsibility to collectively maintain our government. It was never the intention of our founders that our leaders become reclusive despots: from today's vantage point, we can see this. It is a short walk to realize where the blame should be laid. Up and on your way to no future.
Just because Americans don't tend to care about anything that happens beyond their own borders doesn't mean the rest of the world can live with the same blissful ignorance.justAcomment , 1 Aug 2014 03:14The NSA scandal has made us realize that the US regards us as second-rated citizens who are nondeserving of the 'special protections' that Anglo-speaking countries do.
I find it absolutely shocking that this guy's dismissal is still debatable. Should be a no-brainer is any democracy
jma123 , 1 Aug 2014 02:53The three technicians "demonstrated a lack of candor about their activities during interviews."
You mean they lied through their teeth? But of course they were acting on their own initiative ha ha ha ha
In the UK and USA these spooks backed by politicians and civil servants are getting way out of hand. Having the technology to do things doesn't provide the need or right to do such things. They are getting to the point where they are "protecting" us from the very people and system they have become.CornsilkSW , 1 Aug 2014 02:48gab2201 -> killerontheroad , 1 Aug 2014 02:46although the White House indicated its support for a man who has been one of Barack Obama's most trusted security aides.
This is extremely telling about Obama's continued failure to discern good character in his aides and cabinet. His administration has been a shambles largely due to his inability to surround himself with good people.
I guess so, as we all know that the CIA always tried to silent war opponents. This had been largely documented about Vietnam opponents to the War on US soil.paramed1 , 1 Aug 2014 02:41They're all fuc@#$g rogue. Power corrupts but absolute power corrupts absolutely. Who polices the police? No one apparently. They and all their UK counterparts will walk away from this unscathed. If the heat gets a little too warm just play your joker, 'Terrorism'.carolusmagnus , 1 Aug 2014 02:32johhnybgood , 1 Aug 2014 02:26CIA admits to spying on Senate staffers
They have yet to admit they also spy on their President and ex-Presidents. When there is no morality, everyone is an enemy.
The CIA is now a discredited organization run by proven liars. When will Congress do something about it? Answer -- never. They are all being blackmailed.chuck nasmith , 1 Aug 2014 01:34Phuck you Brennan. My family worked for the CIA, NSA etc. when they were not the corporate MIC, NSA Zionist mob. Go to jail or Gitmo.NikMitev -> StrategicVoice213 , 1 Aug 2014 01:33Your state can imprison anyone it wants, for as long as it wants, without having to justify it in any way... hell they are not even required to let relatives know. That is a police state. The US is operating what effectively are concentration camps all over the place, Guantanamo being the flagship.Woodby69 , 1 Aug 2014 01:29America - the land of the free...Hottentot , 1 Aug 2014 01:22The CIA is completely out of control. This begs the question, as to why do, or should, American citizen vote for candidates when those candidates are effectively being 'managed' and spied on by people in the CIA. Senators in both houses are not making 'decisions' the CIA is.whatdidyouexpect , 1 Aug 2014 01:04Quite how the CIA, White House or any other government body think that they have any credibility regarding any matter, is amazing.
If I was using a program set up by the CIA, I would assume it would monitor my activity. Just like Amazon does. Just like the Guardian does.jcamcaldasca , 1 Aug 2014 00:54I don't see a problem, apart from the naivete of the complainants.
'... that's just beyond the – you know, the scope of reason in terms of what we would do,"' Allies, on the other hand, fall within that scope.Anthony Russell , 1 Aug 2014 00:39'demonstrated a lack of candor' has the same ring to it as being 'economical with the truth'.
I JUST PUT A LIST OF QUESTIONS ON MY TIME LINE THIS SHOULD KEEP THE SPY NETWORK BUSY FOR A WHILE ! BUT THEY NEVER DO ANYTHING THAT MAKES SENSE ANYWAY ; THEY ONLY HAVE A 30 BILLION DOLLAR BUDGET ; BUT CANNOT TELL US WHAT HAPPENED TO MH370 MALAYSIAN AIRPLANE ! WOW ! SOME SPY NETWORK ! IT 'S EASY FOR THEM TO SCREW WITH US ; BECAUSE WE ARE EVERYDAY MARKS !majid akram -> Malkatrinho , 1 Aug 2014 00:38They will never admit until its provenmarmite99 , 1 Aug 2014 00:35Feinstein couldn't care less about you and me being spied on, but complains when she is spied on. Just like Angela Merkel.samwoods77 , 1 Aug 2014 00:33Obama still hasn't fired this turd. Maybe he doesn't want to interrupt his endless rounds of $33k/plate fund raisers to attend to running the country.marmite99 -> StrategicVoice213 , 1 Aug 2014 00:33@strategicvoice: More people are imprisoned in the US than in China (on a per capita basis).sacco -> SummerLulstice , 1 Aug 2014 00:28marmite99 -> traidep , 1 Aug 2014 00:28People like Feinstein are chosen to oversee mass surveillance for the simple reason that they are old, completely technologically illiterates
See also: M. Rifkind, et al.
FFS, Jacqui f@&%ing Smith use to be Home Secretary ...
Could they really not make it any more obvious that there is absolutely nothing even vaguely resembling effective oversight?
Yes and the only politician who has called for the abolition of the CIA is Ron Paul.BaronGrovelville , 1 Aug 2014 00:23When criminal methods are used expect criminals to use them. John Brennan and Jose Rodriguez are criminals.SummerLulstice -> inabster , 31 Jul 2014 23:54The entire Republican and Democrat parties are puppets.SummerLulstice -> inabster , 31 Jul 2014 23:47If the United States government doesn't even govern by popular mandate, it certainly won't give a fuck about anyone's respect, dear fellow internet commentator.DrKropotkin -> jrhaddock , 31 Jul 2014 23:47The penalties for lying under oath are quite strict and can include up to 5 years of prison time. But nobody is willing to go after these guys, they have too much information on too many people. The day the US congress voted for the patriot act was the last day of their democracy.SummerLulstice -> madmonty , 31 Jul 2014 23:43The death penalty in California and Virginia is done by lethal injection. Assuming Diane Feinstein and John Brennan weren't above the law.error418 -> Therevolt , 31 Jul 2014 23:38What exactly does a CIA member have to do to get arrested, prosecuted and convicted for an action inside the USA? It is not spying on Congress. It it spying on the Supreme court, or killing a Senator? Do they walk away free after assassinating their own president? Do they need to do more?DrKropotkin -> StrategicVoice213 , 31 Jul 2014 23:37The NSA isn't hindering your movements as you are not a danger to the status quo. You can keep getting blasted at your BBQ's and coming online to defend the indefensible, you're not a threat. But it's not about you. It's about the people who are in a position to challenge the system. This can include anti-war activists, judges, politicians and journalists.Enduroman -> James J Pitcherella , 31 Jul 2014 23:32Everyone who matters can be kept inline with blackmail and for public figures it can be the smallest thing. Recently, during a primary, a candidate lost as questions were raised about the fact he had checked in the a mental care facility. He probably had a breakdown and needed to be observed for a couple of days. This piece of information would be easy to pick up with the various NSA programmes.
If this candidate had the same views as you, this little fact would not have been released but I believe he was a defender of your constitution and that could cause problems for the criminal regime you now live under.
Snooping is poison in a democracy. Your system was built so that it had self correction and could hence adapt to new situations and constantly improve. This served Americans well for many years, but it has ended.
Come on, is not like they sold 2 ounces of marijuana.SummerLulstice -> Joshua Jeffery , 31 Jul 2014 23:30Feinstein and the word "hope" do not belong in one and the same sentence. She along with her fellow conspirators in the intelligence committee are the ones that have been green-lighting this fascism for years. It's like expecting John McCain to repeal the Patriot Act.People like Feinstein are chosen to oversee mass surveillance for the simple reason that they are old, completely technologically illiterates who can be easily fooled or if need be blackmailed through their extensive business empires .
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Aug 01, 2014 | www.theguardian.com
There should be no discussion about this! However just like Mockingbird, National Students Ass., Tailwind, PBSUCCESS,and so many others, they will stall until they get it dropped from the media and we will forget again.Timelooper , 1 Aug 2014 10:41
Get Smart AmaricaHow can you have any faith or trust in a government like this? It's one damn thing after another. The Executive branch, the Congress, the high courts, the Justice Dept. are all corrupt. Laws are broken, constitutional protections are laughed at, we are constantly being spied on. No charges are brought. Nobody goes to jail. But Snowden is a traitor for revealing the truth.The1eyedman , 1 Aug 2014 10:11A minor detail? The CIA and security services have every right to know who is who on all and every politician and their staff.freeandfair -> Woodby69 , 1 Aug 2014 10:04
That's why we are safe. :-)And the brave. They are so brave, they are pathologically afraid of everyone. And want to be "protected".freeandfair -> whatdidyouexpect , 1 Aug 2014 10:03Other than it is against the law for CIA to spy in the US. It is FBI's job. And Brennan lied to Congress under oath, a crime for which Clinton was impeached. And the fact that if they are coneding this crime, they must've been caught on something even bigger. Sure, everything else is just fine. As far as we know, that is.J. Alberto Perez Zacarias , 1 Aug 2014 09:40They are way out of control. They need to take a step back and reevaluate their reason for being and their goals. You can't protect the people if you see them as the enemy.rickmcq , 1 Aug 2014 09:38So it appears that some in Congress will get upset if a Executive agency misuses its powers? Are these the same folks who seem to be okay with the IRS focus on Conservative 501(c)(3) applicants?rickmcq -> rickmcq , 1 Aug 2014 09:36(Sorry, that should have been "reined in" above.)rickmcq -> Trevor Alfred , 1 Aug 2014 09:35Um, no, Trevor Alfred, "the REAL terrorists" are still the folks who deliberately bomb civilians in areas where peace is supposed to exist. The intelligence agencies are civil servants who need to be reigned in whenever they exceed the instructions given to them by their civilian bosses.hhhobbit , 1 Aug 2014 09:03Who ever was over the hacking of the Senator's computer and the Senator's staffers computers should be invited to leave. If that extends all the way up to Brennan, so be it.MuppetPilferR -> PJKatz , 1 Aug 2014 08:38Unfortunately, that corrective action has to come from those who are perpetrating these crimes in order for it to be legal. It's the classic Catch-22 of political corruption.DaoTe , 1 Aug 2014 08:28Don't fire Brennan. Arrest him and charge him violating the prohibition against domestic surveillance, lying under oath and, arguably, treason. Maybe there is space in Guantanamo for him to reflect upon the meaning of the Constitution and the rule of law.DhammaRider -> Texascelt , 1 Aug 2014 08:10And the reason that we never hear of these supposed 'facts' is what? That we're all too dumb to know? Dumbing down America is getting mighty costly of late, n'est-pas?DhammaRider , 1 Aug 2014 08:06Just because they say you're paranoid doesn't mean they're not out to get you. Remember: America is not a democracy. That's a sideshow. It's an oligarchy and don't you forget it.heleninc , 1 Aug 2014 07:40You can always trust some govts/agencies/people to always take the wrong path/back door. It would simply never occur to them to take the right one. This is who they are.Nad Gough -> TomG , 1 Aug 2014 07:32Nad Gough , 1 Aug 2014 07:30"What might a government of the people that does not trust the people it governs be properly called?"
scared sh&#less?
Don't worry it wasn't official, just "staff". lolMarkenstein -> Piet Van Der Riet , 1 Aug 2014 07:28Staffs carry out directives. I'm not buying that staff had cause to go looking otherwise.
Feinstein has problems with being spied on, yet heads the Intelligence Committee who for several years has been authorizing spying on - well, everybody.
Feinstein shouldn't worry about spying, unless she's doing something wrong. Isn't that the proposition?
They certainly are most transparent to the 'Company'!TomG , 1 Aug 2014 07:08So why is it scandalous for public officials in our supposed western liberal democracies to spy on officials in other agencies, and deserving of an apology, but it's Okay for officials to spy on fellow citizens?Texascelt , 1 Aug 2014 06:54What might a government of the people that does not trust the people it governs be properly called?
Perhaps we all need to stop making sense.
I would like to point out that beyond what is touted in the press as "the story" the nature of these sorts of things can remain hidden for many years. Recent events in Germany and in Washington, if viewed from a different perspective may be connected. In the past when such revelations come to light it is resultant from security issues that are of such magnitude that those tasked with intelligence responsibilities remain in power because they are simply doing their job and are doing so at the command of elected officials, who when made aware of covert matters go all quiet and allow the chips to fall as they may. Seldom does the public ever hear of the actual facts in a timely way, and by the time that does happens they have long since moved on to more pressing matters.diddoit , 1 Aug 2014 06:50Has any politician asked them to explain why they spied, in terms of their motivations ? It seems the 'why' is surely more damaging than the act of spying itself?Trevor Alfred -> Hottentot , 1 Aug 2014 06:38What else is new!...Corruption / deceit / fraud / theft, at the highest level of tax payers money is being conducted..War criminals being sponsored by their own corrupt government ministers / agencies, to create carnage, by divide & rule tactics...Its a fatal backfiring failure / disaster which is causing their downfall.Trevor Alfred , 1 Aug 2014 06:19Not surprising...All these out of control "rogue agencies" I.E. CIA / NSA / MI5 / MI6 / GCHG / MOSAD, must be brought to book for their corrupt / deceitful / fraudulent workings...Their most senior officers are involved in a worldwide cover up into illegal involvement of creating criminal wars around the world, by using spying techniques upon government institutions & citizens...The recent scandal of phone tapping / voice mail / email interception, goes to show the lengths they are prepared to conduct / cover up their own war criminality acts. They are the REAL terrorists !!BarrieJ -> worldperspective , 1 Aug 2014 05:48"They have plundered the world, stripping naked the land in their hunger they are driven by greed, if their enemy be rich; by ambition, if poor They ravage, they slaughter, they seize by false pretences, and all of this they hail as the construction of empire. And when in their wake nothing remains but a desert, they call that peace."Bardamux -> CornsilkSW , 1 Aug 2014 05:37
― Tacitus (AD56 to after AD117) The Agricola and the Germania
He could have been writing today.Which US-President was any better ?donkiddick , 1 Aug 2014 05:36They'll even eat their own... How this behaviour doesn't equate to criminal actions is part of the disgrace. The US government have morphed in to a dystopian movement.BarrieJ -> freeandfair , 1 Aug 2014 05:34So true. At least the people of Russia knew they were under a yoke, American citizens were led to believe they lived in the land of the free.BarrieJ -> Darius Las , 1 Aug 2014 05:26At least the Chinese know what they've got and know that it's dangerous to discuss it.BarrieJ -> pa2013 , 1 Aug 2014 05:219/11 Synthetic Terror: Made in USA by Webster Griffin Tarpley (ISBN: 9780930852375) another good read and makes a plausible case for a coup carried out on America.BarrieJ -> fringe_perception , 1 Aug 2014 05:16Us Brits have led the field for centuries.BarrieJ -> eldudeabides , 1 Aug 2014 05:03In the reign of Elizabeth 1st a blacksmith was executed for treason because he was overhead saying that he believed the uncrowned King Edward V was still alive.
A quick search on Sir Francis Walsingham, Elizabeth's Secretary of State will reveal for just how long and how sophisticated state spying on state has been.
Yes, they don't like others to be in a position to know of their venality, their sexual deviances and assorted other human failings.BarrieJ -> consciouslyinformed , 1 Aug 2014 04:58Else that knowledge be used to control them...............
The problem of how the rest of the world views the actions of the US is exacerbated by the seeming inability or disinterest of its citizens in doing anything about it. Admittedly, a frustration shared by many citizens/subjects in Western countries, that pretend to be functioning democracies but are in fact anything but.fireangel , 1 Aug 2014 04:51The problem with political power is that it proves to be a magnet to those with sociopathic/psychopathic tendencies and they are easily corrupted.
We are politically and economically very poorly educated and are daily fed propaganda and mind filling mush by media that are 'on message'.
The media ownership needs to be broken up but politicians, corporations and the media are one self serving body and would resist that and have the power to do so.
Back in the day, the people of Russia knew that what they were being fed was propaganda, in the US and the UK we thought it was news.
Intelligence Agencies have their own Agenda. The CIA spy on everyone including the Senate it seems. Meanwhile the Israeli Intelligence Agencies spy on many people Including the USA, the very people who give them the money... (Out of Control is the thought that springs to mind)SteveBiko187 -> EndersShadow , 1 Aug 2014 04:27Whereas in reality it's only the whistleblowers who lose their job and pension.spartacute , 1 Aug 2014 04:26If the CIA are Spying on the Senate you have to ask the Question who are they working for ? Is it the American Government ? Is it the American Military? Is it The American Citizen ? Or are we seeing the henchmen of the illuminati in action here !BarrieJ -> David Egan , 1 Aug 2014 04:24
Their fingers seem to be in every pie and no one seems to be able to control them .You've just about hit the nail on the head but what to do about it?DaniJV , 1 Aug 2014 04:22US democracy is simply a joke.
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Jun 07, 2019 | www.theguardian.com
CIA director apologises for improper conduct of agency staff One senator calls on John Brennan to resign in wake of scandal
The director of the Central Intelligence Agency, John Brennan, issued an extraordinary apology to leaders of the US Senate intelligence committee on Thursday, conceding that the agency employees spied on committee staff and reversing months of furious and public denials.
Brennan acknowledged that an internal investigation had found agency security personnel transgressed a firewall set up on a CIA network, which allowed Senate committee investigators to review agency documents for their landmark inquiry into CIA torture.
Among other things, it was revealed that agency officials conducted keyword searches and email searches on committee staff while they used the network.
The admission brings Brennan's already rocky tenure at the head of the CIA under renewed question. One senator on the panel said he had lost confidence in the director, although the White House indicated its support for a man who has been one of Barack Obama's most trusted security aides.
CIA spokesman Dean Boyd acknowledged that agency staff had improperly monitored the computers of committee staff members, who were using a network the agency had set up, called RDINet. "Some CIA employees acted in a manner inconsistent with the common understanding reached between [the committee] and the CIA in 2009 regarding access to the RDINet," he said.
Asked if Brennan had or would offer his resignation, a different CIA spokesman, Ryan Trapani, replied: "No."
In March, the committee chairwoman, Senator Dianne Feinstein of California, accused the agency of violating constitutional boundaries by spying on the Senate.
Feinstein said the vindication, from CIA inspector general David Buckley, and Brennan's apology were "positive first steps," suggesting that the director had further work to do before she would consider the matter closed.
She stopped short of calling for Brennan's resignation. But her committee colleague, Democrat Mark Udall of Colorado, said Brennan should go. "I have no choice but to call for the resignation of CIA director John Brennan," Udall said after a briefing on the inspector general's findings.
"The CIA unconstitutionally spied on Congress by hacking into Senate intelligence committee computers. This grave misconduct is not only illegal, but it violates the US constitution's requirement of separation of powers. These offenses, along with other errors in judgment by some at the CIA, demonstrate a tremendous failure of leadership, and there must be consequences.
Mark Udall (@MarkUdall). @CIA IG rprt shows John Brennan misled public, whose interests I have championed. I will fight for change at the CIA: http://t.co/uQVsvV43nB
July 31, 2014Boyd, the CIA spokesman, said Brennan has asked a former committee member, Evan Bayh, a former Indiana Democratic senator, to lead an "accountability board" reviewing Buckley's report and to advise Brennan on next steps.
That advice, Boyd said, "could include potential disciplinary measures and/or steps to address systemic issues."
Steve Aftergood of the Federation of American Scientists, a longtime observer of the CIA, called its Thursday statement a "conciliatory gesture" to the committee's leaders. "If Senator Feinstein is satisfied with the apology then the affair is effectively over. If she contends there was a fundamental breach that cannot be corrected with a mere apology then some further action might be needed," Aftergood said.
McClatchy first reported the apology on Thursday.
Feinstein, in her dramatic speech on the Senate floor in March, said the agency breached the firewall to obstruct the committee's investigation of the agency's torture of post-9/11 terrorism detainees, a years-long effort expected to be partially declassified in the coming days or weeks. That investigation was itself prompted by a different coverup: the destruction of videotapes of brutal interrogations by a senior official, Jose Rodriguez.
Newt Othis -> 2crudedudes , 3 Aug 2014 12:07
That's true. The only two parties in America are the elites and the peasants.Newt Othis , 3 Aug 2014 12:04"In March, the committee chairwoman, Senator Dianne Feinstein of California, accused the agency of violating constitutional boundaries by spying on the Senate."2crudedudes -> FrankBarry , 3 Aug 2014 04:23Aahahahhahhhhahaaa. What a hypocrite hag. She must have something to hide if she doesn't like being spied on. I think that there should be a full investigation into what Dianne...if that is even her real name, has been hiding and bring it to the light of day.
The entire government is corrupt and has been corrupt for decades.2crudedudes , 3 Aug 2014 04:09I love this. Feinstein is a champion of the 4th amendment and Constitutional rights all of a sudden. Bitch ass.awoolf14 , 3 Aug 2014 01:37If its considered 'extraordinary' that a man apologize for his actions, then that man is either a sociopath, a criminal, or both.yadayada2 -> freeandfair , 2 Aug 2014 13:26Good point, but wrong way round imho. The CIA has now clearly suborned the executive. Obama now works for the CIA. He's spineless, Obama. He is craven, before the very same intelligence agencies that are supposed to work for him.Griffon79 -> Arnet Ramming , 2 Aug 2014 12:42Just imagine how the laugh at him, speak about him, behind his back. No wonder Putin treats him like a fool.
You people are so deluded. You think it matter who you vote for. Newsflash - the CIA killed JFK. The CIA runs America.Richard Bittner -> William W Haywood , 2 Aug 2014 12:36It is time to put all the DemPublicanCFR basterds in prison for life. From the BUSH II (The torturer) to bill clinton who initiated the covert torture operation. The clearest signal that we are not living in a self governing democracy is that; excluding Watergate, the DemPublicanCFR ruling elite do not go to prison, there is rarely any real investigation of their crimes; as in the recent largest public swindle in human history....the DemPublicanCFR, Wall st/Rating Company Swindle that was orchestrated by the "boys" from the bohemian grove.The level of corruption in this Country exceeds that of ancient Rome.The best way to combat "terrorism" is to get the hell out of other peoples countries.and imprison the DemPublicanCFR members who intentionally mislead this Country into a fossil fuel War in Iraq. George Bush II ( the coward draft dodger) is a moron on an epic scale comparable to the Roman Emperor who named his horse a general. We are confronted with a monumental environmental emergency and these idiot myopic assholes debate carbon emission controls instead of leading the way to a fossil fuel nuclear free world.by initiating the largest public works program in human history....a massive energy conversion program funded by cutting the military budget in half.The conversion program will also be funded by the profits made by all the fossil fuel and nuclear power companies. Just imagine all the AMERICAN JOBS WILL BE CREATED. We need leaders who put the interests of the Americam people first and who do not march to the drumb beat of the Rockefucker internationalist DemPublicanCFR elite. It is time to send David Rockyfucker to Iran to stand trial for the crimes he has committed against the Iranian people....We are living in a state of environmental crisis and it is time for true American patriots to rise and confront our Enemy within who, thanks to the great American patriot Edward Snowden, we now know for certain has all or electronic communications under 24 hour surveillance. The DemPublicanCFR ruling elite must be held to pay for their crimes or I fear the planet that our childen, grand children and great grandchildren will be living in is doomed to cataclysmic events that we have yet to even imagine...Arnet Ramming , 2 Aug 2014 11:03Boy, once you spy on a Democrat it becomes an issue. Lying seems to be what Obama and his appointees due best as there are no consequences for lying, even under oath as Eric Holder has done several times. So let's just move along here as this is just another day under Obama.TeeJayzed Addy -> muttley79 , 2 Aug 2014 04:50William W Haywood , 2 Aug 2014 04:00if you have nothing to hide then you have nothing to fear
And a justification for refusal to release the report would be that if you have nothing to read then you have nothing to fear.
Agency security personnel had transgressed? And just what is that some kind of creepy code for? We, the bigwigs, did it, but we have language that allows us to blame it on our innocent underlings...of course. This is the height of mental illness and corruption! Just a simple excuse used to placate a supposedly mind dead public already hypnotized by their main stream media and under their almost absolute control. That's you and I, of course...sound familiar? Well, I will be totally under their control when they come and kill me, and not before that! "Agency staff had improperly monitored the computers of committee staff members", well who in the hell is agency staff if not Brennan? Considering how far Obama has fallen since he stated how good he was at killing, I do not see how any of us in a sound state of mind can see Mr. Brennan as anything other than a criminal and a traitor to the American people. Same as our present president, supreme court, congress, and many more.Griffon79 -> spacetimeloops , 2 Aug 2014 00:15Yes, we could dispense with elected officials, and instead use direct democracy. But first, revolution will be required, and that means war.Griffon79 -> inabster , 2 Aug 2014 00:12Unfortunately, unless something is done our children will live Orwell's prophecy of the future: a boot stamping on a human face, forever.
As long as you persist in your long held delusion that there are differences between democrats and republicans - differences that matter - nothing will change.Griffon79 -> chuck nasmith , 2 Aug 2014 00:11Open you eyes. American foreign policy is the same no matter which party is in power. They are all screwing you six ways from Sunday.
If America was a just state, that would happen. But America is a neo-fascist - or more properly, corporatist - state.Griffon79 -> error418 , 2 Aug 2014 00:08Democrats and republicans are two sides of the same coin. Political theater for the plebs to fight over while the real power brokers hide in the shadows.
Do they walk away free after assassinating their own president?Griffon79 , 2 Aug 2014 00:02You could ask Kennedy..oh, wait..
The free flow of information is the only safeguard against tyranny. The once-chained people whose leaders at last lose their grip on information flow will soon burst with freedom and vitality, but the free nation gradually constricting its grip on public discourse has begun its rapid slide into despotism.Mmmoke , 1 Aug 2014 22:07Beware of he who would deny you access to information, for in his heart he dreams himself your master.
The NSA/CIA in recent hearings forcefully explained to the Judiciary Committee in Congress that they only spy on foreigners and not US citizens. I guess Congressmen/women are not US citizens and must be terrorists.Ziontrain , 1 Aug 2014 19:35Nothing will change in America until someone actually starts losing their job, being forced to resign or go to jail - both politicians and so called "leaders" in the agencies committing these horrific crimes.FrankBarry -> Trevor Alfred , 1 Aug 2014 18:00Trevor, thank you.Ivor Fairney , 1 Aug 2014 17:25You've won the HITS THE NAIL ON THE HEAD award.
But you did forget the DHS who also has a Prius type
program for surveillance. The name starts with a C
but I cannot remember off the top of my head. I do
recall that Boeing's employees were involved in doing
training of technicians.Things are "out of hand". I fear the US government will
be using contracted mercenaries to keep us in line before
too much longer. Those guys will be coming home and
taking jobs in our local police departments.Follow the Blackwater money. Erik Prince, and cohorts.
Names may change many times, but it is still all there.It does not seem to be doing the US any good. Their army would seem to be a complete failure. Their so called intelligence seems to know nothing about anything that matters. Vietnam, Iraq, Afghanistan many trillions of dollars and abject failure and we see a nation that brakes every law of decency.FrankBarry -> Charleyzencat , 1 Aug 2014 17:19CharleyzencatPhilip Leung , 1 Aug 2014 17:17
Propaganda is not necessary.Example,
The CIA agent who shot in the back 2 Pakistani men, and then
after reloading once, he fired 10 times. This occurred during the
day on a busy street in Lahore, Pakistan. He claimed first to be
a US Embassy Staff Member. He was ransomed by Kerry, who
was not yet Secretary of State, but was sent by Obama to do so.
2 other CIA agents, the killer's roommates, who the killer had called
for help, ran over a Pakistani bystander with their jeep on the way
to aid the killer, and killed the poor man. They were immediately airlifted out of Pakistan and returned to the United States, never to
be heard of since, nor reported by the media.But, this CIA killer just couldn't stop there. He has been arrested by Sheriff's Deputies, inside a Colorado bar for being involved in a knife fight. This CIA killer and his wife own a United States contracted spy agency in Las Vegas.
These are the Agents who represent our United States of America.
Who can forget Obama's Secret Servicemen, one of which, while
a guest of a South American city, tried to rip off a Whore by short-
changing her. That hit the newspapers around the world.These are the Agents who represent our United States of America.
Don't forget this is the same agency that enabled the capture and imprisonment of Mandela, and that only scratches the surface of some of the stuff they've been up to.FrankBarry -> danielpfeiffer , 1 Aug 2014 16:37The CIA is beyond reform now, it's no longer a matter of changing who heads it.
Feinstein is too old and senile to get the job accomplished. Erik Holder is still a slave to Obama. He prosecutes no one who counts.FrankBarry -> WayneYoung , 1 Aug 2014 16:33The leadership of America is in the hands of the Devil. It has been openly corrupt for more than 20 years. Americans are waking to that fact.
There are places in the world where these people would be put on a wall and quickly dispensed with.FrankBarry -> Susan Bolson Griffiths , 1 Aug 2014 16:25Spies and Surveillers hide the truth from us all, and the United States Congress pays them to do so.
Voters need to Turn Out the Incumbents. Everyone of them. Along with their Staffers. 100,000 lobbyists need to be
stripped of their licenses, and their political connections.It is long past time for revolution or revolt.
It is time to clean house.I have the Tar, bring feathers.
Susan, thank you. Seeing is believing. In the US Intelligence Agencies, including the Military, there are 850,000 men and women employees who hold Top Secret clearances and more. That is a lot of Secrets to hide. Only a few come freely forward to report corruption to the public at large. Only a couple have had the guts to paper the world with these corrupt agency's offal.FrankBarry , 1 Aug 2014 16:19Cut off the heads, and the tails. The United States Intelligence Agencies are corrupted. They are killers of innocent human beings.Susan Bolson Griffiths -> Charleyzencat , 1 Aug 2014 15:50Will Erik Holder send any of them to Prison? He did not prosecute any of the people responsible for our nation's debacle. Not a one of
them went to prison. He and his boss Obama are also corrupted. They both are killers of innocent human beings.Every man of integrity who works for the United States government should, when he sees corruption, report it to the media 1st, and to
his superior officers 2nd. Not to do so, is a criminal act itself.We have to wonder if there are any besides Edward Snowden, who work for the United States government, and have the guts to let us
know when they see corruption.'The CIA spying on the people supposedly in charge of the CIA' sounds as if they are reaping what they sowed...Susan Bolson Griffiths , 1 Aug 2014 15:39Great to see truth coming out in the wash.. Also brilliant to hear on the radio,whistleblowers in the UK are going to be protected, there's progress now....WayneYoung , 1 Aug 2014 14:04It seems to appear the spying business is a new democratic industry where money, power, and control are prime. Words like decency and morality are flying out the windows. The head of a spy ring can retire to form a new enterprise to charge half million to one million dollars for spy protection...danielpfeiffer , 1 Aug 2014 13:28Flagrant Violations of U.S. Constitution & International Law Continue Unabated as CIA/Feinstein Row Over Senate Spying Lands on Front Page and Elite Politely Decline to Prosecute Peers' Crimestruthspeaker -> EndersShadow , 1 Aug 2014 13:17mirageseekr -> Malkatrinho , 1 Aug 2014 13:16I don't know if the 9/11 panic has caused the relaxation of the LAW
The law was relaxed as soon as the Church Committee wrapped up. The CIA was offended at the very idea of having to obey the law, and their allies in Congress, and the White House after Reagan was elected, obliged them.
Who cares about what they admit to that we all already suspected. Who is getting charged and going to jail? Of course the answer is nobody because they are either all complicit or congress is intimidated by what other information they may know about them. Time to purge the whole system.eldudeabides -> BarrieJ , 1 Aug 2014 13:06absolutely, Barrie.EarthyByNature -> frispk , 1 Aug 2014 12:31one has to wonder how many politicians across the Five Eyes nations (US, UK, Canada, Australia and Canada), are being blackmailed, co-erced and manipulated, by big business/government.
Many of the decisions (and statements from some politicians) that I witness in first world government, make no sense.
for example, is there even one investigatory committee in Westminster or Washington, that has/is not been hacked and controlled by outsiders (big business often in cahoots with senior govt/intelligence people).
look at the antics of the disgraced News of the Wooorld, deliberately targetting members of the sub-committee investigating their hacking.
For all the abuses by powerful men in history there are those, including American Presidents, who have demonstrated both leadership and courage in the face of obstruction, opposition.OpineOpiner -> Charleyzencat , 1 Aug 2014 12:29But hey, thanks for adding bluster and hot air to the debate. I guess you'd have us all pack up and go home.
The CIA spying on the people supposedly in charge of the CIA has nothing to do with fighting 'terrorism' and everything to do with the CIA protecting itself from any such namby-pamby libtard delusions such as integrity, accountability, congressional oversight, responsibility, and other such pesky nuisances.Piet Van Der Riet , 1 Aug 2014 11:57To paraphrase Hitler: " Is it not fortunate for politicians that the general public do not think ..."babymamaboy , 1 Aug 2014 11:39Want a good salary, higher prestige than elected leaders, and less accountability than a welfare recipient? Check out employment postings at the CIA!Charleyzencat , 1 Aug 2014 11:38But isn't spying what the CIA is supposed to do? And isn't this what we supported for so many years during the Cold War because of "the threat of communism"?There are certainly still threats out there (Al Queda and Boko Haram come to mind) but is the CIA geared to handle intelligence in terrorist organizations or are they still fighting the Communists? Revamp the Agency to make it more adapted to the new reality of terrorist threats world wide but don't fault somebody if they're just trying to do their job. Give them some direction or don't complain when things go awry. Maybe they're just looking for something to do. Let's be sure to keep them busy fighting terrorists not the US Senate.
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May 01, 2019 | discussion.theguardian.com
DoesNotComputer -> LibertineUSA , 30 Apr 2019 15:12
Here's the problem: it doesn't matter if you'd support Biden if he were to get the nomination, the Democratic base will simply not back another corporatist shill, especially after getting stabbed in the ankle in 2016.docjan , 30 Apr 2019 15:11No matter how much you think people should hold their nose and vote for the lesser of two evils, they're not going to get out of bed to go vote for someone they don't trust. The base is driving this election cycle, there is no way around it, if we don't hold the base we lose.
The writers and readers of the Guardian (aka the Fox of the Left) who believe that the American electorate has somehow shifted leftward remind me a delightful roommate that I had back in Pleistocene. He came home one day convinced that George McGovern would win. "How did you come up with that?" I asked. "I don't know a single person who is voting for Nixon."Duncan_Idaho , 30 Apr 2019 15:11It's that level of bubble-driven stridency that will keep many of you at home on election day and had another 4 years to the worst piece of crap to occupy the White House. Sure, there are many people preferable to Biden, but a piece of burnt toast is preferable to Trump.
The Dems won the midterms not on ideological grounds but by the pragmatic turnaround of middle class white suburban women. Clinton did not lose in '16 because she was a "zombie centrist" but because of her campaign's severe hubris, a lesson not learned from '08. Unless you prefer ranting [and lefties often seem to prefer being in opposition to actually doing the heavy lifting of compromise and governing], you will have to get rid of Trump by going with your n-th choice, not your first one.
Sorry, that's the way it works outside of Berkeley, Austin, Madison, Eugene, Brooklyn, Cambridge, and Asheville.
You're missing something. Plenty of people who support the actual left WILL be happy if we get Biden, if it means we no longer have Trump. The US system is built on compromise. Biden is a compromise, for sure. But would YOU rather have Trump again? Really?DoesNotComputer -> Gelion , 30 Apr 2019 15:06I don't want Biden. But last time I figured the left couldn't lose to a fucking moron I was proven wrong.
Literally all the polling conducted in the 2016 election showed Bernie annihilating Trump by a far higher margin than Clinton, who was losing in many polls. Biden is virtually a carbon copy of Clinton. He is an establishment shill with the same voting record and the same vulnerabilities that sank Clinton.factfynder , 30 Apr 2019 15:06Like Hillary he shits on the most popular policies in the country, and he shits on the base pushing those policies, and has shown zero signs of learning from the 2016 catastrophe. He launched his campaign on a message of returning to the same empty neoliberal politics that delivered us Donald Trump. Meanwhile Bernie is in fact running on the most popular policies in the country. 70% of the American people, even a majority 52% of Republicans, support Medicare For All. 82% of Americans support raising the minimum wage. 76% of Americans support raising taxes on the rich. 60% of Americans support free college tuition. 70% of Americans want stricter laws on assault weapons. 94% of Americans support universal background checks. 58% of Americans support abortion rights in all or most cases. 62% of Americans support legalizing marijuana. 78% of Americans support stricter Wall Street regulation. 61% of Americans support ending the Afghanistan war. 72% of Americans support expanding Social Security. 80% of Americans support the Green New Deal. Literally all the data shows Bernie would be a far stronger candidate than a center right corporate Democrat like Biden.
Biden is a standard Joke in both parties known as an Obama lackey and dim witted apologist who will be blown out of the hunt by a female Dark Horse candidate yet to rise up out of the dung pile of Democrat wannabes. The only real hope for the Democrats, guess who?neonliberalism -> TheCheGuevara , 30 Apr 2019 14:57His first campaign fundraiser after his announcement was hosted by the CEO of Comcast. That is wholly out of touch with the middle class.NativeAngeleno -> ILEXcottage , 30 Apr 2019 14:56
https://www.cbsnews.com/news/comcast-executive-to-host-joe-biden-fundraiser /The somewhat grating and professorial Warren, as if lecturing to kindergartners, is becoming the third choice in the polls behind Biden and Sanders due to her galaxy of hard-nosed, fully fleshed-out policies the public is embracing.JohnLG , 30 Apr 2019 14:51She has passed Sanders in his relatively much more limited agenda, trumping him on policies castrating Wall St---Sanders has not much evolved beyond positions he's held since the 1970s, including understanding how to address the two largest parts of the Democratic base, women and blacks.
I have no doubt Warren will be an important member of the cabinet where she can implement her policies, which is why she will be in Biden's cabinet. Biden has touched on gutting Wall St greed, signalling the rise of her influence. For all his centrist corruption he grasps the desires of the base, understanding his popularity would suffer if he didn't.
"The Democrats are the ones who were supposed to save us. It was their failure in this duty that allowed the catastrophes to pile up."LauraInMadrid -> Quantum Ape , 30 Apr 2019 14:45It's not just the failure. It is cynical collaboration to placate the financially powerful. The Republican project for at least the last 40 years has been to resurrect "Robber Baron" era neo-feudalism with Republican leadership lining up for their share of the take. Witness the breathless fawning of the likes of Scott Walker when he thought the prankster he was talking to was a Koch. Mainstream media long accepted that political outcomes can be bought, that lavishly funded lobbies can block popular initiatives and railroad publicly distasteful ones, and feature fundraising scorecards as a measure of electability. As a matter of fact, what does that say about our democratic process and equality under law? Back in the 1980s Business Week featured a discussion of how manufactures and retailers were backing away from a "middle class" centered focus to a "Tffany-Wallmart" strategy? Does such a move support E Pluribus Unum or feudalistic social bifurcation?
Sadly, the Clinton, Obama, Biden school is way to focused on go along to get along, while equity of opportunity and wealth, and equal protection under law has steadily diminished. Obama, who campaigned on "change you can believe in" and "the audacity to hope" was less than audacious when it came to the strangle-hold of too big to fail on the economy, and made them even bigger. Yes, he was far more socially responsible than his predecessor but hob nobbed with the "Great Recession's" architects and turned over redress for Mainstreet to the banks, with predictable results. Many who voted for Trump were seeking any kind of change over more of the same.
Better yet: progressive Democrats have realized a few key points:kritikon -> AntiGuardianista , 30 Apr 2019 14:42
* Medicare for all polls really damned well. Amazing well.
* Raising minimum wage polls really well. Hugely well.
* American progressive liberal policies, when not framed as such, poll really well. Americans want these things. These issues are winners.
* Turnout. Turnout. Turnout. It is not about getting people who always vote Democratic at every election to consider you. It is about getting people who do not regularly vote to turnout at the polls. (Look at Spain where the threat of Vox encouraged huge numbers of women to vote and the socialists and the left came out as winners.)Biden is not on solid ground with issues supported by the electorate and catering to the center is going g to repress turnout. (Which could have ugly down ticket implications.)
CynicusCuratoris , 30 Apr 2019 14:39Biden is not centre. If you think mainstream Democrats are centre, you're already to the right of people like the National Front (both UK and French). You're already a rabid extremist. Even someone like Sanders would be considered fairly firmly centrist in the rest of the free world. State funded health and education is accepted practice here, not a novel socialist/communist fantasy that will turn you into a Soviet drone. It's what we pay taxes for, not for a war machine to enforce business profit.
GOP is fascistic, Democrats are extreme right, Sanders is centrist...you don't actually have a left at all.
ehmaybe -> fiddler1 , 30 Apr 2019 14:37"Elections are about preventing bad things from happening...:"-- -- -- -- -
That argument [ Elections are about preventing bad things from happening] is a double-edged sword. Many voters acted on that precept in 2016 which accounts for the creature that now squats in the White House.neonliberalism -> violagirl , 30 Apr 2019 14:36Are people who say this generally clueless or just unaware of the make up of Congress since January 2017? What change could Sanders have brought? What bills were the Republicans going to pass that Sanders would have signed? Do they not remember what Mitch McConnell said when Obama took office? Do they imagine that McConnell would shift his focus from stymieing any chance of enacting policies the president promoted with Sanders instead of Obama?Saunders would have beaten Trump and brought real change
It's just about the most ridiculous claim a person could make about American politics.
Did you watching Bernie's townhall at Fox News? He seemed like he was in his 60s and handled many tough questions well. He seemed to be winning over some of the independents and conservatives in that crowdStrategyKing , 30 Apr 2019 14:35Finally the Guardian gets something right. We don't need these Clinton Era holdovers and we don't need anymore Geriatrics in the White House.There are some great new younger candidates who understand the modern economy, the corrupt foreign policy and have good things to say. Try Yang and Gabbard. Get with the times people.
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May 04, 2019 | off-guardian.org
Embedded on the Frontline: Carole Cadwalladr and OSI written by David Macilwain
David Macilwain
"Investigative journalism" is all the rage nowadays, in the age of "fake news. And anyone can do it, from institutions like the Guardian – "support our independent investigative reporting" – to nerds with an iPhone and odd habits. What is revealed by these "investigations" of "Open Source Intelligence" – OPI – is only limited by one's imagination, because one must imagine what "closed source intelligence" might reveal.
This is more of a problem with OSI than it might seem, as mostly it is only concealed information which needs investigating! No better example of this exists than the work of the renowned investigative journalist Seymour Hersh. What has made his recent reports of such significance is information gleaned from "intelligence sources" – which Hersh has cultivated over years, and which have given us special insight into controversial events such as the alleged chemical weapon attacks in Syria.
Equally topical are the "closed source investigations" obtained by Wikileaks, whose revelations about US war crimes and covert actions in the Middle East have been of such fundamental importance and use to those pursuing "truth and justice" – and the people who try to avoid them.
That the work of these two genuine investigative journalists has been the cause of such strife to those caught in the headlights is evidenced by their reaction and the extreme efforts to stifle the incriminating truth. Hersh may not have been subject to trumped-up charges and imprisonment, but his writings have been stifled by publishers and his conclusions ignored by Western media.
Meanwhile, those media – the Guardian and its ilk – have given "investigative journalism" a bad name, particularly with solicitations like this:
And we need your help, too. More people, all around the world, are reading and supporting The Guardian's independent, investigative journalism . And unlike many news organisations, we have chosen an approach that allows us to keep our reporting accessible to everyone, regardless of where they live or what they can afford.The Guardian is editorially independent, meaning we set our own agenda. Our journalism is free from commercial bias and not influenced by billionaire owners, politicians or shareholders. No one edits our editor. No one steers our opinion.
This is important as it enables us to give a voice to those less heard, challenge the powerful and hold them to account . It's what makes us different from so many others in the media, at a time when factual, honest reporting is critical .
It's often necessary to read Guardian articles, and be subjected to this obnoxious and mendacious hype. This particular version came at the end of this article, whose content perfectly summarises the problem with the Guardian :
Citizen journalists – the fighters on the Frontline against Russia's attacks."
"We can no longer count on our governments to protect us from a tide of disinformation. Our security rests in the hands of open source intelligence, as pioneered by Bellingcat." – writes Carole Cadwalladr.
A chilling thought!
The mention of "frontline" in Cadwalladr's title seems hardly coincidental, as it was at the Frontline Club in London that Chis Wiley, the whistleblower on Cambridge Analytica appeared in public following Cadwalladr's dramatic expose' in the Observer two days earlier. Her work in bringing this scandal to light was widely recognised and lauded, including with the Orwell prize in July last year, an irony that would have been lost on readers of the Observer and Guardian.
It would also be lost on those of our compatriots who suddenly discovered Cadwalladr following her dramatic presentation at the recent TED annual conference in Vancouver. And justifiably. Cadwalladr confounds our distrust of her allegiances and establishment status with her passionate and brave speech to Silicon Valley tech-heads, linked to in this article .
Orwell might have noted the irony also – or perhaps coincidence – that the Frontline club became known a decade ago when it became the forum for discussion of Wikileaks' investigations, and the place where Julian Assange was the idol du jour amongst a similar cult social group before the insidious destruction of his credibility took hold of them. And the links go further. A youthful James Ball was working with Wikileaks back then, if fractiously. Ball claimed to support the "laudable aims" of Wikileaks, but objected to its practices as well as some of its adherents.
But any problem he may have had with Assange and Wikileaks is dwarfed by the problem we now have with James Ball as an agent for the Integrity Initiative working at the Guardian. Ball's name was included in lists of II's contacts in documents hacked and leaked by Anonymous in December 2018, and this forced the Guardian employee to come clean – after a fashion .
While admitting but downplaying his connection to Donnelly's Institute for Statecraft, Ball spares no words to mouth off about Russia's alleged disinformation tactics, and supposed responsibility for the shooting down of MH17 and the poisoning of the Skripals in Salisbury.
Ball also mentions the Integrity Initiative event he attended, along with his colleague Carole Cadwalladr, at the Frontline club in mid December 2018. This twitter thread from Wikileaks tells almost the whole story:
But that was in December, and before further documents from the IfS had been released by Anonymous. Although Ball suggests that the Integrity Initiative "was doomed from the start" by operating covertly "like the Russians", its agenda to spread disinformation and to extend malign influence into centres of government across Europe could hardly operate transparently! And it continues to operate as before; last week there was this event at the Frontline Club :
Meet some of the world's leading Open Source Investigations teams to discuss the groundbreaking techniques being used to support and strengthen reporting of civilian harm in conflicts worldwide. Times senior foreign correspondent Anthony Loyd will be joined by Chris Woods, Director of Airwars, Bellingcat's Yemen reporter Rawan Shaif and Milena Marin, project lead for Amnesty Decoders.Enter OSI. Using mountains of data sourced from freely available online resources like Twitter, Facebook and Google Earth, and often on a shoestring budget, many of the world's biggest stories are being broken from behind laptops across the globe.
From the Skripal poisoning to the Battle of Mosul, Open Source Investigations are bringing information to the public by harnessing the phenomena of mass communication. This panel will focus on how OSI teams and monitoring groups are working to strengthen our power to report, and uncover stories of civilian harm in the world's bloodiest conflicts.
The chair for this event was none other than the BBC's Defence correspondent Jonathan Beale, named in II documents as one of their own. Chris Woods has also worked for BBC Panorama, while Anthony Loyd recently distinguished himself by stumbling upon the "IS bride" Shamima Begum in Al Hol refugee camp.
Loyd "has witnessed the atrocities committed by Bashar al-Assad's regime, the brutal rise of the self-styled Islamic State and the desperate struggle of the Syrian people caught between the two."
One wonders where he may have "witnessed" these things, given the problem in visiting parts of Syria controlled by the "regime" without a visa. Or perhaps he witnessed them on a laptop in London. But his story of Begum and her babies captivated British audiences for weeks, allowing the real action to pass almost unnoticed until the End of the Caliphate was announced.
Also at this significant planning meeting was Rawan Shaif from the very recently launched Bellingcat-Yemen project . Whatever is behind this "open source investigation" into the US coalition's war on the Yemeni national resistance, it certainly isn't intended to identify the culprits for Yemen's humanitarian disaster, given they aren't in Yemen but in Abu Dhabi, Tel Aviv, Washington, Paris and London. One might ask also "why now", and not three years ago, when thousands were being killed by bombs and missile strikes, including one on a funeral that ended up killing over 400 people, and over a dozen officials from Ansarullah.
For that particular war crime, I wrote "Decapitation in Sana'a" , also reviewing the moves to form a new government after 18 months of war. Reading it again now, two and a half years later, it's hard not to be cynical about anyone who claims to "investigate" the crimes of the aggressors, without setting a foot in Yemen. In fact, it's hard not to be incensed, at the sheer wilful brutality and calculated mendacity of those behind the "world's worst humanitarian disaster" – that they themselves created.
The truth of what has been done to Yemen, as revealed by brave investigative journalists like Marwa Osman and Vanessa Beeley, and ignored by the serried ranks of mainstream reporters and commentators, is representative of the whole crisis on the cyber-battlefield – the virtual frontline between the Western mainstream and the "Resistance" – or whatever we like to call those who stand against it. The chasm between the two – us and them – has become almost unbridgeable, as even if we can manage to stir an interest in "The Integrity Initiative", or "the Nurse's Tale", the details will be incomprehensible and unacceptable.
The reality of this impotence – my inability to influence close friends and acquaintances – came home with a crash last week with a group email about Carole Cadwalladr's TED talk. The chair of my local climate action group unusually sent it round saying:
I am compelled to share this straight away. It's about how powerful elites bypassed UK electoral laws using platforms such as FaceBook and how this resulted in a vote to leave on Brexit. It's not just about Brexit, it's about all elections. I'd read bits and pieces about this issue, but not previously understood the full ramifications."
There is an election underway in Australia at the moment, in which climate change and coal mining are big issues, as is electoral interference, so Cadwalladr's message has struck a chord with my campaigning friends, and struck a nerve with me!
How to explain "the full ramifications" of Cadwalladr's cooperation with the enemy that she herself seems barely aware of – that is embedded in her? And to a community where US and Israeli influence is so embedded as to be invisible?
Originally published at American Herald Tribune
What is cool and what is fuddy duddy under neoliberalism
Francis Lee says May, 5, 2019
Taking a long view it was very astute and cleverly conceived plan to to present counter-revolution as revolution; progress as regress; the new order 1980- (i.e., neoliberalism) was cool, and the old order 1945-1975 (welfare-capitalism) was fuddy-duddy.Francis Lee says May, 5, 2019Thus:
Capital controls = fuddy duddy Capital Account liberalisation = cool Worker's Rights = fuddy duddy Flexible Labour markets = cool World Peace – fuddy duddy War = Cool National Sovereignty = fuddy duddy Globalization = Cool Social Mobility = fuddy duddy Inequality = cool Respect for elections/referenda = fuddy-duddy Flexible referenda/elections = cool Social solidarity = fuddy-duddy Rampant nihilistic invidualism = cool Respect for human rights and the UN International Law = fuddy-duddy Blatant Imperialism = coolAnd so the agenda goes on. Counter-revolution qua revolution
I like this bit – "No one edits our editor. No one steers our opinion." That's because the bullshit has become so internalised and second nature that these stenographers need no external guidance.Yarkob says May, 5, 2019I think that it was Trotsky who summed up this process: "Every bourgeois journalist has a gendarme sitting in his head, so that the external one is unnecessary."
Carole Cadwalladr is the crazy cat-lady of "investigative journalism". her twitter is a revelation. she should get a room with Louise MenschGezzah Potts says May, 4, 2019The Guardians 'independent, investigative journalism' . 'challenge the powerful and hold them to account' Who? Tony Blair? Obomber? NATO? Netanyahu? How exactly does the Guardian 'hold the powerful to account'? Who wrote this crap? Oh . they did.binra says May, 5, 2019The signature pattern is of accusing one's own intent and act on the other: While I hold to the truth – "it takes one to know one".milosevic says May, 5, 2019... ... ...
The Guardian is no longer a credible or worthy witness, but rather a tool of a hidden hand. I don't tune in to crap tv or anything else that operates a hateful, deceitful and life-undermining intent. Not in order to become virtuous – but to release that which denies awareness of the innate virtues of Life. And weaken the mask in others by withdrawing support from engaging at the personality level.
George says May, 5, 2019I hold to the truth -- "it takes one to know one".Your disinfo is growing old and tired. Nobody younger than sixty-five takes this New Age bs at all seriously anymore; you must be completely out-of-touch if you don't understand that.
Ask your handlers to provide you with some fresh material, that hasn't been recycled twenty-seven times already.
Yes. "The Guardian is no longer a credible or worthy witness, but rather a tool of a hidden hand." is all that needed to be said.binra says May, 5, 2019Well throw your baseless accusation in smear to my post milosovic and join the purpose of propagating and directing hate – as if to disempower others is to gain it for your 'self'.Jen says May, 4, 2019What is hate but 'hurtred'? You make offence when there is none – except perhaps to cherished or weaponised illusions. But I don't attack your illusions except by not sharing them you will think so.
'New Age' is of course used pejoratively to invalidate and with some understandable justification with regard for the co-opting and subversion of any movement to a reactive identity – which is just another version of the old.
But insofar as the old is revealing itself ever more insane and hatefully polarised or myopically managed in what I see as an ongoing and terminal paralysis – I will stand in the New regardless of the comings and goings of fashions that are themselves co-opted and subverted evasions.
I just live here – and write from who I accept myself to be into the themes being shared. If I wanted to be fashionable I would appeal to hates and fears and self-specialness. Likewise if I wanted to operate disinfo and division here, I have a wealth of life experience that could be called on to work mischief but that is not my Calling. It doesn't interest me. And to a significant extent, people are more than able to sabotage their own fulfilment simply as a result of unowned fears coming up to trigger each other into distrust, suspicion, projection and attack.
However – anyone who fuels such division by mere assertion or accusation without any demonstrable cause or basis – has to be effectively a 'disinfo agent' regardless they know or don't know a hate-agenda uses them, or whether they have some script of self-justification by which to inject fake news or false witness into the stream or channels of attention and communication.
Are mainstream reporters 'useful idiots' by nature of being sold an 'insider' narrative of a smug or protected self-specialness, status and privilege?
"It is difficult to get a man to understand something, when his salary depends upon his not understanding it!" – Upton Sinclair.
In fact it is impossible I can get you to understand anything you are not already of a willingness to accept. So I don't try to get you or anyone else to understand what you are they are not already in a willingness to uncover.
That is your freedom and your responsibility. However the invitation is there, however you currently perceive it.
That, 'it takes one to know one' holds true, means that you help me get in touch with facets of myself that may otherwise be denied – and yet actively triggered to respond in like kind.
You are free to make me (or anyone else) in your own image and likeness – and therefore free to release what you made to a real relationship – unless you believe your freedom depends on my denial. Then you must make a world like this one – and die in it – or change your mind about your mind.
Off-Guardian.org should consider registering itself as an organisation investigating dangerous religious cults. So much of what Off-G writers report about The Fraudian increasingly resembles the monitoring of cult practices aiming at the brainwashing and closing the minds of vulnerable people caught in its grip.crank says May, 4, 2019Fraudian journalists act as missionaries advocating or evangelising for their cause. The constant appeals for money smack of similar appeals made by cults that deliberately portray themselves as showing the only true way to salvation or enlightenment and which claim to be shunned, persecuted or marginalised for their "courage" or "undeviating loyalty" to Truth.
No wonder The Fraudian seems whiffy when you look at it online: the whiffiness is of a dangerously self-deluded and arrogant religious cult hell-bent on pursuing a fast lane to its own Armageddon.
Good article.John2o2o says May, 4, 2019I agree that the gap has become a gulf.
The liberals are almost unreachable now, and as their sense of entitled safety in the world implodes they will be increasingly vulnerable to the manipulations of some very nasty forces.
I too know this from friends, family and acquaintances. It worries me greatly.
To try and unpick the layers of lies and distortion with which they have been subject in recent years is a task beyond the achievable.
It's not that they are bad people per se, but they identify with a system that is being revealed as evil (no other word for it), and they would rather bolt themselves to a sinking ship than question that identification.
I always think there's something slimy about most of the Guardian's journalists, but I cannot quite get a handle on what exactly it is about them. Perhaps their deep seated conceit and arrogance. Their belief that what they think is always right and those who think otherwise should be silenced.Stonky says May, 5, 2019Codswallop and Monobot are two of the worst, but King Turd surely has to be every mothers favorite gayboy Owen Jones. Still, he has some stiff competition from the likes of Freeman and Williams. What an odious bunch, the lot of them. Bleah!
Gezzah Potts says May, 5, 2019I always think there's something slimy about most of the Guardian's journalists, but I cannot quite get a handle on what exactly it is about them
It's not too difficult John:
"Oh yaaah of course I'm all in favour of radical change. Only please god don't let it ever actually happen. And if you do, please god make sure it doesn't impinge on my comfortable upper-middle class metropolitan lifestyle. And whatever you bloody well do god DON'T LET IT AFFECT THE VALUE OF MY PROPERTIES IN LONDON!!!"
Stonky: Oh, how well you hit the nail on the head. I think they're referred to as The Resistance, otherwise known as Faux Left. Especially the hipsters.milosevic says May, 5, 2019I always think there's something slimy about most of the Guardian's journalists, but I cannot quite get a handle on what exactly it is about them.binra says May, 4, 2019It's the slime.
That's what makes them too slimy to get a handle on.
Embedded thinking doesn't comply or conform; it does not even happen. Something else operates in place of what thinking was.In my own preference for terms I see 'thinking' as the means of denial of a quality of awareness to which thought is a servant and a tool.
Narrative dictate is the surrender of the freedom of thought to an overriding fear – under which a dissociated mind may operate under the stockholm syndrome – so as to play out some sense of love and life even under coercive captivity – by polarising to protect and support the power that can destroy – and so by pleasing, mitigate or assign privileged status.
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Jun 05, 2019 | off-guardian.org
Francis Lee says May 5, 2019
Taking a long view it was very astute and cleverly conceived plan to to present counter-revolution as revolution; progress as regress; the new order 1980- (i.e., neoliberalism) was cool, and the old order 1945-1975 (welfare-capitalism) was fuddy-duddy.Thus:
Capital controls = fuddy duddy Capital Account liberalisation = cool Worker's Rights = fuddy duddy Flexible Labour markets = cool World Peace -- fuddy duddy War = Cool National Sovereignty = fuddy duddy Globalization = Cool Social Mobility = fuddy duddy Inequality = cool Respect for elections/referenda = fuddy-duddy Flexible referenda/elections = cool Social solidarity = fuddy-duddy Rampant nihilistic invidualism = cool Respect for human rights and the UN International Law = fuddy-duddy Blatant Imperialism = coolAnd so the agenda goes on. Counter-revolution qua revolution
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Jun 06, 2018 | discussion.theguardian.com
Anomander64 -> Davesnothereman , 3 Jun 2018 16:44
Shhhh... whatever you do, don't ever let them hear you criticizing the "job creators" or there will be trouble.You know we can't touch the corporations - they are sacrosanct because they are the supposed "job creators" - this one title gives them carte blanche to act however they like, to make spurious claims about economies faltering, businesses going offshore and unemployment. They also donate heavily to the political parties.
Repeat after me:
"Blessed are the job creators"
"Blessed are the job creators"
"Blessed are the job creators"
"For THEY shall inherit the wealth"
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Jun 05, 2019 | off-guardian.org
For no important reason, I was thinking about the Royal Navy's new aircraft carrier, HMS "Queen Elizabeth II". This ship has been in the news, but for all the wrong reasons: her commander was recently removed by helicopter whilst anchored in the Forth, accused of having used the ship's car for personal use whilst in the US (maybe he should have used a helicopter?).Even Lord West of Spithead (former head of the RN) expressed his bemusement at the style of management. But if this really is a question of misuse of public money, then it seems but a drop in several oceans compared with the bigger pictures – firstly of defence spending, secondly of defence strategy, and lastly of man-management.
Firstly, the cost to build these two 65,000T aircraft carriers is currently about $10 Billion (when it comes to such eye-watering amounts of money, the figures always expand because defence spending is notoriously adrift). This is however a bargain compared with US super-carriers (100,000T) which are nuclear-powered, cost about $15 Billion to build (and $3 Billion to de-commission).
The US fields about 10 such ships: they are quite defenceless (thus have to be escorted by various surface escorts and submarines) thus 5-6,000 men. The 2013 cost of clothing, training, feeding, paying such numbers put the daily running costs to USD $6.5 Million (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gerald_R._Ford-class_aircraft_carrier). If the Royal Navy deems her Captain over-used the ship's car, then money must be tight.
But what of the aircraft the ship was built to carry? QEII is supposed to carry 36 F-35Bs (designed for US Marines) built by US firm, Lockheed-Martin.
The F-35 programme was 7 years behind schedule and $150 Billion over-budget (perfectly acceptable in defence spending!). Lockheed-Martin are not Boeing – and any reference to their 737 Max would be inappropriate – but when half remain grounded for lack of spares, then one (for-the-price-of-two) costs $300 million.
The 72 aircraft for two ships adds $11 Billion. (N.B. these are their off-the-shelf price, not their whole-of-life cost).
Secondly, QE II apparently now has 12 F-35Bs and will be attached to the US Marines. British taxpayers' money has not been well spent. I don't know how much a supersonic missile or torpedo costs, nor indeed a swarm of plastic drones, but such an expensive ship makes for a very juicy target.
The first aircraft carrier HMS Hermes, was launched in 1919 and technology has changed in 100 years, but not strategy. Carriers' vulnerability puts a serious counterweight to any 'prestige' they might bring to erstwhile superpowers; indeed, the UK's prostrated serfitude to the US destroys any last pretence of British Sovereignty.
All empires fall: losing one may be a misfortune, but to lose two is pure incompetence. Australia, Canada and NZ cling on like drowning men, weighed-down by oxymoronic military intelligence and misplaced political allegiance. Peace benefits Humanity. Wars profit Bankers.
As per the latest NZ Budget, our military will spend $5 Billion, doing " nothing to address poverty, homelessness, healthcare, low income, incarceration; nor does it address climate change Military spending diverts resources. If we want genuine socio-economic and climate justice, new thinking is essential".
Finally, man-management: the Royal Navy in 1757 executed Admiral Byng for 'failure to do his utmost'. Voltaire considered that this was the British way "pour encorager les autres". Is it likely that the removed commander will ever again do his utmost for King & Country?
British Secretary of Defense (Stupid Boy, Gavin Williamson) has walked the plank for breaching Cabinet duplicity, and PM May has been given a seat on the next helicopter. Napoleon said: Never interrupt the enemy when he is making a mistake.
andyoldlabour
Sink the carrier after it launches aircraft and where are the aircraft going to land?
Modern missile technology has made large ships obsolete.During the November 2012 conflict, a detailed review of a large number of photographs of Iron Dome interceptor contrails revealed that the rocket-defense system's success rate was very low -- as low as 5 percent or, perhaps, even less. A variety of media outlets have attributed the low casualty number to the supposed effectiveness of the Iron Dome system, quoting Israeli officials as saying it has destroyed 90 percent of the Hamas rockets it targeted. But close study of photographic and video imagery of Iron Dome engagements with Hamas rockets -- both in the current conflict and in the 2012 hostilities -- shows that the low casualties in Israel from artillery rocket attacks can be ascribed to Israeli civil defense efforts, rather than the performance of the Iron Dome missile defense system.
https://thebulletin.org/2014/07/the-evidence-that-shows-iron-dome-is-not-working/
Note this against Hamas 'Roman candles' not against ballistic missiles travelling at mach 10 [7,500 MPH]I think several British carriers were sunk, one by a submarine early in the war, one off Norway in 1940 and the Ark Royal in 1941. There may have been others. Some scort carriers were also lost. Germany introduced the first anti ship missiles in 1943, the Fritz X and Henschel 293. They were very effective in a number of attacks off Italy, damaging the battleship Warspite and sinking a cruiser and a number of other targets, as well as the Italian battleship Roma as it was on its way to surrender.
In Korea, Vietnam and Iraq, opposing naval forces were so weak as to be virtually non existent. Anti ship missiles were used by Argentine forces in 1982 to sink two large vessels, the Coventry and Atlantic Conveyor, a merchant ship converted into a makeshift aircraft carrier. The last case occurred in 2006, when Hezbollah severely damaged and nearly sank a large Israeli warship. It appears that the missile actually failed to explode.
Countries like Iran and DPRK are now equipped with a large number of anti ship missiles of far greater sophistication than any previously employed in battle. There are surprises in every war, and no one can accurately predict what will occur until battle is joined. Experienced and competent commanders expected cavalry to play an important part in WW1. Many others doubted that armoured and mechanised forces would be effective in WW2, because of problems of supply and command and control, or that aircraft would be capable of sinking heavily armoured warships. But it seems reasonable to draw attention to the increasing vulnerability of large aircraft carriers.
The last aircraft carrier to be sunk, was the IJN Amagi in Kure Harbour in July 1945.Island nations need carriers, the threat is always from the sea.
Regardless, the biggest threats from the seas, were always the British, French, Spanish, Portuguese, False Flag Pirates and good ole' Uncle $ham's navy,
on the hunt for corporate resources to thieve . . .Perhaps you would like to stress your brain, (rather than arguing some mathematical stupidity) and give us all just one example of when Aircraft Carriers were used defensively, William ? Additionally, Bill, even friendly fire and silly lil' accidents with old munitions can immobilise an aircraft carrier, to the point where somebody like John McCain jumps ship ASAP, for example on the USS Forrestal
"I'm an old Navy pilot. I know when a crisis calls for all hands on deck,"
Sen. McCain said >>> records show otherwise !Show some respect for others' intelligence.
The UK isn't Jamaica. It has more people, and a tradition of invention which has elevated its position in the world.
As to aircraft carriers, they are an offensive weapon (attack being the better part of defence) , but always part of a carrier group. The defense of the vessel dependent on the air power of her aircraft, and to a lesser extent the accompanying fleet.
The world is a dangerous place, don't take the freedoms we have in the UK for granted. If you doubt that, live in an undemocratic country. I do, and it makes me love my country more.
The world certainly is a dangerous place. I'm sure that most Koreans, Vietnamese, Cambodians, Afghans, Iraqis, Libyans, Yemenis, Palestinians, Iranians and Venezuelans would fully agree with you. It is a dangerous place largely because of the homicidal antics and military adventures of rogue terrorist regimes like the USA and its satellites like the UK as they rampage across the planet slaughtering, starving and immiserating tens of millions, like Nazi Germany on steroids. Which even now are simultaneously threatening further criminal wars of aggression against three of those countries.
You're certainly wise not to take freedoms for granted. They are ancient history. In the UK as in the USA, stringent censorship is being imposed and civil liberties are being shredded. Whistleblowers and dissidents who reveal evidence of numerous war crimes and atrocities are increasingly subject to persecution and intimidation by a corrupt and politicised judicial system, with a growing number of political prisoners and prisoners of conscience. We are all subject to an Orwellian system of state snooping and surveillance. Torture has bee normalised, and we have a "Leader of the Free World" who is an enthusiastic advocate of torture, inheriting a long established global Gulag of concentration camps, torture chambers and secret prisons in a score of countries, including UK territory, where thousands of unfortunates have been and are being tortured and murdered on an industrial scale.
I agree with you that you live in an undemocratic country. If that makes you love your country more, good luck to you.
He flew an avengerMk2 in the english fleet air arm as escort for convoys up to Murmansk. They didn't use aircraft carriers I dunno why, prolly just not wanting to waste resources on commies, truth be told. Instead he and his cobbers were launched into the air by steam catapult off the foredeck of freighters.
They flew patrol looking out for nazis then landed their plane (which had floats) beside the 'mothership' and got craned aboard.
That would seem to me to be smarter as it doesn't require putting all yer eggs in one basket. As far as the old bastard was concerned it was better too, since the english navy appears to have learned bugger all from the battle of Jutland in the first half of the 20th century euro war where the english navy lost lost 3 battlecruisers, 3 armored cruisers, and 8 destroyers off the coast of Denmark in 1916.Navy architects appear to have done nothing about protecting the cordite magazines from flash explosion in the 20+ year interregnum between the two blues, cause the HMS Hood had exactly the same design flaw of a bottleneck with inboard cordite distribution causing lax safety practices as the boats in the Jutland debacle, resulting in the 'mighty hood' going down a coupla minutes after first being hit by a german shell. The magazine blew up, 3 men survived and more than 1300 crew did not.
Then the ark royal, the one boat the old bugger did fly off early on in his ww2 gig, was sunk thanks to incredible stupidity and incompetence by its leadership.
No wonder all the kiwi pilots were only too happy to take the 'shit detail' the english navy offered of flying off freighters in the North Sea.Building vast floating targets seems to me to have been more about admirals' penis envy than sensible strategic planning. Useful for a handful of years in the thousands of years old arseholes have been getting young men to kill each other, by the end of ww2 aircraft carriers had become surplus to needs and nothing has happened since then to alter that.
Same same goes for huge nuke subs, no matter how many kazillions is spent on making them invisible, the edge is lost in a matter of months and within a short time even small non-superpower navies know where all the genocidal, population-killing, nuke subs are. If USuk ever do decide in a fit of lunacy to attack Iran, I betcha the Iranians will knock off most of the big stuff (aircraft carriers, battleships and nuke subs) with a flotilla of craftily utilised inflatables in the first few days.All that money literally billions every year, which could be used employing citizens to do constructive stuff within their communities gets blown in bribes, boats and bombs just so that scummy politicians and brainless navy bosses get to show off in the most facile dick measuring contest since Churchill needed a magnifying glass and a pair of tweezers to try and meet Uncle Joe's challenge way back when. lol.
They were mostly converted merchant ships, with decks around 500 feet long, and carried Hurricanes, Swordfish and Martlets.
I know this because my late uncle served on HMS Avenger.https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/HMS_Avenger_(D14)
http://www.royalnavyresearcharchive.org.uk/ESCORT/ACTIVITY.htm#.XPdqqo97mUk
http://www.royalnavyresearcharchive.org.uk/ESCORT/TRACKER.htm#.XPdr7I97mUk
In defense I will say that after checking the links that the so called aircraft carriers used on the Murmansk run all appear to be freighters converted into 'carriers' rather than purpose built ships.
I have a brother who lapped all that war stuff up who would most likely know more, the little I know was when in some sort of weird post his karking it curiosity I bought (but never actually put together ) a model of a fleet arm avenger Mk2 as far as I can work out he was in either 851 or 855 squadron but am not even sure of that.Sometimes that means building weapons systems capable of taking the consequences right up to the enemies coastline.
A carrier is only a 'sitting duck' if one considers it as a single vessel, but no navy would use them like that. They are an integrated weapons system, and kept well out of harms way. Typically, a carrier group would destroy the means to wage war on it long before any missiles were launched at it.
LOL
sorry, that's all your comment warranted. For a proper response, see: OffG, Craig Murray, MoA et al..
again, LOL
All the Salisbury incident 'demonstrated' was that Cold War spy games are still very much a part of our psychopathic leader's toolbox. Everything else beyond that is unsubstantiated speculation of which we'll likely never know the truth and you'd have to be either a simpleton, or a blatant liar to suggest otherwise.
I won't bother with the rest of your post because arguing the pros and cons of a Carrier's military capabilities and application means I have to implicitly accept the terminological trick (pulled by both yourself above, our governments and the companies that build these things) that an aircraft carrier somehow qualifies as a 'defensive' weapon.
Be careful to be guided by this golden rule. Stick close to your desks and never go to sea, and you all may be rulers of the Queen's Navee!
When you realise how much money is poured into these HMS Sitting Ducks you realise just how far we have been duped when told there is never enough money for the NHS.
Tut, your last paragraph reminded me of Eisenhower's "Humanity hanging from a cross of iron" speech from 1953. Things shave got steadily worse since then.I would argue, yes, there is a lot of intelligence, because one cannot be dumb stupid idiot when able to appropriate vast amount of vital resources to build plain criminal evil destructive instruments of death.
.. put the daily running costs to USD $6.5 Million
The ship broadside, if in Australia, can be used to promote/advertise racing and gambling.
"Every single change in technology in the past half a century has had "Stop building carriers!" written all over it. And nobody in the navy brass paid any attention.
The lesson here is the same one all of you suckers should have learned from watching the financial news this year: the people at the top are just as dumb as you are, just meaner and greedier. And that goes for the ones running the US surface fleet as much as it does for the GM or Chrysler honchos. "The purpose of the Navy," Vice Admiral John Bird, commander of the Seventh Fleet, tells me, "is not to fight." The mere presence of the Navy should suffice, he argues, to dissuade any attack or attempt to destabilize the region. From Yokosuka, Guam, and Honolulu
That's the kind of story people are still writing. It's so stupid, that first line, I won't even bother with it: "The purpose of the Navy is not to fight." No kidding. The Seventh Fleet covers the area included in that 2000 km range for the new Chinese anti-ship weapons, so I guess it's a good thing they're not there to fight". http://exiledonline.com/the-war-nerd-this-is-how-the-carriers-will-die/all/1/These 65k ton carriers are the biggest ships ever operated by the Navy. Its battleships and fleet carriers of WW2 were 35,000 and 25,000 tons respectively. They might as well have been named HMS White Elephant I and II. One will be mothballed immediately (maybe they could sell it to the Chinese?) The other may operate with a much reduced complement of a handful of aircraft (if the F35s ever work.)
This is a ludicrous prestige project that will be seen as a national embarrassment as time goes by, like the scrapped Nimrod AEW. It reflects the delusions of our ruling elite ("What if we want to bomb North Korea?") and those of people like Admiral West.
To operate, aircraft carriers require an escort of 5-6 frigates and destroyers and a submarine, for anti aircraft and anti submarine defence. These won't be available. Britain has a grand total of 17 frigates and destroyers, 5 – 6 of which are out of commission undergoing refits at any one time. British frigates and destroyers are less well equipped than their foreign counterparts. Crewing even one of these ships will be a major headache. The personnel strength of the Navy is currently 29,000. Even the cost of fuel for operations is prohibitive. The US carriers have nuclear reactors which only require refuelling around once every fourteen years.
It would have made much more sense to buy a few extra frigates and destroyers instead. Maybe the odd small aircraft carrier of around 20,000 tons like the Invincible class, if they really wanted. Though most people think in any future wars large aircraft carriers against a half competent enemy would be little more than floating coffins, very vulnerable to the new class of anti ship missiles like the Yakhonts/ Sunburn. In recent times, they have only been used in modern colonial style warfare against the present day equivalent of the Zulus and the Fuzzy Wuzzies. Brave but not terribly well equipped fighting men who don't have so much as an Airfix model Spitfire for air defence. Aircraft carriers would be terribly vulnerable if used even against countries like Iran or North Korea.
And then there are the aircraft. I think the actual unit cost of the F35 comes in at something around $400 million a pop all in. Whether it will ever work is open to question. America has problems building aircraft that don't work. This thing has problems with its engines, which keep conking out in mid flight, with the oxygen system, which keeps failing with rather unfortunate consequences for the pilot, and the cannon, which won't fire because its computer won't work. It has wings which are too small for a good fighter, and it can't bomb anything if it faces any stronger opposition than a few tribesmen with AK47s. Apart from that, it's okay, though we probably can't afford more than a dozen of them. The previous F22 was a similar failure. The production line was closed down after 100 – odd of them had been made, though they were supposed to produce 1,000.
America used to produce some very good aircraft, like the F14/15/16/18. The F35 is supposed to replace them, but the new aircraft is grossly inferior to them all. They are talking about putting the F18 and A10 back into production. This is eerily reminiscent of the Luftwaffe in WW2, whose new aircraft projects like the Messerschmitt 210 and Heinkel 177 were flying death traps. They were forced to put obsolete aircraft like the Junkers 87 and the Heinkel 111 back into production till the end of the war, so that they had something to fight with, however inadequate.
Still, so long as Lockheed's profits are okay, I suppose that's the main thing. And Gavin Pugwash Williamson, or his successor, can posture and preen about how Britain rules the waves with HMS White Elephant and its dozen Flying Turkeys, even if they can't scrape a crew together for it. Why should England tremble?
Real warfare now is about blasting the ionosphere to create awful weather in enemy territory. It is releasing super pests onto other contitenrs to infest agricultural crops. It is engineering viruses to be more harmful and releasing them abroad. It is crashing global stock markets to wipe competitors out.
Aircraft carriers had their day. In about 1945 .
I do not want proxy wars either. Not in Ukraine, not in Syria, not in North Korea, not in Venezuela.
But all our corrupt officials and representatives think wasting trillions of our money on archaic overpriced ersatz masturbation toys is just fine and dandy.
It is not ok to sell their daughters into foreign prostitution though.
Oh no .
Pity we can't post a list of companies?
https://thefullertoninformer.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/12/cia-millimeter-waves-1.pdf
I sometimes feel that I could show up somewhere in the corridors of the Pentagon with a plan to recycle people's shirts and underwear cheaply into some sort of instant camouflage in the event of an "enemy" guided-missile attack upon one of "our" aircraft carriers, and there would be a high-ranking official there daft enough to fund me to the tune of billions of dollars to develop it.
Certifiable insanity is no stranger to the military environment of modern western government."Weapons are ominous tools. They are abhorred by all creatures. Anyone who follows the Way shuns them."
"Those who advice the ruler on the Way, do not want the world subdued with weapons."
Tao Te ChingWe live in society that grew accustomed to war and violence as the sole mean to "solve" its conflicts. The irony of this is that now there is a hughe issue with bullying and cyber-bullying and people are still 'wondering' how was this ever possible in a, so called, civilized society.
A 'civilized society' that still debates what's the best (more economic and efficient) way to go to war, that is, the more efficient way to manslaughter .
And it's the politicians who make the decisions
And I am, myself, probably sometimes guilty of what you say too, although I do try not to be.Russia recently demonstrated the maximum tactical use they can be put to, when they sent their one remaining carrier to Syria. Against a smaller power they give you the advantage of air superiority when deployed as a 'pop up airfield', but against another major power they would be useless. The recent US sabre waving in the Gulf may impress the gormless, but even Iran has the missile capability to make them worthless.
As to the racket that is war, Major General Smedley Butler published this pamphlet in 1935 based on an after dinner speech he made. Not the finest writing, but well worth a read _
https://ratical.org/ratville/CAH/warisaracket.pdfWhilst it's original function might have been considered to be a nuclear launch platform (there were 500kT nukes under it's deck) it's real purpose was as an area denial system designed to kill aircraft within it's engagement envelope.
As such, somewhat ironically the ancient old soviet aircraft carrier is probably the only thing afloat that could withstand a modern missile attack by itself.
Time that the non- brain dead 5-eyes morons realused that we didn't win the second world war by outselves. There were many millions of Sub-continentals, Africans and Afro-Caribbeans as well Afro-Americans, Native Americans etc. AND the millions and millions of Russians, military and civilians, who actually stopped the Anglo-Imperialists proxy Nazi mercenaries and wiped out their military strength. Only than did the 'Allies' make a token effort at invasion.
Aircraft carriers are totally useless in modern warfare. They are visible from the sky and vulnerable to missiles – hypersonic and ballistic, never mind frogmen with limpets.
Military intelligence? Does that even exist in the context of the British armed forces?
" Finally, man-management: the Royal Navy in 1757 executed Admiral Byng for 'failure to do his utmost' "
Yes, doing his utmost meant he should have arranged with the enemy to execute him.
That humans are headed for extinction.
It looks indeed as if our physical existence at least is headed nowhere – in its current form at any rate
It is certainly fiction.
So we have our fiction on one side, and our personal experience on the other.
What kind of cocktail we make of that is up to us, I reckon.
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May 27, 2019 | www.theguardian.com
The sophisticated attacks of "deepfakes", where video is manipulated to show real people doing or saying things which in real life they never did, are frightening enough. But consider what can be done with very shallow fakes indeed: last week a video was circulated on both Facebook and YouTube purporting to show Nancy Pelosi, the Democratic leader of the House of Representatives, giving a speech. It had simply been slowed down by a quarter, and then had the pitch of her voice boosted back up to a normal tone. The result was to make her appear drunk or seriously unwell. YouTube took it swiftly down. Facebook, where it has been watched at least 2.8m times, has refused to do so. Instead, it placed a sidebar on the video, suggesting as "further viewing" various news stories pointing out that it is a lie.
This will of course have no effect on those who want to believe. It looks like a deliberate business decision by Facebook to position itself as the preferred channel for dirty politics in the pursuit of power without responsibility. That is why it is the task of democratic politicians to compel the company to take responsibility for its coarsening of political debate.
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May 18, 2019 | www.theguardian.com
The US is closer to war with Iran than it has been since the Bush years, or perhaps ever. And Bolton is largely to blame
But Bolton is on a fast track, seemingly aware that Trump's time in office may be limited.' Photograph: Jim Young/Reuters Donald Trump's national security adviser John Bolton wants the United States to go to war with Iran .We know this because he has been saying it for nearly two decades .
And everything that the Trump administration has done over its Iran policy, particularly since Bolton became Trump's top foreign policy adviser in April of 2018, must be viewed through this lens, including the alarming US military posturing in the Middle East of the past two weeks.
Just after one month on the job, Bolton gave Trump the final push he needed to withdraw from the Iran nuclear agreement, which at the time was (and still is, for now) successfully boxing in Iran's nuclear program and blocking all pathways for Iran to build a bomb. The Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA) – as the Iran deal is formally known – was the biggest obstacle to Bolton's drive for a regime change war, because it eliminated a helpful pretext that served so useful to sell the war in Iraq 17 years ago.
Since walking away from the deal, the Trump administration has claimed that with a "maximum pressure" campaign against Iran, it can achieve a "better deal" that magically turns Iran into a Jeffersonian democracy bowing to every and any American wish. But this has always been a fantastically bad-faith argument meant to obscure the actual goal (regime change) and provide cover for the incremental steps – the crushing sanctions, bellicose rhetoric, and antagonizing military maneuvers – that have now put the United States closer to war with Iran than it has been since at least the latter half of the Bush administration, or perhaps ever.
And Bolton has no qualms about manipulating or outright ignoring intelligence to advance his agenda, which is exactly what's happening right now.
In his White House statement 10 days ago announcing (an already pre-planned) carrier and bomber deployment to the Middle East, Bolton cited "a number of troubling and escalatory indications and warnings" from Iran to justify the bolstered US military presence. But multiple sources who have seen the same intelligence have since said that Bolton and the Trump administration blew it "out of proportion, characterizing the threat as more significant than it actually was". Even a British general operating in the region pushed back this week, saying he has seen no evidence of an increased Iranian threat.
What's even more worrying is that Bolton knows what he's doing. He's "a seasoned bureaucratic infighter who has the skills to press forcefully for his views" – and he has a long history of using those skills to undermine American diplomacy and work toward killing arms control agreements.
As a senior official in the George W Bush administration, he played key role in the collapse of the Agreed Framework, the Clinton-era deal that froze North Korea's plutonium nuclear program (the North Koreans tested their first bomb four years later).
He said he "felt like a kid on Christmas day" after he orchestrated the US withdrawal from the international criminal court in 2002. And now as a senior official in the Trump administration, he pushed for the US to withdrawal from a crucial nuclear arms treaty with Russia.
While it's unclear how much of a role he played in scuttling Trump's negotiations with Kim Jong-un in Hanoi last year, he publicly called for the so-called "Libya model" with the North Koreans (in other words, regime change by force). Just months before joining the administration, he tried to make the legal case for a preventive war against Pyongyang. And if you think he cares about the aftermath of war with North Korea, he doesn't. Bolton was reportedly "unmoved" by a presentation during his time in the Bush administration of the catastrophic consequences of such a war. "I don't do war. I do policy," he said then.
So far, Bolton has been successful in moving the United States toward his desired outcome with Iran – if getting the Pentagon to draw up plans to send 120,000 US troops to the region to confront Iran is any indication. There are hopeful signs that we can avoid war, as US officials and our European allies, seemingly alarmed by what Bolton is up to, are sounding the alarm about the Trump administration skewing intelligence on Iran.
But Bolton is on a fast track, seemingly aware that Trump's time in office may be limited. The question, ultimately, is whether the president can stick to his instincts of avoiding more military conflict, or acquiesce to a man hellbent on boxing him into a corner with no way out other than war with Iran.
Ben Armbruster is the communications director for Win Without War and previously served as National Security Editor at ThinkProgress
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May 16, 2019 | www.unz.com
The Disinformationists, by C.J. Hopkins - The Unz Review
...what motive would they possibly have, these enormous corporate media conglomerates, and the transnational corporations that own them, and these intelligence agencies, and their fronts and cutouts, and corporate lobbyists and PR firms, and councils, and think tanks, and research institutes, to disinform the Western masses, or to manufacture an official narrative that allows them to systematically stigmatize, marginalize, criminalize, deplatform, demonetize, and otherwise eliminate any type of speech they deem to be "Russian disinformation," or "extremist content," or a "conspiracy theory," or simply too "dangerous," "divisive," or "confusing" to circulate among the general public?
No see? That makes no sense. That's just an example of the type of fascist disinformation these Putin-Nazi disinformationists are trying to spread to confuse us to the point where we can't even concentrate long enough to think anymore, or parse the meaningless jargon-laden nonsense they're trying to deceive us with, and just devolve into these Pavlovian imbeciles conditioned to respond to specific trigger words, like "extremist," "terrorist," "fascist," "populist," "anti-Semitic," "Russians," "hackers," and whatever other emotional stimuli we are being trained to instantly recognize and robotically react to like circus animals.
Or I don't know, maybe it isn't. I'm not even sure what I'm trying to say. Probably they've already got to me. I'd better get back down into my anti-disinformation bunker, pull up The Guardian , or The Washington Post , or Der Spiegel on my child-proof computer, and immerse myself in some objective journalism, before the Putin-Nazi spywhale makes its way up the Landwehrkanal, takes control of what's left of my mind, and forces me into going out and trying to vote for Hitler or something.
I recommend you do the same, and I'll see you when this nightmare over.
C. J. Hopkins is an award-winning American playwright, novelist and political satirist based in Berlin. His plays are published by Bloomsbury Publishing (UK) and Broadway Play Publishing (USA). His debut novel, ZONE 23 , is published by Snoggsworthy, Swaine & Cormorant Paperbacks. He can be reached at cjhopkins.com or consentfactory.org .
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May 15, 2019 | off-guardian.org
CNN rigged a poll to censor out nearly everyone under 45 years of age. Based on this nonsensical false sampling they claim Biden is now in the lead.
MSNBC was caught making up false numbers to report, increasing Biden from an actual 25% approval to a magical 28%, just enough to edge out Bernie Sanders. But this is a fraud, deliberate journalistic malfeasance at the highest levels. How could such a thing happen?
How could it not? Comcast owns NBC.
Comcast executive to host Joe Biden fundraiser"
CBS News 24/04/19MSNBC is also that bastion of journalistic integrity that hired an exposed CIA mole, Ken Dilanian, to feed its viewers propaganda about "national security."
MSNBC also made hysterical, highly dangerous, and false claims about the Russians' ability and intention to shut down America's electrical grid, a completely false story that was retracted as soon as it went out by the Washington Post. This kind of unhinged war propaganda could lead the world straight to Armageddon.
Now, the parties truly "meddling in America's democracy" should be very clear, although I can only scratch the surface here concerning the long history of media corruption and outright lies broadcast all the time.
GrafterThe criminal behaviour continues unabated. Lies and fraud abound. American behaviour worldwide is an embarrassment to any free thinking individual. They are a danger to all of us. We can start by removing them from Europe along with their so called "allies". Here in the disunited UK T.May and her little gang of Tory millionaires should be top priority for political oblivion. People worldwide urgently need to wake up to the sick joke that goes under the name of "American democracy".
mark
Organisations like the BBC and all the rest of the corporate media are a greater threat to democracy than any foreign army or terrorist organisation.
They need to be constantly exposed for what they are rather than actually suppressed or controlled. They can be safely left to wither on the vine and decline into irrelevance. Social media and sites like this are a powerful antidote.
Seamus Padraig
As Trump might say, 'Fake News!'
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May 14, 2019 | www.theguardian.com
Democrats are reluctant to impeach Donald Trump but he may provoke such a move by continuing to obstruct congressional efforts to oversee his administration, a senior lawmaker said on Sunday.
Adam Schiff, chair of the House intelligence committee, told ABC's This Week impeachment by the Democratic-run House would be divisive and unlikely to succeed in the Republican-run Senate.
"But [Trump] may get us there," Schiff said. "He certainly seems to be trying and maybe this is his perverse way of dividing us more he thinks that's to his political advantage, but it's certainly not to the country's advantage."
Trump's stonewalling of congressional oversight does add weight to calls for impeachment, Schiff said, adding: "But you know, part of our reluctance is we are already a bitterly divided country and an impeachment process will divide us further."
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May 14, 2019 | www.theguardian.com
Attorney general 'should make this call' over Ukraine ties Schiff says president targeting 'most formidable opponent'
Giuliani told the Guardian he and Trump agreed that the attorney general should decide whether US investigators ought to look into a lucrative business deal in Ukraine obtained by Biden's son while Biden was vice-president.
"I believe the president has the same view that I have – that the attorney general should make this call," Giuliani said.
Hailing Barr as "independent, brilliant and honest", Giuliani added: "I can't tell Attorney General Barr what to do. He's a very, very fine lawyer. My experience with him is that he's a very honorable man, and he will do the right thing."
... ... ...
Giuliani has been working to resurface allegations that Biden improperly used his position as Barack Obama's "point man" on Ukraine to help the business career of his younger son, Hunter, a corporate lawyer and former reservist in the US navy.Biden has publicly boasted that in 2015 he threatened to withhold US aid to Ukraine, as a way to help oust the country's top prosecutor. Giuliani claims Biden did so because the prosecutor had been investigating a gas company that was paying Hunter Biden as a director. The investigation was dropped.
The Bidens strenuously deny any connection. They are supported by prominent anti-corruption campaigners in Ukraine, who say the prosecutor, Viktor Shokin, was simply failing to thoroughly investigate corruption among the country's elite and deserved to be fired.
In 2015 , when questions about the situation first arose, a spokeswoman for the Bidens said: "Hunter Biden is a private citizen and a lawyer. The vice-president does not endorse any particular company and has no involvement with this company."
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May 14, 2019 | www.theguardian.com
Here's a summary of the day thus far: Donald Trump praised attorney general William Barr for opening what appears to be a broad investigation of the Russia counterespionage investigation that swept up the Trump campaign. Barr appointed a US attorney to lead the inquiry and reportedly has got the CIA and DNI involved.Senator Elizabeth Warren took a "hard pass" on an offer to do a Fox News town hall event, calling the network "hate-for-profit".
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May 13, 2019 | www.theguardian.com
MindandHeart -> ADamnSmith2016 , 13 Sep 2016 06:57
ADamnSmith: Yes, I'm a psychologist. You've pretty much nailed it. I'd add that one of the major reasons narcissistic sociopaths are dangerous is that they lack empathy for others.
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May 13, 2019 | discussion.theguardian.com
MindandHeart , 13 Sep 2016 01:23
I studied this phenomenon experientially for over 8 years among conservative Republican followers, and believe it is totally Cult behavior. I've seen contrary evidence literally "switch off" the thinking brain, erasing it, then finding the appropriate Party Line to answer. There seems to be no way to "de-program," that I know of. It is impervious to reason, evidence, or facts. When they were left with no other choices, I saw how Donald Trump was transformed from an initially appalling character to them into an image of a "leader of the Free World," in their realities. They had already been conditioned by some 30 years of Hillary bashing, to unmercifully hate her. Their leaders used the same propaganda machine on Obama. "Liberals" were the ultimate "enemy" and to blame for all our ills.Barring further evidence to the contrary, I concluded that those most vulnerable to this Cult phenomenon had a strong, authoritarian religious upbringing in childhood, and perhaps some significant life hurt or trauma.
Many of our religious "leaders" have jumped on the gravy train, to control and exploit them, using the same methods used by Donald Trump. Scapegoating is constant. Questioning and critical thinking are not allowed. These folks were "primed" to believe and follow the superb conservative Republican media propaganda machine that now boasts 24/7 coverage "coast to coast." I read that the average American watches television 5 hours a day. The average American over 65 watches it 7 hours a day. Adolf Hitler would have loved it. Such fertile ground for dictators and demagogues. Now we have some, what, 13 million? programmed American zombies on our hands. Not only that, but ALL of us have been "affected" by the Hillary/Obama/"liberal" bashing to some extent. I don't know a single individual personally who speaks out enthusiastically for Hillary, even those going to vote for her: they always use apologies, excuses, caveats. By odds, that's just not normal. As John Dean wrote, Republicans can no longer govern, but they are superb at the "politics of personal destruction." They successfully purged their own moderates and liberals, turned the Grand Old Party's principles upside down, and created a Trump Godzilla. They've become a gang of thugs and thieves, the Poison Party. Some are playing "coy" right now, for the limelight they love -- and trying to hedge their bets. But if Trump wins he'll be welcomed with open arms, and he will fit right in, with what's now left of the GOP.
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May 07, 2019 | off-guardian.org
With the new CNN poll showing Joe Biden representing the fossil wing of the Democratic party with a 39% favorable rating as Bernie drops to 15%, it is eerily reminiscent of overstated polls for HRC in 2016. Thanks to CNN, additional White House contenders have qualified for the debate via the % option including former Colorado Gov John Hickenlooper who might take the opportunity to inform the public why he attended the Bilderberg meeting in 2018 .
Given her almost totally hostile reception by every MSM outlet who deigned to interview her, Rep. Tulsi Gabbard has experienced, as an opponent of regime change wars, more bad manners and outright personal antagonism than any other candidate. While Gabbard easily qualified for the debates via the $65,000 requirement and continues to attract SRO audiences in NH, Iowa, California and elsewhere, yet until the newest CNN poll, she failed to register any % of public support.
Something here does not compute given the 'favored' polls past history of favoritism. If the Dems continue to put a brick wall around her, Jill Stein has already opened the Green Party door as a more welcoming venue for a Tulsi candidacy. The Dems, who tend to be unprincipled and vindictive, better be careful what they wish for.
Renee Parsons has been a member of the ACLU's Florida State Board of Directors and president of the ACLU Treasure Coast Chapter. She has been an elected public official in Colorado, an environmental lobbyist for Friends of the Earth and staff member of the US House of Representatives in Washington DC. She can be found on Twitter @reneedove31
Dimly Glimpsed
The Democrat establishment hates Tulsi with a passion. There appear to be several factors:
1) she opposes all the neocon wars, and opposes intervention in Venezuela.
2) She refuses to kowtow to the bipartisan establish sacred cows (an apt metaphor for Tulsi), such as blind support for Saudi Arabia and Israel;
3) She gave the DNC and Hillary the back of her hand when she resigned as a vice-chair of the DNC in 2016, citing the reason as unethical bias by the DNC during the primaries. In other words, she resigned because the DNC was not neutral during the primaries, and colluded with Hillary to cheat Bernie;
4) Tulsi is very progressive, favoring single payer health care, student debt relief, the Green New Deal, etc.
For an establishment democrat, those policies are like garlic to a vampire.
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May 07, 2019 | off-guardian.org
United Christians for Israel, founded and led by pastor John Hagee, have millions of members and call themselves "the largest pro-Israel charity in the United States." The organization was an important factor in the decision of US President Donald Trump in 2017 to recognize Jerusalem as the capital of Israel and to transfer the US embassy there.
Gabbard sponsored the resolution of the Congress criticizing Amnesty International for revealing Israeli atrocities against civilians in his blitzkrieg in Gaza in 2014. The resolution stated that Israel "focuses on terrorist targets" and "goes to extraordinary efforts to attack only terrorist actors".
https://www.counterpunch.org/2014/10/22/gaza-and-the-bi-partisan-war-on-human-rights/What it looked like "focusing on terrorist targets" according to Gabbard can be seen here: https://www.google.pl/search?q=gaza+2014&source=lnms&tbm=isch
Zionism and Islamophobia Gabbard have gained recognition and support from all kinds of unpalatable characters -- like right-wing billionaire and Zionist Sheldon Adelson, who loudly declared that "all Muslims are terrorists".
In addition to Israel's loyal defender, Gabbard has also proved to be a credible servant of Adelson's business interests. Introduced regulations against online gambling to protect the casino's empire from competition on the Internet. Adelson thanked her, giving her the Champion of Freedom award.
http://time.com/3695948/sheldon-adelson-online-gambling/Her prejudices against Islam directly stem from her Hindu fundamentalism. Gabbard became one of the main American political supporters of Narendra Modi, the leader of the Hindu sectarian party Bharatiya Janata (BJP) and the current Prime Minister of India.
Being the main minister of the Indian state of Gujarat in 2002, Modi helped spark a pogrom against Muslims, in which they killed 2,000 people and displaced over 200,000 people in the ethnic cleansing campaign. Since his victory in the 2014 elections, Modi has been a decidedly pro-Israeli Indian politician and has strong relations with Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.
At the invitation of Modi, Gabbard traveled through India for three weeks during which various Hindu fundamentalists greeted her as their American master. In probably the worst part of the tour, the India Foundation, a formation tuned to the Hindu fascist group Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS), hosted Gabbard to discuss the future of Indian-American relations. After the reactionary lovefest, the Indian newspaper Telegraph called it "the American Sangha mascot"
https://www.telegraphindia.com/india/sangh-finds-a-mascot-in-american-tulsi/cid/1579985
After returning to the USA, Gabbard defended Modi against any criticism. She was one of the few democrats who spoke against the federal government's decision to refuse a Modi visa in 2014 because of his abolition of religious freedom
A year earlier, she carried out a successful campaign to abolish legislation calling on India to improve the treatment of religious minorities. Gabbard condemned the bill as an attempt to "influence the outcome of the national elections in India."
https://www.alternet.org/2015/02/curious-islamophobic-politics-dem-congressmember-tulsi-gabbard/Gabbard's service for the most right-wing forces in Indian politics leaves no doubt about its Islamophobia.
Gabbard supported Donald Trump's claim that Islam itself is the source of terrorist organizations such as Al-Qaeda and ISIS. She claimed that Obama "completely misunderstands the rational Islamic ideology that drives these people."
https://www.foxnews.com/politics/knives-are-out-hawaii-dem-faces-backlash-for-taking-on-obama-over-islamist-extremismAs with other leading liberal democrats, Gabbard's alleged progressive values do not extend to the Palestinian struggle for freedom. While she may support the resistance of Indian Native at Standing Rock, she will not support the indigenous people of Palestine and her struggle for self-determination against Israeli colonialism.
http://socialistworker.org/2014/08/13/liberal-champions-of-apartheidjohny conspiranoid
Tulsi Gabard is a member of the Council for Foreign Relations. She’s a phony radical
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May 07, 2019 | www.theguardian.com
...The American wing of the movement sees big tech as an attractive target of attack; for them, Silicon Valley is a bizarre mix of greedy capitalists and "cultural Marxists", keen on indoctrinating their users into leftwing ideas while getting filthy rich off everyone's data.
Populists in the rest of the world, in contrast, see Silicon Valley's platforms as their best chance of escaping the intellectual hegemony of their own domestic "cultural Marxists", firmly ensconced in elite institutions, such as the media, the academia, and the Deep State.
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In an August 2018 interview with CNN, Steve Bannon called people leading "evil" Silicon Valley "complete narcissists" and "sociopaths"; the data grabbed by their companies, he insisted, should be "put in a public trust". He also predicted that big tech would be one of the main themes of the 2020 presidential election.
Given that the anger towards Silicon Valley is also growing on the left – Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, the latest sensation of American leftist politics, memorably attacked New York City's $3bn welcome package to Amazon – it seems like a reasonable prediction. Silicon Valley appears to be a perfect enemy for non-centrist forces in America, as bashing it helps to delegitimize the legacy of Obama and Clinton, seen as its primary enablers.
Others on the right endorse Bannon's opinions. Brad Parscale, the digital media director of Trump's 2016 campaign, has complained that "Big tech monsters like Google and Facebook have become nothing less than incubators for far-left [neo]liberal ideologies and are doing everything they can to eradicate conservative ideas and their proponents from the internet."
Recent bans on far-right and conservative personalities by social media and online fundraising platforms have only amplified such perceptions of Silicon Valley.
Even Donald Trump complained that Google was "suppressing voices of Conservatives and hiding information and news that is good" – a "very serious situation" that, he promised, "will be addressed".
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May 07, 2019 | amp.theguardian.com
Mon 29 Apr 2019 01.55 EDT Marine experts in Norway believe they have stumbled upon a white whale that was trained by the Russian navy as part of a programme to use underwater mammals as a special ops force.
1 week ago1 week ago (Edited)The whale was the secret intermediary between Mr. Putin and Mr. Trump. The messages were transmitted during weekly 'Whales-R-Us' peer support sessions. It's ironic it turns up now, after Mr. Mueller's report has already been issued.
I'm pretty sure "Nessie" is a mobile underwater propoganda base used by the Russians since the time of the Bolshevic revolution. Originally, it was merely a base to hide the Reds operating on the outskirts of the Capitalist capitol of London. Scotland was the perfect hiding place.
Now however, it's outfitted with the most sophisticated internet hacking equipment, AI technology so advanced it can alter your political ideology just by selling you a mailorder slavic blow-up doll.
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May 05, 2019 | off-guardian.org
Francis Lee says May, 5, 2019
Taking a long view it was very astute and cleverly conceived plan to to present counter-revolution as revolution; progress as regress; the new order 1980- (i.e., neoliberalism) was cool, and the old order 1945-1975 (welfare-capitalism) was fuddy-duddy.Thus:
- Capital controls = fuddy duddy
- Capital Account liberalisation = cool
- Worker’s Rights = fuddy duddy
- Flexible Labour markets = cool
- World Peace – fuddy duddy
- War = Cool
- National Sovereignty = fuddy duddy
- Globalization = Cool
- Social Mobility = fuddy duddy
- Inequality = cool
- Respect for elections/referenda = fuddy-duddy
- Flexible referenda/elections = cool
- Social solidarity = fuddy-duddy
- Rampant nihilistic invidualism = cool
- Respect for human rights and the UN International Law = fuddy-duddy
- Blatant Imperialism = cool
And so the agenda goes on. Counter-revolution qua revolution
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May 05, 2019 | off-guardian.org
Jen says May, 4, 2019
Off-Guardian.org should consider registering itself as an organisation investigating dangerous religious cults. So much of what Off-G writers report about The Fraudian increasingly resembles the monitoring of cult practices aiming at the brainwashing and closing the minds of vulnerable people caught in its grip.Fraudian journalists act as missionaries advocating or evangelising for their cause. The constant appeals for money smack of similar appeals made by cults that deliberately portray themselves as showing the only true way to salvation or enlightenment and which claim to be shunned, persecuted or marginalised for their "courage" or "undeviating loyalty" to Truth.
No wonder The Fraudian seems whiffy when you look at it online: the whiffiness is of a dangerously self-deluded and arrogant religious cult hell-bent on pursuing a fast lane to its own Armageddon.
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Apr 30, 2019 | www.theguardian.com
Clinton-era politics refuses to die. Joe Biden is its zombie that staggers on Hamilton Nolan Biden thinks he's well positioned because after the shock of the Trump years, people want to go back to where we were. Wrong
Joe Biden is well on his way to uniting everyone who likes to watch the world burn. Photograph: Saul Loeb/AFP/Getty Images Y ou cannot understand politics in America until you understand that in the Democratic party, which ostensibly represents the left side of our nation's political spectrum, there are a significant number of people who genuinely believe that -> Joe Biden is the best possible presidential nominee. Their belief is not cynical, or at least not wholly cynical.
His constituency is real. It is not illuminating to think of them just as centrists, arguing for the gentlest sprinkling of sugar over the top of America's poison. It's better to think of them as zombies: the product of three decades of self-serving, triangulating brainwashing. They are the Democrats who had their eyelids propped open and were forced to watch the Clinton era, year after year after year. It is not so much that they do not, deep down, harbor a vague wish for a better world; it is that, like stray dogs dining exclusively on garbage, life has taught them that this is the best that they will ever get.
Consider what it says about the state of America's political system that in the left party, the presumptive frontrunner for the presidential nomination did not think twice about kicking off his campaign with a fundraiser hosted by the founder of a union-busting law firm, days before appearing at a major union-hosted rally. And why should he? He gets the money, and then he gets the union support. He knows his audience well. This is how Democratic politics has been done in Joe Biden's lifetime. This is how it works.
It is not remarkable in the least for Joe Biden to come right out of the gate by filling his coffers with money from telecom and health insurance executives. Who is going to tell him that he shouldn't? The lobbyists advising his campaign? The zillionaire media executives feting him in a Hollywood mansion? The superstructure of Obama administration functionaries who see him as the most established of the establishment brand names? For the people who matter, Joe Biden is doing just what he is expected to do.
Good luck on the campaign trail, Joe. You're about to meet an America that has already left you behind
And that is just it. Millions of people – including, most importantly, Joe Biden himself – have yet to see any evidence that he is not playing the game exactly as it should be played.
We are talking about a person who built his career as the credit card industry's man in Washington , while simultaneously cultivating a reputation as a down-to-earth everyman. We are talking about a man who voted against gay marriage when it was unpopular – and then won plaudits for his bravery by changing his mind years later, when it was popular. We are talking about a man who played a key role in launching America's war on drugs and mass incarceration epidemic, yet who is widely perceived as a sensitive man with hard-won empathy after losing a son. We are talking about a man who voted in favor of the Iraq war even while giving every indication that he knew it was a bad idea.
Later, he apologized. After that, he became the vice-president for a president whose bona fides on the left were based in large part on his opposition to that war. And now, he will try to ride his connection to that popular ex-president into the White House. And all of the pundits will say that he is the man to beat, and all of the money will come flooding in, and the corporate executives will wink at him even as the firefighters union gives him that big labor endorsement. He is well on his way to uniting everyone who likes to watch the world burn.
I am not mad at Joe Biden. He is a type. His type is "The Old Way of Doing Things." Now that he is in the race, his type is represented. He rounds out the field. Now, Democratic voters truly have the entire buffet of choices, from "True Leftist Insurgent" to "Bland, Winning Young Résumé-Polisher" to "Indistinguishable Ambitious Congresspersons" to "The Same Old Kind of White Guy As Always".
This is nothing to fear. This is healthy. This is a perfect referendum on where our country is now. Joe Biden, the avatar of the past, believes that he's well positioned because after the shock of the Trump years, people want to go back to where we were. Wrong. People want to go somewhere new. I fully expect Joe Biden to step out of his campaign headquarters and fall directly into the huge pit that has opened up as America moved tectonically to the left. There is nothing scary about the candidate that represents the political philosophy that produced in the public the deadly cynicism that gave us Donald Trump. This plain fact will never be accepted by the sort of people who believe that Joe Biden is the answer, because accepting it is an indictment of an entire generation of leaders who consider themselves quite successful.
The Republican party has long been a corrupt tool for serving the interests of the rich by lying to the poor; dwelling on their role in bringing us here is like scolding an alligator for biting off your hand after you stuck it in his mouth. The Democrats are the ones who were supposed to save us. It was their failure in this duty that allowed the catastrophes to pile up. They failed to stop the post-Reagan explosion of economic inequality; they failed to stop the militarism that has embroiled us in endless war; they failed to argue for things like healthcare and education as rights rather than purchases; they fed our most vulnerable citizens to an evil machine labeled "criminal justice" in exchange for votes from racists. They earned their turn in power by agreeing not to use that power for the common good. And here we are: incredibly divided, hopelessly unequal, justifiably sick of our broken institutions, and very, very angry.
Good luck on the campaign trail, Joe. You're about to meet an America that has already left you behind. I'm sorry you'll have to find out the hard way.
Hamilton Nolan is a senior writer at Splinter. He lives in Brooklyn
SolentBound , 30 Apr 2019 15:58
I think that it's noteworthy that nobody here is talking about Biden's speech in Pittsburgh. Lots of talk about policy, lots of gutter sniping, but no awareness of what's going on on the ground.ronnewmexico -> Matt M , 30 Apr 2019 15:58Biden intends to revive the Democrat/Labor coalition that has become increasingly tenuous since Bill Clinton - a badly frayed relationship that Trump took full advantage of in 2016. This is a big deal, and Biden can do it. He would have made a very good labor organizer. He knows what to say, and how to say it. He is going to get the support of every union in America.
We can be assured that Trump and his people, who already recognize Biden as the front runner, are paying plenty of attention to the speech. Shortly before, Trump sent Tweets that try to drive a wedge between union leaders and union members. This is not going to work. Indeed, I think that it will backfire. A revived Democrat/Labor coalition is a genuine threat to Trump in what will be key states in 2020, not least Pennsylvania.
The new CNN poll, done before Pittsburgh, has Biden leading Democrats at 39%, and he is already leading Trump. I believe that his numbers will go up in post-Pittsburgh polls.
Democrats who can see past their noses will watch the speech, which The Guardian and others have up on YouTube, regardless of which candidate they support. No matter who is the eventual nominee, that person has to build on what Biden is doing.
This is good news for the Democratic Party, and for all who want to defeat Trump in 2020.
Exactly and the gleam of hope is actually the midterms, who had if we are to look at it in total, the most progressive candidates winning the house for the dems not the republican light candidate. Many are not progressive in the overall of things in their particular places, but compared to republicans are. NO more playing conservative as HRC did with her conservative Syrian war statements, to win the day. Republcians are simply most suited to play the conservative game.AJVC1991 -> HellHoundOnMyTrail , 30 Apr 2019 15:52WE must make them hold their nose and vote progressive as we did for years their candidates vote centrists.
Jim Moodie -> delabole , 30 Apr 2019 15:52This is how you beat Trump: make a political offer to the American people that the majority *want*
Except, sadly, it is not what America democrats want. Biden currently has an 11 point lead over the rest:
https://edition.cnn.com/videos/politics/2019/04/30/cnn-poll-2020-dems-biden-in-lead-newday-vpx.cnn
I would like to see a Warren win. Sadly I dread that they will all be eaten alive.
You might well be right, he was all luvvie with the Dems today. MCConnell has managed Trump well, using Racism and the Wall but the pragmatic old bird Pelosi might be running Trump soon and as a Dem before long. A two Trillion infrastructure plan repairing potholes Bridges etc really would be a Trumps Wet Dream. I don't think even the silly old MCConnell can stand in front of this train.Matt M , 30 Apr 2019 15:52Pelosi knows impeaching Trump is a waste of time MCConnell is obstructionist has been for 15 yrs perhaps the most hated politician ever. Pelosi knows if the Dems can get 4 Trillion of Infrastructure spending its game over does it matter if they build a shiny painted steel fence it's a Border.
Trump wants Rating ps above anything else. Pelosi is a nasty old politician it's the End game that matters. As Winston Churchill said I would sleep with the "Devil it that would end this War."
If Biden wins the Democratic nomination.....they will lose again to Trump. Hillary was the face of "centrism".....Biden shares the exact same platform. A platform that has been overwhelmingly rejected by the voters. Over 1000 seats lost in legislatures across the country, the House, the Senate, the courts, and the people. But it's "progressives" who are delusional about "what voters want"???.....Again.....Trump already beat them by beating Hillary. Facts are facts. The definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over and each time expecting a different result. It's mind boggling.....a strategy, proven by several elections now, to be a total loser...the strategy that gave us Trump.....and still they scream "but but but listen to us...we know what we're doing!!! it's the only way to get rid of Trump"......AmigodeDurruti , 30 Apr 2019 15:51I don't have illusions about how "socialist" Bernie Sanders really is, but in a debate he'd mop the floor and the inside of a small plastic garbage pail with Donald Trump. I would love to see an irreligious guy who was raised Jewish and calls himself a socialist take the gibbering, drooling mediocrity Trump apart in public.memo10 -> interiorbc , 30 Apr 2019 15:40Arch Stanton -> Thinkermom , 30 Apr 2019 15:39With some thirty is it now? people running for the Democratic nomination, the Democrats seem to be already in a difficult position to find the best candidate that can possibly successfully lead their party to the Oval Office.
How many more will throw themselves into an already complicated pool?This long list of candidates is not a bug, it's a feature.
The Dem party bigwigs expect Bernie Sanders to win. They are trying to dilute the race with candidates and get his total votes down below 50%. If they do, then the party's rules say they are free to disregard the results and choose their own candidate even if Bernie was clearly the winner.
Gabbard is hugely critical of US military interference and general warmongering around the world. As we see in Venezuela today. So the conservative and liberal mainstream media will be shunning her.ronnewmexico -> Rhialto , 30 Apr 2019 15:39Yes quinnipiac who also said this less than a month before the general last go round.... Reported through politico...ronnewmexico -> SolentBound , 30 Apr 2019 15:36"Hillary Clinton has a 7-point lead over Donald Trump nationally, according to a Quinnipiac University poll released Wednesday."
AS opposed to the echo chamber of the NYT CNN or MSNBC supporting centrists. They aired a empty podium with trump scheduled to speak rather than show a Bernie rally with thousands in attendance CNN did. Liberal media my foot.memo10 -> jacquescollins , 30 Apr 2019 15:35Biden is not there to win. He's there to help dilute Bernie's win in the Dem primary race. If Bernie wins with less than 50% of the votes then the party can choose to nominate somebody else (Kamala Harris?).socram -> ronnewmexico , 30 Apr 2019 15:35There were 13 candidates in 1988. That included David Duke and Lyndon LaRouche as well as to-be-convicted felon James Traficant. Schroeder and Biden withdrew in 1987.Arch Stanton , 30 Apr 2019 15:33The Democrat elites' purpose in life is to intercept and neutralize demands for change from below and to the left. They will get more exercised against Sanders and Warren then they ever would against Trump or the Republicans.
Biden like Clinton is a moderate conservative, the ideal stooge for the banks and the military industrial complex that runs the USA.AmigodeDurruti , 30 Apr 2019 15:26"No Joe!" by Andrew Cockburn in last month's 'Harpers' clearly delineates how completely anti-working class the corporate stooge Joe Biden is.Thinkermom , 30 Apr 2019 15:24CNN love love loves Joe Biden because he's cut from the same corporate cloth as them, and when Biden inevitably loses to Trump, CNN can continue to be Fox News for people with BAs and keep raking in those big time advertising bucks.
The media is not covering Tulsi Gubbard. At this point I would support a Sanders and Gubbard ticket. � �JohnLG , 30 Apr 2019 15:18memo10 -> BobHlavac , 30 Apr 2019 15:13"Consider what it says about the state of America's political system that in the left party, the presumptive frontrunner for the presidential nomination did not think twice about kicking off his campaign with a fundraiser hosted by the founder of a union-busting law firm, days before appearing at a major union-hosted rally."I think that the terms "left" and "right" party or ideology are, while not entirely useless, misleading, and help to support the notion that somehow some point in the middle is "just right". For one thing, two wrongs can't make a right, and sometimes the cat and dog fights that dominate headlines miss the more important point entirely.
Political or legal outcomes that can be substantially bought with money are corrupt. Period. It does not matter if the payment is direct, the traditional wad of bills in an envelope, or indirect de facto bribery so long as how much you are able to spend can influence political results. That is everything that justice and democracy is not. Money does buy influence and to some degree the impact of money on politics is unavoidable, just as it is impossible to entirely rid a courtroom of bias; but we are crazy if we don't try to do the best that we can.
The GOP has sold out entirely to the patronage of extreme financial power. The DNC is more shy about it and promotes noblesse oblige, but the Clinton school https://www.motherjones.com/politics/2016/02/hillary-clinton-kissinger-vacation-dominican-republic-de-la-renta / of Democrat is not going to rock the world of mega-donors.
The "love" of money is said to be "the root of all evil". I take "love" in this case to mean a willingness to sell out anything and anyone get it. Left? Right? Corruption is an equally opportunity despoiler, and the point is it dangerous and it is wrong.
There is no far-left in the USA today. The farthest-left "progressive" Democrats are the only non-Republicans on the charts anymore.
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May 01, 2019 | www.theguardian.com
... Joe Biden is its zombie that staggers on
... Consider what it says about the state of America's political system that in the left party, the presumptive frontrunner for the presidential nomination did not think twice about kicking off his campaign with a fundraiser hosted by the founder of a union-busting law firm, days before appearing at a major union-hosted rally. And why should he? He gets the money, and then he gets the union support.
...I am not mad at Joe Biden. He is a type. His type is "The Old Way of Doing Things." Now that he is in the race, his type is represented. He rounds out the field. Now, Democratic voters truly have the entire buffet of choices, from "True Leftist Insurgent" to "Bland, Winning Young Résumé-Polisher" to "Indistinguishable Ambitious Congresspersons" to "The Same Old Kind of White Guy As Always".
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Apr 30, 2019 | discussion.theguardian.com
US politics lives on a different planet.marshwren , 30 Apr 2019 14:30"Just another rich white guy". With Obama you even managed to get a black guy who was just another rich white guy. He continued the wars, backed rich megabillionaires who run the country as a means only to making more billions, and had almost no social conscience...if he did, he certainly didn't act on it.
You have democrats who are what anyone else in the West outside of Israel consider hawkish right wingers, almost extreme. Your Republicans are not rightwing...they're one iota short of being out and out fascists. You have a complete establishment who seem to think government is not about governing (you know...things like running education, healthcare, social setups, transport, infrastructure....that kind of thing ).
I can't think of any mainstream right wing politics in any European/Australasian/democratic Asian countries where Democrats wouldn't be considered to far right to be called mainstream. Your Democrats have created wars, backed Republican wars, enabled business to stop the formation of any kind of social government. They support profit being the driver for everything. They take business bribes the same way Republicans do, only it's called "lobbying".
Clinton didn't lose because she was a woman, she lost because she was in business's pocket and was an avid backer of every war she could think of. Even Republicans were heartily sick of their own corrupt warmongering extremists...otherwise why do you think they voted for Trump? Unfortunately they were too stupid to realise Trump was exactly the same under a different marketing brand.
Should Biden be the nominee, it would be manna from heaven for Republicans. His record is such that the GOP can spend the entire campaign on the offensive (in more ways than one), correctly painting Biden as the darling of the Deep State, "The Swamp!", the M$M, and Wall Street (while the Mango Messiah of the MAGAT-Hats reprises his 'working class hero' role from '16), while the seamier side of the internet goes after Joe's shady brothers, James and Beau, and his even shadier son (if you're unfamiliar with the accusations, wait five minutes; the RNC is preparing the talking points as you read).SolentBound , 30 Apr 2019 14:28As the nominee, Sanders puts the GOP on the defensive until election day because 1) Sanders is on the right side of the practical issues that have been driving elections--and election results--since 2017 and particularly in '18; and 2) mud doesn't stick to Sanders the way it's naturally adhesive to Clinton or Biden...and Trump. And he also has one advantage over Trump that no other DP candidate (with the possible exception of Warren) has: a direct, no-nonsense personality of the sort Dear Leader finds admirable in sycophants, and utterly intimidating in opponents.
If Biden is the nominee, he'll get the same plurality of the popular vote as Clinton, and still be vulnerable in the electoral college. The Senate will remain a GOP-controlled bastion of obstructionism. The DP's House majority will be eroded (though probably not lost). And the legislatures up for grabs will mostly remain Republican, just in time to continue in 2021 the gerrymandering they did in 2011. If anyone is voting for Biden out of Obama nostalgia you're going to get it in the form of divided government.
If Sanders is the nominee, the DP can take back the Senate, hold on to, or expand, its House majority, and pick up a few red state governors and legislatures. He also makes more red states competitive, forcing the GOP to devote far more time, resources and money into holding on to what they already have, and leaving less to contest elsewhere, while Biden does the opposite, making blue states competitive for Republicans without affecting red states.
That's the choice. Choose wisely.
I think that it's noteworthy that nobody here is talking about Biden's speech in Pittsburgh. Lots of talk about policy, lots of gutter sniping, but no awareness of what's going on on the ground.dylan37 , 30 Apr 2019 14:15Biden intends to revive the Democrat/Labor coalition that has become increasingly tenuous since Bill Clinton - a badly frayed relationship that Trump took full advantage of in 2016. This is a big deal, and Biden can do it. He would have made a very good labor organizer. He knows what to say, and how to say it. He is going to get the support of every union in America.
We can be assured that Trump and his people, who already recognize Biden as the front runner, are paying plenty of attention to the speech. Shortly before, Trump sent Tweets that try to drive a wedge between union leaders and union members. This is not going to work. Indeed, I think that it will backfire. A revived Democrat/Labor coalition is a genuine threat to Trump in what will be key states in 2020, not least Pennsylvania.
The new CNN poll, done before Pittsburgh, has Biden leading Democrats at 39%, and he is already leading Trump. I believe that his numbers will go up in post-Pittsburgh polls.
Democrats who can see past their noses will watch the speech, which The Guardian and others have up on YouTube, regardless of which candidate they support. No matter who is the eventual nominee, that person has to build on what Biden is doing.
This is good news for the Democratic Party, and for all who want to defeat Trump in 2020.
Trump's apparent popularity isn't hard to understand at all. Many Americans felt let down and left behind by big government, saw their jobs and factories move to Mexico, see a large illegal immigration problem, and felt, with a large measure of justification, that traditional politicians were really only in it for themselves.They saw the US involved in wars and conflicts in places they had never even seen on a map, the banking robber barons take everyone for a sub-prime ride, and Wall Street largely get a pass from Obama.
Trump may not be the answer. He's a skilled Vegas shyster selling them something they don't really need - the lie that America has failed and needs to be made "great again".
But the Democrats need to get their act together quickly. Over 2 years down, and realistically only months away from the beginning of a new election campaign, we really should be hearing about new and hopeful rising stars. People with vision and energy, who can get beyond the navel-gazing self indulgence of why Hillary lost, or whether they should have gone for Bernie instead. And it's definitely not Biden. That's all history now. If they don't reenergise, reinvigorate, and refresh, Trump will sail into a second term of spin, swamp draining and salesmanship.
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Apr 30, 2019 | discussion.theguardian.com
Should Biden be the nominee, it would be manna from heaven for Republicans. His record is such that the GOP can spend the entire campaign on the offensive (in more ways than one), correctly painting Biden as the darling of the Deep State, "The Swamp!", the M$M, and Wall Street (while the Mango Messiah of the MAGAT-Hats reprises his 'working class hero' role from '16), while the seamier side of the internet goes after Joe's shady brothers, James and Beau, and his even shadier son (if you're unfamiliar with the accusations, wait five minutes; the RNC is preparing the talking points as you read).As the nominee, Sanders puts the GOP on the defensive until election day because 1) Sanders is on the right side of the practical issues that have been driving elections--and election results--since 2017 and particularly in '18; and 2) mud doesn't stick to Sanders the way it's naturally adhesive to Clinton or Biden...and Trump. And he also has one advantage over Trump that no other DP candidate (with the possible exception of Warren) has: a direct, no-nonsense personality of the sort Dear Leader finds admirable in sycophants, and utterly intimidating in opponents.
If Biden is the nominee, he'll get the same plurality of the popular vote as Clinton, and still be vulnerable in the electoral college. The Senate will remain a GOP-controlled bastion of obstructionism. The DP's House majority will be eroded (though probably not lost). And the legislatures up for grabs will mostly remain Republican, just in time to continue in 2021 the gerrymandering they did in 2011. If anyone is voting for Biden out of Obama nostalgia you're going to get it in the form of divided government.
If Sanders is the nominee, the DP can take back the Senate, hold on to, or expand, its House majority, and pick up a few red state governors and legislatures. He also makes more red states competitive, forcing the GOP to devote far more time, resources and money into holding on to what they already have, and leaving less to contest elsewhere, while Biden does the opposite, making blue states competitive for Republicans without affecting red states.
That's the choice. Choose wisely.
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Apr 30, 2019 | discussion.theguardian.com
Trump vs. Biden? Could it be that Trump is less of a hypocrite than Biden?
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Apr 30, 2019 | off-guardian.org
... ... ...
Bugajski's ideas are not new at all. Globalist think tanks have been advancing the same for decades.
Mud-slinging in order to undermine Russian statehood aims at fueling radicalism, nationalism and regionalism. It has the wave-like behavior. The previous wave top targeted pretty much the same regions: the North Caucasus, Middle Volga, Siberia and the Far East. Tricks and methods employed are not divers. The only difference between them is geographical location and names of the influenced ethnic groups.
These approaches could be provisionally marked as the "Polish style". This term has no links to modern Poland. We employ it only because the approaches provided below, except for the first point, Poland really has a great written history, are quite similar to the ones that were first used to fuel Polish nationalism in the 19 th and 20 th centuries and applied to the same geopolitical area.
The main ideas of this model are:
Creation of a pseudo-history of a nation or ethnic group. Usually this pseudo-history is dated back to the ancient world and legendary times. This "history" is based on pseudo-historical works and research papers composed by authors unknown to the world academic community. Promotion of ideas of exceptionalism among members of the nation or ethnic group. These ideas argue that the nation or ethnic group is superior to neighbors and instigate a grotesque sense of national identity (exceptionalism based on ethnicity). Creation of the myth of a historical archenemy, who has been oppressing the nation or ethnic group, often attempting to eliminate its "exceptional" culture. This historical archenemy is described as the reason for the group's undoing and thus its poor state in the modern world. The historical archenemy can be constructed from various states existing in different periods of history but, through which a historical succession or links can be traced. For example, the Golden Horde, the Moscow state, the Russian Empire, the USSR and the Russian Federation. The myth is actively fueled by speculation regarding historical events, which can neither be confirmed nor denied using factual data. Creation and promotion of the idea of the nation as once great but now defective, where this position of greatness had been stolen from it. Instigation of religious or intra-religious tensions, if the nation or ethnic group has a similar religion to that of its neighbors. The main approaches employed are:
- Promotion and creation of religious cults, including heathen customs, which are allegedly linked to the "ancient history" of the nation or ethnic group;
- Promotion of discords or sectarianism within the main religion of the nation. For example, for Orthodox Christianity: the Old Believers or Schismatical cults; for Islam: Sunni sects or Shia branches;
- Instigation of religions tensions between the religion of the ethnic group and other religions of the state. For example: Islam/Christianity or Orthodox Christianity/Catholicism.
- Promotion of myths about rich natural resources in the territory, where the ethnic group lives. Therefore, if this ethnic group were to rule this area "independently", its wealth would grow and grow. A part of this effort is propaganda against government actions concerning the use of natural resources from the territory, where this ethnic group lives. The negative impact on the ecological situation is nightmarized by dissemination of myths about the barbaric exploitation of nature. A vivid example is the disseminated information about the alleged irreparable damage to Lake Baikal that is harmed by the plant producing bottled mineral water.
- Instigation of territorial and intraregional economic disputes between the neighboring nations or ethnic groups.
- Discredit of everything linked with the dominating state culture, language and history. For example, bashing everything "Russian", the creation and promotion of offensive language and terms (Russian – Vatnik), a wide spread of derogatory language and the mutilation of words, terms and names.
The previous wave of information onslaught on nations and ethnic groups of Russia was aimed at the following targets:
- The Northern Caucasus. The influence was mostly aimed at the Kabardians living in the Kabardino-Balkar Republic, the Karachay-Cherkess Republic, Stavropol Krai and the Republic of Adygea. The Ossetians in the Republic of North Ossetia – Alania were also targeted. Recently the Ingushs living in the Republic of Ingushetia, Moscow and St. Petersburg were again considered as a priority goal in "the Northern Caucasus target list".
- The Southern Federal District. The main effort was to instigate nationalism, regionalism and separatism among the Cossacks, mostly in Rostov Oblast. The Cossacks are not an ethnic group. However, they are a large social group, which makes them a likely target.
- The Northwestern Federal District. The goal was to instigate regional nationalism among Finno-Ugric ethnic groups. Another point of pressure was to create nationalism tendencies among ethnic Russian population in the Republic of Karelia and Arkhangelsk Oblast in order to form a new large ethnosocial group. For example, in April, the city of Arkhangelsk experienced a series of rallies held in breach of law. This situation happened under the passive eye of regional authorities. Furthermore, initial reactions and attitude of the regional authorities played a notable role in fueling the protest moods. These protests, caused by a project of landfill site in the nearby area, is being actively exploited by the so-called non-system opposition and "liberal media" to fuel tensions between the different groups of local population as well as the regional government.
- Separate efforts were contributed to influence the population of Saint Petersburg, which in terms of culture is one of the most westernized city of Russia alongside with Kaliningrad. There was also an attempt to instigate local separatism using the concept of Ingermanland.
- The Volga region. Ethnic nationalism and religious radicalism were instigated among the Kalmyks, Bashkirs and Tatars. Small ethnic groups and nations, often described as Russians: the Mokshas and Erzyas also became the target of foreign influence. Among small ethnic groups and nations, local nationalism can take ugly forms.
- Western Siberia. The goal was to create a separate ethnic-social group describing itself as the citizens of Siberia and separating itself from the rest of Russian citizens. The main targets were the Altai Republic, Novosibirsk Oblast and the city of Novosibirsk (the capital of the Siberian Federal District). The foreign influence achieved notable successes in these areas.
- Eastern Siberia. The campaign in this region was aimed mostly at Buryats and Tuvans. Yakuts were also a target.
- The Far East. Local regionalism and separatism were actively fueled in Khabarovsk Krai and Primorsky Krai, especially in the cities of Khabarovsk and Vladivostok. Besides this, the foreign influence is actively exploiting simultaneously both pro-Chinese intentions and the myth of the Chinese threat.
It should be noted that the article "Managing Russia's dissolution" published by The Hill points to the same regions for further operations designed to dismantle Russia. These operations will be more dangerous than the previous ones because they will exploit the successes already achieved in some fields. For example:
the nationalism and religion issues in the North Caucasus; the nationalism of ethnic groups in the Volga region – Bashkirs, Tatars, Erzyas, Moshkas; the nationalism and regionalism of Buryats in eastern Siberia. the creation of a new separate pro-western identity by a good part of the people living in the cities of Saint Petersburg and Kaliningrad, that distance itself from the rest of Russia; the creation of a separate ethnic-social identity in Western Siberia:The regions have been targeted by multiple campaigns undermining and discrediting nationwide traditions and behaviors, for example the New Year traditional family holidays, social events of Soviet or Old Russian origin as well as common history of Russia. Individualism, neoliberal attitudes and values are successfully promoted in Saint Petersburg, Kaliningrad and Western Siberia. Education is simplified and westernized. Meanwhile stakeholders describe these tendencies as ugly and hostile examples to residents of the North Caucasus, southern Russia and other regions, promoted ultra-hardline or far right ideology. Local regionalism and ideology tensions are being successfully fueled.
In large, this situation has become possible due to a de-facto inaction of or even unofficial ideological protection from authorities. If one takes a detailed look at the Russian elite, he will find that a significant part of it consists of westernized adherers to "liberal democratic order" while another consists of representatives of national family clans.
Many of these persons do not associate themselves with the ordinary population and consider the territory of Russia only as a source to increase their personal wealth.
The term "new aristocracy", which has recently got spread in Russian media, has initially appeared as a proud self-designation among Russian elite families emphasizing exceptionality of their members.
Nonetheless, supporters of Bugajski ideas do not consider the aforementioned tendencies as sufficient for dismantling Russian statehood without additional strivings. While on the regional level they have achieved some results, the identified nationwide goals have not been accomplished. The system of Russia has not yet come close to an imbalance, that is, to the condition where destructive trends are already beginning to grow on their own, without additional artificial influence.
The negative tendencies so far set in motion could still be stopped and reversed. In this situation, we may expect a new wave of information onslaught toward Russia, traditionally backed by Western funds.
Copyrights 2015-2019. SouthFront (SF).
mark says Apr, 27, 2019
This is pure projection.Paul says Apr, 27, 2019
All the faults and failings and problems listed apply far more to the United Snakes and EU than to Russia. There is a remarkable continuity in western aggression towards Russia from Hitler till the present day. Carve up Russia into artificial mini states and loot its resources.Bismarck used to say, Russia is not as strong as it seems. But it's not as weak as it seems either.
People point to the discrepancy in GDP and military spending. US v. Russia $21 trillion and $1.6 trillion, and $1,134 billion and $49 billion respectively.
That's true so far as it goes, but money buys 3 x as much in Russia. So that 1.6 figure is more like 4 plus, or around the size of the German economy.
Then there is the artificial dollar yardstick. The US organized a speculative attack on the rouble, driving it down from 30 to 80 to the dollar. So in dollar terms, the economy was reduced to less than half its previous size. But they were producing just as many cars and just as much oil and wheat as before. Exports were cheaper. The rouble was allowed to float back to around 55. Gold and foreign currency reserves were not wasted defending it, as Washington wanted. There was a great boost in domestic production. America can bankrupt itself with its endless wars and bloated inefficient war machine if it wants.
And if you look at the US economy, 40% is unproductive, rent seeking finance, Wall Street spivs pushing around worthless derivatives toilet paper and pretending it is worth trillions. Or the bloated rent seeking of the drug and insurance companies, 17% of the economy, charging $5,000 per hospital journey and $750 for a pill that costs a few cents to produce. So much else is accounted for by the military boondoggles.
When you take that into account, the figures are more like 8 trillion v. 4 trillion.
So much US wealth is eaten up by the gargantuan level of graft and corruption.
It is the US and EU that are at far greater risk of collapse – maybe a lot sooner than anyone realises.
Anti Russian policies really took off in the 1780's when Catherine the Great was moving South (including taking Crimea). The British saw Russia as a threat to its business empire in India and possibly replacing parts of the Ottoman Empire if that was to finally crumble. The icing on the cake for the Russophobes came with Napoleon's retreat from Moscow. Russian soldiers bedded down on Parisian streets in 1814 got the paranoid juices flowing, from that time on the narrative has been that Russia is expanding aggressively and intends to dominate Europe while destroying European colonies in Asia.BigB says Apr, 27, 2019The Revolution just increased Western paranoia; Russia was no longer just Russia but a Communist State and one immensely stronger with the formation of the USSR. When the Union collapsed and Russia was suddenly so much smaller and less powerful it was no surprise that plans developed to finally divide it up while hostility continues unabated.
It's almost as if the West needs the threat but not the war. In 250 years Britain has only once attacked Russia head on, during the French, Turkish, British attempt to seize Crimea in the 1850's. Although Sevastopol was destroyed the Allied forces had to withdraw.
Usually Britain has fought with Russia, against Napoleon and then the Germans in both World Wars.
In global terms , Russia is particularly stable but, for reasons best known to itself – is risking global contagion due to its own neoliberal ideology (see below: reply to TTIC). Other than that, it is the whole integrated system that is susceptibly fragile to contagion. Russia and America are separated only by discourse – as revealed by capital flows.BigB says Apr, 27, 2019And the epicentre of debt inertia could just as easily be the East – centred on China. For the precise reason that China built its way out of GFC 1.0. It won't build its way out of GFC 2.0 – which is likely to be many times the magnitude of the first one due to the debt hangover. We will discover what moral hazard and contagion really mean this time. And there will be no easy restart – negative interest rates and massive credit stimulus to reinflate the "mother of all bubbles'?
There are so many contradictions and fragilities, that predicting the where and when is a mugs game. But neither will there be any morality or false karmic retribution to it. The deliberately impoverished poor, sucked dry of their life essence by BOTH America and Russia (and Britain and China – see below) will suffer the most. The best thing humanity could do is reject as ecologically and evolutionarily redundant the entire hierarchical tributary system of globalised debt and death.
Entropically and ecologically, we can't afford it any more. But, psychologically, we probably won't. Some people seem to like it too much. They are not all American or European though. Even in their home countries – humanity has been left behind.
The M$M lies: everyone knows its main purpose is para-state political propaganda – the integrated Fourth Estate. But it does not lie without purpose – there is the Herman/Chomsky model of controlling consent and consensus in the debatable public forum of acceptable discourse the Overton Window that focuses on the liberal democratic 'extreme centre'. It creates the spectacle of electoral politics – including Brexit and its transatlantic equivalent 'Obstructiongate'. This political 'bread and circuses' spectacle is extended into the fantasy imaginal of East/West geopolitcs. So is there intracapitalist inter-relational tensions and contradictions between East and West? Of course, ones that might get us all killed if they develop. But it also obscures what is happening beneath the radar – within and without the trained and political propaganda focused microscope – which is an International World Capitalism that is killing us all softly while our gaze is averted and focused on simulated and superficial spectacle elsewhere.After the other day, I thought I better wind my neck in and do some actual research into international loans and FDI. There is plenty, if anyone wants to substantiate what I have said – there is no East and West to International World Capitalism (IWC). This should be obvious, but it isn't because the focus is on the ripples – sometimes large – on the surface of the pond. IWC works below the surface as integrated flows and counter-flows – round-tripping for treaty, tax, and money-laudering of illicit flows purposes. All of this is deregulated – and occurs 'elsewhere' beneath the public radar, and beneath the created spectacle that is deliberately narratively constructed to conceal it.
Nick Shaxson is a prime source, and one of the few journalists that cover the 'spiders web'. A web that is still centred on the City of London Corporation – that controls 25% of world trade. The other main centres are NY and Switzerland (Zurich – the BIS is 'elsewhere' to). Analysis of actual capital flows is not easy – deliberately so, as it is deliberately made to conceal the capital origination and through a series of accounting measures – make it look as it originated 'elsewhere'. But what analysis is available consolidates Wallerstein's World Systems Theory of a core, semi-periphery, and deliberately pauperised periphery.
Like it or not, (and downvotes won't change anything), it also shows that the 'network core' is the aforementioned ZUSUK ('Z' for Zurich) extended alliance of 'Pax Americana' and the City's post-colonial 'British Empire' – supported by a sub-imperial semi-periphery of the 'Eastern Block' and 'Greater China' as this paper shows.
So my unpopular proposal is that IWC is a parasitical hierarchical tributary system based on interest bearing debt, and Compounded Annual Rates of Growth (CAGR) that are are drawing the entire world into a deflationary death spiral. ZUSUK is the imperialist network core: with Russia/China as the sub-imperial, semi-periphery – drawing on the rest of the world. One that costs the poorest countries $1.2tn pa (in 2008). It is not a dynamic that anyone can do anything about, particularly when it is deliberately kept as a stealth dynamic – below the public radar. You can thank the media for that. But then, that's their job. Our job is to expose the lies and the underlying dynamics of death. It is globalised and integrated – and arranged hierarchically – not hemispherically. There is no East and West to capitalism not beneath the surface.
As Wallerstein has said: to understand World Systems – you have to forget what we have been inculcated with about the nation-state. We do not live in that regulated space anymore. The real world was deregulated for capital decades ago – though the neoliberal restructuring is ongoing. As soon as humanity realises that the teleology for capital accumulation is not an Ecological Civilisation – but deregulated Global Governance it may be able to consolidate the considerable anti-globalisation pushback growing in every country. Maybe, if and when we stop pretending the East has a capitalised Eco-Shangri-La rising. That, I'm afraid is capitalist propaganda.
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Apr 30, 2019 | off-guardian.org
George Cornell says Apr, 29, 2019
https://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/europe/whale-russia-norway-harness-military-navy-weapon-finnmark-a8890926.htmlThis just in! The Independent reports a beluga whale seen in Norway was put there for military purposes ( not porpoises) by the Russian Navy. They know because it had a tag on it saying Equipment of St Petersburg, in English?
You can't make it up.
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Apr 29, 2019 | off-guardian.org
Headlice says Apr, 27, 2019
An excerpt from:Alpine Observer says Apr, 27, 2019"One of the more important revelations in former Justice Department Special Counsel Robert Mueller's report on the 2016 election is the close working relationship Bannon established with Prince. Sensing fertile political ground for their far-right beliefs, Bannon and Prince have established, under the aegis of their professed Catholicism, a movement that threatens both the current pope and the European Union."
Try googling "could Emmanuel Macron be the antichrist?"
Loading...Macron the Antichrist? It's impossible because Tory B.liar is still alive.
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Apr 27, 2019 | www.theguardian.com
She had cast herself as a comparative innocent caught up in a massive geopolitical power game and at Friday's sentencing hearing, Butina appealed to Judge Tanya Chutkan to release her with nine months of time served.
"My reputation is ruined, both here in the United States and abroad," she said, asking for "a chance to go home and restart my life".
Chutkan, however, fully complied with the government's recommendation and sentenced Butina to spend an additional nine months behind bars, before being deported. The judge said the sentence was meant "to reflect the seriousness of [Butina's actions] and to promote deterrence".
Butina's lawyers decried the judgment as overly harsh; they had characterized Butina as a naive but ambitious international affairs student who simply didn't realize her actions required her to register as an agent of a foreign government.
The Russian embassy in Washington responded to the sentence in a Facebook post that Butina "is a political prisoner, a victim of provocations by special services and the arbitrary use of repressive US legislation. We insist on the innocence of our compatriot. We demand her immediate release. We will continue to provide her with comprehensive consular and legal assistance."
Leonid Slutsky, chairman of the foreign affairs committee in the lower house of the Russian parliament, said the case was "political and fabricated from air poisoned with Russophobia".
"It is necessary to continue the fight, to file an appeal and to do everything in our power for Maria Butina to return to Russia as soon as possible," Slutsky was quoted as saying by the state news agency Tass.
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Apr 26, 2019 | off-guardian.org
U.S. Attorney General William Barr, flanked by Deputy U.S. Attorney General Rod Rosenstein, speaks at a news conference to discuss Special Counsel Robert Mueller's report on Russian interference in the 2016 U.S. presidential race, in Washington, U.S., April 18, 2019. REUTERS/Jonathan Ernst TPX IMAGES OF THE DAY
I owe the corporate media an apology. For the last few years, I've been writing all these essays explaining how they were perpetrating an enormous psyop on the American public a psyop designed to convince the public that Donald Trump "colluded" with Russia to steal the presidency from Hillary Clinton. Up until a few days ago, I would have sworn that they had published literally thousands of articles and editorials, and broadcast countless TV segments, more or less accusing him of treason, and being a "Russian intelligence asset," and other ridiculous stuff like that. Also, and I'm still not sure how this happened, I somehow got the idea in my head that the investigation that Special Counsel Robert Mueller was meticulously conducting had something to do with Donald Trump conspiring or "colluding" with Russia, or being some kind of "Manchurian president," or being blackmailed by Putin with a pee-tape, or something.
In any event, the publication of the Mueller report has cleared things up for me. I get it now. The investigation was never about Trump colluding with Russia. It was always about Trump obstructing the investigation of the collusion with Russia that the investigation was not about. Mueller was never looking for collusion. It was not his job to look for collusion. His job was to look for obstruction of his investigation of alleged obstruction of his investigation of non-collusion, which he found, and detailed at length in his report, and which qualifies as an impeachable offense.
Not that he proved that there was no collusion! On the contrary, as professional hermeneuticists have been repeatedly pointing out on Twitter, given that Mueller wasn't looking for collusion, and that collusion could never have been legally established, and isn't even a legal term, Mueller's failure to find any actual evidence of collusion is evidence of collusion, notwithstanding the fact that he couldn't prove it, and wasn't even looking for it, except to the extent it allowed him to establish a case for the obstruction he was actually investigating.
In other words, his investigation was launched in order to investigate the obstruction of his investigation. And, on those terms, it was a huge success. The fact that it didn't prove "collusion" means nothing -- that's just a straw man argument that Trump and his Russian handlers make. The goal all along was to prove that Trump obstructed an investigation of his obstruction of that investigation, not that he was "colluding" with Putin, or any of the other paranoid nonsense that the corporate media were forced to report on, once an investigation into his obstruction of the investigation was launched.
See, and this is why I owe the media an apology. All those thousands of hysterical articles, editorials, and TV segments accusing Donald Trump of treason, and of literally being a Russian agent, and probably Putin's homosexual lover , were not just ridiculous propaganda. The corporate media were not engaged in a concerted campaign to convince the public that Trump conspired with a foreign adversary to brainwash millions of African Americans into refusing to vote for Hillary Clinton with some emails and a handful of Facebook posts. No, the media were simply covering the story of his obstruction of the investigation of the made-up facts the intelligence agencies got them to relentlessly disseminate to generate the appearance of a story, which, once it was out there, had to be reported on, regardless of how it came into being, or whose nefarious purposes it served.
Moreover, regardless of whether Mueller did or did not establish obstruction (or attempted obstruction, which is just as impeachable) of his non-investigation of collusion, he absolutely established that Russia attacked us by brainwashing all those African Americans who were definitely going to vote for Clinton until they saw those divisive Facebook ads and those DNC emails that Putin personally ordered Trump to order Paul Manafort to personally deliver to Julian Assange , who was hunkered down in the Ecuadorean embassy poking holes in King-size condoms, abusing his cat, and smearing invisible poo all over the walls of his kitchen.
Now, these are all indisputable facts, which Mueller establishes in his report by referencing the repeated assertions of a consensus of U.S. intelligence agencies, and the corporate media's relentless repetition of those agencies' assertions, and the feeling a lot of people have that they must be factual to some extent, given how often they have been repeated, and referenced, and authoritatively asserted, and how familiar they sound when they hear them, again. The fact that there exists no evidence whatsoever of any "Russian attack," and that all we're actually talking about is the publication of a bunch of emails that DNC members actually wrote, and some ridiculous social media posts, should not in any way detract from the fact that the Russians launched a totally devastating, virtually Pearl Harbor-scale attack on the fabric of American democracy, which Trump obstructed an investigation of, or attempted to obstruct an investigation of, or conspired to attempt to obstruct an investigation of obstruction of.
Or whatever. The point is, now they've got him! His justice obstructing days are numbered! Break out the pussyhats and vuvuzelas, because next stop is Impeachment City! So what if he's not a Russian agent and didn't conspire or collude with anyone? He got elected without permission, and insulted a lot of powerful people, and well, who cares what they impeach him for, as long as they impeach him for something!
They kind of have to do it, at this point, don't they? They just spent most of the last three years rolling out an official narrative in which the Russians are running around attacking democracy, poisoning ducks with Novichok perfume , fomenting populist uprisings in France, and just generally being the evil enemies that the Islamic terrorists used to be, before they turned into freedom fighters and helped us try to take over Syria.
If the Democrats don't impeach Donald Trump, that official narrative might fall apart. Liberals might have to face the fact that Americans elected Donald Trump president, not because they were brainwashed by Russians, or had any illusions about what a thuggish, self-aggrandizing buffoon he is, but because they were so disgusted with the neoliberal Washington establishment, and the global capitalist elites that own it, that they leapt at the chance to vote against it, and probably would have elected anyone who promised to even marginally disrupt it but there I go drifting off into my crazy conspiracist thinking again.
Anyway I'm really sorry about all that stuff I wrote about the corporate media. Rest assured, that won't happen again. Admittedly, I blew the Russiagate thing, but I promise to do better with Obstructiongate, or Tax-Returnsgate, or Whatevergate. It doesn't really matter what we call it, right? The important thing is to teach the masses what happens when they vote for unauthorized candidates. We're only halfway through that lesson. Stay tuned there's much, much more to come!
Gezzah Potts says Apr, 26, 2019
CJ . So, Russiagate is finally done and dusted? Kaput? Finito? Never to be heard of again? Hurrah! I honestly didn't know how much more of the turgid, twisted, mind numbing crap I could take. Was thinking of buying a one way ticket to Easter Island! ( Do they have corporate media on Easter Island?). So now we have .. Obstructiongate. Oh Joy. Something else the ethical, unbiased, truth telling journalists at The Guardian, ABC, BBC, et al can sink their teeth into. Been as crook as a dog with rabies and bubonic plague (combined) the last week, but your words are a tonic, and your satire is bang on, Cheers.Kathy says Apr, 26, 2019Thank you for an article that exposes the fascinating Rabbit hole through rabbit hole into rabbit hole syndrome. And so concisely and wittily.A Nice business to DO people with says Apr, 26, 2019We must all take measures to avoid contamination with this virus. It now seams to have become an unstoppable raving epidemic within the weirdly deranged, and manipulative world of the controllers and gate keepers of the official narrative.
Hells teeth, we skipped from Catch 22 to Catch 53 and missed most of the numbers in between. Great work, it makes the scene in Catch 22 where Bob Newhart tells his adjutant he is out, look shabby by comparison.tutisicecream says Apr, 26, 2019
Love itI'm confused CJ, So Putin is not as omnipotent as we were led to believe by our forth estate buddies at the Graun et.al? It was obstruction of justice like the FBI not checking or investigating the DNC hard drives? Operation hard drive worked well for the Graun, you might have thought that MI5/6 would have tipped off CIA/FBI regarding Hillery's compromat rather than producing a completely fact free dossier.alsdkfj says Apr, 26, 2019Either way it just goes to show that now in Ukraine real democracy reigns and apparently Putin doesn't like that according to the Graun either.
How can anyone possibly assert that Trump is anything BUT representative of the swamp of crony capitalism and the rest. CJ, have you noticed the Austerity on steroids wrecking ball the Trump Administration is swinging around? Of course not. You are a leftist who just loves his Trump, but of course you don't nudge nudge. A truly bizarre phenomenon. Perhaps it's the nationalism you relate to, or his golf swing? Penchant for the "strong man"?Makropulos says Apr, 26, 2019I despise Bill and Hillary, and every other corporate servicing schmuck that makes up the leadership of the Democratic Party. I especially despise Obama, Feinstein, and Pelosi for driving the getaway car for the war criminals in the Bush Administration in addition to his own Administration piling on. What I don't get are leftists that give Trump a pass on everything they rightly detest Obama, Clinton, et al for.
Trump's not authorized? Huh? The globalist capitalist being the crony capitalist swamp monster he is isn't authorized by "the powers that be"? Oh yes, yes I almost forgot. The Deep State hates him, right? I mean the way you get on the bad side of the Deep State is to shove more money to the MIC, suck up to Israel, pile on Obama's "nuclear modernization", get the prison industrial complex back in full swing, and the list goes on and on and on.
But what derision does CJ have for the fascist in the White House? Nada.
He loves his Trump.
It's not a question of "loving" Trump. It's a question of realising that the whole Trump fiasco blows a hole in the phoney political spectrum i.e. that fraudulent arena which has now been revealed as – in the words of Gore Vidal – a bird with two right wings. Yes Trump is an arsehole. But I'm damned if I'm going to enter into that putrid game of denouncing him just to swing over to the "better option" of supporting the Democrats.
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Apr 25, 2019 | off-guardian.org
BigB says Apr, 24, 2019
Overproduction of capital – seeking a high, no risk return – is a certainty. Especially with continuing QE. There is no end game now. That capital will find its way into derivative casino capital gambling – of which only 2% ends up as a commodity changing hands. The rest is hidden toxic exposure making the banking system untenable. Other outlets include mergers and acquisitions (toward oligopolies of power); leveraged buyouts; and asset stripping destroying any last real productive capacity for short term 'Global Death Protocol' (GDP returns – one of the sensible points Monbiot made it is no substitute Human Development Index). Pension fund raiding: there is thought to be a $30 tn black hole already – now they want to release $90tn 'locked assets' without even the slightest chance of ever getting an ROI. Overproduced capital will also find its way in to the tech bubble – funding our AI-redundancy. Oil-rent, commodity-rent, bio-pharma-rent, agi-rent, and tech-rent seems to be a major part of the capitalist death throes. But you cannot rent a host humanity by making them redundant. Now they also want to rent nature back to us. Add in spiralling exponential debt; EROI and a slow-burn falling net-energy crisis; and authoritarian states merging with bureaucratised corporate capital down to the local infrastructure level its humanity versus corporate state insanity.And the bleated hope of sheep is that a nativist leader – like Jeremy Corbyn – will come along and save us. Reality is going to have to hit the majoritarian massif really hard in the face to wake people up to the systemic fragility of globalised capitalism. Unfortunately, its internecine internal contradictions may prove fatal before that. My hope is that something better may rise from the ashes: a humanist society contra all the fatal contradictions of relentless coercive capital accumulation. Given the level of political and ecological acumen we encounter on a daily basis I'm presently not too optimistic. But that can change, rapidly. Consciousness is not timebound or limited by causality (see below). Now! would be a good time for a consciousness evolutionary explosion a Big Bang of a new reality. Depending on what the Big Bang of the old leaves intact! There will be a solution. It might not be optimal though. I presently can't see any smooth transition taking place. Carpe deum and enjoy the ride over the ever quickening rapids of the net energy falls!
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Apr 23, 2019 | off-guardian.org
harry stotle says Apr, 23, 2019
The ceding of democracy to an unaccountable deep state in the US is at the heart of many of the world's woes.BigB says Apr, 23, 2019'The Devils Chessboard' (by DAvid Talbot) provides a riveting account of how cold war paranoia became the engine to so much US thinking culminating in the murder of JFK (by the CIA) once Kennedy became the first president to meaningfully challenge the authority of the security apperatus.
The murderous policies Kennedy tried and failed to confront have only mushroomed since then so that today we have a form of cryptofascism in the US that the media are in absolute denial about.
JFK was gunned down.
Julian Assange will be consigned to solitary if the deep state has it's way.
But this doesn't stop MPs like jess Phillips, hacks like Hadley Freeman or other assorted phonies in the 'liberal media' cheering them on – this is what we are up against.Except JFK didn't do anything of the sort: and conducted a fair few murderous policies of his own – inter alia: against Cuba and South Vietnam. But I am tired of arguing the point with actual facts. What I will say, is that this pseudo-historic construct hides the and heroifies the crimes of Empire and Unpeoples more than half the world. And normalises Armageddon as a game of nuclear brinksmanship. We won't be so lucky again following the satandardised diplomatic "13 Days" diplomacy. [That was a typo: but its staying as far more eloquent than 'standardised']. A point I have made consistently for about two years: with evidence. But opinion is averse to contradictory facticity. It would be nice to see a symmetric history emerging: one that returns the humanity to the dehumanised of the world. Not one that focuses on and normalises the murderous hagiography of the Great Men of Empire but hey, ho. Loading...harry stotle says Apr, 23, 2019What we do know is that JFK was preceived as sufficiently threating (to the interests of the deep state) that the CIA blew his brains out.BigB says Apr, 23, 2019It is this fundemental power dynamic that I am mostly alluding to – in other words the way in which the intelligence apperatus rose above the law so that by '63 even the president of the USA was not safe from their nefarious scheming.
By comparison a whitleblower is a far more vulnerable target and it appears the CIA have been prepared to bide their time while a sham legal process goes through the motions in order to create an illusion that justice is being served when in facts it's not, because as we all know Asssange's fate has already been sealed.
I take your point about JFKs failings but given the fascistic nature of US power it is very unlikely that an untainted politician could negotiate the many hurdles the prevent less amoral individuals from reaching such rarefied heights.
Loading...With all due respect, Harry, we do not know that JFK was perceived as a 'threat' at all. That is a retroactive conclusion drawn from a fabricated virtual JFK. I've shown he was not turning to peace, not withdrawing from Vietnam, the MIC was doing rather well out of him – particularly the Rand Corporation that was driving policy in Vietnam. He doubled the nuclear arsenal and ordered a whole fleet of Polaris subs, alongside massively strengthening his conventional forces – including his counterinsurgency forces that were currently raping, torturing and murdering their way round any designated 'gooks' in Vietnam. He even gave them a valedictory shoutout in his last recorded speech. And added that Vietnam would fall overnight without them.Hugh O'Neill says Apr, 24, 2019Millions of man hours and a trillion dollar industry have shone very little light on the why. Speculation abounds. What he did do was really piss off a whole bunch of psychopaths (my money is on Lyman Lemnitzer). The whole metaconspiracy thing seems contrived to me – especially as it does not fit the evidence.
Points about the power structure are well made. The CIA and international intelligence agencies – not strictly limited to 'Five Eyes' or even 'Fourteen Eyes' – seem to have at least some integrated policy and are out of control.
Any derogatory remarks about the medias alternative Labour leader – Jess Phillips – are welcome too.
Loading...BigB. Wrong again. A Washington journalist 3 weeks before the assassination wrote about the CIA being out of control in Vietnam. His highly placed source reckoned too that a coup would more likely come from the CIA before the Pentagon. The source in all likelihood was JFK. Just because you are ignorant of something doesn't mean it wasn't so. Loading...BigB says Apr, 24, 2019Well, Hugh – what can I say? You have steadfastly refused to even contemplate that the Douglass pulp fiction is tripe. I have offered to go through the key pages and cross-reference with any of Sheldon Stern's Excomm books – that show how contrived a narrative fiction it is. You will not hear it. Nor will you hear anything of the murderous policies of the Diem clan – and their forced Catholicisation and cultural genocide. Now you are countering what I have adequately referenced in the past with "a reporter said". Reporters say a lot of things: not necessarily linked to reality. Can you substantiate what this anonymous reporter said?His well chronicled persecution of, inter alia, the Cubans and the South Vietnamese speaks volumes to those who have ears to hear. I believe the first thing he did was sign a counterinsurgency order against North Vietnam – but I can't be bothered to check. His whole programme there was illegal, contra International Humanitarian Law, contra the Geneva Accords, contra humanity, contra life. They still have deformed children and environmental problems from the rainbow of chemical warfare defoliants used in Operation Ranch Hand – every run signed off by JFK initially. And still you defend him, denigrating the unpeopled and deformed Other because a reporter said? Get real: he is not worthy of anyone's adulation. You can't hide behind the CIA forever. He made plenty of anti-human decisions on his own. Some of which nearly precipitated Armageddon.
Coming right back at ya: just because you are ignorant of something doesn't mean it wasn't so.
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Jan 19, 2019 | off-guardian.org
Two days ago BuzzFeed published a front page story, under a "BREAKING" banner, headlined: President Trump Directed His Attorney Michael Cohen To Lie To Congress About The Moscow Tower ProjectIn the article, Buzzfeed reporters Jason Leopold and Anthony Cormier claim to have been told, by two anonymous sources, that Robert Mueller's "Russiagate" investigation had evidence Donald Trump had instructed his lawyer to lie to Congress. That would be a felony, and obviously an impeachable offence.
The reaction of the news media and associated twitterati was as quick as it was predictable. MSNCBC, CNN, the BBC, The Guardian the usual suspects. They were all over it within hours.
But then, less than a day later, Robert Mueller's spokesperson Peter Carr issued this statement :
BuzzFeed's description of specific statements to the special counsel's office, and characterization of documents and testimony obtained by this office, regarding Michael Cohen's congressional testimony are not accurate,"
Despite this, BuzzFeed is sticking to its guns. Insisting that Mueller's statement is vague, and therefore does not undercut the heart of their story.
The rest of the mainstream media are sensing the tone though and jumping ship. The Washington Post – not known for their pro-Trump slant – ran an editorial pointing out the scarcity of Mueller's public comment (this the first statement Mueller has ever issued concerning evidence or claims in the press), and arguing that the rush to refute the BuzzFeed article means it is probably completely false.
Nevertheless, BuzzFeed has not retracted or altered their story in any way – except for putting in one small paragraph reporting that Mueller's office disputes their story. There is no note of the update, and the rest of the story remains unchanged .
There is a striking parallel here, with a story Luke Harding contributed to The Guardian in late November last year: "Manafort held secret talks with Assange in Ecuadorian embassy"
The article claimed Trump's campaign manager Paul Manafort had met with Julian Assange at least three times prior to the 2016 Presidential Election. No evidence was produced, save the word of "unnamed intelligence officials", "secret Ecuadorian documents" and the like. While the predictable news outlets picked up the story and ran with it with the eagerness of a 6-month-old Golden Retriever, we in the alternative media were quick to point out the logical and factual deficiencies in the story.
Within hours, The Guardian had edited its language to be rather more circumspect , and include the denials made by both accused parties. The edits made to the article were not noted or highlighted in any way, we only know they exist because of internet archives. The next day The Guardian released a brief, terse, defensive statement. That statement was itself refuted by both Manafort and WikiLeaks. As of today, WikiLeaks is actively pursuing legal action in this case.
Later, it was revealed that a key contributor to the story had been previously been convicted of forgery .
No apology has been made, and no retraction issued, no explanation given. Both the editor, Katherine Viner, and Luke Harding have been totally silent on the topic.
So, in the last 2 months both Buzzfeed and The Guardian have issued "BREAKING NEWS" stories that made bold claims, but were not backed up with any evidence. Both these stories were shown to be untrue in less than 24 hours.
Anonymous sources are a common area here – both stories rely exclusively on the word of "unnamed sources" from either "the intelligence services" or "government agencies". Anonymous sources are the batarangs on the propagandist's utility belt. Flexible, simple, timeless.
Anonymity allows government agencies to leak misinformation on purpose, without hurting their credibility. It allows newspapers to control public opinion without having any actual facts on hand. It allows intelligence agencies to plant narratives they may want to revisit, or to give targets of blackmail operations a warning. And, most obviously, it allows journalists to simply make stuff up.
I don't know which specific class these two stories fall into – but I do know it's one or all of them.
So we come to the question of motive: BuzzFeed and The Guardian must have known there was no evidence to back up their assertions (yet, anyway). They must know the "significant minority" of the population who believe "conspiracy theories about their own government" will research and refute these claims.
So why publish them?
Well, in the Guardian's case, every story demonising Assange discredits WikiLeaks' future output, whilst also softening public sympathy for Assange in preparation for potential extradition of to the US. All the mainstream press have turned on WikiLeaks, but The Guardian – for some reason – has a particularly strong institutional axe to grind with WikiLeaks, and specifically Julian Assange.
Similarly, every "Russia bad!" story primes the public to accept increased defence spending, increased control of the internet by the government and increased social media censorship. It is very much the gift that keeps on giving in that regard.
In BuzzFeed's case, it has been apparent for a while now that the Mueller investigation is likely to fizzle. Articles and interviews from various media sources have been prepping the public for a "let down" for a few weeks. At this point, there is no case for impeaching Trump. But the Deep State still needs to keep him over a barrel.
Trump has been a disappointment to his base and is yet to implement half the policies he discussed on the campaign trail, but he's not fully and totally being controlled by the warhawking Deep State yet, either. His policy of peace with North Korea and decisions to pull out of Syria and Afghanistan show that there is a tug-of-war ongoing inside the administration. It's probably no coincidence that this latest of many "bombshells" comes so quickly on the heels of Trump's announcement of the Syria withdrawal.
Careful "leaks", planted stories and social media witch-hunts remind Trump how precarious his position is, whilst simultaneously distracting the public – both pro-Trump and anti-Trump – from real issues.
The case-specific "why?" doesn't matter so much as the general aim of this type of manipulation. The important question is: Why does the media tell lies if they know they will be revealed as such?
Clearly, the lies serve a purpose, regardless of their retraction or qualification.
Telling a lie loudly and then taking it back quietly is an old propaganda trick – it allows the paper to maintain a facade of "accountability". The point of this practice is to propagate lies into the public consciousness. It's a method that can be used to distract and disseminate and divide.
The accuracy of the statement is immaterial. The point is, once it has been said it cannot be unsaid. There are countless examples: "Assange was working for Russia", "Trump ordered Cohen to lie to Congress", "Russia hacked the US election", "Donald Trump worked for the KGB", "Assad gassed his own people", "Jeremy Corbyn is an antisemite".
The list goes on and on and on. None these have been proven. All were asserted without evidence, fiercely defended as facts, and then discretely qualified.
That is the purpose of "fake news", to forge the Empire's "created reality" , and force us all to live in it. These are world-shaping, policy-informing, news-dominating narratives and are nothing but feathers in the wind .
A perfect examplar of this occurred just two days ago on the BBC's flagship Political debate show Question Time :
The (notionally impartial) host not only sided with right-wing author Isabel Oakeshott in criticising Labour's polling, but then joined in mocking the Labour MP Diane Abbott for attempting to correct the record.
Both Oakeshott and Fiona Bruce, the host, were factually incorrect – as shown a hundred times over since. But that doesn't matter. The lie was told, the audience laughed, the reality was created. "Labour are behind in the polls, anybody who says otherwise is a laughingstock" .
The lie goes around the world while the truth is still putting its boots on.
That's why fake news is so important to them, and so dangerous us.
Kit Knightly is co-editor of OffGuardian. The Guardian banned him from commenting. Twice. He used to write for fun, but now he's forced to out of a near-permanent sense of outrage.
Anirudh says Mar, 1, 2019
This is one of the biggest problems with mainstream media these days. They just give out fake stories or tailor-made stories out there and people on social media latch on to the stories without actually trying to find out what really happened.Chris Friel says Jan, 26, 2019This is not the first time BuzzFeed it issuing an article like this one by now it has developed a reputation for propagating facts that are untrue. It is said to see what our media houses have come down too, gone are the days when news reports were based on facts.
Here's a short piece on Muralgate as part of Israeli information warfare: Was the antisemitism crisis in the UK Labour Party designed as a distraction from Gaza? Very early on some complained that Jeremy Corbyn was a victim of a smear campaign, but might it be more accurate to say that UK politics witnessed a deliberate smokescreen? As controversial as this narrative is, I think that all the evidence points in that direction. https://www.academia.edu/38226258/MuralGate_as_a_Distraction_from_Gaza_Smear_and_SmokescreenMartin Usher says Jan, 28, 2019I've never thought of there being an antisemitism crisis in the Labour party but rather think of it as part of a concerted attack on anyone opposing Israeli policy towards Palestinians, occupied territories and so on. There's two reasons for this; one being that the intellectual base of left wing politics has historically has always included a lot of Jewish thinkers. The other is that we don't have a Labour party here in the US but any organization that's critical of these policies gets tarred in exactly the same way. Its a lazy 'fill in the blanks' approach that obviously does the job (because the media just takes up the banner and runs with it, it doesn't hang around to ask questions) but at the same time its really easy to see through if you know what to look for.axisofoil says Jan, 23, 2019This is very interesting https://disobedientmedia.com/2018/04/all-russiagate-roads-lead-to-london-as-evidence-emerges-of-joseph-mifsuds-links-to-uk-intelligence/David Eire says Jan, 22, 2019Buzzfeed is a complete scam. I remember the night of the Presidential election their running vote tallies were completely false – they had Hillary Clinton leading the whole time. They know exactly what they are doing. It's not like they are making mistakes.Lloyd says Jan, 21, 2019BuzzFeed is a useful outlet for fake news because no intelligent person takes the zine seriously. But CNN/MSNBC/etc. consumers only see hear the manic assertions and miss where the 'news' came from then later miss the corrections. If Brian Stelter is later pressed he can say "Well, it's BuzzFeed, I mean, come on. CNN had nothing to do with it." BuzzFeed says a couple of prostitutes peed on a bed to amuse Trump, the story is discredited, but a lot of people still believe it. And on and on.Martin Usher says Jan, 22, 2019Now the story that Trump hat wearing high school kids were harassing black people who were quoting the Bible – and then laughed at an old Native American who stepped in to prevent the kids from assaulting the blacks – is falling apart. Seems odd that Anderson Cooper or Don Lemon haven't invited the Black Israelites on to talk about civil rights in 2019 – especially LGBT rights and anti-antisemitism..
This is the classic way to insert stories in the main stream media. You use postings on Internet sites which reverberate -- they get reposted (which you may do a bit of as well) so they build up a veneer of credibility. They are then quoted as "authoritative" by more established media.axisofoil says Jan, 21, 2019The technique isn't new and its not confined to politics. This is how product marketing works, using a combination of press releases, 'leaks', 'exclusive access' and so on to get 'buzz' about the product. As with politics it often finds itself in a gray area where it might be marketing a product that doesn't exist (yet), often to forestall a competitor's advantage. (Disclaimer -- I've never worked in marketing but I have spent my working life developing products and technologies. Sometimes what gets published about what you and your colleagues have developed is a bit of a surprise ..but that's just how business works!)
Josh says Jan, 21, 2019https://www.youtube.com/embed/FTeJWQMpX0E?version=3&rel=1&fs=1&autohide=2&showsearch=0&showinfo=1&iv_load_policy=1&wmode=transparent
Good article Kit, just please correct the few times where I thought you missed a word. "All were asserted without evidence, fiercely defended as facts, and then discretely qualified." Did you not mean disqualified? Similarly at the very end.Mike Thornbury says Jan, 21, 2019No, his sentence makes perfect sense, and is constructed well.Admin says Jan, 21, 2019"Qualified", in this context, means to frame a set of boundaries: 'he qualified his off-the-cuff remarks by asserting it was what he heard'
Qualified was the intended wordBadger Down says Jan, 22, 2019But why "discretely qualified"?Badger Down says Jan, 20, 2019
Were they qualified separately?
Shouldn't it be "discreetly qualified"?Then there's fake news and no-news about the "israeli" invasion of Palestine:wardropper says Jan, 20, 2019
https://ifamericaknew.org/media/clues.htmlThe creation of chaos appears to be the aim.rtj1211 says Jan, 20, 2019
And it's working just fine.
When it gets bad enough, the engineers of the chaos just move in and reorganize things the way they have always wanted them.
It's what I would do if I were a soulless, incompetent fathead.There is of course another possibility: click bait.DunGroanin says Jan, 20, 2019The public click thru absolutely outrageous headlines more than measured ones. They are like junkies neding a fix.
James Delingpole gets huge click thru metrics using a pre-adolescent puerile in-your-face rudeness. He has a captive audience of very right people, mostly on Breitbart.
There is similar behaviour on the left, equally calculated.
You want this sort of thing to stop, the general populace must turn away in huge droves from the click bait.
Any idea what Cadwalladr is on about in her latest tweet?DunGroanin says Jan, 20, 2019
A girlfriend of an oligarch manhandled at a Moscow airport?Still no mention of II/IoS and Caroles links with them and their anti Russian disinformation.
She mentions the usual bogeymen , trump, mannafort, farage, but not Murdoch, Mandy, Blair or Tory MP's.
Meanwhile the plot of a coup to by-pass parliamentry democracy reaches a denoument this week – all the neocon/lib forces are to be marshalled under the patrician Grieve and Cooper along with all the right-thinking forces of the land in the final fight between to regain the land for Mordor. A unholy alliance of the Willing to stop the Corbynite Hobbits ridding the land of the ancient powers!
Latest bit of fake news by the Groaniadbevin says Jan, 20, 2019
'May's move comes as fresh polling evidence suggests the public are sanguine about the possibility of a no-deal Brexit.
A poll by ICM conducted in the wake of last week's historic government defeat and seen by the Guardian asked voters what should happen next.'"seen by the Guardian" "the public are sangunie"
Look into my mystical crystal bowl eyes, you are sanguine, sanguine !
Do they even know what 'sanguine' means?
Dear Off-G you could do with a perma link to the ticker tape of all the twaddle the Obssesive Groaniad prints, we could all contribute.
"Dear Off-G you could do with a perma link to the ticker tape of all the twaddle the Obssesive Groaniad prints, we could all contribute "Andyoldlabour says Jan, 20, 2019
Yes. The obvious course is for OG to take on the task of exposing Hte Garuniad's lies and manipulations, in real time.
Not that this is a criticism of the excellent work currently being done."The lie goes around the world while the truth is still putting its boots on."binra says Jan, 20, 2019This is one of the most pertinant phrases today, particularly with the speed of modern communications. The lies which led to the invasion of Iraq, the lies around so called chemical weapons attacks, the lies about the White Helmets, the media lies which lead to the demonisation of Jeremy Corbyn and Diane Abbott
If the media keeps on propagating lies and misinformation, then we could find ourselves on the brink of a final catastrophic war.Illusions operate in place of true for that is their function, given them by those who hold them dear.axisofoil says Jan, 21, 2019
Belief you are separate (from life – each other and world) is the belief that truth is different for each one and that there is a hierarchy of illusions – where some are held as more true than others. Each must establish this for themself by attack on others to make their own true.
The errors seen in others are thus always a call for attack and not for undoing, healing or correction.
The mind is thus set at war with itself by war of self-reinforcing self-illusion with obviously distressing results to the willingness to those who give reality to its dictate.If you see the underlying principles of a mind at war with (in active denial of) living truth, are recognisably insane but normal premise to human confusion, then you are no longer altogether listening to confusion.
That there is fear of truth in us would be more evident if we were not so active in the engagement within illusions as if some illusions can be victorious over other illusions.
The mind of deceit seems to be the saviour from confusion, while actually protecting and persisting it as the sin seen or flagged onto others. This protects 'sin' or irrevocable guilt that calls for punishment, as the framework of perception by the attempt to put it out on another and MAKE it true.But then an underlying fear of truth is magnified by the fear that what we thought to get rid of, will come back to us and damn us. Which will SEEM true while we persist in seeing errors as uncorrectable AND as the means to protect and maintain defences for a false sense of possession and control.
Insane defences protect insanity against healing.
There is a work I companion with over many years as a daily inspiration that I associate with synchronicity of recognition or resonance of what is apparently going on, with emerging perspective of desire to see – rather than persistence in habits and patterns of thought that are brought to light by choosing not to automatically react as if true.
https://acourseinmiraclesnow.com/course-miracles-chapter-23-ii-laws-chaos/
Illusions cannot 'save themselves' by struggle or assertion. But any awakening point of recognition of false as false is an opportunity to simply call on truth instead of trying to make true.
"Survival' within a battle of illusions is seeking a 'better' illusion within a self-damnation that can only arrive at its starting place. Releasing this as the point from which to receive identity is through the willingness or choice NOT to use it by opening to another in desire for a peace of being that is prior to – or beneath – the coverings of a buzz feed of fake news.
Questioning what we are, made a questionable mind and gave it the time of day to rob us of the joy in the day thereof. Another way to say this – is the interjecting of the mind of thought and control upon the flow of communication and relation that life already is the being and sharing of – as a 'self-consciousness' of inhibition and division.This curious capacity to become both subject and object – and as if separate from fearful life – is associated with lack of power and lack of love by the drive to then regain it or protect the little we hath from a sense of total loss.
Does this mean that it is safe to eat cheerios?Badger Down says Jan, 22, 2019only if you wanna say cheerio to gut healthmilosevic says Jan, 27, 2019see discussion of similar issues here:Gezzah Potts says Jan, 20, 2019Edward Bernays, Walter Lippmann, Joseph Goebbels, Luke Harding (and his many vile clones in the Western media) Manufacturing Consent . You nail it Kit in one single article. The phrase 'created reality' says it all. Sort of a bit like the 2 minutes of hate thing from that famous book. And of course, now the slime have NewsGuard ready to roll out as well as many having their Facebook and Twitter accounts suspended or terminated. Incidentally, my Facebook account has been suspended 5-6 times now for 'breaching community standards'.milosevic says Jan, 27, 2019my Facebook account has been suspended 5-6 times now for 'breaching community standards'.Martin Usher says Jan, 20, 2019It's almost like people who are capable of independent thought aren't wanted there.
Maybe there's a lesson in that.
Another good bit of recent news misinformation was the story about the Chinese 'spy chip' that was embedded into server motherboards made in China. This story was well debunked by the technical community -- the general response was a combination of "If it was in the SKU we'd have noticed it" and "this is one fantastic part, where can I buy some?" but the story will still come up if you do a search on "Chinese spy chip" rather than the (numerous) rebuttals.Michael Leigh says Jan, 20, 2019More sinister, and more important, is the global campaign against Huewei. You'll find numerous instances of countries banning their equipment because of fears that its spying for China, something the company has been at pains to prove false. There's two levels to this, though. One is the normal Cold War/Chinese intellectual property theft stuff, the other is commercial. Huawei is currently in a position to supply what's called '5G' wireless equipment, not just the phones but the entire infrastructure that's needed to make them work. US companies are somewhat behind in their ability to deploy this technology so it has become necessary to slow or eliminate the competition by political rather than technical means. There's a lot of money at stake, and as we know from the so-called energy sector threatening the hegemony has already caused several wars, coups and what-have-you so its not inconceivable that a similar measures might have to be taken with this technology. (There's more than money at stake as well -- control of the technology is vital if you want to use it for spying. Spying? Everyone does, in fact its gone commercial with the personalization of advertising, its just a question of who gets to reap the rewards.)
Aside from the aforementioned warnings about HUAWEI' s ability to competively and profitably manufacture and markert so-called fifth generation wireless telephony systems and products, which are surely based upon simply; jealous commercial slander by Huawei's competitors.Martin Usher says Jan, 22, 2019More important is the strange fact that this " fifth generation wireless technology " has not been to be a safe, or even a practical technology, by any of the necessary and acceptable ITU approved standards organisations.
This is more than a source of health and safety concerns all of the population most widely, and is still without he necessary approvals which are still absent, and thus it is an urgent matter for official precautions with health and safety, given the wide scope of this high-speed and wide-band emmission radio wave technology?
So called "5G" encompasses a whole basket of technologies, some established and some still being tested. The role of the ITU is to set overall parameters for the technology with other industry groups dealing with the details. The process is well established, its used by all complex technologies that have to interoperate globally, and it invariably ends up with some kind of patent basket where participants share technologies (and spoils). (I've been involved peripherally in similar sorts of activities in the past so I've seen how these groups work.)Baron says Jan, 22, 2019Since this technology is evolutionary rather than revolutionary its likely that equipment manufacturers will deliver it in phases so the race is to get your equipment placed because it can always be upgraded later (typically this will be firmware updates for the infrastructure kit). Here you notice that two of the big players in this are Chinese, they just happen to be ZTE and Huawei. One of the other players is Qualcomm, a company that you may not be familiar with but essentially had a stranglehold on previous generation wireless technology through its IP portfolio (it derives most of its income from licensing rather than manufacturing). Anyone who works in this business and figure out two plus two knows exactly what's going on when the US government goes after Chinese manufacturers and spying, health and safety and what-have-you are definitely not the real reasons. (the H&S angle I've not heard of but since 5G will mostly use existing frequencies there's no change -- anyway the whole electromagnetic radiation thing is one of those voodoo things put out by people who never studied physics at school or beyond)(we can put this into another thread, it doesn't belong here).
In many aspects of mobile technology the Chinese are, unfortunately, light years of us. (So are the Koreans, BTW.) Its a hard truth but one we must face if we're to do anything about being competitive.
Years ago, a British company called Sportingbet was cornering the market for bets placed over the internet, punters could use credit cards, the Americans were caught unprepared, hastily put together a statute that got attached to another one (which was debated certain to pass) only hours before voting.Einstein says Jan, 20, 2019At a stroke, the new law cut off the US punters, the share price of Sporting plummeted, eventually remnants of the company got sold. Within months, an American company emerged, no problem with using credit card placing bets. (The story's more complex, arrests of Sportingbet execs are a part of it, but the substance of it that matters is as Baron says).
That's what the American business does, it's ruthless beyond one's imagination.
I see they've discovered the 'doc' who gave Julia Skripal CPR on the park bench.bevin says Jan, 20, 2019
It turns out the 'doc' was Colonel Alison McCourt, Chief Nursing Officer of the Army!
What a coincidence!See Moon of Alabama for more.balkydj says Jan, 21, 2019or, alternatively check Colonel McCourt's award winning daughter , as nominated by mummark says Jan, 19, 2019Where would the Skripals be today, were it not for the astounding 'Lifesaver' military instincts instilled by mother ?
Maybe someone can get an interview with the daughter, now , as first responder . . . given the monetary value in bread & butter espionage fiction; even, she could write a book titled
Mother's Pride & Joy , (as 'Lifesaver') >>> itsa' miracle of modern medicine & Star Wars & all penned with a trick Bic tracheotomy in mind
These smears are all small change by US standards They are the daily fare of what passes for a political system.axisofoil says Jan, 20, 2019
Some recent far more entertaining smears:-Barack Obomber is a Muslim illegal alien.
His wife, Michelle, is really a man.
Clinton is dead. Her place has been taken by a body double.
Trump is having an incestuous relationship with his daughter.
Melania is a hooker.One Presidential candidate in the 1800s put it about that his opponent had just died. You can't vote for him, he's dead. Vote for me instead.
Britain clearly falls way behind in the smear stakes.
The best they can come up with is Steele's Golden Showers and Jezza is an anti Semite. How pathetic is that?Saturday Night Live is looking like the more grounded reality. Never loose your sense of humor.Martin Usher says Jan, 19, 2019
https://www.youtube.com/embed/x8CBF4aWwps?version=3&rel=1&fs=1&autohide=2&showsearch=0&showinfo=1&iv_load_policy=1&wmode=transparent
The BBC / Diane Abbott story is more interesting when you read reports that the host wound up the audience pre-show to get them to have a go at Ms Abbottt. One person described it as a 'roast'. The BBC has some serious credibility issues these days (John Reith must be spinning in his grave something rotten -- he established the idea that the BBC should be impartial, establishing a reputation that's been ruthlessly exploited and totally sullied in recent years).Toby Russell says Jan, 20, 2019Planting stories in credulous or complicit media relies on journalists who might know how to write but know nothing about what they're writing about. They'll turn out copy on anything without asking questions. There are some, though, that seem to want to understand the story, that will ask questions and so on. We have to seek them out and -- most important -- find a way of paying them because while media is entirely dependent on eyeballs and clicks for income its essentially compromised. (See the articles in the current edition of "Time" magazine about digital media -- they're an important read.)
"We have to seek them out and -- most important -- find a way of paying them"Philip Nash says Jan, 19, 2019Via Off-Guardian and similar platforms?
As you say, it is indeed up to us. We have to put our money where our mouth is and develop an alternative, as-incorruptible-as-possible media platform that serious journalists can join. Thousands of people contributing a pound a month is a start, tens and hundreds of thousands would make a real difference.
So disinherit Auntie, stop paying the licence fee, and redirect you monies to where the truth get told.
Thank you for a very nicely articulated article.vexarb says Jan, 19, 2019Quoted tweet: Ollie Richardson 7hYarkob says Jan, 20, 2019
"The funniest thing about GiletsJaunes: At no point in the Syrian war did the Syrian people march on the streets and chant "Assad is a dictator". But today the French people are on French streets calling Macron & Co dictators"[Vexarb adds: The Yellow Jerkins shout, "Macron Must Go" -- facing tear gas, truncheons, armoured cars and lethal weapons deployed by the Rothschild Regime.]
i see also that quite a few twitter commentators are calling the gov the Macron regime. delicious.tubularsock says Jan, 19, 2019Tubularsock has noticed that EVERY time the MSM produces clear information it is always misinformation.intergenerationaltrauma says Jan, 19, 2019It is just the way it's done.
Funny how that works.
"That is the purpose of "fake news", to forge the Empire's "created reality", and force us all to live in it." – authorvexarb says Jan, 19, 2019Precisely.
Here in the U.S. the deep state is working hard with "business" to limit access to any progressive media that might challenge the "Empire's created reality." Offering software to public libraries that facilitate suppressing the truth in favor of the empire's lie. Capitalism and the military state at work, joined at the hip. I believe that fits Benito's definition of "fascism" quite nicely.
https://consortiumnews.com/2019/01/18/narrative-control-firm-targeting-alternative-media/
"A moderate House of Cards the greatest wit / Though he can start it cannot finish it." -- Wolfgang von Goethe, German scientist.I am re-posting the following extract from previous thread, "Curious Bedfellows", because it is relevant to the present thread on Brassy, Barefaced Lying by criminal regimes.
"andrew belshaw Jan, 17, 2019
USA and Israel planned and carried out the FALSE FLAG 9/11 Attacks–
then blamed Afghananistan, Iraq, etcFBI named their 9/11 investigation PENTTBOM
for PENtagon Twin Towers BOMbingSo where are the FBI explosive tests???
.
WHERE ARE THE FBI TESTS FOR EXPLOSIVES???Reply
vexarb Jan, 18, 2019
Andrew, do you imply that the FBI actually tested for explosives -- and their report has been suppressed?
Or do you mean the FBI, like the committee which issued the Official Report, avoided the usual test for explosives in cases where modern buildings fall down?
I ask for clarification because I read at the time that the FBI said, they had no evidence against Osama Ben Laden or Saddam Hussein.
Reply
axisofoil Jan, 19, 2019
The FBI did extensive and thorough forensics and sample testing from the crime scene of 9/11 with the National Institute of Standards and Technology. The molecular examination of the remains and dust was conducted to the nano level. An admirable undertaking. The thoroughly documented results were printed up at a cost of over 8 Million tax payer dollars. _The documents were unfortunately misplaced._ the cost to duplicate the tests was deemed too much of a financial burden on the American public by law makers."
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Apr 17, 2019 | craigmurray.org.uk
Charles Bostock , April 17, 2019 at 11:40John2o2o , April 17, 2019 at 19:07Even if the Skripal affair WAS staged, you shouldn't get too excited about it. In fact, you should be rather pleased because it would demonstrate that the tired, incompetent old UK is still capable of mounting an operation of which young, vigorous, competent Russia would be proud.
The UK can fake events with the best of them! I would find that reassuring rather than deplorable because it's a nasty world out there.
Tony_0pmoc , April 17, 2019 at 11:44I shouldn't be anything. The whole thing shames the UK and is an insult to Russia and it's people.
The Government and the media, have not been telling the whole truth for a long time. Sometimes they blatantly lie. Most people still believe most of what they say, as there is an in-built trust of authority, for some very good historical reasons. The Skripal story, made it obvious to a large number of people, that some of it could not be true. Most still believe it or din't take much notice. The arrest of Julian Assange made it clearer, to an even larger number of people, that the government and the media, had lost all moral authority. Still many people didn't take much notice, or were convinced by the lies in the media, that he was a rapist and should be in jail.
The lies and corruption from government, is now increasingly out in the open. I believe that this is deliberate. I also think that it is exceedingly dangerous for society for multiple reasons. We are conditioned to accept authority as our moral guide. They act as an example of acceptable behaviour. If society as a whole, behaved like government, all trust would break down. Virtually all functions of society are based on trust. Without such trust, nothing will work.
Corruption of government and media, is also exceedingly dangerous, for everyone's mental health. People begin to subconsciously know that they are being lied to, but they cannot accept it, because the lies conflict with their worldview, which quite naturally is based on trust for authority, and that nice man reading the news on TV.I believe this has all been pre-planned, and it will result in a disastrous effect on all society, unless something happens to bring the governments and media back to truth and sanity. I have no idea what that might be, but I expect it will not be pleasant.
The following was an early warning of the mass insanity affecting The US Government. It has spread like a highly infectious disease.
In 2004, Karl Rove in The Bush Government " Guys like me were 'in what we call the reality-based community,' which he defined as people who 'believe that solutions emerge from your judicious study of discernible reality.' [ ] 'That's not the way the world really works anymore,' he continued. 'We're an empire now, and when we act, we create our own reality. And while you're studying that reality -- judiciously, as you will -- we'll act again, creating other new realities, which you can study too, and that's how things will sort out. We're history's actors and you, all of you, will be left to just study what we do'
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Apr 15, 2019 | www.heraldscotland.com
A SCOTTISH Labour candidate and former Better Together boss has been called on to explain her links to a "military propaganda unit" within the British Army.
Kate Watson is believed to be part of the Berkshire-based 77th Brigade, which was described by one newspaper as a "special force of Facebook warriors".
She declined to comment, but David Miller, a professor of political sociology at Bristol University , said: "The 77th Brigade is involved in manipulation of the media including using fake online profiles." Glasgow East is traditional Labour territory.
"A Labour candidate seeking to represent it should be transparent about their affiliations and commitments."
Formed in 2015, the 77th Brigade specialises in non-lethal warfare in the age of 24/7 rolling news and social media platforms.
With Vladimir Putin's Russia being accused of exploiting the openness of Western democracies – pumping out conspiracy theories on state-owned TV stations, and spreading fake stories on Twitter and Facebook – the military has been determined to regain control of the narrative.
In a November article, Wired magazine reported that the Brigade's soldiers do not fight, but instead "edit videos, record podcasts and write viral posts".
Given access to the unit, the magazine said of the office: "There was a suite full of large, electronic sketch pads and multi-screened desktops loaded with digital editing software.
"The men and women of the 77th knew how to set up cameras, record sound, edit videos. Plucked from across the military, they were proficient in graphic design, social media advertising, and data analytics.
"Some may have taken the army's course in Defence Media Operations, and almost half were reservists from civvy street, with full-time jobs in marketing or consumer research."
According to the Army's website, the Brigade is a combined "Regular and Army Reserve" unit, which aims to challenge the "difficulties of modern warfare" through "non-lethal engagement" and "legitimate non-military levers".
Using marketing jargon, the Army says that the 77th conducts "audience, actor and adversary analysis", as well as "supporting counter-adversarial information activity".
In a nod to its social media purpose, the website adds that the 77th Brigade collects, creates and disseminates "digital and wider media content in support of designated tasks".
Journalists, social media experts and researchers are listed as potential recruits.
As director of operations at Better Together, Watson played a key day-to-day role in an organisation set up to keep Scotland in the United Kingdom.
After the referendum, she got a job working for Consequitur, a consultancy owned by former Labour shadow foreign secretary Douglas Alexander. According to The Courier newspaper, she also graduated with a postgraduate qualification in terrorism studies in 2013.
She also has political ambitions, having stood for Labour in Glasgow East at the last General Election and losing by 75 votes. She has since been selected to contest the same seat.
An online left-wing magazine, in a write-up of the fiercely-contested Labour selection contest, claimed in June last year that she is part of the 77th Brigade, which Miller told this newspaper is a "secretive military propaganda unit".
Another politician linked to the unit is Tory junior defence minister Mark Lancaster. The MP's website states that he has been "selected as Deputy Commander 77 Brigade".
Speaking about the Brigade in Parliament last week, Lancaster said: "We have focused on just one aspect of the role of 77th Brigade, which is web ops, but it also encompasses some of the traditional capabilities we also have, be that what we would know as CIMIC – civil-military co-operation – the outreach group or the media group.
"By bringing all those components together, you are effectively updating what was a 20th-century capability for the 21st century and the introduction of the web and the internet. There is no doubt that information advantage is very much a key component of all the work that we will be doing in the future.
"I will give one example of interest to us as politicians, where recently I went on an exercise. Traditionally, military exercises tend to escalate upwards, but actually the key component there to allow de-escalation, which politicians are always interested in, was the use of information advantage and the web."
Between February 2017 and February 2018, 29 personnel from 77th Brigade were "forward deployed" on operations, according to a written parliamentary answer.
Meanwhile, it was reported in December that a security alert had been issued at UK military bases in Britain after a Russian TV crew was seen outside the 77th Brigade's headquarters. A journalist was spotted filming close to the Brigade's 25ft barbed wire perimeter fence, but he later denied trying to infiltrate the army base.
The MoD said the journalist's "suspicious" behaviour was monitored by the base's security systems.
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Apr 14, 2019 | discussion.theguardian.com
Vin LoPresti , 12 Apr 2019 09:57
Oh please: this is just a more-elaborate replay of what the DNC did to Bernie in '16 and what it does to anyone not espousing the idiocy of the party's corporately enshrined majority. Hence, what's actually happening is the [over]flooding of the field with corporate centrist neoliberals like Harris, Booker, Biden, Hickenlooper et al., enough of a deluge to draw attention & support from the more-progressive candidates, including Bernie, Warren, and Tulsi (particularly vehement for her open criticism of the war economy)T0nyN -> SoonToBeDead , 12 Apr 2019 10:01The USA has become anti-intellectual. It prefers 'style' over substance and theatrics over facts.charlieblue -> Swan17 , 12 Apr 2019 09:59We're not talking about "Change for changes sake" here. We're talking about Elizabeth Warren vs. Donald Trump. We're talking about a smart, educated woman and proven capable leader and US senator, vs. a vulgar, lazy, Reality TV host and failed businessman. We're talking a calm, rational human being vs. a bloviating jackass.candoll -> jae426 , 12 Apr 2019 09:57" white, straight and struggling middle class, "ChesBay -> John Finan , 12 Apr 2019 09:56Not if you add up those things. USA is only ~ 60% white. Depending on how you define middle class, I think more of the US is working class than middle class these days. Straight? Maybe, but I think you could just as easily say "most of the US is *not* a straight white male middle class, and frankly is fed up with the default identity being straight white, male and middle class.
My guess is that you are well to do, and enjoying your tax cut. Most of the rest of us are not. The economy is not synonymous with the stock market, which is up because of stock buy-backs. Do you understand how this works? Do you know how many workers have been laid off in the last 3 months? How many companies have moved out of the country, after receiving their tRump bribes? How many more companies paid NO TAX last year--or how many more got REBATES (out of my pocket?) You are soon to be horribly surprised.retsiLdivaD -> KedarB , 12 Apr 2019 09:55-You blame her for being good at her job and for having married someone who is good at his job, or for having policies that would distribute wealth? Rich people can be left wing. Find me any politician who isn't loaded.theredmenace -> GeorgeFrowny , 12 Apr 2019 09:58- High salaries at Universities are a problem, but not responsible for high student loans- roughly half the budget at Havard is spend on salaries, and that includes pensions, and a lot of people in lower paid positions https://finance.harvard.edu/files/fad/files/harvard_annual_report_2018_final.pdf
She didn't list herself as such when applying for jobs, she volunteered a recipe for a cookbook. Everything else you're repeating is just Fox News propaganda.Atlant -> Beaufort100 , 12 Apr 2019 09:54"In 2012 she was criticized for having listed herself as a minority in a directory for Harvard Law School. Some critics alleged that she falsified her heritage to advance her career through minority quotas. Warren denied that, and several colleagues and employers (including Harvard) have said her reported ethnic status played no role in her hiring. An investigation by The Boston Globe in 2018 found "clear evidence, in documents and interviews, that her claim to Native American ethnicity was never considered by the Harvard Law faculty, which voted resoundingly to hire her, or by those who hired her to four prior positions at other law schools". PolitiFact noted: "Before this controversy arose in 2012, there is no account that Warren spoke publicly of having Native American roots, although she called herself Cherokee in a local Oklahoma cookbook in 1984."
You should apologise and retract.
candoll -> HarryFlashman , 12 Apr 2019 09:53And there is no Democrat who is going to take votes from Trump's base.
I've told this story before but I guess it still bears repeating:
In November of 2016, my wife won a seat in the New Hampshire State House as a Democrat. As she campaigned, she knocked on hundreds and hundreds of doors, the doors of Democrat, Republican, and "Undeclared" households. And many times, she spoke to Republicans who stated that they could easily have seen themselves voting for Bernie Sanders over Trump but they'd BE DAMNED if they were ever going to vote for Hillary Clinton.
My wife didn't argue this point with them. After all, it was her job to get herself elected, not to get Hillary elected. In New Hampshire, the Democrats who DID argue for Clinton (including two more women in our election ward) went down to defeat; my wife won.*
Hillary was absolutely poison for the Democrats nationwide but Bernie would have 1) won and 2) had yuuuuge coat-tails. When they did him in, the Democrats did themselves in.
* Hillary narrowly won New Hampshire's Electoral votes and Democrats narrowly won our U.S. Senate race and both Congressional districts but Democrats lost the Governor's race, three of five Executive Council races, the State House, and the State Senate. That is, Democrats got wiped out within New Hampshire just like they got wiped out nationally.
By electing Trump the American people were rejecting middle-of-the-road politics-as-usual. Warren is the much needed change in the democratic party.mwesqcpa , 12 Apr 2019 09:51
Instead, they're going to push Biden or Beto and try to serve the "safe" more of the same crap that people don't want anymore. We're all fed up to death with the neo-liberal corporate-owned politicians. We need real change for the everyday working people, who have seen their quality of life decline and cost of living incline for decades now.Elizabeth Warren has a tremendous academic background in economics, economic history, finance and bankruptcy law; she also is an experienced bankruptcy lawyer.ChesBay -> Amanzim , 12 Apr 2019 09:51She was in the forefront during the 2008 economic crisis and raising the alarm about the corrupt banking practices of trillions of risky sub prime lending loans and credit default swaps.
Her current campaign is floundering for many reasons. She is fuzzy on many issues and other issues may be repulsive to most of the electorate such as reparations for the horrible institution of slavery. Two wrongs do not make a right.
The only candidate that rings the bell and frames the hot button issues in a brilliant and articulate manner is Mayor Pete. His only negative is the repulsion of many voters to gay people who in reality are just people who happen to be different than the majority.
The right has moved sooo far right, that reasonable, popular positions may seem "radical." After all, who in the world would vote for health care for themselves? Positively far left, eh? I would like to know: HOW are we going to pay for a $1.9 TRILLION tax cut for the filthy rich, or $730 BILLION for defense? WHERE will we get the money for those "basic needs?"Thomas1178 -> OliversTravels , 12 Apr 2019 09:48She didn't -- the bar application does not have a section for race. What she did was fill in an optional area on race to indicate her interest in organizations or societies centered around ethnicity. Not uncommon in academiaJudeUSA -> ChesBay , 12 Apr 2019 09:48Her own argument, that she actually believed that she was far more Native American than she was and was interested in meeting other women with a similar background, matches up well with that. It was not in any way part of deciding to admit her to the bar. Think about it – that would be illegal anyway.
The majority of Americans do not back packing the courts and reparations.They will be losing issues for those candidates that give those issues strong support.ThisEarthling , 12 Apr 2019 09:47It's a shame she didn't run last time, instead of Hilary Clinton - things might have been different. That was her chance, and it's gone now. She will be put in the same bracket as Hilary now by too many voters, and it'll be the kiss of death for her chances. That silly comment about her ancestry aside, she is a very smart woman who wuld have made a decent POTUS, but she's missed her chance at it. Or the party missed its chance with her. Somehow it was deemed to be Hilary's "turn" last time round. If there's anything positive to come out of Trump's election, it might be to wake politicians up to the fact the the old way of doing things must go, though unfortunately the Democrats don;t seem to have really grasped this. The people have voted in some fresh faces, but the party is still stuck in the past.... Bernie Sanders, ffs. God help us.ChesBay -> Daubish , 12 Apr 2019 09:46Daubish--Don't hold your breath. Remember who, and what, is "leading" the party. It's an "organization" I intend to quit immediately following next year's closed primary. Remember the words of Mark Twain: "I don't belong to any organized political party. I'm a Democrat."ChesBay , 12 Apr 2019 09:41Warren and Sanders are the only clear thinkers in the group. I support Bernie, but I am also sending money to Warren to keep her in the race. She represents the thinking of the majority of Americans. She's right on the money! Backward, corporate,conservative Nancy Pelosi be damned.BorgleyUderwad -> Afraid of Americans , 12 Apr 2019 09:41I think the expression "Don't try to argue with an idiot, they'll just drag you down to their level and then beat you with experience" applies.Henny Miller , 12 Apr 2019 09:41Although I live outside the US, it is important for the rest of the world to have a competent, decent, ethical and honourable person to be elected as the next president, especially after this disastrous term with Trump. I personally would love to see Elizabeth Warren as the next president, having read a lot about her over the years and her performance after the financial crises when she to the Wall street bankers to task was marvelous. She is the sort of person that would be very beneficial for the US and the world, I think the rest of the world would start to have respect for the US again, as it is definitely on the nose now.AdamCMelb , 12 Apr 2019 09:39There is no doubt that Warren has smarts. Her competition policy around the tech giants is actually quite nuanced and sensible, despite presenting some challenges.But she is not a good presidential candidate. She has wrecked her chances with her 'Pocahontas' antics and - mystifyingly - doubled down on her alleged Indian ancestry before the election. (This is despite the fact that Native American identity is generally not based on DNA alone. Mystifying stuff.)
Meanwhile, ideas like scrapping the electoral college are just bizarre and naive. I had not been aware that this was a 'policy' of Warren's. It does not show her in a good light.
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Apr 14, 2019 | discussion.theguardian.com
gunnison -> dallasdunlap , 12 Apr 2019 09:34
gunnison -> jae426 , 12 Apr 2019 09:22Even Donald Trump had experience running an international business empire.
Some would say international crime syndicate, but never mind that.
Running anything as an authoritarian CEO in a private institution of any kind, with no shareholders and no accountability, is not a useful background in the context of a presidency, as we have been finding out on a daily basis since that assrocket took office.
Being a mayor of any kind of city is better preparation by far, because you have to fine ways for people who are not natural allies to pull in the same direction.dallasdunlap , 12 Apr 2019 09:17. I think that's bollocks. Present your evidence. Sure, it's going to be a hard fought fight, but the chances that Dems supporting a candidate who does not win the primary would boycott the election and put Trump back in the White House are vanishingly smallThey have decided they are more interested in fighting themselves than fighting Trump, with different wings of the party saying they will boycott other wings' candidates if they win the nomination instead
this time around.
Obama campaigned on the theme of progressive change, and won, twice, then once in office governed as a milquetoast centrist trying to seek consensus with an adversary committed to destroying both him and any remnants of the New Deal.Most of America is white, straight and struggling middle class, I'm afraid. A unity candidate like Obama is needed to build bridges between different demographics, but what did we hear from a prominent Democrat activist last week? An attack on Obama as being the worst thing to happen to the Democrat Party in a generation.
His lackluster performance in this regard and the Dem party establishment's commitment to corporate fealty by thumbing the scale to ensure the confirmation of Clinton's focus-group corporate windsockery so infuriated the traditional working class midwestern party roots that we now have Trump.The mewling of the remnants of that party establishment can be ignored. There's a new energy now, unleashed by Sanders' remarkable insurgency in the 2016 cycle, and there's no putting the cork back in that bottle.
Trump isn't smiling. Trump has never smiled in his life. He smirks a lot, but that's not the same thing, and over the next year or so he's about to suffer the death of a thousand cuts if the newly empowered House investigative committees do an even halfway competent job of revealing what a corrupt and vindictive scumbag he really is.
Warren was my early favorite in the Dems primaries, but abolishing the Electoral College, packing the Supreme Court, and paying reparations make her unacceptable to me.jae426 , 12 Apr 2019 08:58I'd like her to win the nomination, but she won't.That won't necessarily be a bad thing, however, because the chances of the Democrats winning the election are looking pretty slim right now. They have decided they are more interested in fighting themselves than fighting Trump, with different wings of the party saying they will boycott other wings' candidates if they win the nomination instead.
Most of these activists are either New Yorkers or Californians or people who think like New Yorkers and Californians. New York and California will vote Democrat whoever wins the nomination. The next election, like the last, will be won or lost in Michigan, Pennsylvania and Florida.
It will annoy people on the Guardian website to hear, but people in those states are typically not as interested in what might be called 'identity politics' as people on the seaboards. 2016 should have taught Democrats that. Instead they have doubled down on fighting a little civil war between demographics who claim only their candidate should be President.
Most of America is white, straight and struggling middle class, I'm afraid. A unity candidate like Obama is needed to build bridges between different demographics, but what did we hear from a prominent Democrat activist last week? An attack on Obama as being the worst thing to happen to the Democrat Party in a generation.
Trump is smiling, and those smiles aren't fake.
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Apr 14, 2019 | www.theguardian.com
popgoesthepop , 12 Apr 2019 10:26
Four more years of Trump is in the works.jae426 -> gunnison , 12 Apr 2019 10:26The fact that she lied about her ethnicity in the past in hopes of gaining a leg up will backfire spectacularly if she's the DNC nominee for POTUS. Conservatives will beat this point over and over and over.
Is the Left secretly trying to put Trump in the WH for another term? It sure looks like it.
Thomas1178 -> Sheldon Hodges , 12 Apr 2019 10:25the chances that Dems supporting a candidate who does not win the primary would boycott the election and put Trump back in the White House are vanishingly small this time around
They were warned that that would happen last time, and they still let it happen. The "Bernie bros" are back out in force, and not only have they not learnt their lesson, they feel validated by Clinton's defeat to the extent where they are even more determined that their old man should be the candidate and nobody else. These are people who abandoned the Democrats for Jill Stein, the Green Party candidate who managed to make Sarah Palin look intelligent. They will do it again because they are largely white, male and think just because they read liberal newspapers that means they don't have a sense of entitlement.
Both Michigan and Pennsylvania would have gone to Clinton if only 20% of Green voters hadn't lodged protest votes. These people don't want Elizabeth Warren, they don't want Kamala Harris, they don't want Beto O'Rourke, they don't want Pete Buttigieg. They want Bernie. If Bernie isn't the Democrat, they won't vote Democrat.
You can dismiss this as much as you like, but I placed a bet on Trump winning the Republican nomination when he was the joke candidate and when he won the nomination I bet on him winning the presidency. I think that would be an even safer bet this time round.
That's just funny. She's been behind some of the major legislation that enacted the things that Bernie Sanders talks about. And Wall Street is scared crapless of her -- why do you think they're going after her so hard?popgoesthepop -> WishesandHorses , 12 Apr 2019 10:23She lies about her ethnicity to get ahead in life? That may have something to do with it.Sheldon Hodges , 12 Apr 2019 10:22This conjecture is entirely fiction at best but centrist neo libeberal bollocks as a certainty. Warren was and is a republican. She is a corporate bootlicker, a thrall of Hillary and has no serious attachment to truth. I regret to admit that I am a US citizen, 68 years of age. I have wittnessed Warren's shameless plagirising of Bernie Sanders' arguments and am sickened to see her lionized by people who, if honest, should know better.Thomas1178 , 12 Apr 2019 10:21The columnist is right about Warren's intellectual stature and influence, and anyone who's looked at what she's accomplished for Massachusetts (or for that matter watched her takedown of the sleazy head of Wells Fargo during the Senate hearings) knows she's tough. She also has a *workable* vision of what the Democrats could offer Americans. From affordable childcare to making college tuition affordable again to helping out working-class people like the fisherman in Massachusetts, while reigning in the banks and making sure we don't have another crash – it's the blueprint.Patrician1985 , 12 Apr 2019 10:21There's something hysterically funny about all the people who have signed in here, clearly skipped the article, just to yell "squirrel!" – or in this case -- "oh no she filled out the optional ethnicity box and it turns out her family stories were mistaken!"
What they're missing, what Warren is laying out and the article is pointing out, is what the GOP will really be up against in the future.
I don't like this argument: she may not win the primary, but it's her ideas that will dominate the conversation.SolentBound , 12 Apr 2019 10:21It worked for Bernie supporters to console themselves.
If we elect someone, it needs to be the person who will be passionate about that idea (as opposed to lukewarm like Pelosi is on Green New Deal). We need someone who knows what it will take to get it done. What will get in the way. How to get around it.
Warren not only had the idea for CFPB. She actually set it up. Then Obama lacked the moral courage and political spine to have her lead the agency - just because Wall Street had pressured the Democrats against it.
Warren is the right candidate for the right time. She has ideas to fix the country and doesn't just rail against people. That's why even Steve Bannon is scared of her policy positions that they could be theirs.
Democrats need to stop playing pundits and go with their heart. If they vote for someone they like less but because he (why is it always a 'he' who is electable?) can win - we will end up with a candidate no one really cares about and how is that a winning strategy?
Democrat primary voters need to recognise that defeating Trump is going to be very difficult.JayThomas -> Rio de Janeiro , 12 Apr 2019 10:20Since WW II, only Jimmy Carter and George Bush Sr. have failed to win re-election, in both cases to superb campaigners who captured the public's imagination and, critically, swing voters.
Which of the potential Democrat challengers is a Ronald Reagan or a Bill Clinton? Or, indeed, a Barack Obama?
For a dose of reality, Democrats could do worse than read Mike Bloomberg's piece on his decision to stay out of the race: https://www.bloomberg.com/opinion/articles/2019-03-05/our-highest-office-my-deepest-obligation
And because nobody expects a politician to keep a promise, they have to find some other way to be convincing.BenjaminW , 12 Apr 2019 10:19Warren rules -- her policy ideas are creative, intelligent and moral, and the world would be an indescribably better place if people like her were ever allowed into positions of authority. That anyone on the planet would prefer to be represented by someone like Biden, never mind Trump, is utterly depressing.charlieblue , 12 Apr 2019 10:16Sadly, FOX News has already issued their proscribed talking points on Sen.Warren. You will find them listed and repeated anywhere Elizabeth's Warren's candidacy is discussed (including here). Most of it will be lies or exaggerations, claims that she received jobs and promotions based on her claims of Native American ancestry, claims that she received scholarships or some kind of preferential treatment by calling herself an "Indian". They will insist that this is an obvious character flaw, that she's a liar and some sort of cultural thief.Rio de Janeiro , 12 Apr 2019 10:13Sadly, too many American's still imagine FOX News and it's ilk are purveyors of fact. They imagine the propaganda they are being fed about Elizabeth Warren is a truth the "mainstream media" won't mention. We saw all of this with Hillary Clinton. 30% of Republican voters still think Sec. Clinton ran a pedophile ring out of a DC pizza parlor.
If Sen.Warren, or any other rational candidate has a fair chance at running for President, if all the lies and propaganda of the right-wing media establishment are to be countered, the left and the center of US politics needs an effective counter to right-wing narrative.
A presidential campaign is not about specific, detailed policy proposals. It's about a vision for the country. A vision that must be consistent with voters' feelings and expectations; and must be communicated in a clear, energetic way by an effective messenger. That's the way Reagan, Clinton, Obama and Trump won.outkast1213 -> newageblues , 12 Apr 2019 10:13Does anybody remember Trump's healthcare policy?
People don't vote for policy manifestos. People vote for candidates that inspire and convince.
The same Liz that stated as a Senator she had a better chance to effect change than as POTUS in 2016 now is a genius?GeorgeC , 12 Apr 2019 10:12If Warren is the 'intellectual powerhouse' of the Democratic party, then god help them. Not a word about 1 trillion dollar budget deficits and rising (under Trump)-but remember Obama was little better; in 15 years time the US state pension system will be bankrupt, various other states' pension schemes are also effectively bankrupt (see Illinois, Tennessee) as are various cities (Chicago), and all Warren and Trump can think of is more debt, and nor will MMT help (we know this is just deficit spending on steroids). None of these people are 'progressive' - by not tacking the key problem of runaway debt it just robs everyone by forcing a default - not an 'honest' one, but rather the route taken by all politicians, namely rapid devaluation of the currency; something that robs all people, and destroys savings. Instead all we get are jam today, and bankruptcy tomorrow.needaname100 -> Thomas1178 , 12 Apr 2019 10:11She changed her ethnicity from white to Native American at the University of Pennsylvania Law School. Also, a large majority of Americans have Native American DNA....and EW has less than the average American (which is 5%)...she has 0.20. She abused a privilege and got called out.Thomas1178 -> mwesqcpa , 12 Apr 2019 10:05She's too damn smart, is the problem. Along with all her qualifications she has also a lot of very solid wins that she brought home for the people of Massachusetts as a senator, from helping fisherman to low-income students suffering from college debt -- emphasizing that she's actually helped working class people and people in student debt should be a no brainer. And yet she seems not to have a savvy political operator advising her – she sure as hell hasn't gotten out ahead of the Native American thing, and I don't know why no one is doing that for her.LydiaLysette , 12 Apr 2019 10:03"Elizabeth Warren is the intellectual powerhouse of the Democratic party"Then they really are in trouble.....
Just take 1 point....
"She has called for abolishing the electoral college, the unfair institution the US used to elect executives "
Well that requires a constitutional amendment, that requires a two thirds majority in both houses and then ratification by three quarters of the States. The ERA was proposed in 1923 didn't get through Congress until 1972 and is still short of the 38 State ratifications to adopt it. That's an issue of direct concern to at least half the population. The idea that a procedural change to the constitution for partisan benefit is getting through the process is blatantly laughable. Particularly as there appear to be about 27 states that have enhanced importance under the current system ( http://theconversation.com/whose-votes-count-the-least-in-the-electoral-college-74280 ) and only 13 are needed to kill it.
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Apr 14, 2019 | discussion.theguardian.com
HARPhilby -> HARPhilby , 12 Apr 2019 08:55ABT-Anybody But Trumpmoderate_rebel_rebel , 12 Apr 2019 08:55Warren has the same foreign policy as all the others, invade, sanction, destroy. Steal oil, gold and assets. The US has become a deluded neurotic police state rife with addiction and so addled it is no longer a force for good in any sphere.In short it is now a part of the problem and no longer a part of any workable solution. Who becomes POTUS is therefore irrelevant.
Warren is flawed ideologically and personally, US citizens need to wake up and recognise that the POTUS is an irrelevant position with no authority and that until you tackle the neocon ridden nature of US politics nothing will ever change.
There is no hope in systems, only hope in people. Politics has become irrelevant in the face of our impending extinction.
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Apr 12, 2019 | www.theguardian.com
It may well not be Warren who wins the Democratic nomination, but whoever does will be campaigning on her ideas
since her initial announcement in December, Warren's campaign has rolled out a series of detailed policy proposals in quick succession, outlining structural changes to major industries, government functions, and regulatory procedures that would facilitate more equitable representation in the federal government and overhaul the economy in favor of the working class. These policy proposals have made Warren the Democratic party's new intellectual center of gravity, a formidable influence who is steadily pushing the presidential primary field to the left and forcing all of her primary challengers to define their political positions against hers.
Warren has become the Democratic party's new intellectual center of gravity
Warren herself is an anti-trust nerd, having come to the Senate from a career as an academic studying corporate and banking law. On the stump, she's most detailed in the same areas where she is most passionate, like when she talks about about breaking up huge tech companies such as Amazon and Google, and implementing a 21st-century -- version of the Glass-Steagall act that would separate commercial and investment banking (she has also called for prosecuting and jailing bank executives who break the law). But her policy agenda is broader than that, taking on pocketbook issues that have resonance with working families.
Warren outlined a huge overhaul of the childcare system that would revolutionize the quality, cost and curriculum of early childhood education, with subsidies for families and a living wage for caregivers. It's a proposal that she talks about in the context of her own career when, as a young mother and fledgling legal mind, she almost had to give up a job as a law professor because childcare for her young son was too expensive.
Warren has also proposed a housing plan that would limit huge investors' abilities to buy up homes, give incentives for localities to adopt renters' protections, and build new public housing. Crucially, and uniquely, her housing plan would also provide home ownership grants to buyers in minority communities that have historically been "redlined", a term for the racist federal housing policies that denied federally backed mortgages to black families. The provision, aimed to help black and brown families buy their first homes, is a crucial step toward amending the racial wealth gap, and it has helped sparked a broader conversation within the party about the need to pay reparations to the descendants of slaves -- a concept that Warren has also endorsed.
Taking her cues from pro-democracy and voting rights advocates such as Stacey Abrams, Warren has also taken on anti-majoritarian constitutional provisions, aiming to make American democracy more representative and less structurally hostile to a progressive agenda. She has called for abolishing the electoral college , the unfair institution the US uses to elect chief executives that makes a vote in New York count less than a vote in Wyoming, and which has resulted in two disastrous Republican presidencies in the past two decades. She has advocated eliminating the filibuster , an archaic procedural quirk of the Senate that would keep the Democrats from ever passing their agenda if they were to regain control of that body. And she has signaled a willingness to pack the courts , another move that will be necessary to implement leftist policies such as Medicare for All -- because even if the next Democratic president can pass her agenda through Congress, she will not be able to protect it from the malfeasance of a federal bench filled with conservative Trump appointees eager to strike it down.
When other candidates campaign, Warren's strong policy positions force them to define themselves against her
Warren has been the first to propose all of these policies, and it is not difficult to see other candidates falling in line behind her, issuing belated and imitative policy proposals, or being forced to position themselves to her right. Warren has promised not to go negative against other Democrats , but her campaign's intellectual project also serves a political purpose: when other candidates campaign, her strong policy positions force them to define themselves against her.
After Warren announced her childcare overhaul, senators Kirsten Gillibrand and Kamala Harris rolled out plans similarly designed to combat gendered economic injustice, calling for guaranteed family leave and better teacher pay , respectively. After Warren rolled out her pro-democracy agenda of eliminating the electoral college, abolishing the filibuster and packing the courts, her ideological rival Bernie Sanders was forced to come out against both eliminating the filibuster and packing the courts , damaging his reputation with a party base who knew that without these interventions, a progressive agenda will probably never be enacted. The pressure eventually forced Sanders to cave to Warren's vision and concede that he would be open to eliminating the filibuster in order to pass Medicare for All.
There's still a long time before the first contests, and it's possible that Warren will succumb to the flaws that her critics see in her campaign. In particular, she might not be able to raise enough money. She's decided not to take any Pac money and not to fundraise with wealthy donors, a position that may be as much practical as it is principled: the super-rich are not likely to donate to Warren anyway, since she has such a detailed plan, called the Ultra Millionaire Tax , to redistribute their money. She may fall victim to the seemingly unshakable controversy over her old claims of Native American ancestry, and she seems doomed to be smeared and underestimated for her sex, called cold and unlikable for her intellect and then, as with other female candidates, derided as pandering when she tries to seem more relatable.
But it would be a mistake to write Warren off as a virtuous also-ran, the kind of candidate whose intellectual and moral commitments doom her in a race dominated by the deep divisions in the electorate and the craven demagoguery of the incumbent. Elizabeth Warren does not seem to be running for president to make a point, or to position herself for a different job. Instead, she is making bold interventions in the political imagination of the party. It may well not be Warren who wins the Democratic nomination, but whoever does will be campaigning on her ideas.
Moira Donegan is a Guardian US columnist
CharlesLittle -> Ken Kutner , 12 Apr 2019 11:00
Thanks Ken and Thomas. I couldn't have said it better myself. Are we going to pare down the list of Democratic candidates on the basis of one or two stupid missteps? Looking through the Bible, I note that Jesus lost his temper at the money-changers and put down the hard-working Martha. So, he's out too.geejay123 -> Beaufort100 , 12 Apr 2019 10:58Ex Veteran Tulsi Gabbard has a very good chance of taking votes from Trump's base imo.Ranger69 , 12 Apr 2019 10:57
All round the best democratic candidate to declare so far.Im just glad Gabbard made it to the debate stage. More progressives the better.SoonToBeDead -> T0nyN , 12 Apr 2019 10:57Not only the USA, with everyone becoming wealthier, the need for education has declined, across the western world, being liberal or educated has become a swear word. Social media and lazy journalists are doing the rest, its all propaganda now, and permanent contradictory stories means only simple messages cut through the noise, hatred, immigrants, islamophobia, anti-semitism, etc. are classic messages that get through and stir people's emotions. Intellect doesn't win elections with a gullible electorateBaronVonAmericano -> CharlesLittle , 12 Apr 2019 10:54She really is thin in all areas but financial regulation and consumer protection.zagrebZ -> alex13 , 12 Apr 2019 10:54An excellent Commerce/Treasury secretary, or VP. But she lacks the cohesive vision that Sanders articulates.
Trump IS dumb... Or do you want me to Google a few thousand references for you?FolkSpirit -> OliversTravels , 12 Apr 2019 10:48'Moron'; 'Child-like'; 'Idiot'; 'Can barely read'...
Sound familiar? Words about Trump from his own staff.
It was a mistake and it was self-interested and it was unethical. And it was a different time before tribal groups in the US developed and enforced laws regarding membership status. Had Trump not shown disdain for her and all native Americans by calling her Pocahontas as though it were a racial slur, few would have made a big deal from this mistake.Excession77 -> HarryFlashman , 12 Apr 2019 10:42Warren did confess without need to do so that she had purchased distressed mortgages to turn a profit as a young lawyer like so many of her ethically misguided law colleagues.
If you are or intimately know more than two attorneys you know this was and in some towns and cities still is common practice for building wealth among lawyers who have first notice when these “deals” are posted at the local Court House. Find me a “clean” lawyer anywhere if you can and I doubt you can — they write law and protect themselves and wealthy constituents mightily in doing so.
If you can help remove most of them from political office and replace them with people working professions of greater merit I stand with you. Congress needs intellectual strength and diversity of backgrounds.
Shakespeare: “First, we kill the lawyers”.
Tulsi Gabbard or don't bother.garlicbreakfast , 12 Apr 2019 10:41Unfortunately she opposes wars of choice from the position of an impressive service record in Iraq so she gets ignored in favour of the ridiculous Elizabeth Warren here and in other places. Warren's window was last time anyway when she was coming off the back of viral public speeches about inequality.
Posturing as a would-be American native and supporting racial retributions is as far from qualifying as an intellectual powerhouse as it gets. She would be better than Trump, obviously, but then anybody would.BaronVonAmericano , 12 Apr 2019 10:41While I'd prefer the genders reversed, I think she would be an ideal running mate for the front-runner among the declared candidates.Sheldon Hodges -> Londonsage , 12 Apr 2019 10:41Sanders has much more assiduously defined the moral center that any candidate for president must have: unapologetic confrontation with the oligarchy. Warren is the intellectual weapon such an administration could deploy on the specifics of banking and anti-trust.
This is all the more practical given that Warren has failed to tie race, social justice and criminal justice issues all together in her values-based worldview -- certainly not to the extent that Sanders has, his being well beyond any other candidate's efforts.
Because Obama was a canny corporate move to place someone that offered such qualities as intelligence and grammar in sharp relief to GW Bush while remaining closely controlled by the oligarchy.BigDave47 , 12 Apr 2019 10:30Intellectual powerhouse?Do you include her fraudulent and offensive claims to Native American heritage in that? As CNN has reported, as far back as 1986 she was falsely claiming "American Indian" heritage on official documents. Despite repeated calls by the leaders of the Tribal Nations, she has still failed to apologise. That's some intellectual powerhouse..
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Apr 14, 2019 | discussion.theguardian.com
charlieblue -> Rio de Janeiro , 12 Apr 2019 10:39
Yeah, I remember Trump's healthcare "policy". It was a great, really, really great. The best healthcare ever. Repeal and replace. Obamacare is failing, it has failed, it's a huge failure, but Trump will do better. We were going to have the best healthcare in the world... I guess he's just to distracted by building that wall he's not building. Or, golf.
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Apr 13, 2019 | www.unz.com
For seven years, we have had to listen to a chorus of journalists, politicians and "experts" telling us that Assange was nothing more than a fugitive from justice, and that the British and Swedish legal systems could be relied on to handle his case in full accordance with the law. Barely a "mainstream" voice was raised in his defence in all that time.
... ... ...
The political and media establishment ignored the mounting evidence of a secret grand jury in Virginia formulating charges against Assange, and ridiculed Wikileaks' concerns that the Swedish case might be cover for a more sinister attempt by the US to extradite Assange and lock him away in a high-security prison, as had happened to whistleblower Chelsea Manning.
... ... ...
Equally, they ignored the fact that Assange had been given diplomatic status by Ecuador, as well as Ecuadorean citizenship. Britain was obligated to allow him to leave the embassy, using his diplomatic immunity, to travel unhindered to Ecuador. No "mainstream" journalist or politician thought this significant either.
... ... ...
They turned a blind eye to the news that, after refusing to question Assange in the UK, Swedish prosecutors had decided to quietly drop the case against him in 2015. Sweden had kept the decision under wraps for more than two years.
... ... ...
Most of the other documents relating to these conversations were unavailable. They had been destroyed by the UK's Crown Prosecution Service in violation of protocol. But no one in the political and media establishment cared, of course.
Similarly, they ignored the fact that Assange was forced to hole up for years in the embassy, under the most intense form of house arrest, even though he no longer had a case to answer in Sweden. They told us -- apparently in all seriousness -- that he had to be arrested for his bail infraction, something that would normally be dealt with by a fine.
... ... ...
This was never about Sweden or bail violations, or even about the discredited Russiagate narrative, as anyone who was paying the vaguest attention should have been able to work out. It was about the US Deep State doing everything in its power to crush Wikileaks and make an example of its founder.
It was about making sure there would never again be a leak like that of Collateral Murder, the military video released by Wikileaks in 2007 that showed US soldiers celebrating as they murdered Iraqi civilians. It was about making sure there would never again be a dump of US diplomatic cables, like those released in 2010 that revealed the secret machinations of the US empire to dominate the planet whatever the cost in human rights violations.
Now the pretence is over. The British police invaded the diplomatic territory of Ecuador -- invited in by Ecuador after it tore up Assange's asylum status -- to smuggle him off to jail. Two vassal states cooperating to do the bidding of the US empire. The arrest was not to help two women in Sweden or to enforce a minor bail infraction.
No, the British authorities were acting on an extradition warrant from the US. And the charges the US authorities have concocted relate to Wikileaks' earliest work exposing the US military's war crimes in Iraq -- the stuff that we all once agreed was in the public interest, that British and US media clamoured to publish themselves.
Still the media and political class is turning a blind eye. Where is the outrage at the lies we have been served up for these past seven years? Where is the contrition at having been gulled for so long? Where is the fury at the most basic press freedom -- the right to publish -- being trashed to silence Assange? Where is the willingness finally to speak up in Assange's defence?
It's not there. There will be no indignation at the BBC, or the Guardian, or CNN. Just curious, impassive -- even gently mocking -- reporting of Assange's fate.
And that is because these journalists, politicians and experts never really believed anything they said. They knew all along that the US wanted to silence Assange and to crush Wikileaks. They knew that all along and they didn't care. In fact, they happily conspired in paving the way for today's kidnapping of Assange.
They did so because they are not there to represent the truth, or to stand up for ordinary people, or to protect a free press, or even to enforce the rule of law. They don't care about any of that. They are there to protect their careers, and the system that rewards them with money and influence. They don't want an upstart like Assange kicking over their applecart.
Now they will spin us a whole new set of deceptions and distractions about Assange to keep us anaesthetised, to keep us from being incensed as our rights are whittled away, and to prevent us from realising that Assange's rights and our own are indivisible. We stand or fall together.
Jonathan Cook won the Martha Gellhorn Special Prize for Journalism. His books include "Israel and the Clash of Civilisations: Iraq, Iran and the Plan to Remake the Middle East" (Pluto Press) and "Disappearing Palestine: Israel's Experiments in Human Despair" (Zed Books). His website is www.jonathan-cook.net .
anonymous [340] • Disclaimer , says: April 12, 2019 at 10:41 am GMT
Thank you.Digital Samizdat , says: April 12, 2019 at 5:11 pm GMTThis should be an uncomfortable time for the “journalists” of the Establishment. Very few will speak up as does Mr. Cook. Watch how little is said about the recent Manning re-imprisonment to sweat out grand jury testimony. Things may have grown so craven that we’ll even see efforts to revoke Mr. Assange’s awards.
This is also a good column for us to share with those people who just might want not to play along with the lies that define Exceptionalia.
Carlton Meyer , says: • Website April 13, 2019 at 4:32 am GMT… from the moment Julian Assange first sought refuge in the Ecuadorean embassy in London, they have been telling us we were wrong, that we were paranoid conspiracy theorists. We were told there was no real threat of Assange’s extradition to the United States, that it was all in our fevered imaginations.
It all reminds me of Rod Dreher’s Law of Merited Impossibility: “That’ll never happen. And when it does , boy won’t you deserve it!”
Equally, they ignored the fact that Assange had been given diplomatic status by Ecuador, as well as Ecuadorean citizenship. Britain was obligated to allow him to leave the embassy, using his diplomatic immunity, to travel unhindered to Ecuador. No “mainstream” journalist or politician thought this significant either.
Why would they? They don’t even recognize diplomatic status for heads of state who get in their way! Remember what they did to President Evo Morales of Bolivia back when he was threatening to grant asylum to Ed Snowden? Here’s a refresher:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Evo_Morales_grounding_incident
Any way you slice, this is a sad for liberty.
From my blog:The Alarmist , says: April 13, 2019 at 5:01 am GMTApr 13, 2019 – Julian Assange
People who just watch corporate media think Julian Assange is a bad guy who deserves life in prison, except those who watch the great Tucker Carlson. Watch his recent show where he explains why our corporate media and political class hate Assange.
https://www.youtube.com/embed/ZE7OfU71Sbk?feature=oembed
He is charged with encouraging Army Private Chelsea Manning to send him embarrassing information, specifically this video of a US Army Apache helicopter gunning down civilians in broad daylight in Baghdad.
https://www.youtube.com/embed/25EWUUBjPMo?feature=oembed
But there is no proof of this, and Manning has repeatedly said he never communicated to Assange about anything. Manning got eight years in prison for this crime; the Apache pilots were never charged. and now they want to hang Assange for exposing a war crime. I have recommend this great 2016 interview twice, where Assange calmly explains the massive corruption that patriotic FBI agents refer to as the “Clinton Crime Family.”
https://www.youtube.com/embed/_sbT3_9dJY4?feature=oembed
This gang is so powerful that it ordered federal agents to spy on the Trump political campaign, and indicted and imprisoned some participants in an attempt to pressure President Trump to step down. It seems Trump still fears this gang, otherwise he would order his attorney general to drop this bogus charge against Assange, then pardon him forever and invite him to speak at White House press conferences.
Endgame Napoleon , says: April 13, 2019 at 6:14 am GMT“… they ignored the fact that Assange was forced to hole up for years in the embassy, under the most intense form of house arrest, even though he no longer had a case to answer in Sweden.”
Meh! Assange should have walked out the door of the embassy years ago. He might have ended up in the same place, but he could have seized the moral high ground by seeking asylum in Britain for fear of the death penalty in the US, which was a credible fear given public comments by various US officials. By rotting away in the Ecuadorian embassy, be greatly diminished any credibility he might have had to turn the UK judicial system inside out to his favour. Now he’s just a creepy looking bail jumper who flung faeces against the wall, rather than being a persecuted journalist.
@Johnny Rottenborough Millionaire politicians on both sides of the political fence get very emotional about anything that impacts their own privacy & safety and the privacy & safety of their kin, while ignoring the issues that jeopardize the privacy & safety of ordinary voters. While corporate-owned politicians get a lot out of this game, ordinary voters who have never had less in the way of Fourth Amendment privacy rights, and whose First Amendment rights are quickly shrinking to the size of Assange’s, do not get the consolation of riches without risk granted to bought-off politicians in this era’s pay-to-play version of democracy. It’s a lose / lose for average voters.Tom Welsh , says: April 13, 2019 at 9:31 am GMTMr Cook’s criticism of the mainstream media (MSM) is absolutely justified.UncommonGround , says: April 13, 2019 at 10:13 am GMTIt seems to me that their hatred of Mr Assange reflects the unfortunate fact that, while he is a real journalist, they actually aren’t. Instead, they are stenographers for power: what Paul Craig Roberts calls “presstitutes” (a very happy coinage which exactly hits the bull’s eye).
The difference is that real journalists, like Mr Assange, Mr Roberts and Mr Cook, are mainly motivated by the search for objective truth – which they then publish, as far as they are able.
Whereas those people who go by the spurious names of “journalist”, “reporter”, “editor”, etc. are motivated by the desire to go on earning their salaries, and to gain promotion and “distinction” in society. (Sad but true: social distinction is often gained by performing acts of dishonesty and downright wickedness).
Here are some interesting quotations that cast some light on this disheartening state of affairs. If you look carefully at their dates you may be surprised to find that nothing has changed very much since the mid-19th century.
‘Marr: “How can you know that I’m self-censoring? How can you know that journalists are…”
‘Chomsky: “I’m not saying you’re self censoring. I’m sure you believe everything you’re saying. But what I’m saying is that if you believed something different, you wouldn’t be sitting where you’re sitting”’.
– Transcript of interview between Noam Chomsky and Andrew Marr (Feb. 14, 1996) https://scratchindog.blogspot.com/2015/07/transcript-of-interview-between-noam.html
‘If something goes wrong with the government, a free press will ferret it out and it will get fixed. But if something goes wrong with our free press, the country will go straight to hell’.
– I. F. Stone (as reported by his son Dr Jeremy J Stone) http://russia-insider.com/en/media-criticism/hey-corporate-media-glenn-greenwald-video-can-teach-you-what-real-journalism/ri6669
‘There is no such a thing in America as an independent press, unless it is out in country towns. You are all slaves. You know it, and I know it. There is not one of you who dares to express an honest opinion. If you expressed it, you would know beforehand that it would never appear in print. I am paid $150 for keeping honest opinions out of the paper I am connected with. Others of you are paid similar salaries for doing similar things. If I should allow honest opinions to be printed in one issue of my paper, I would be like Othello before twenty-four hours: my occupation would be gone. The man who would be so foolish as to write honest opinions would be out on the street hunting for another job. The business of a New York journalist is to distort the truth, to lie outright, to pervert, to vilify, to fawn at the feet of Mammon, and to sell his country and his race for his daily bread, or for what is about the same — his salary. You know this, and I know it; and what foolery to be toasting an “Independent Press”! We are the tools and vassals of rich men behind the scenes. We are jumping-jacks. They pull the string and we dance. Our time, our talents, our lives, our possibilities, are all the property of other men. We are intellectual prostitutes’.
– John Swinton (1829–1901), Scottish-American journalist, newspaper publisher, and orator. https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/John_Swinton http://www.rense.com/general20/yes.htm
‘The press today is an army with carefully organized arms and branches, with journalists as officers, and readers as soldiers. But here, as in every army, the soldier obeys blindly, and war-aims and operation-plans change without his knowledge. The reader neither knows, nor is allowed to know, the purposes for which he is used, nor even the role that he is to play. A more appalling caricature of freedom of thought cannot be imagined. Formerly a man did not dare to think freely. Now he dares, but cannot; his will to think is only a willingness to think to order, and this is what he feels as his liberty’.
– Oswald Spengler, “The Decline of the West” Vol. II, trans. C.F. Atkinson (1928), p. 462
‘How do wars start? Wars start when politicians lie to journalists, then believe what they read in the press’.
– Karl Kraus, “Through Western Eyes – Russia Misconstrued” http://www.hellevig.net/ebook/Putin’s%20new%20Russia.pdf
And finally, two quotations from classic novels which go to the heart of the matter.
‘It is difficult to get a man to understand something when his salary depends upon his not understanding it’.
– Upton Sinclair
‘Sometimes a man wants to be stupid if it lets him do a thing his cleverness forbids’.
– John Steinbeck (“East of Eden”)
Very good article. There is one point that I would like to make: Assange asked for asyl before he went to the embassy of Ecuador and Ecuador gave him asylum. This meant that they had an obligation to protect him. It’s really unbeliavable that a country gives asylum to someone and half way tells that they have changed their mind and will let the person be arrested. ” We told you you would be safe with us, but now we just changed our mind”. Assange also became a citizen of Ecuador and this possibly means that Ecuador couldn’t have let him been arrested in their embassy by the police of another country without a process against him in Ecuador and without him having the right to defend himself in a court. Many countries don’t extradit their citizens to other countries.EliteCommInc. , says: April 13, 2019 at 10:59 am GMTAnother remark. For years there were uncountable articles about Assange in The Guardian. Those articles were read by many people and got really many comments. There were very fierce discussions about him with thousends of comments. With time The Guardian turned decisively against him and published articles againt him. There were people there who seemed to hate him. In the last days there were again many articles about him. They pronounce themselves discretely against his extradition to the US even if showing themselves to be critical of him as if trying to justify their years of attacks against him. But one detail: I didn’t find even one article in The Guardian where you can comment the case. Today for instance you can comment an article by Gaby Hinsliff about Kim Kardashian. Marina Hyde talks in an article about washing her hair (whatever else she wants to say, with 2831 comments at this moment). But you don’t find any article about Assange that you can comment. 10 or 8 or 5 years ago there were hundreds of articles about him that you could comment.
The game afoot here is obvious.Tsar Nicholas , says: April 13, 2019 at 11:38 am GMThttps://www.caracaschronicles.com/2017/04/03/ecuador-next-venezuela/
Pressure relief
@ArtUK PM May said about Assange – “no one is above the law” – proving she is a weak sister without a clue.
No one is above the law except the British government, which ignored the provisions of the EU Withdrawal Act requiring us to leave on March 29th.
No one is above the law except for the US and the UK which have illegally deployed forces to Syria against the wishes of the government in Damascus.
And Tony Blair, a million dead thanks to his corruption. He should be doing time in a Gulag for his evil crimes.
And of course, the black MP for Peterborough – Fiona Onasanya – served a mere three weeks in jail for perverting the course of justice, normally regarded as a very serious offence. But she was out in time – electronic tag and curfew notwithstanding – to vote in the House of Commons against leaving the EU.
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Apr 13, 2019 | www.unz.com
APB , says: April 13, 2019 at 4:30 pm GMT
@UncommonGround Many years ago The Guardian was a left leaning newspaper and reported the news in a fairly unbiased manner. It was always quite critical of the Zionists and Israel and supported good causes but then suddenly, a few years ago, it became very defensive of Israel and started to censor readers comments about Israeli news stories, then it stopped publishing any story criticizing Israel.There must have a change of ownership or some kind of right wing or Zionist takeover.
Then it started really blocking comments to news articles which didn't agree with the opinion of the Guardian editors.
Then Wikileaks published its leaks through the Guardian, and others, who used the info to sell news.
Then it quite shockingly turned around and stabbed Wikileaks and Assange in the back.
I think now it is operated as a controlled media outlet in favour of the UK security services and the Israelis, it's a real shame as it has the potential to be an excellent news source but it's reputation is now trashed in my opinion.
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Apr 08, 2019 | off-guardian.org
Russian research team which claimed to have detected signs of intelligent life in Washington has now discovered the life there not to be quite so intelligent after all.
A Russian spokesman, who wishes to remain anonymous, told our Moscow science correspondent -- who also wishes to remain anonymous -- that the Washington atmosphere has been poisoned by huge clouds of putrid hot air belching from the corporate media. He explained that such a hostile environment makes it almost impossible for intelligent life to survive, let alone evolve a sustainable culture. The Russian team believes there may still be small pockets of intelligent life elsewhere on the North American continent but without the necessary conditions they need to thrive they are destined to disappear without trace.
Speaking off the record, the Russian spokesman, who asked us not to disclose his identity, added that hopes of finding intelligent life in London, Paris, Berlin and other Western European locations, where it might be expected to flourish, are fading fast. Though it is believed intelligent life once existed in Occiental Europe, an atmosphere suitable for the maintenance of such life has all but evaporated.
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Apr 08, 2019 | off-guardian.org
Jackrabbit | Apr 7, 2019 10:23:49 AM | 1
All of us in the West pay the Scumbag Tax: crime, terrorism, corruption, addiction, excessive immigration (in part from smashed countries) , pollution, propaganda, managed/faux democracy, wealth/income inequality, moral turpitude (supporting dictators, war, genocide, human rights abuses, apartheid, torture, etc.) , and more.
All in the name of freedom and democracy. How's that working out for ya?
AntiSpin | Apr 7, 2019 3:06:21 PM | 37
@ lysias | Apr 7, 2019 12:22:45 PM | 17
You might have been given an incorrect title to the book; I think that you may be referring to this:
"Operation Gladio: The Unholy Alliance Between the Vatican, the CIA and the Mafia"
It's for sale here:
https://www.amazon.com/Operation-Gladio-Alliance-between-Vatican/dp/1616149744Here is a highly informative, detailed, fact-filled review of the book
https://off-guardian.org/2019/04/06/operation-gladio-the-unholy-alliance/
that might hold you until you manage to acquire the book itself.
The review by itself is filled with names, dates, events, places, and ties together dozens of nasty historical threads, making sense out of so many seemingly senseless horrors over the past 70 years.
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Apr 04, 2019 | www.theguardian.com
The NSA access was enabled by changes to US surveillance law introduced under President Bush and renewed under Obama in December 2012. Prism Photograph: Guardian
The program facilitates extensive, in-depth surveillance on live communications and stored information. The law allows for the targeting of any customers of participating firms who live outside the US, or those Americans whose communications include people outside the US.
It also opens the possibility of communications made entirely within the US being collected without warrants.
Disclosure of the Prism program follows a leak to the Guardian on Wednesday of a top-secret court order compelling telecoms provider Verizon to turn over the telephone records of millions of US customers.
The participation of the internet companies in Prism will add to the debate, ignited by the Verizon revelation, about the scale of surveillance by the intelligence services. Unlike the collection of those call records, this surveillance can include the content of communications and not just the metadata.
Some of the world's largest internet brands are claimed to be part of the information-sharing program since its introduction in 2007. Microsoft – which is currently running an advertising campaign with the slogan "Your privacy is our priority" – was the first, with collection beginning in December 2007.
It was followed by Yahoo in 2008; Google, Facebook and PalTalk in 2009; YouTube in 2010; Skype and AOL in 2011; and finally Apple, which joined the program in 2012. The program is continuing to expand, with other providers due to come online.
Collectively, the companies cover the vast majority of online email, search, video and communications networks.
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Apr 01, 2019 | www.theguardian.com
MSM honchos were frantically typing #Covfefe on Google translate to see what it means in Russian.
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Mar 27, 2019 | www.theguardian.com
Donald Trump recently unleashed his dark vision for our nation and our world, in the form of his budget request to Congress .
A budget shows our values more clearly than any tweet, campaign speech or political slogan. It's what marries detailed, dollar-and-cents policy decisions to deeper political – and moral – priorities.
One set of moral priorities – a different one – would end our endless wars and use the vast wealth of this nation to end poverty and lead to true security for all of us. It would invest in healthcare, well-paying jobs, affordable higher education, safe drinking water and clean air for all of us.
The proposed Trump budget drops bombs on that vision – almost literally.
With this budget, Trump takes more than $1tn in taxpayer money and disperses fully $750bn to the military. Out of every taxpayer dollar , in other words, 62 cents go to the military and our militarized Department of Homeland Security. (Veterans' benefits take another seven cents.)
... ... ...
At every turn, the Trump budget finds vast billions for militarization, while it cuts much smaller poverty and other programs, claiming the goal is to save money.It includes $164bn in war funding, but it cuts $4.7bn in economic development and food assistance to other nations. It finds $14bn for a vanity project military branch called the space force, while it cuts $1.2bn for a program that's built and preserved more than 1m affordable homes. It includes $11bn for contractor Lockheed Martin to build more F-35 jet fighters, but it cuts $3.7bn in heating and cooling assistance for 6m poor households.
And it includes more than $12bn for a wall at our border, while it cuts $1bn for Job Corps, the program that provides yearly training and work experience to 50,000 poor (and mostly black) youths.
The budget falsely claims to adhere to strict spending limits set by Congress for the military. But it hides an extra $174bn for the Pentagon in plain sight by adding it to a war spending account – despite the fact that the president has said he wants to bring back thousands of troops from Syria and Afghanistan. This gimmick brings total military spending all the way up to $750bn, even while the administration claims it is cutting the base Pentagon budget
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Mar 27, 2019 | www.theguardian.com
No country in the world recognizes Israel's rule over the Golan Heights, occupied by Israel in 1967 and unilaterally annexed in 1981 – no country, that is, until now.
Donald Trump signed a presidential proclamation on Monday formally recognizing Israeli sovereignty over the Golan Heights, still considered Syrian territory under international law. Standing by President Trump's side during an address by the two heads of state in Washington DC, the Israeli prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, reportedly called Trump's decision " historic justice " and gifted the president a box of wine from the occupied territory. As they embraced, Israeli forces began an aerial bombardment of the besieged Gaza Strip after rockets launched from Gaza hit a house in a community north of Tel Aviv earlier that day.
Trump's announcement is unmistakably an election-time favor for Netanyahu. Saddled with multiple corruption charges, including one for bribery, Netanyahu and his Likud party have been flagging in the polls. Likud increasingly appears threatened by the center-right Blue and White party, jointly headed by the taciturn retired general Benny Gantz and former TV personality Yair Lapid. Netanyahu's desperation can be measured by the extremity of his rhetoric. He and his surrogates have spent the past several weeks waging a hateful, vicious campaign, accusing the Arab political parties of supporting terrorism and explicitly warning that a Gantz and Lapid victory would lead to dead Israelis.
Many in Israel, however, view Netanyahu, despite his flaws, as a talented statesman and skilled advocate for the country's interests on the international stage, and Netanyahu has campaigned on achievements such as normalizing relations with the Gulf states and the US embassy's move from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem. The Golan Heights declaration – which initially took even the secretary of state, Mike Pompeo, who was in Israel at the time, by surprise – is likely meant to bolster this image.
Trump's recognition of the Golan Heights marks the total capture of US policymaking in the Middle East by pro-Israel right
But Trump's Golan Heights proclamation is not just a cynical political gambit. It is a dramatic change in US policy in the Middle East that could have serious consequences. Trump, unlike his predecessors, has never even pretended to abide by international norms and conventions. And yet the decision to recognize Israeli sovereignty over territory that the international community nearly unanimously considers occupied, or at the very least disputed, is unprecedented.
It gives a formal US stamp of approval to Israel's violation of international law, and, in particular of the Fourth Geneva Convention, which prohibits an occupying power from transferring its civilians into occupied territory. Roughly 20,000 Israeli settlers live in the occupied Golan Heights today – now with the unambiguous backing of the US government.
This potentially paves the way for Israel's annexation, in part or whole, of the West Bank. It has long been a talking point on the Israeli hard right that, despite the international community's protestations, there would be few consequences for extending Israeli sovereignty over the West Bank . Trump's declaration, it seems, has not only proven them right, but given them an added boost: unlike during the Obama years, they can be confident that the global hegemon will take their side.
If Netanyahu's Likud wins enough seats on 9 April to form a government, it is very like that annexation, at the very least, will be on the table for discussion. The Likud's central committee unanimously voted in 2017 in favor of annexing the West Bank. Naftali Bennett, co-chair of the New Right party, has proposed a plan to annex parts of Area C of the West Bank. And the other rightwing parties – the extremist Union of Parties of the Right and Moshe Feiglin's Identity party, both of which would almost certainly sit in a future Likud government – have only more extreme proposals for dealing with "the Palestinian question", including the forced transfer of Palestinians out of the West Bank and into Jordan.
Trump's recognition of the Golan Heights marks the total capture of US policymaking in the Middle East by pro-Israel right. US ambassador to Israel David Friedman is an opponent of the two-state solution who previously operated the charitable arm of a rightwing orthodox religious seminary in the West Bank settlement of Beit El. Jared Kusher's family is so close Netanyahu that the prime minister once slept in Kushner's childhood bedroom . Between the Trump administration's personnel and rightward lurch in Israeli politics, the pieces that would make the current one-state reality permanent are rapidly falling into place.
It is important to remember this in light of the glitz and pablum of the AIPAC policy conference taking place this week in Washington DC, where the PR hacks and policy flacks are working hard to launder Israel's image, to obscure the fact that there is one sovereign state between the Jordan River and the Mediterranean Sea that determines the lives of roughly 13 million people; that of those 13 million, only half – Israeli Jews – have full citizenship and social rights; and that the other half, the Palestinians, live under a range of discriminatory systems, from codified discrimination but legal citizenship within Israel, to residency without the right to vote in East Jerusalem, to military dictatorship in the West Bank. Donald Trump , his administration, the pro-Israel lobby, and Netanyahu all intend to keep it that way.
Joshua Leifer is an associate editor at Dissent. Previously, he worked at +972 Magazine and was based in Jerusalem
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Mar 26, 2019 | www.theguardian.com
I would like to express my gratitude to Jared Kushner for reviving interest in my 2006 book, The Price of Admission . I have never met or spoken with him, and it's rare in this life to find such a selfless benefactor. Of course, I doubt he became Donald Trump's son-in-law and consigliere merely to boost my lagging sales, but still, I'm thankful.
My book exposed a grubby secret of American higher education: that the rich buy their underachieving children's way into elite universities with massive, tax-deductible donations. It reported that New Jersey real estate developer Charles Kushner had pledged $2.5m to Harvard University not long before his son Jared was admitted to the prestigious Ivy League school, which at the time accepted about one of every nine applicants. (Nowadays, it only takes one out of 20.)
I also quoted administrators at Jared's high school, who described him as a less-than-stellar student and expressed dismay at Harvard's decision.
"There was no way anybody in the administrative office of the school thought he would on the merits get into Harvard,'' a former official at the Frisch school in Paramus, New Jersey, told me. "His GPA [grade point average] did not warrant it, his SAT scores did not warrant it. We thought, for sure, there was no way this was going to happen. Then, lo and behold, Jared was accepted. It was a little bit disappointing because there were at the time other kids we thought should really get in on the merits, and they did not.''
Risa Heller, a spokeswoman for Kushner Companies, said in an email on Thursday that "the allegation'' that Charles Kushner's gift to Harvard was related to Jared's admission "is and always has been false". His parents, Charles and Seryl Kushner, "are enormously generous and have donated over $100m to universities, hospitals and other charitable causes. Jared Kushner was an excellent student in high school and graduated from Harvard with honours.'' (About 90% of Jared's 2003 class at Harvard also graduated with honours.)
My Kushner discoveries were an offshoot of my research for a chapter on Harvard donors. Somebody had slipped me a document I had long coveted: the membership list of Harvard's Committee on University Resources. The university wooed more than 400 of its biggest givers and most promising prospects by putting them on this committee and inviting them to campus periodically to be wined, dined and subjected to lectures by eminent professors.
My idea was to figure out how many children of these corporate titans, oil barons, money managers, lawyers, high-tech consultants and old-money heirs had gone to Harvard. A disproportionate tally might suggest that the university eased its standards for the offspring of wealthy backers.
I began working through the list, poring over Who's Who in America and Harvard class reunion reports for family information. Charles and Seryl Kushner were both on the committee. I had never heard of them, but their joint presence struck me as a sign that Harvard's fundraising machine held the couple in especially fond regard.
The clips showed that Charles Kushner's empire encompassed 25,000 New Jersey apartments, along with extensive office, industrial and retail space and undeveloped land. Unlike most of his fellow committee members, though, Kushner was not a Harvard man. He had graduated from New York University. This eliminated the sentimental tug of the alma mater as a reason for him to give to Harvard, leaving another likely explanation: his children.
Sure enough, his sons Jared and Joshua had both enrolled there.
Charles Kushner differed from his peers on the committee in another way: he had a criminal record. Five years after Jared entered Harvard, the elder Kushner pleaded guilty in 2004 to tax violations, illegal campaign donations and retaliating against a witness. (As it happens, the prosecutor in the case was Chris Christie, recently ousted as the head of Trump's transition team.) Charles Kushner had hired a prostitute to seduce his brother-in-law , who was cooperating with federal authorities. Kushner then had a videotape of the tryst sent to his sister. He was sentenced to two years in federal prison.
I completed my analysis, which justified my hunch. Of the 400-plus tycoons on Harvard's list – which included people who were childless or too young to have college-age offspring – more than half had sent at least one child to the university.
I also decided that the Kushner-Harvard relationship deserved special attention. Although the university often heralded big gifts in press releases or a bulletin called, in a classic example of fundraising wit, Re:sources, a search of these outlets came up empty. Harvard didn't seem eager to be publicly associated with Charles Kushner.
While looking into Kushner's taxes, though, federal authorities had subpoenaed records of his charitable giving. I learned that in 1998, when Jared was attending the Frisch school and starting to look at colleges, his father had pledged $2.5m to Harvard, to be paid in annual instalments of $250,000. Charles Kushner also visited Neil Rudenstine, then Harvard president, and discussed funding a scholarship programme for low- and middle-income students.
I phoned a Harvard official, with whom I was on friendly terms. First I asked whether the gift played any role in Jared's admission. "You know we don't comment on individual applicants,'' he said. When I pressed further, he hung up. We haven't spoken since.
At Harvard, Jared Kushner majored in government. Now the 35-year-old is poised to become the power behind the presidency. What he plans to do, and in what direction he and his father-in-law will lead the country, are far more important than his high school grades.
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Mar 18, 2015 | Russia Insider
Washington is betraying the best interests of the American people through its current foreign policy... European democracy is threatened by US, not Russian, foreign policy
The avalanche of commentary since the Ukrainian crisis erupted a year ago has overshadowed any reflections on the immense forgone benefits (technically speaking, the "opportunity cost") of what might have been if Washington had been working for peace and stability instead of war and chaos.
Imagine the following: After the unraveling of the Communist bloc, Europe, in partnership with the US, had forged a new security system in which Russia was treated as a valued and equal partner – one whose interests were respected. Russia, decimated by a century of wars and Communist imperialism, would doubtless have eagerly reciprocated in kind. Most countries of the former Soviet Union would have then proceeded to build a new Eurasian structure of which Russia would have served as the natural umbrella, given its long-standing interaction with the region's diverse nations and cultures.
Indeed, as Putin himself had proposed in his visionary October 2011 article, the Eurasian Union could have become one of the pillars of a huge harmonized economic area stretching from Lisbon to Vladivostok and based on the EU's single-market rules (acquis communautaire).
The rising Far Eastern economic powerhouse, with the world's most populous country, China, at its centre, would have linked up with the world's largest economy (the EU). An enormous Eurasian production and financial bloc would have been created – one that drew primarily on secure supplies of Russian energy and other natural resources. Untold investment opportunities would have opened up in Siberia and Russia's Far East as well as in Central Asia. Hundreds of millions of people in Eurasia and elsewhere would have been lifted out of poverty. And, not least, the EU would have been refashioned as an integral part of the dynamic trans-Eurasian economy (rather than as a German-centred empire, as appears to be the case today), thereby making a major contribution to overcoming the ongoing global economic depression.
All of this was not to be, however. Why not? First and foremost, because the self-proclaimed "exceptional" power (actually, a mere "outlying island" in the Atlantic, according to the founder of geopolitics, Halford Mackinder) and its dysfunctional "deep-state" officialdom did not want it to be. How could they have permitted such a thing? How could they have allowed other countries to get on with improving the lives of their citizens without being obliged to seek Washington's approval every step of the way?
European democracy is threatened by US, not Russian, foreign policy
In order to make sure that they were not side-lined, the US elites had to intervene. The Western propaganda machine started churning out all sorts of nonsense that Putin is a new Hitler who is bent on restoring the Soviet empire and who is bullying Europe, while continuing to bang on about his "increasingly autocratic rule".
Deadly attacks by chauvinistic proxies were launched on the Russophone people in South Ossetia, Georgia in 2008 and more recently in Ukraine.
And in what is eerily reminiscent of Stalinist "bloc discipline", the EU/NATO nomenclature was ordered to implement the absurd strategy of severing the Russian economy from the EU. For their part, the cowering Eurocrats willingly obliged by imposing sanctions on Russia that, perversely, have had a negative impact on their own economies (but, let it be stressed, not that of the US). No questions raised and no public debate on the wisdom of such a strategy permitted.
Stuck in an Orwellian nightmare, Europe has to demonstrate its unfailing loyalty to Big Brother and go along with the view that Russia, an intrinsic and valuable part of the European mainstream both historically and culturally, represents universal evil and that the Earth will not be safe until the Federation has been dismembered and Putinism wiped out once and for all.
This abuse and humiliation of Europe is unparalleled. The continent that gave the world the wonders of the Antiquity, modern democracy, the industrial revolution and what is arguably the greatest tradition of philosophy, fine arts and classical music is being bullied by its oversized offspring. Having self-destructed in two world wars, it has become an easy and even willing prey to an arrogant, ignorant and power-drunk predator that has never experienced the hardships and horrors that Europe has. War and extermination camps are etched into the European DNA. America "knows" about them only from afar – and, not least, from the Hollywood entertainment industry.
Even more terrifying, intellectually third-rate Washington viceroys such as Victoria Nuland and the freelancing armchair warrior Senator McCain are allowed to play God with our continent. The so-called European "leaders" are colluding with them in plunging Europe into the abyss and thereby risking nuclear confrontation.
America, too, is a loser
But this is not just a tragedy for Europe and Eurasia. We are also witnessing the wilful misrule of America and, by default, of the entire West. Indeed, Washington is betraying the best interests of the American people through its current foreign policy. The "democracy-promoters" running Washington's foreign-policy apparatus apparently do not understand that America has nothing to lose and a lot to gain from the Eurasian economic project: the rising tide of global economic welfare would lift everyone's boats, including its own. Why should it matter to Washington if the rising tide comes from other quarters beyond its control?
Indeed, the damage extends beyond the economy. By aligning with the forces of chaos – such as chauvinistic extremists in Ukraine – Washington and its Euro-vassals are corrupting the moral (and intellectual) core of the West. If it continues to support such forces against Russia, united Europe will lose not only its backbone but its very soul. The moral consequences of this loss will be enormous and could lead to the precipitous erosion of Western democracy.
The 'autocrats' want to work with the West, not against it
US and EU leaders believe that the Russian and Chinese "autocrats" are out to destroy the West because the latter hate freedom (as George W. Bush might have put it). And hence, they argue, the autocrats must be stopped in their tracks. The simple truth is that Western leaders are too blinkered to understand that far from desiring to destroy the West, Russia and China want it to prosper so that they can work with it to everyone's benefit. Having enjoyed a privileged position over several centuries and having attained unprecedented prosperity in recent decades, the West simply cannot understand that the rest of humanity has no interest in fomenting the "clash of civilizations" but rather craves peace and stability so that it can finally improve its economic lot.
Perhaps, however, all is not yet lost. It is still possible that reason – and economic forces – will prevail and force the West to correct the errors of its ways. What we need, perhaps, more than ever is the ability to step out of the box, question our fundamental assumptions (not least about Russia and China) and find the courage to change policies that have proved disastrous. After all, critical thought, dispassionate analysis and the ability to be open to new ideas is what made the West so successful in the past. If we are to thrive once again in the future, we must resurrect these most valuable and unsurpassed assets.
Vlad Sobell teaches political economy in Prague and Berlin Europeans Look On as US Sows Discord on the Continent Wed, Nov 2
Tom Welsh
What I cannot understand is the naive belief that elected politicians would act in the interests of those whom they represent. Under what other circumstances do we see human beings act with disinterested altruism? So why would a bunch of people who have been ruthlessly selected for selfishness, arrogance, and callousness - a bunch of carefully chosen psychopaths, if you will - behave in that way?
'My Ph.D. dissertation chairman, who became a high Pentagon official assigned to wind down the Vietnam war, in answer to my question about how Washington gets Europeans to always do what Washington wants replied: "Money, we give them money." "Foreign aid?" I asked. "No, we give the European political leaders bagfuls of money. They are for sale. We bought them. They report to us." Perhaps this explains Tony Blair's $50 million fortune one year out of office'.
- Paul Craig Roberts
jabirujoe
"Washington is betraying the best interests of the American people through its current foreign policy".
Not only it's foreign policy but it's domestic policy as well. Let's call it for what it really is. The Wall Street/Corporate policy which is the driving force behind behind everything the US does
Toddrich
"We, the [CENSORED] people, control America and the Americans know it." -- Benjamin Netanyahu, Prime Minister of [CENSORED]
"When we're done with the U.S. it will shrivel up and blow away." -- Benjamin Netanyahu, Prime Minister of [CENSORED]
The welfare or future of the American people are not part of the equation.
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-> www.theguardian.com
GODsaysBRESCAPE , 2016-07-26 11:20:12Sucker born every minute over there!
Sounded like a speech made by a mother on the PTA committee , talk about hyperbole and one sided reporting.
Yeah, they are good with words the Obama. They can talk the talk. But they don't walk the walk. All we got from Obama was more wars, more regime changes, more torture prisons, hundreds of thousands of more dead women and children in the middle east, more racist killer cops at home and a new cold war. And Hilary will bring more of the same. Now that is something to cry about.tb4911 -> -> ShanghaiGuy , 2016-07-26 11:40:30Libya but Hillary was the real driving force.Michael109 , 2016-07-26 11:12:00Collective amnesia here. The speech brought me to tears also, tears for a once proud Dem party. The Obamas are backing a person, Clinton, who was "extremely careless" with emails in relation to national security (FBI words) and who clearly lied under oath to Congress and who is also clearly behind rigging the Dem nomination process to shaft Sanders and the millions of young people who supported him, absolutely shamelesspentreifan , 2016-07-26 11:11:46Caring Hillary? A woman who said of Gadaffi's murder "We came, we saw, he died." He was, apparently, sodomised with a bayonet beforehand. And Obama's care for children seems limited by borders. Doesn't seem to care much about the kids of Afghanistan or Yemen.Rob Lewis , 2016-07-26 10:56:02Here's John Pilger on Obama:
" In 2009, President Obama stood before an adoring crowd in the centre of Prague, in the heart of Europe. He pledged himself to make "the world free from nuclear weapons". People cheered and some cried. A torrent of platitudes flowed from the media. Obama was subsequently awarded the Nobel Peace Prize.
It was all fake. He was lying.
The Obama administration has built more nuclear weapons, more nuclear warheads, more nuclear delivery systems, more nuclear factories. Nuclear warhead spending alone rose higher under Obama than under any American president. The cost over thirty years is more than $1 trillion."
Link: http://www.counterpunch.org/2016/03/23/a-world-war-has-begun-break-the-silence
Michelle said (Hillary) "Advocating for kids with disabilities as a young lawyer" This is the same Lawyer that bragged about getting a 41 year old pedophile off the hook for raping a 12 year old girl.Sid Debgupta , 2016-07-26 10:44:03https://www.intellihub.com/video-hillary-clinton-brags-getting-pedophile-off-hook /
Wow -- I am all weepy --Frontignan , 2016-07-26 10:39:50Where to next Madam Obama ? You have a few months left to scrounge on the taxpayer dime, so where is the next multi-million dollar all-expenses paid vacation with Mammy, the kids and the entire entourage gonna be ?
Yea heard the speech - can I throw up now? How can anyone be taken in by the total insincerity of the whole charade. Hypocricy rules the political roost and people just love it.Yarkob , 2016-07-26 10:39:38Christ, the astroturfers are out big today.Chuck3 , 2016-07-26 10:25:28Did she mention the over 4000 people (of who estimates vary between 500-3000 civilian deaths) her husband has murdered with drone strikes since being in office?
So inspiring!
Don't Americans understand how incredibly arrogant it sounds when they say theirs is the "greatest country on earth"?Flooch , 2016-07-26 10:08:44What a load of jingoistic garbage. I've lived there. It most definitely is not the "greatest country on earth".
Usual shouty American nonsense. If you don't have an intelligent point to make, just shout. You know it makes no sense.BlackForester , 2016-07-26 10:08:13I adore great men and women who know how to hire a competent team of ghostwriters.MarkoRam , 2016-07-26 10:05:18Lol. So much for 'open, independent and fearless' journalism.NuttyNietzsche , 2016-07-26 10:00:46An overpopulated planet, a poisoned biosphere, a militant and violent global insurgency by a 7th Century tribal faith; a potential woman in the Whitehouse (and what a gleaming example of womanhood she is!)? A complete irrelevance. Bread and circuses and maudlin hyperbole that will keep the tiny minds of SJWs happy but which won't solve a thing.Potyka Kalman , 2016-07-26 09:37:50Only Obama obviously wasn't the first "African American" president. He was the first African American who sold out his fellow African Americans to be a president. To big money.Piggy256 , 2016-07-26 09:19:51BTW he's preparing to go on his conference tour. If you think about all the public money he used to save the banking sector (without any consequence for the banking sector), he should be touring at the end of his life. Poor Hillary. She so wanted the job Obama got.
The Americans are so good at farce (Trump) or heart-rending tear-jerkers (Michelle) that are always somewhat repulsive or embarrassing, shall I say, to our European ears. It is a form of popular catharsis that is second-nature to artists and politicians there.whoarethey , 2016-07-26 09:19:12Moved to tears, really, well I suppose being Americans they are full of mush and hypocrisy --DaveMerkin , 2016-07-26 09:11:06These conventions seem like well managed cult get together. Both republicans and democrats seem like mindless zombies. Obama's old lady was as cheesy as the rest of them. Shallow words from shallow people.Iconoclastick , 2016-07-26 09:00:06I recall when she came to an inner city girls' school in London a couple of years back, on what's despairingly referred to as a sink estate. She gave one of those syrupy, nuero linguistic programming speeches, favoured by her dark arts husband's, TelePrompTer speech writing team. Full of all that usual suspect; "hopey, changey, reach for the stars, you can do it if you believe and want it bad enough" nonsense to the assembled teenage girls. And there in lies the point of the Obamas; they're an antidepressant, a simple and effective calming drug for sections of the masses.IvoryT , 2016-07-26 08:58:53There's an impressive speechwriter in their team. And the delivery coach is also worth the money.
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Mar 13, 2019 | www.theguardian.com
Revealed: Donald Trump's son-in-law challenged by Rex Tillerson and Gary Cohn for mixing personal interests with US foreign policy
Jared Kushner was told by the secretary of state, Rex Tillerson, that his interference had 'endangered the US', while his wife Ivanka's team was derided as the 'home of all bad ideas'. Photograph: Jim Bourg/Reuters Donald Trump's son-in-law, Jared Kushner , was confronted by two of the most senior US government officials for mixing his personal interests with US foreign policy, according to a new book.
Kushner, an envoy to the Middle East for his father-in-law, is said to have been robustly challenged by both Rex Tillerson, then secretary of state, and Gary Cohn, formerly Trump's top economic adviser.
The confrontations are detailed in Kushner Inc by the journalist Vicky Ward, who also describes interference in foreign relations by Kushner's wife, Ivanka Trump . The book is scheduled to be released on 19 March. A copy was obtained by the Guardian.
https://www.theguardian.com/email/form/plaintone/4300
Ward reports that Tillerson blamed Kushner for Trump's abrupt endorsement of a provocative blockade and diplomatic campaign against Qatar by Saudi Arabia and several allies in June 2017. The US has thousands of troops stationed in Qatar.
Tillerson "told Kushner that his interference had endangered the US", an unidentified Tillerson aide tells Ward. Tillerson is also said to have read negative "chatter" about himself in intelligence reports after Kushner belittled him to Kushner's friend Mohammed bin Salman, the controversial Saudi crown prince.
Meanwhile, Cohn is said to have rebuked Kushner in January 2017 after it was revealed Kushner had dined with executives from the Chinese financial corporation Anbang, which was considering investing in the Kushner family's troubled tower at 666 Fifth Avenue in Manhattan.
The heart of the US-Saudi relationship lies in the Kushner-prince friendship | Mohamad Bazzi Read more
"You've got to be crazy," Cohn is said to have told Kushner in front of others. Kushner met the executives around the time he hosted Chinese government officials at the Fifth Avenue tower. The building was eventually refinanced by a Qatari-backed investment fund.
Ivanka Trump is reported to have interfered in telephone calls between her father and foreign dignitaries despite having overseas business interests. "Thanks so much for the CD you sent me," she is quoted as having told an Indian leader by someone who heard the call. The Trump Organization owns several residential towers in India.
Ward's book portrays Kushner and Ivanka Trump as relentlessly ambitious operators who are loathed by many forced to work with them. She reports that White House staffers mocked Kushner as the "secretary of everything" for his wide-ranging meddling and derided Ivanka Trump's team as Habi – "home of all bad ideas".
John Kelly, formerly Trump's chief of staff and homeland security secretary, is quoted as dismissing the couple as "just playing government".
The book also details disagreements between them and Steve Bannon, Trump's former campaign chief and top White House strategist. Bannon clashed with the couple, who are former Democrats, while pushing to convert Trump's aggressively nationalist campaign rhetoric into government policy.
Bannon recalls Kushner furiously shouting at him at the White House in 2017 after he confronted Kushner about holding secret talks with senators on immigration reform. "He goes from a little boy to, like, this fucking devil," Bannon is quoted as saying.
Bannon also claims to have told Ivanka Trump: "Go fuck yourself you are nothing" in front of her father, during an argument over who was the bigger leaker to the media. Ivanka Trump is said to have called Bannon a "fucking liar".
For her part, Ivanka Trump is focused on cementing a Trump dynasty to rival the Kennedys and Bushes by becoming commander-in-chief herself one day, according to Ward. "She thinks she's going to be president of the United States," Cohn is quoted as saying.
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Sep 04, 2015 | The Guardian
MaoChengJi -> andy4248 4 Sep 2015 22:10
"Russians are brainwashed daily that the West is an awful place and we are going to invade them at any moment. " Oh rather you're brainwashed daily that Russia is an awful place where Russians are brainwashed daily that the West is an awful place and we are going to invade them at any moment.
I'm pretty sure not a single Russian believes that the west is going to invade. For reasons that are obvious, or should be obvious.
runner911 -> notoriousANDinfamous 5 Sep 2015 04:23
You must be joking ! 70 per cent of Americans do not know what the Constitution is, and six per cent don't even know when Independence Day falls. In a recent survey just over a half of Americans didn't know what the Taliban are , despite the fact they led the charge in Afghanistan.
When looking at a map of the world, young Americans had a difficult time correctly identifying Iraq (1 in 7) and Afghanistan (17%). This isn't that surprising, but only a slim majority (51%) knew where New York was. According to Forbes and National Geographic, an alarming 29% couldn't point to the Pacific Ocean.
Many didn't know where Europe is let alone Spain.
Americans cultural ? What a hoot !
runner911 -> jezzam 5 Sep 2015 04:09
Be assured Russia is more than capable of defending itself against Western ( USA ) aggression, plus they hold the biggest nuclear arsenal on the planet , so lets be clear no-one is going to attack Russia and risk nuclear annihilation in return. As regards being surrounded by NATO, how do you think the yanks would react if the same were to apply to the USA and that sad corrupt country was surrounded by Russian Forces ? The last time it happened in 1962, as I recall the yanks were whining like whipped dogs, but eventually agreed to dismantle their missiles in Turkey provided the Russians did the same in Cuba.
Beckow -> notoriousANDinfamous 5 Sep 2015 11:59
You lost the argument, so you are trying to change the subject. Now we can see why Western media doesn't allow an open discussion - you don't have much to say.
East-central Europe was invaded by Germans, Russians, Ottomans, French, even the Swedes. Germans murdered about 15 million people here. Ottomans (Turks) about 10 million. Russians liberated us from a murderous German occupation after WWII and stayed way too long...
Russian victims are in tens of thousands. Given that Russians lost about 1.5 million soldiers liberating us from Germans and saved us from planned extermination by Nazis over time, we keep some perspective about it. But I am not sure your ideological and slogan-driven thinking would understand any of it...
EugeneGur -> zenithmaster 5 Sep 2015 11:43
This has zero to do with Russia's poor relations with the EU and everything to do the Russians' smaller spending power.
This is not quite true. You underestimate the power of the sentiment. One example: Russian tourism to Estonia dropped 60% after the scandal with the Bronze soldier in 2007, long before any decrease in the buying power, and it never recovered.
You are right, of course, that the decreased value of the ruble affected mass tourism, but the effect was multiplied by the anger towards Europe, believe me, it was. Going through the visa process was always annoying and humiliating but under the present circumstances it became unbearable. This one thing that affects all European countries whether its Bulgaria or Italy.
MaoChengJi -> jezzam 5 Sep 2015 09:56
Yeah, something like what thecorporateclass said above.
I'll add this: deep down even people like you don't believe in any Russian 'invasion' in Ukraine. They know: if Russia did invade, it would've been over long time ago. The question, rather, is about Kiev regime's control of the border, which would amount to a blockade of Donetsk-Lugansk republics; blocking all the supplies, attacking from all directions, and exterminating people who feel ethnically Russian.
This can not happen: it would've brought the Russian government down, and therefore no Russian government could participate in it; be it led by Putin, Dugin, or Navalny, or anyone at all. It's just a physical impossibility. IMO.
TheCorporateClass -> jezzam 5 Sep 2015 06:37
The West agrees to drop this missile shield, Putin agrees to stop his military interference in Ukraine.
This needs correcting IF it is to work as a solution.
The West agrees to drop this missile shield, agrees to stop it's interventions into Ukrainian government and it's politics, agrees to stop FUNDING and GUIDING far right neo-nazi militias and their political wings, agrees to stop making intentionally false/unproven/fictional accusations against Russia & Putin's Government, stops providing military intelligence to Ukraine (a non-Nato country), and admits to the direct connection between the externally caused "political and social" instability in Ukraine begun by EU/NATA and the externally caused "political and social" instability and then Civil War in Syria with oil/gas supplies from Russia and Qatar ... then that would be a great first step towards the truth of matters bullshit.
Then all of Russia and Putin at their ELECTED President would no doubt agree to stop his humane military interference in Ukraine on behalf of those people having their human rights and lives taken by ideologically driven psychopaths and their corrupt crazies from Washington, Berlin, Riyadh, Doha, and Tel Aiv.
Simple really.
HollyOldDog -> raffine 5 Sep 2015 04:59
Whereas there are convoys of Russian trucks that are stopping the East Ukrainians of starving to death. The only 'gifts' that West Ukraine gives to their East compatriates is constant shelling, grad missile fire, mine fields and snipers that shoot any East Ukrainians on sight whether they are men ,women or children.
MaoChengJi -> jezzam 4 Sep 2015 23:48
I believe the western anti-missile installations along the Russian borders give the impression that the US is trying to break the MAD balance and create, at some point in the future, a defense against retaliatory nuclear strike. That seems like the only rational explanation for those installations. For do you think they are for?
MaoChengJi -> andy4248 4 Sep 2015 22:10
"Russians are brainwashed daily that the West is an awful place and we are going to invade them at any moment. "
Oh rather you're brainwashed daily that Russia is an awful pleace where Russians are brainwashed daily that the West is an awful place and we are going to invade them at any moment.
I'm pretty sure not a signle Russian believes that the west is going to invade. For reasons that are obvious, or should be obvious.
crackling -> MaoChengJi 4 Sep 2015 22:03
fingerprints is copying GWBush's data collection on citizens and visitors to the US - last night I just had my photo and fingerprints taken on customs entry to Taiwan - I expect it's becoming the norm these days.
Beckow -> notoriousANDinfamous 4 Sep 2015 21:22
Address Obama's admission that "US assisted in the transition of power", why do you skip over it? $15 billion was a loan and it was used for the Ukrainian budget. If someone stole some of it, prove it and charge them.
I never said that Russians didn't try to influence Kiev, but so did US - listen to the recording, it assigns roles for different protest leaders. Ashton was an EU official and she was standing with the protestors - so were many others, incl. Nuland, ambassador, etc... - that goes way beyond "trade agreement".
I am a Slovak and I comment on anything I feel like. If you have a problem with that, maybe you don't understand democracy and freedom of speech. By the way, most people in my part of Europe (from Budapest to Vienna to Prague) roughly share my view of the situation. We know Russians, we know Ukrainians, and we can judge for ourselves.
Popeyes -> andy4248 4 Sep 2015 19:45
It's very sad but Russians are for more aware of what's going on politically than their Western counterparts. The fact that they have a low opinion of Westerners is hardly surprising and they certainly don't have to be " brainwashed ' by the Kremlin to know what's going on. They only have to look at Iraq, Libya, and Syria, Ukraine the list is endless to figure it out. You could blame GM food for the fact that Americans seem to be pretty dim and clueless on Europeans affairs, but as for the rest of Europeans I guess they are the ones that are really "brainwashed".
Beckow -> notoriousANDinfamous 4 Sep 2015 19:32
Thou protest too much.
The "baroness" was an EU foreign secretary, that's pretty high up. In addition: US ambassador, assistant sec for Europe (Nuland), and a number of other officials were at the Maidan protests - videos and all.
The recording was very specific about who (Yats) should be Prime Minister and how it should be done. If US also does that in Spain, that's even a bigger problem.
$5bn is a lot of "civil organizations" - most of it in the last 5-10 years. Russia gave a loan - that is very different.
Finally, Obama literally said "we assisted with the transition of power in Ukraine"
what other proof can one possible have than an admission by the chief?By the way I used the term "assist in an overthrow". To "orchestrate" is more pro-active. Given what has been made public there definitely was "assistance" (see Obama's statement above), whether that amounts to "orchestrate" like in 1953 Iran, I would leave to the historians.
Beckow -> notoriousANDinfamous 4 Sep 2015 18:52
There are videos of dozens of Western leaders standing on the podium with the demonstrators on Maidan (just imagine Lavrov joinig an Occupy protest in New York or London).
There are recordings of Nuland deciding on who will run Ukraine ("f...k Europe").
US spent 5 billion in 20 years on "civil groups" in Ukraine.
If you prefer an infantile denial, I can't help you. Just don't be surprised if you become irrelevant.
Beckow -> dmitryfrommoscow 4 Sep 2015 18:34
Yes it was always mostly about the visa-free access to EU. Ukrainians want to move to Europe for jobs, benefits, school, etc... That was what drove Maidan energy (and US took advantage of it).
But your numbers are off. There are about 1 million Ukrainians now in EU, mostly in UK, Czech, Hungary and Poland. E.g. Poland has about 400,000 new Ukrainian migrants. The real large numbers are yet to come. I think they will - they are watching the Syrians and getting jealous, worried that all the empathy will be used up. Slovakia (my country) has camps ready on the border. We also suddenly have a lot of Ukrainians who have discovered the Slovak (or Czech) heritage. The same thing is going on in Poland, Romania and Hungary.
Millions are coming. And they won't be tourists or have money for Italian hotels. But I am sure the Western media will find a way to blame it on Russia. Such are the pleasures of dead-end ideologies, everything is very simple: "Putin did it!."
Beckow -> notoriousANDinfamous 4 Sep 2015 18:26
"US didn't orchestrate a coup in Ukraine and hasn't offered Kiev a military alliance"
I suppose that would depend on your definition of "orchestrate" and a "coup". Most rational observers would agree that US at a minimum assisted with the Maidan revolution (or a coup). There are videos, recordings, financial transfers. Until the whole Maidan thing went bad, the US State Department was very open about the assistance that they had provided on Maidan, Obama said "we assisted with the transition of power in Ukraine" (actual quote).
US has said since 2008 that Ukraine will join Nato. They reiterated it last year and Ukraine has an official policy of joining Nato. There are joint exercises and training with Nato. It is rather conclusive that US and Ukraine are having a "military alliance".
Given those two facts how can you deny it? Or do you also deny the nose between your eyes?
magicmirror1 4 Sep 2015 18:11
Fingerprints to get a visa.
Welcome to democratic EU. This is the future European leaders are building and I cannot understand why.
dmitryfrommoscow -> Ola Smith 4 Sep 2015 16:46
Ola, the problem is there are no 45 million people in Ukraine these days. As many as 2.8 million people with Ukrainian passports work and live in Russia alone. And I think twice as many live and work in the EU. And about five to seven million are in a crouch start position to rush elsewhere at the first opportunity that avails itself. After all the Maidan hullabaloo was about getting free access to European -- and probably North American -- job markets and disappearing there for good. Let's throw aside all that talk about 'democracy and values' and be honest about it.
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Mar 28, 2018 | www.theguardian.com
The harvesting of our personal details goes far beyond what many of us could imagine. So I braced myself and had a look .
A slice of the data that Facebook keeps on the author: 'This information has millions of nefarious uses.' Photograph: Dylan Curran W ant to freak yourself out? I'm going to show just how much of your information the likes of Facebook and Google store about you without you even realising it. Google knows where you've been
Google stores your location (if you have location tracking turned on) every time you turn on your phone. You can see a timeline of where you've been from the very first day you started using Google on your phone.
Here is every place I have been in the last 12 months in Ireland. You can see the time of day that I was in the location and how long it took me to get to that location from my previous one.
Google stores search history across all your devices. That can mean that, even if you delete your search history and phone history on one device, it may still have data saved from other devices .
Click on this link to see your own data: myactivity.google.com/myactivity
Why have we given up our privacy to Facebook and other sites so willingly?
Google has an advertisement profile of youGoogle creates an advertisement profile based on your information, including your location, gender, age, hobbies, career, interests, relationship status, possible weight (need to lose 10lb in one day?) and income.
Click on this link to see your own data: google.com/settings/ads/
Google knows all the apps you use
Google stores information on every app and extension you use. They know how often you use them, where you use them, and who you use them to interact with. That means they know who you talk to on Facebook, what countries are you speaking with, what time you go to sleep.
Click on this link to see your own data: security.google.com/settings/secur
Google has all of your YouTube historyGoogle stores all of your YouTube history, so they probably know whether you're going to be a parent soon, if you're a conservative, if you're a progressive, if you're Jewish, Christian, or Muslim, if you're feeling depressed or suicidal, if you're anorexic
Click on this link to see your own data: youtube.com/feed/history/s
The data Google has on you can fill millions of Word documents
Google offers an option to download all of the data it stores about you. I've requested to download it and the file is 5.5GB big , which is roughly 3m Word documents.
Manage to gain access to someone's Google account? Perfect, you have a diary of everything that person has done
This link includes your bookmarks, emails, contacts, your Google Drive files, all of the above information, your YouTube videos, the photos you've taken on your phone, the businesses you've bought from, the products you've bought through Google
They also have data from your calendar, your Google hangout sessions, your location history, the music you listen to, the Google books you've purchased, the Google groups you're in, the websites you've created, the phones you've owned, the pages you've shared, how many steps you walk in a day
Click on this link to see your own data: google.com/takeout
Facebook has reams and reams of data on you, too
Facebook offers a similar option to download all your information. Mine was roughly 600MB, which is roughly 400,000 Word documents.
This includes every message you've ever sent or been sent, every file you've ever sent or been sent, all the contacts in your phone, and all the audio messages you've ever sent or been sent.
Click here to see your data: https://www.facebook.com/help/131112897028467
Facebook Twitter Pinterest 'A snapshot of the data Facebook has saved on me.' Photograph: Dylan Curran Facebook stores everything from your stickers to your login locationFacebook also stores what it thinks you might be interested in based off the things you've liked and what you and your friends talk about (I apparently like the topic "girl").
Somewhat pointlessly, they also store all the stickers you've ever sent on Facebook (I have no idea why they do this. It's just a joke at this stage).
They also store every time you log in to Facebook, where you logged in from, what time, and from what device.
And they store all the applications you've ever had connected to your Facebook account, so they can guess I'm interested in politics and web and graphic design, that I was single between X and Y period with the installation of Tinder, and I got a HTC phone in November.
(Side note, if you have Windows 10 installed, this is a picture of just the privacy options with 16 different sub-menus, which have all of the options enabled by default when you install Windows 10)
Facebook Twitter Pinterest Privacy options in Windows 10. Photograph: Dylan Curran They can access your webcam and microphoneThe data they collect includes tracking where you are, what applications you have installed, when you use them, what you use them for, access to your webcam and microphone at any time, your contacts, your emails, your calendar, your call history, the messages you send and receive, the files you download, the games you play, your photos and videos, your music, your search history, your browsing history, even what radio stations you listen to.
Facebook told me it would act swiftly on data misuse – in 2015 | Harry Davies
Here are some of the different ways Google gets your dataI got the Google Takeout document with all my information, and this is a breakdown of all the different ways they get your information.
Facebook Twitter Pinterest 'My Google Takeout document.' Photograph: Dylan Curran
Here's the search history document, which has 90,000 different entries, even showing the images I downloaded and the websites I accessed (I showed the Pirate Bay section to show how much damage this information can do).
Facebook Twitter Pinterest 'My search history document has 90,000 different entries.' Photograph: Dylan Curran Google knows which events you attended, and whenHere's my Google Calendar broken down, showing all the events I've ever added, whether I actually attended them, and what time I attended them at (this part is when I went for an interview for a marketing job, and what time I arrived).
Facebook Twitter Pinterest 'Here is my Google calendar showing a job interview I attended.' Photograph: Dylan Curran And Google has information you deletedThis is my Google Drive, which includes files I explicitly deleted including my résumé, my monthly budget, and all the code, files and websites I've ever made, and even my PGP private key, which I deleted, that I use to encrypt emails.
Facebook Twitter Pinterest Google can know your workout routineThis is my Google Fit, which shows all of the steps I've ever taken, any time I walked anywhere, and all the times I've recorded any meditation/yoga/workouts I've done (I deleted this information and revoked Google Fit's permissions).
Facebook Twitter Pinterest And they have years' worth of photosThis is all the photos ever taken with my phone, broken down by year, and includes metadata of when and where I took the photos
Facebook Twitter Pinterest Google has every email you ever sentEvery email I've ever sent, that's been sent to me, including the ones I deleted or were categorised as spam.
Facebook Twitter Pinterest And there is moreI'll just do a short summary of what's in the thousands of files I received under my Google Activity.
First, every Google Ad I've ever viewed or clicked on, every app I've ever launched or used and when I did it, every website I've ever visited and what time I did it at, and every app I've ever installed or searched for.
Facebook Twitter Pinterest 'They have every single Google search I've made since 2009.'They also have every image I've ever searched for and saved, every location I've ever searched for or clicked on, every news article I've ever searched for or read, and every single Google search I've made since 2009. And then finally, every YouTube video I've ever searched for or viewed, since 2008.
This information has millions of nefarious uses. You say you're not a terrorist. Then how come you were googling Isis? Work at Google and you're suspicious of your wife? Perfect, just look up her location and search history for the last 10 years. Manage to gain access to someone's Google account? Perfect, you have a chronological diary of everything that person has done for the last 10 years.
This is one of the craziest things about the modern age. We would never let the government or a corporation put cameras/microphones in our homes or location trackers on us. But we just went ahead and did it ourselves because – to hell with it! – I want to watch cute dog videos.
NOTE: A caption was corrected on 28 March 2018 to replace "privacy options in Facebook" with "privacy options in Windows 10".
Dylan Curran is a data consultant and web developer, who does extensive research into spreading technical awareness and improving digital etiquette
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Mar 05, 2019 | www.theguardian.com
Chilean coup: 40 years ago I watched Pinochet crush a democratic dream How the drama and repression developed as a US-backed coup overthrew Allende's government on 11 September 1973
Sat 7 Sep 2013 12.52 EDT First published on Sat 7 Sep 2013 12.52 EDT Share on Facebook Share on Twitter Share via Email
Chilean troops make arrests during the military coup that overthrew President Salvador Allende. Photograph: Universal History Archive/Rex Features Few foreign reporters were left in Santiago on the spring morning of Tuesday 11 September 1973 when Augusto Pinochet , head of the army, was pulling off his trick.
The previous Saturday he had finally joined in preparations for the long brewing coup d'état against a fairly elected government and, only three days later, was revealing his capacity for terrorism, torture and treason with a foreign power. Only now was he throwing in his lot with a US government that detested the idealistic but ramshackle coalition of six parties headed by Dr Salvador Allende, the country doctor and upstanding freemason who was set on introducing elements of social democracy in a country long organised for the benefit of the landowners, industrialists and money men.
For months the original plotters had kept Pinochet at a distance, judging him too loyal to the elected – and, as the results of the recent local elections showed, increasingly popular – Allende, and too loyal to the constitution to be allowed into the conspiracy.
Most foreign journalists had given up and left Chile after weeks of waiting, many returning from deprived and poor Santiago – proud but provincial – to bustling Buenos Aires and their homes across the Andes. The Washington Post had a correspondent, but not the New York Times; Newsweek, but not Time magazine.
As troops fanned out in the town awaiting the arrival of Hawker Hunter jets to bomb and destroy civilian government, Allende desperately but vainly tried to contact Pinochet and for a few hours was convinced that his military commander had been kidnapped and silenced by the insurgents.
Many of we foreign reporters in the weeks before September 1973 had got into the habit of gathering in the snug downstairs bar of the Carrera hotel – across the square from Allende's sober and unadorned presidential palace, the Moneda – where many of us were staying. Endlessly, over scotches and pisco sours, we tossed about our conjectures for the future, those with US passports rightly forecasting the worst for Chile's "socialist experiment".
On Tuesday, the counter-revolution was in full flood, telephone and telex lines were cut and the airports closed. Before 10am my friend and colleague, Stewart Russell of Reuters, and I trekked through deserted streets to the British embassy, above the Bank of London and South America, in search of a line that would take our story to London. No line was available but, as the firing in the streets increased, we were given house room and refreshments and could not but observe the unalloyed joy of many in the embassy, notably the British naval representatives, at the coup.
At that time Admiral Gustavo Carvajal, one of the plotters, was on the phone to Allende offering him a plane if he would leave the country. But the president, a man with high blood pressure, was trenchant: "Who do you think you are, you treacherous shits? Stuff your plane up your arses! You are talking to the president of the republic! And the president elected by the people doesn't surrender."
On the roof of our building a resister with a .22 rifle loosed off the occasional shot until he was killed by a passing helicopter. By four in the afternoon the city, ringed by its Andean peaks, was quieter, so Stewart and I, robbed of connections with London, marched out of the bronze doors down the centre of the deserted streets to our hotels, our hands in the air.
Back within the well-shuttered Carrera and gathering in its imposing reception area sheathed in black glass, Pinochet's many moneyed supporters toasted him with champagne, and his three fellow members of the junta from the navy, air force and gendarmerie. They whooped as he announced on television the closing down of congress, the political parties, the trade unions and the judges.
The terrified staff gathered in a corner and watched their country's fate being played out. As a precaution, for our safety, they had prepared beds for us past the laundry in the hotel's sub-basement. After a good night's sleep we emerged to watch the flames continuing to consume the Moneda . Under curfew the stadium began filling with Pinochet's prisoners: some were summarily shot, others were sent to concentration camps in the Atacama deserts of the north or the frigid sub-Antarctic south. At the beginning, when the curfew was clamped down at 6pm, there was a nightly rush for transport, public and private, as people scrambled to get indoors promptly.
The soldiers were initially frightening with their battledress and machine guns as they blundered in, messed up the houses of suspects and carried off whatever took their fancy. Foreigners who were fleeing persecution – in Brazil, for instance – and who had been given political asylum by Allende were in particular danger, as were office holders in the trade unions. Later on, the squaddies, many of them country boys, came to be seen as figures of fun as they took the presence of books on cubism, for instance, as evidence that the householder was an admirer of Fidel Castro and thus worthy of being arrested and interrogated. Comedians on television joked nervously about stupid people being as thick as a soldier without a car.
A rash of denunciations saw many imprisoned unjustly by the military, who would seldom confess who they had in prison and who they didn't. Over the weeks at the Moneda the flames consumed what they could, leaving a thick layer of ash.
Thus had started 17 years of Pinochet's dictatorship – he soon reduced his fellow members of the junta to a cipher – held together by terrorism. As had already been the case after the military coups in Brazil in 1964 and then in Uruguay, Paraguay, Bolivia and Argentina, and as was to be the case latterly in modern Iraq, Afghanistan and Guantánamo Bay, the military and police torturers were ready with their electrodes, thumbscrews and waterboarding equipment to defend "western Christian civilisation". Many had been brought to a peak of perfection in their trade in the US itself or in its bases in the Panama canal zone by US instructors.
Seven years before, at a dinner party in 1966 during a prolonged stay in the Chilean capital with my wife Georgie, I met Allende and his wife Hortensia "Tencha" for the first time. He and I got on famously right up until he was killed in the attack on the presidential palace. Our host Álvaro introduced us jokily to the leader of the left, saying: "This man has already made attempts to win the presidency and wants to have another go. But he'll never get there." Allende equally jokily chimed in: "Young man, do you know what's going to be on my tombstone?"
"No, doctor," I replied politely. "What is going to be on your tombstone?"
Amid renewed laughter Chile's future head of state replied using his full name: "Here lies Salvador Allende Gossens, future president of Chile."
On 21 September 1970, Allende had been declared victor of clean elections, but before he took over the presidency, after a fruitless effort by Chilean conservatives and their US allies to have the victory declared unconstitutional, Edward Korry, the US ambassador in Santiago , reported to Henry Kissinger, the foreign strategist of President Richard Nixon: "Once Allende comes to power we shall do all within our power to condemn Chile and the Chileans to utmost deprivation and poverty."
A few days earlier Richard Helms, director of the CIA, had scribbled notes on a meeting in Washington with Nixon, Kissinger and John Mitchell, the US attorney general, where the president demanded a coup. They read: "One in 10 chance perhaps, but save Chile! /worth spending /not concerned risks involved /no involvement of embassy /$10,000,000 available, more if necessary/ best men we have/ game plan/ make the economy scream /48 hours for plan of action."
After Allende's enemies finally claimed their victory against him on 11 September, Chileans protected themselves as best they could while Pinochet and his cohorts, well favoured now by Washington, turned to making themselves fortunes from the privatisation of public services and, quietly, from the trade in cocaine from Bolivia which the US never seemed to want to criticise or attack.
So confident was Pinochet in his protectors in "the free world" that on 17 September 1976 he ordered the killing of Orlando Letelier , Allende's former defence minister, with a bomb planted in his car in Sheridan Circle in the diplomatic heart of Washington itself. Such an atrocity, had it been committed by any Arab or Iranian, or indeed a Muslim of any persuasion, would have brought down instant punishment, or even war. But Pinochet was in no danger. After all, he had been Nixon's man all along.
Hugh O'Shaughnessy is the author of Pinochet, The Politics of Torture, published by Latin America Bureau and New York University Press Chilean coup: 40 years ago I watched Pinochet crush a democratic dream Comments This is our basic commenting system. For the full range of features, use one of our recommended browsers .
santiagogooner -> Estanislao Deloserrata , 9 Sep 2013 21:48
In the 1958 election Jorge Alessandri was elected president with 31% of the vote.Squiff811 -> Nyarlat , 9 Sep 2013 10:28That was the system,
tea party proponents don't know the difference between fascism, communism, socialism nor capitalism. Conservers of familial myth are anti-sociable by nurture.Squiff811 -> Nyarlat , 9 Sep 2013 10:21to be fair humankind is rather nice apart from the idiots that claim superiority, they are merely conserving the myth of exclusivity to preserve their ignorance.chrisramsey , 9 Sep 2013 02:19See http://www.forviemedia.co.uk/articles_268378.html Victor Jara article http://www.forviemedia.co.uk/articles_268378farabundovive -> KingCranky , 8 Sep 2013 21:53richardmuu , 8 Sep 2013 20:40Not even close to a satisfying outcome
And what happened to all the millions pilfered from the Chilean state? I bet they weren't restored to the Exchequer.
Re Time Magazine, I just remembered another detail. Eisendrath told us about the loss of telecommunications. I believe he traveled to the Argentine border and from there sent a story about the coup to...I don't know if it was Buenos Aires or the U.S. I do remember that he claimed that he broke the story in the U.S. press.richardmuu , 8 Sep 2013 20:29Mr. O'Shaughnessy,MarquisDeMoo -> James Rufus , 8 Sep 2013 19:51I believe Time Magazine had someone in Santiago. It was Charles Eisendrath, who was I believe at the time the bureau chief based in Buenos Aires. He was in Santiago that morning, in a hotel across from the presidential palace, because he said he had an interview scheduled with President Allende for that morning. Mr. Eisendrath shared this story in a seminar with his journalism graduate students in 1983 or 1984. I recall feeling there was something unusual about his account but I never followed up on it with him.
So was Hitler democratically elected as were the Mensheviks. Many a totalitarian government of the left and right were democratically elected but how long before people rallying to your call demand a one party state because the right or the left cannot be trusted?Vocalista -> zvakanaka , 8 Sep 2013 17:18...and the rest of western civilisation...Vocalista -> 3gGene , 8 Sep 2013 17:15Empire builders cannot allow the middle class to get too large as it will end up with too much power and threaten the elite.peter_glazier , 8 Sep 2013 16:03Hence the crushing of the middle classes we see around the World right now.
I used to travel to Chile regularly before and after Allende. A country self sufficient in virtually everything and an exporter of raw materials had been reduced to begging for everything with Cuban militias patrolling the streets, empty shelves in the supermarkets, dairy herds slaughtered for meat etc etc. The military saw themselves as saviours of the nation and the Constitution. Violent they were in an openly disgraceful manner but no more so than the imported "gangs".OstanesAlchemy -> stoptheslavepress2 , 8 Sep 2013 15:56The US was behind the coup, no doubt, but was Cuba not behind Allende? Allende was democratically elected but under a very unusual system. The people did not vote for the Cuban revolution to be imported. Once elected he proceeded to destroy the country economically and politically. Chile had become the Spain of the second half of the century. We all knew the outcome of that so what was the surprise?
OstanesAlchemy -> ChukTatum , 8 Sep 2013 15:5440 years on and the majority of Chilean people don't see that progress that you are talking about. Now, if you meant economic progress to the ultra right wing people of the UDI party, high rank military personnel and the international corporation companies from USA, UK, France, Canada, Spain and others, exploiting the minerals and other essentials services in Chile, you are right to say progress. Chile is economically and socially divided than ever before.You must remember, to a wingnut, success is measured in GDP terms. The fact that 99% of that GDP is taken by 1% of the population is further proof of the success of a government. Look at the upper class warriors people like this vote for in the UK!
I guess you think those Chilean CIA operatives you've been talking to are representative? Or more likely, you're an American fantasist, still clinging to the notion that the Chileans was "saved" by Pinochet.OstanesAlchemy -> ghuujjnjmhh123 , 8 Sep 2013 15:50"Elements of social democracy" included large scale nationalization and the expropriation of farms as small as 200 acres.Mumsche -> ChukTatum , 8 Sep 2013 15:43I fail to see the problem here.
Funny. Because all the Chileans I know were refugees. Hell, a landlord of a flat I was renting was even rounded up in Santiago's football stadium and got tortured as a young man. Because he was a student and it was assumed, as a student, he was pro-Allende. A girl's father I know had to flee to Britain. He had a Victor Jara record with him. Would he have been found, he would have been shot on the spot.BlackjackX -> curiouswes , 8 Sep 2013 15:38So no, I don't think that many Chileans have a favorable view of Pinochet... I mean, except those that maybe made a killing out of other peole's suffering...
Ok, I misread you. But, the hate reason ais not good enough to impeach. Laugh at and make him wear the dunce hat, yes!RoetFuss -> gr0711 , 8 Sep 2013 15:36Interestingly, when given the chance, they got rid of him. So much for a benign leader.RoetFuss -> ghuujjnjmhh123 , 8 Sep 2013 15:34None of what you've said justifies the coup and what followed. If Allende's government was a disaster, then the Chilean electorate should have been given the chance to boot him out and get someone else in place. Instead they were robbed of the chance (and that is one of the least problematic things with what followed...)ArfurTowcrate -> Flyper , 8 Sep 2013 15:34Don't forget that Labour's Jack Straw let Pinochet go home rather than extradite him to SpainMumsche -> ChukTatum , 8 Sep 2013 15:31Sorry, but it's clearly you who looks at a criminal unquestionably responsible for the murder and torture of thousands of innocent people through rosé tinted spectacles. You are also aware that Pinochet made a fortune out of illegal dealings with cocaine? Rose tinted spectacles...?! Sorry man, what drugs are you on??RoetFuss -> Nyarlat , 8 Sep 2013 15:25curiouswes -> BlackjackX , 8 Sep 2013 15:13Of course it was not to make us rich but to have us back against the Russians.
and/or to create a nice market for American products.
How about lying about a reason to go to war: numerous dead; mucho dollars spent? "They hate us for our freedom?"ID9845712 , 8 Sep 2013 14:55and since then, the Americans have been active in Iraq, Afghanistan, Lybia, and now thinking of helping the Syrians out... When is the rest of the world going to tell them to STOP... maybe, when they march on Poland!curiouswes -> MarquisDeMoo , 8 Sep 2013 14:39the truth is that the US used white phosphorus in Fallujah, Iraq. That sort of makes it difficult to blame Israel for doing it.BlackjackX -> stoptheslavepress2 , 8 Sep 2013 14:26Nor will they ever without removing the shackles of domination and bribes for the few.BlackjackX -> stoptheslavepress2 , 8 Sep 2013 14:21"time period", Hmn , does that mean the US should have just bombed Chile straight away?BlackjackX -> ChukTatum , 8 Sep 2013 14:18Is that "desperation" the same as we see in lil obama and kery? Or is that to big a grotesque for you?curiousaltruistic -> WithoutMalice , 8 Sep 2013 14:11Yes, you are right - it is an old problem with sometimes 'powers' choosing to battle on others territory )(convenient - isnt it!?) Anyway, only some countries still behave like that - chiefly The United States of America - does that mean they think they are entitled to an opinion on how the southern bit is run as well !?Dimitri , 8 Sep 2013 13:53The Chilean success story thus far:WithoutMalice -> gr0711 , 8 Sep 2013 13:4071% of Chilean children, according to a Unicef report ( 4th Study on Child Abuse - Santiago, Oct. 2012 ) suffer from domestic violence (physical, mental, sexual abuse), and pretty much so on an equal basis at all socio-economic levels of society.
The country's youth, as a consequence, are high users of legal and illegal stimulants (alcohol, drugs, particularly marijuana and frequently the highly toxic coca paste (a cocktail of kerosene, sulphuric acid, ammonia and cocaine). School children are also near the top of the global league for dependence on cigarettes, a habit which the local tobacco firm used to enjoy supporting by handing out free fags at concerts and other youth events.
According to the National Socio-Economic Characterisation Survey (CASEN - the official mechanism for calculating inequality and poverty indicators in Chile), approximately 14% of the population live on or below the poverty line, hailed as a great success story of the ever-expanding Chilean economy, down from the 50% + that was hit by the dictatorship when their first attempt at neo-liberal nirvana ended (early 80s) in tears, retributions, and frustrated future billionaires. However, some social scientists and economists believe this figure to be highly questionable , and point out that the shopping basket used to calculate the poverty line is still the original, i.e. dates from 1986, a fact once pointed out by the present Minister of Finance, Felipe Larraín:
A rough estimate given by one prominent government economist was that with an updated basket, poverty in Chile may be somewhere between 28 and 30% of the population, basically the difference between 2 and 4 million inhabitants, or perhaps more...
This last is another sticking point in Chile, as no one seems to really know how many Chileans there are, given that the last reliable census of the country was probably that of 1970, with the results of 1982 (dictatorship) 1992, 2002 and 2012 possibly having a cumulative margin of error now between 9% and 15%, i.e. the difference between 17 and 23 million Chileans, a situation currently being investigated by international experts.
The consequences of central government not knowing the exact population figure can be serious. They are particularly felt in funding received for regional and municipal development and services, with negative repercussions for education, health care, housing, social services, public transport, childcare, etc. How this manifests is the general down-trodden nature and appearance of the country's urban and rural environs, the exceptions, to an extent, being Santiago and a few other university cities located mainly on the coast.
At the end of the day, there is certainly great wealth in Chile, it's just not being fairly distributed, the gap between haves and have-nots widening to dangerous levels with respect to social well-being and harmony. There are just too many poorly-educated Chileans living in squalid, depressing, stressful and unhealthy conditions, and social violence (domestic, particularly against children, and on the street) is ever increasing.
A success story? Not in my opinion.
Which is why ten years after the coup poverty had nearly doubled and Chile was in the greatest economic crisis of its history.WithoutMalice -> ghuujjnjmhh123 , 8 Sep 2013 13:39Nationalization of resources was already taking place before Allende became president and his call to nationalize even more of Chile's resources received 100% of the support of congress.WithoutMalice -> ChukTatum , 8 Sep 2013 13:35Total right-wing horseshit. Pinochet destroyed democracy in Chile in order to save the wealthy landowners and industrialist. He outlawed political parties, murdered those opposed to him by the thousands and imprisoned them by the hundreds of thousands. Protest and demonstrations were outlawed, the free press was destroyed, all TV and radio networks were controlled by the regime and ten years after he came to power poverty had nearly doubled in Chile while the rich were making out like bandits. But no one profited more from his dictatorship that Pinochet himself who robbed the nation of millions, if not billions of dollars during his reign.Sean Casey , 8 Sep 2013 13:31A US-Backed coup that came about when Allende refused the Soviet order to use the military on the right-wing unions that were striking. Once he refused, USSR withdrew their backing of his government.WithoutMalice -> curiousaltruistic , 8 Sep 2013 13:29I visited Chile this year, I went to the home of chilean poet and diplomat Pablo Neruda in Santiago which was incredible. The guide explained how the army altered the stream flowing at the back of the house (his home was on a hill in front of a zoo) to flood it and then had a little book BBQ too.
I also went to the Museum of Memory and Human Rights which was very painful: http://www.museodelamemoria.cl/
The French President (Pompidou) really helped as he offered safety to refugees escaping Chile which is a lot more than ever Thatcher did.
It's worth noting that the US involvement in Chile started in the early 19th century through efforts of the US to rid Chile of British influence.James Rufus -> MrDavedc , 8 Sep 2013 12:52The same as David Cameron and more than any of Thatcher's victories in march 1973(senate election). Chile today is very unequalanewdawn , 8 Sep 2013 11:39The beginning of the neoliberal nightmare everywhere. They did it more slowly in the UK, but they are getting there. Unions neutered, loss of nationalised industries and the NHS, schools to be privatised - and everyone in deb peonage to the banks.curiouswes -> curiousaltruistic , 8 Sep 2013 11:23
We were spared the torture and killing though.Your post is a curious one. I assume every post is being stored in some super computer in Utah. As far as the US is concerned, the first amendment is already under duress. Why should I be any more cautious because of "neo-trolls"?gottliebvera , 8 Sep 2013 11:19(not being critical, just inquiring minds want to know) I've been accused of being too "gloom and doom" on this blog.
And hasn't the US been disturbing the shit since the end 1800s??? A country I have totally lost respect for.prairie , 8 Sep 2013 11:08Just a gift from Murder Inc and the Nobel Piece Prize winner Henry Kissinger.curiouswes -> suprabrew , 8 Sep 2013 11:05It does appear as though we are heading for martial law (assuming we aren't already there). Have you seen these FEMA camps, or is there any way that I can verify that they exist?curiouswes -> suprabrew , 8 Sep 2013 10:57So you agree with me Obama should be overthrown, given a speedy public trial and quick execution?
I cannot support this thinking. We can't impeach for lying. What has this president done that this congress and its predecessors haven't given him the authority to do? How is this president any worse than his predecessor? I believe Obama, Bush (GW), and Clinton all deserve impeachment. But to view his transgressions in a vacuum hardly sounds reasonable.
Feinstein is just as culpable as Obama in this NSA thing because she's been in a position to stop it, long before Obama came to "power". Obama is being manipulated like a puppet and as well informed as you are, I'm sure you realize this. Congress doesn't have the moral authority to impeach this president.
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The Guardian
HollyOldDog gimmeshoes 13 Jul 2015 20:40
The Georgian authorities have asked Interpol to put a Red notice on Mikheil Saakashvili as the request to Ukraine to return him for trial in Georgia was refused.ww3orbust PrinceEdward 13 Jul 2015 20:22That does not detract from the fact that the Ukrainian cabinet has been chosen by the US state department. Natives of the US, Georgia and Lithuania were hastily granted Ukrainian citizenship in order to maintain an iron grip on Ukraine, while accusing Putin of appointing majors or governors - in his capacity as head of state?ww3orbust 13 Jul 2015 20:16Amazing, nothing at all mentioned by the BBC. It does not fit in to their narrative to see the country descend into a new stage of anarchy, between the people who murdered police and protesters on Maidan square, and the US state department installed cabinet. Presumably if Right Sector refuse to disarm and continue torturing civilians and murdering police, the BBC will continue to ignore it and focus instead on its Russo-phobic narrative, while accusing Russia of propaganda with the self-righteous piety that only the BBC are capable of. Or god forbid, more stories about what colour stool our future king has produced this week.jgbg Omniscience 13 Jul 2015 18:42jgbg Pwedropackman 13 Jul 2015 18:26Diverse Unity sounds much better than Nazi
The thing is, Ukraine is unique in allowing their Nazi thugs to be armed and have some semi-official status. Everywhere else (including Russia), governments are looking to constrain the activities of Nazis and prosecute them where possible.
If it was not for the right sector, Ukraine would still be one united nation.
Them and Svoboda. If it had just been Orange Revolution II, with a simple change of Jewish oligarchs in charge, there might have been some complaints but little more. It is the Russian-hating far right that has brought about the violence and everything that has happened since.
PrinceEdward GreatMountainEagle 13 Jul 2015 18:22
Last I heard, Ukraine owes China billions for undelivered Grain.
HollyOldDog gimmeshoes 13 Jul 2015 18:11
jgbg PrinceEdward 13 Jul 2015 17:54But the Euro Maidan press is just an Ukrainian rag that invents stories to support its corrupt government in Kiev.
Vatslav Rente , 13 Jul 2015 17:44I forget the article, but in the comments I mentioned that multiple Georgians were being appointed to high level positions by Kiev, and some Russophobe called me a liar.
Not a few days later, Shakashvilli was appointed governor of Odessa. An ex-president of another country, as governor of a province in another one! Apparently, none of the millions upon millions of Ukrainians were qualified for the job.
Sakashvilli's former Minister of Internal Affairs in Georgia, Eka Zguladze, is First Deputy Minister of Internal Affairs of Ukraine. Of course, the Georgian people removed these chumps from power the first chance they got but the Ukrainian electorate haven't had any say in the appointments of foreigners in their country.
Well ... when it comes to Ukraine, the need to stock up on popcorn. This bloody and unpredictable plot is not even in the "Game of Thrones." And this is only the middle of the second season.
Today Speaker of the "RS" Andrew Sharaskin, said: Sports Complex in Mukachevo where the shooting occurred, was used as the base of the separatists DNR.
- A place 1,000 kilometers from Donetsk! But it's a great excuse to murder the guard in the café and wounded police officers.
I think tomorrow will say that there have seen Russian Army tanks and Putin - 100%
"Ukraine is part of Europe" - the slogans of the Maidan in action...jgbg gimmeshoes , 13 Jul 2015 17:42
Laurence Johnson, 13 Jul 2015 17:18Pravyi Sektor were not wrong. However, you cannot have armed groups cleaning up corruption outside the law...that only works in Gotham City.
Right Sector weren't trying to clean up corruption, they were simply trying to muscle in on the cigarette smuggling business. If Right Sector cared about crime and public order, they wouldn't be driving around, armed to the teeth, in vehicles stolen in the EU. (In the video linked in the article, all of their vehicles have foreign number plates. At least one of those vehicles is on the Czech police stolen vehicle database: http://zpravy.idnes.cz/pravy-sektor-mel-v-mukacevu-auta-s-ceskymi-spz-fqj-/zahranicni.aspx?c=A150713_102110_zahranicni_jj)
Right Sector are no strangers to such thuggery - remember their failed attempt to extort a casino in Odessa?
The EU and the US have stated on many occasions that there are "No Right Wing Nationalists" operating in Ukraine and its simply propaganda by Putin.So there shouldn't be anything to worry about should there ?
Stas Ustymenko hfakos 13 Jul 2015 15:15
Yes, yes. You seem to tolerate Medvedchuk and Baloga mafias way better, for years. Transcarpathian Region is the most corrupt in all of Ukraine (which is quite a fit). What we see here is a gang war in fatigues.
tanyushka Jeff1000 13 Jul 2015 15:14
sorry i posted the same above... i was just to hasty.. sorry again...
in the main picture of the same article it's interesting to notice the age of most of the conscripted soldiers... they are in their 30's, theirs 40's and even in their 50's... it's forced conscription, they are not volunteers... while all the DPR & LPR soldiers are real volunteers...
an uncle, the father of a cousin, was conscripted in Kherson... my cousin had to run away to South American to say with an aunt to avoid conscription... many men are doing it in Ukraine nowadays... not because they are cowards but because they don't want to kill their brothers & sisters for the benefit of the oligarchs and their NATO masters (and mistresses...)
did you know that all the conscripts have to pay for their own uniforms and other stuff, while in the National Guard and the oligarchs batallions everything is top quality and for free... including bulletproof vests and other implements courtesy of NATO
Demi Boone 13 Jul 2015 15:13
Well finally they reveal themselves. These Ukraine Nationalists are the people who instigated the anarchy and shootings at Maidan and used it as an excuse to wrongfully drive out an elected President and in the chaos that followed bring in a coup Government which represents only West-Ukraine and suppress' East-Ukraine. You are looking at the face of the real Maidan and not the dream that a lot of people have tried to paint it to be.
Stas Ustymenko MartinArvay 13 Jul 2015 15:11
Many Right Sector members are indeed patriots. But it looks like the organisation itself is, sadly, much more useful for providing thugs for hire than "justice".
BMWAlbert PrinceEdward 13 Jul 2015 14:20
But seriously, the naval base is probably the reason, it is too important for some interests to have a less-reliable (Ukrainian) in charge, this is a job only for the most trusted poodles. If things had gone differently, the tie-eatimng chap would have been appointed Mayor of Sebastopol.
BMWAlbert PrinceEdward 13 Jul 2015 14:15
There appears to be a Quisling-shortage in Ukraine at present.
Stas Ustymenko obscurant 13 Jul 2015 13:32
More accurately, Kolomoyskiy is Ukrainian oligarch. Who happens to be ethnically, culturally and, by all accounts, religiously, a Jew.
Stas Ustymenko Kaiama 13 Jul 2015 13:24
Ukrainian Volunteer Corps of the Right Sector fighting in Donbass is two battalions. How is this a "key organization"? They are a well-known brand and fought bravely on some occasions, but the wider org is way too eager to brandish arms outside of combat or training. They will be reigned in, one way or another, and soon.
GameOverManGameOver Jeff1000 13 Jul 2015 12:02
Shh shh shh. This news does not exist yet in the western media, therefore it's nothing but Russian propaganda.
Jeff1000 13 Jul 2015 11:54
EugeneGur , 13 Jul 2015 11:21It gets worse - soldiers from the UA are now refusing to follow orders in protest against the total anarchy sweeping the chain of command, and their lack of rest and equipment.
Jeremn, 13 Jul 2015 11:16Finally, the Guardian decided to report the actual new after satisfying itself with ample discussion of the quality of Russian cheeses. Right sector "helped" to fight "separatists"? Really? Does Alec Luhn know that there are currently two (!) RS battalions at the front and 19 (!) inside Ukraine? They are some warriors. Now they are occupying themselves fighting as criminals they are for the control of contraband.Tensions have been rising between the government and the Right Sector militia that has helped it fight pro-Russian separatists in the east of the country.
At the ATO zone, they help consists of plundering, murdering and raping the local population. They enter a village, take everything of value from houses and then blow them up. They rape women and girls as young as 10 years old. They've been doing this for more than a year, and we've been telling you that for more than a year. But apparently in the fight against "pro-Russian separatists" everything is good. These crimes are so widespread, even the Ukrainian "government" is worried this will eventually becomes impossible to deny. Some battalions such as Shakhtersk and Aidar have been officially accused of crimes and ompletely or partially reformed.
Examples:
http://www.amnesty.org/en/documents/EUR50/040/2014/en/
http://www.liveleak.com/view?i=bfb_1413804655Stas Ustymenko Jeremn 13 Jul 2015 11:14Ukraine, what a mess. As though it was ever about the people. It was a grab for resources, 19-century style. But with 21st-century stakes. You can see what the West is after when you look at the US-Ukraine Business Council. It bring NATO, Monsanto and the Heritage Foundation under one roof:
You'd be surprised, but I like Bandera (controversial as he was) way more than I trust some people who wrap themselves in his red-and-black Rebel banner. Yarosh included. Banderite rebellion ended 60 years ago. Its major goal was establishing a "united, free Ukrainian state"; by contrast, stated ultimate goals of the Right Sector are way murkier; I'm not sure even most of the movement's members are clear on what these are.
With present actions, Right Sector has a huge image problem in the West. If it will come to all-out conflict, no doubt the West will back Poroshenko government over a loose confederation of armed dudes linked by the thin thread of 30ies ideology (suspect even then). And the West will be right.
Stas Ustymenko Nik2 13 Jul 2015 11:03
Methinks you're way overselling a thug turf war as "major political event. Truth is, the region has been long in the hands of organized crime. The previous regime incorporated and controlled almost all organized crime in the country, hence no visible conflict. Now, individual players try to use temporary uncertainty to their advantage.
Right Sector claims they were trying to fight the smuggling, but this doesn't sound plausible. The word is, what's behind the events is struggle for control over lucrative smuggling between two individuals (who are both "businessmen" and "politicians", members of Parliament). Both are old-school players, formerly affiliated with Yanukovitch party. One just was savvy enough to buy himself some muscle under Right Sector banner. Right Sector will either have to straighten out its fighters (which it may not be able to do) or disappear as a political player. I fail to see how people see anything "neo-Nazi" in this gang shootout.
PaddyCannuck Cavirac 13 Jul 2015 10:21
tanyushka Pwedropackman 13 Jul 2015 10:10Nobody here is an apologist for Stalin, who was a brutal and cruel despot, and the deportations of the Crimean Tatars were quite indefensible. However, a few observations might lend some perspective.
1. Crimea has been invaded and settled by an almost endless succession of peoples over the millennia. The Crimean Tatars (who are of Turkic origin) were by no means the first, nor indeed the last, and cannot in any meaningful sense be regarded as the indigenous people of Crimea.
2. The Crimean Tatars scarcely endeared themselves to the Russians, launching numerous raids, devastating many towns, including the burning of Moscow in 1571, and sending hundreds of thousands, if not millions of Russians into slavery in the Ottoman Empire.
3. The deportations took place in 1942 - 1943 against the backdrop of World War II, when a lot of bad stuff happened, including -
4. The American (and also Canadian) citizens of Japanese ethnicity who had their property confiscated and were likewise shipped off to camps. Their treatment, if anything, was worse.Sevastopol, Pearl Harbor. What's the difference? What's sauce for the goose is sauce for the gander.
http://rt.com/news/207899-un-anti-nazism-resolution/
http://www.un.org/en/ga/third/69/docs/voting_sheets/L56.Rev1.pdf
do these links answer your question?
Meanwhile last night & this morning, just to distract the people of what is going on in the West, Kiev launched a massive shelling over Donetsk and other places in Donbass using weapons forbbiden by the Minsk agreements, including Tor missiles, one of which fell at a railway station but didn't explode... it was defused by emergency workers but the proof is there if you care to see... it was thesecond biggest attack since the cease fire...Nik2 6i9vern 13 Jul 2015 09:53
Not exactly. By now, BBC has made good coverage of these events in Ukrainian and Russian languages, but not in English. It looks like BBC considers that Western public does not deserve the politically sad truth about armed clashes between "champions of Maidan Revolution" and "new democratic authorities, fighting corruption". Western public should not be in doubt about present-day "pro-European" Ukraine. And "The Guardian" still has only one article on the issue that could be a turning point in Ukrainian politics. This is propaganda, not informing about or analyzing really serious political events.
VictorWhisky 13 Jul 2015 09:51
This is the IMF hired guns now going after the very people who helped the Wall Street IMF shysters in the illegitimate coup and the set up of the illegitimate Kiev junta, a mix of half Ukrainian and non-Ukrainian mongrels.
Furthermore, instead of bringing in the people who helped overthrow Janukovich into the government fold, the IMF is placing it's foreign collaborators in ministerial positions by making them instant Ukrainian citizens, while keeping the right wing, without whose help the coup would not have succeeded, out of government and slowly trying to eliminate them with their private foreign mercenary force.
Madame "F*ck the EU Nuland from the US state department bordello, a devout Zionist, enticed these supposed Ukrainian NAZIs to help her in her dirty deeds, no doubt with promises of power sharing.
So madame Nuland was perfectly willing to get in bed with the Ukrainian NAZI devils (her Jewish friend should be proud) and when the dirty deed was done, she is now turning against Ukrainian nationalists in the attempt to have outside forces in control of Ukraine. Madame Nuland is not as intelligent or capable as portrayed, because if she was, she would have known Ukraine has a very delicate and very complicated political structure and history with nearly half the country speaking Russian and more loyal to the Russians than to the US.
An intelligent person familiar with Ukrainian history would know any attempt of placing a US stooge in Kiev would certainly result in a civil war.
She no doubt got her position not by intelligence but by connections. More than 6000 Ukrainians, human beings, innocent men women and children, have died in madame Nuland's engineered coup, putting her in league with her mentor, Henry Kissinger, aka the butcher of Vietnam. That intelligent idiot's policies resulted in the death of 3 million Vietnamese and 50,000 young Americans. Does madame Nuland intend to sacrifice that many Ukrainians to prove her ultimate stupidity?
Jeremn Luminaire 13 Jul 2015 09:51
The conscripts didn't want to shoot their fellow Ukrainians. The nationalists don't believe the people in the east are their fellow Ukrainians.
Jeremn DrMacTomjim 13 Jul 2015 09:43
Yes. But meanwhile the Atlantic Council tells us this is why more Ukrainians admire nationalists.
Because they were lovely guys, evidently, and their "popularity" has nothing to do with armed thugs beating you up if you say anything against them (or the state prosecuting you for denying or questioning their heroism).
Jeremn jezzam 13 Jul 2015 09:35
Ukrainian media, reporting Ukrainian government official:
12 police dead in two days, 180 wounded with gunshot wounds.
Still Kremlin lies?
Jeff1000 13 Jul 2015 09:30
Thank God Ukraine is finally free and democratic. The old autocratic regime actually had the gall to make running street battles illegal - but those dark days are in the past. In the liberated Ukraine you are free spend the dollar a day you get paid on a bullet proof vest so the rampant Nazi street gangs don't kill you.
Jeremn SHappens 13 Jul 2015 09:26
You'd be surprised, there are Bandera-lovers in the UK too. There's a Bandera museum. And there is this lot, teaching Christian values to children. And telling them that Bandera was a hero. Future Right Sector supporters being crafted as we type.
6i9vern 13 Jul 2015 09:24
The Ukrainian sub-saharan African minimum wage is now being accompanied by Somali-style politics. Luckily, the Russians have liberated Crimea so piracy on the high seas isn't an option for the Ukrainians.
6i9vern 13 Jul 2015 09:18
Apparently, UAVs generously supplied to Ukrainians by the Canadian taxpayers are being put to good use smuggling cigarettes into Slovakia.
6i9vern 13 Jul 2015 09:12
The BBC are bravely sticking to their decision not to report this story. Congratulations are in order for such dedication. The graun protected its readership from this confusing information for 24 hours and then caved to the temptation to report news. Too bad.
aucontraire2 13 Jul 2015 08:36
Can we officially congratulate Nuland for a crappy job and also for providing Putin with all the tools he needed to bring back Ukraine under his wing. False flag operations for American private interests must stop now. They are immoral, unethical and only bring death and destruction to otherwise stable societies. The UN should have a say.
SomersetApples 13 Jul 2015 08:25
The country is bankrupt; the Kiev putschists are selling off the country's assets to their New York allies, the oligarchs and Nazis are at war against each other and the illegal putschist government and now toilet mouth Nuland is back on the scene. Looks like a scene form Dante's Inferno.
todaywefight Polvilho 13 Jul 2015 07:54
Which Russian invasion will this be the of he approximately 987 mentioned by Poroshenko and our man Yatz...or are you referring to the people of the AUTONOMOUS REPUBLIC OF CRIMEA's (yes that was what was called after the 1994 referendum) massive wishes to (like Donbass) go against a government who illegally dismissed an elected president a wish that was reflected on a referendum which was allowed by their constitution 18(7)
Bosula Scepticbladderballs 13 Jul 2015 07:38
Yes. Most of the protesters are good people who just want a better deal in life.
monteverdi1610 13 Jul 2015 06:54
Remember all those CIF threads when those of us who pointed to the neo-Nazis in Ukraine were immediately called ' Putinbots ' ?
PS/ Apologies would be the order of the day , perhaps ?Sturney 13 Jul 2015 06:49
Apparently this conflict is over. Temporarily over. Anyway in ever-contracting economy, in a Mariana trench between Russia and EU, in the most totalitarian country in history, such conflicts will continue. Since Nuland tossed yeast in the outhouse nobody can stop fermentation of sh*t. Help yourself with some beer and shrimps. I am looking forward when these masses splash out to EU, preferably to Poland. Must be fun to watch. (Lipspalm)
Justin Obisesan 13 Jul 2015 06:33
In the run-up to the Euro 2012 football tournament, jointly hosted by Poland and Ukraine, I remember how the media in this country worked themselves into a frenzy harping on about the presence of violent neo-Nazi groups in Ukraine. After the removal of Mr Yanukovych from office, the same media organisations changed their tune by describing any talk of neo- Nazis in Ukraine as "Russian propaganda". The Western media coverage of the Ukrainian crises has been so blatantly pro-Kiev and anti-Donbass that their claims of impartiality and objectivity cannot be taken seriously anymore.
Jeremn jgbg 13 Jul 2015 06:16It is fine when they are shooting at Donetsk, but not so good when they use the same tactics in western Ukraine.
Azov are the same, violent neo-Nazi thugs given authority, and this article notes that PrivatBank is the bank that services requests for donations to the Azov funds, using J P Morgan as intermidiary.
Neither Azov nor Right Sector want peace. On 3 July 4,000 men from these units protested in Kiev, calling for resumption of the war against the eastern provinces. They favour ethnic cleansing.
Jeremn William Fraser 13 Jul 2015 06:10
The people who support Bandera are in western Ukraine. They are the ones who say Stalin starved the Ukrainian people.
Trouble is, in the 1930s, western Ukraine belonged to Poland.
It was the Russians, eastern Ukrainians and other Soviet people who starved, not the western Ukrainians.
Kefirfan 13 Jul 2015 06:02
Good, good. Let the democracy flow through you...
Pwedropackman SHappens 13 Jul 2015 05:53
It will be interesting to see which side the US and Canada will support. Probably Poroshenko and the Oligarchs because the Right Sector is not so happy about the ongoing sales of Ukraine infrastructure to US corporates.
SHappens 13 Jul 2015 05:14
Harpers' babies are out manifesting, supporting the good guys:
"Supporters of Ukraine's Right Sector extremist group rallied in Ottawa Sunday amid the radicals' ongoing standoff with police in western Ukraine."
The rally outside the Ukrainian embassy was organized by the Right Sector's representative office in the Canadian capital, 112 Ukraine TV channel reported, citing the Facebook account of the so-called Ukrainian Volunteer Corps.
careforukraine 13 Jul 2015 05:09
I wonder how long it will be before the us denounces nazi's in ukraine? Kind of seems like we have seen this all before. Almost like how ISIS were just freedom fighters that needed our support until ?..... Well we all know what happened there.
Pwedropackman 13 Jul 2015 05:04
If it was not for the right sector, Ukraine would still be one united nation.
GameOverManGameOver Chris Gilmore 13 Jul 2015 04:41
Yes, I agree, they do wreck the economy. That was my point. Russia want's strong economies to do business with, not broken economies that only ask for financial aid.
Like I said, no evidence of Russian troops in Donbass and South Ossetia asked for the presence of Russian troops to deter the Georgian government from trying another invasion.
And organisations like CIS are meant to expand economic ties. Just like the EU I suppose. They function in pretty much the same way with everyone getting a chance to lead. So I don't know why that should be a bad thing. Since the EU is not interested in admitting Russia why can't Russia go to other organisations?
VladimirM Dmitriy Grebenyuk 13 Jul 2015 04:26
It's a poisonous sarcasm, I think. But I've heard that RS accuse the Ukrainian government of being pro-Putin as the government accuse them of being Russian agents. Surreal a bit.
stewfen FOHP46 13 Jul 2015 04:24
The west would not have dialogue with Russia because it was not what Washington wanted. Washington wanted to push a wedge between Russia and EU at any cost even 6500 lives and unfortunately they succeeded
GameOverManGameOver Chris Gilmore 13 Jul 2015 03:54
I'll admit that frozen conflicts could be useful to Russia. But only from a security point of view. And why not, exactly? NATO is Russia's biggest threat, so it would make sense for the government to want to avoid it expanding any further. I understand your misgivings since you're speaking from the position that NATO should expand to deter Russi I mean 'Iran', but surely you understand that Russia wanting to prevent that makes logical sense? Sure, it's at someone else's expense but let's not pretend that big countries doing something at someone else's expense is a new and revolutionary concept reserved only to Russia. And the Georgian conflict dates back to the very early 90's.
From an economic point of view though, no sense at all. Frozen conflicts usually bring economic barriers. Believe it or not Russia's priority isn't expansion, but the economy. And trade with it's neighbours is an important element of the Russian economy. It's very hard to trade with areas that are in the middle of a frozen conflict. So in that sense the last thing Russia would want are profitable areas in a frozen conflict around it's borders hampering it's economic growth.
And none of this has anything to do with Marioupol.
Debreceni 13 Jul 2015 03:38
The Right Sector does not exist, or if it does, it has been created by Moscow. The crisis in Greece is also the work of Russian agents. The ISIS is financed and trained by Putin. Ebola was cooked up in a laboratory in Saint Petersburg. Look for the Russian!
Kaiama PrinceEdward 13 Jul 2015 02:50
We don't know if PS were also doing it as well or just poking their noses into someone else's business. Who started it? I doubt the correct answer will ever be known. Two unsavoury groups arguing about an illegal business. The problem is that the MP is an MP whereas PS is a national organisation.
DrMacTomjim 13 Jul 2015 02:04
"Note to Ukraine: Time to Reconsider Your Historic Role Models" Someone wrote this a bit late.
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/nikolas-kozloff/note-to-ukraine-time-to-r_b_7453506.htmlDrMacTomjim hisimperialmajesty 13 Jul 2015 02:01
"neo-Chekists" That's new to me.... Are you sure they are not "Just doing their jobs" ? Did you read the Nafeez Ahmed piece someone linked ? Here (if you didn't) https://medium.com/insurge-intelligence/secret-pentagon-report-reveals-west-saw-isis-as-strategic-asset-b99ad7a29092
And this from Foreign Affairs https://www.foreignaffairs.com/articles/libya/2015-02-16/obamas-libya-debacle
It's never the US....it's never the West..... (you know, to balance things) : )
todaywefight 13 Jul 2015 01:53
If any one on the other side, the dark side, ever thought that these lot will hold hands with any one, lay down their arms and sing Kumbaya, uou are either utterly naive or willfully ignorant. Apparently, these lot have 23 battalions, armed to their teeth, the added bonus for the Privy Sektor is that , due to expedience and cowardice , they have just made legal and incorporated into the Ukrainian army, Kyiv is in a highway to nowhere.
Incidentally, unlike the maidan demonstrations which essentially were only in Kyiv there are demonstrations in more than a dozen cities, and have established dozen of check points already and Yarosh a member of the VT. have clearly instructed them to fight if necessary.
GameOverManGameOver Omniscience 13 Jul 2015 01:35
So? Yes there are nationalists in Russia, just like everywhere else. You get a gold star for googling. Shall I get some articles with European and American nationalists to parade around to make a vague point? If you want I can get you an article of Lithuanians dressed up as the Waffen SS parading around Vilnius. That's Lithuania the EU and Nato member. Funny how EU principles disappear when it's one of their own violating them.
You seem to be missing the point entirely. While all countries have their nationalists, those nationalists are a very small minority, have no power, have no popular support, have no seats in government, usually derided by the majority of the population and they certainly aren't armed to the teeth roaming around the country killing, torturing and kidnapping people with the blessing of their government
HollyOldDog Joe way 13 Jul 2015 00:09
The Right Sector were / are Ukrains Storm Troopers who have had more advanced training by the Americans. If the Right Sector turn on the Kiev Government they will be difficult to defeat, and who knows if the civilian population of Ukraine may join in the 'fun' by ousting the current unpopular Ukrainian government.
sorrentina 12 Jul 2015 23:35
this is what happens when you play with fire: you get burned. Using Neo-Nazi's to implement Nato expansionist policies was always a very bad idea. It's just a shame it is not people like Victoria 'fuck the EU' Nuland who will have to suffer the blowback consequences- it is the poor Ukrainian people. This is not that different to what has happened in Libya- where Islamic extremists were used as a proxy force to oust Gaddafi.
annamarinja jgbg 12 Jul 2015 23:31
The threshold has been guessed impatiently by the US neocons (while the provocateur Higgins/ Bellingcat fed the gullible the fairy tales about Russian army in Ukraine). The US needs desperately a real civil war in Ukraine, the Ukrainians be damned. Just look what the US-sponsored "democracy on the march" has produced in the Middle East. Expect the same bloody results in eastern Europe.
annamarinja obscurant 12 Jul 2015 23:25
perhaps you do not realize that your insults are more appropriate towards the poor Ukrainians that have been left destitute by the cooky-carrying foreigners and their puppets in Kiev. The Ukrainian gold reserve has disappeared... meanwhile, the US Congress has shamed the US State Dept for collaborating with Ukrainian neo-nazis. Stay tuned. But do not expect to hear real news from your beloved Faux News.
annamarinja quorkquork 12 Jul 2015 23:14
the jihadists in Ukraine are the integral part of Iraqization of Ukraine. The lovers of Nuland's cookies are still in denial that Ukraine was destined by the US plutocrats to become a sacrificial lamb in a fight to preserve the US dollar hegemony.
Bud Peart 12 Jul 2015 22:59
Well we always knew it would end this way. With a stalemate in the war with the East the Right wing paramilitaries and private oligarch militias (whom the west funded and trained) have gone completely feral and are now in fighting directly with whats left of the Ukrainian National Army. This is pretty much the rode to another breakaway in Galacia which would effectively end the Ukraine as a functional state.
The government should move as fast as possible to get a decent federal structure (copy switzerland) in place before the whole of the West goes into revolt as well.
DelOrtoyVerga LostJohnny 12 Jul 2015 22:38
That is what you get when you put fascists in your government.
I rather reword it to
That is what you get when you enable and rely on thugish pseudo-fascist radical para-military groups to impose order by force and violence against dissident segments of your own population (which is armed to the teeth probably by Russia)
Bosula Scepticbladderballs 12 Jul 2015 22:37
What do you think it is?
There were several people identified directly or indirectly in this BBC story whose stories should have been formally pursued by legal authorities in Kiev.
If you lived in the West you would understand that we call these references as possible 'leads' - you follow these 'leads' and see where they take you. That is what Western police do.
The story says that Kiev didn't want to follow up any of these points. Why? What harm could this do?
You state that you do not understand the point that this BBC journalist was making. But I have in a fair way tried to to explain the point that the BBC was making.
This story caused quite a stir went it came out - and the BBC chose to stick with it and support their British reporter. In an edited and shorter form the story is still on the BBC - the editing is also acknowledged by the BBC.
Do you think the BBC should have blocked or not published this investigative piece?
If so - why?
And why hasn't Kiev followed up these issues?
Have I addressed your point yet?
HollyOldDog Scepticbladderballs 12 Jul 2015 21:34
I am just watching a program recorded earlier. Hiroshima: The Aftermath. I have got past the part when the Japanese 'survivors' had to drink from the pools of Black Rain ( highly radioactive) and watched the part when American Army Tourists visited the city to take a few photos ( no medical help though) while gawking at the gooks. In fact the Japanese civilians recieved no medical assistance at all from the Americans. The commentator just said that they were just there to study the effects of nuclear radiation on a civilian population. These nuclear bombs were just dropped on Japan to save One Day of the surrender of the Japanese forces.
The next documtary I will watch another day is the sinking of the Tirpitz by the RAF using Tallboy bombs. At least this had a useful pupose in helping to stop the destruction of the North Atlantic convoys, sending aid to Russia. That aid along with the rebuilding of the Soviet Armies helped the Soviet Union to destroy the invading Nazi forces and provided a Second Front to the Western Allies to invade Normandy. A lot of good can be achieved when the East and West work together - maybe avoiding the worst effects of Global Warming but the Americans only seem to want to spend Trillions $ building more powerful nuclear weapons. Is this all that America has now, an Arms Industry - I can see it now, cooling the planet with a Nuclear Winter.
HollyOldDog Scepticbladderballs 12 Jul 2015 20:33
The USA caused the chaos in Ukraine so they must pay the billions of $ to fix it then leave Ukraine alone.
6i9vern 12 Jul 2015 20:29
One of the amusing features of the Soviet media was the long silences it maintained on possibly embarrassing breaking news until it became clear what the Party Line was. Eventually, a memo would go out from Mikhail Suslov's office to various media outlets and the silence would be broken. At least everyone knew exactly how that system worked. What is happening with the British media is much more murky.
The beeb/graun seem to be the Pravda/Izvestia, whilst the torygraph is a sort of Trybuna Ludu - ie real news very occasionally appears in it.
6i9vern 12 Jul 2015 20:08
So, after a mere 24 hours the Graun ran a story on Mukachevo. The Torygraph actually had the nerve to run the AFP wire report more or less straight away. The BBC are still keeping shtum.
The Beeb/Graun complex have well and truly had the frighteners put on them.
PrinceEdward Kaiama 12 Jul 2015 20:07
There's no doubt. I agree that the MP was probably running cigarettes, but also Right Sektor was going to muscle in.
If you asked somebody 3 years ago if Ukraine would be rocked by armed bands with RPGs and Light Machine Guns fighting in towns, they would have thought you were crazy.
This isn't Russia, this is the Ultranats/Neo-Nazis.
PrinceEdward obscurant 12 Jul 2015 20:05Right, it's the people in Donbass who bury 14th SS Division veterans with full honors, push for full pensions to surviving Hiwi and SS Collaborators... not those in Lvov. Uh huh.
BMWAlbert 12 Jul 2015 20:0411 months of investigations by the newKiev regime, attempting to implicate the the prior one for the murder of about 100 people in Kiev early last year was unsuccessful. There may be better candidates here.
fragglerokk ploughmanlunch 12 Jul 2015 19:55
It always amazes me that the far right never learn from history. The politicians and oligarchs always use them as muscle to ensure coup success then murder/assasinate the leaders to make sure they dont get any ideas about power themselves. Surprised its taken so long in ukraine but then the govt is barely hanging onto power and the IMF loans have turned to a trickle so trouble will always be brewing, perhaps theyve left it too long this time. Nobody will be shedding any tears for the Nazis and Banderistas.
hisimperialmajesty Scepticbladderballs 12 Jul 2015 19:54
Why, don't you know? They infiltrated Ukraine, the CIA (and NATO and the EU somehow) created Maidan, their agents killed the protesters, then they overthrew a legitimate government and installed a neo-nazi one, proceeded to instigate a brutal oppression against Russian speakers, then started a war against the peaceful Eastern Ukrainians and their innocent friends in the Kremlin, etc etc. Ignorant question that, by now you should know the narrative!
Kaiama gimmeshoes 12 Jul 2015 19:53
If you think Pryvi Sektor want to "clean up" then yes, but not in the way you imagine - they just want the business for themselves.
Geordiemartin 12 Jul 2015 19:51
I am reminded of AJP Taylor premise that Eastern Europe has historically had either German domination or Russian protection.
The way that the Ukrainian government had treated their own Eastern compatriots leaves little reason to believe they would be welcome back into the fold and gives people of Donbass no reason to want to rejoin the rest of the country.
If government is making an effort to reign in the likes of Right sector it is a move in the right direction but much much more will be needed to establish any trust.
Some Guy yataki 12 Jul 2015 19:45
just because they are nazis doesnt mean they are happy about doing any of this... now. look at greece and the debacle that has unfolded over the past week has been . the west ukraine wanted to be part of the euro zone and wanted some of that ecb bail out money. now they are not even sure if they could skip out on the bill and know they are fighting for nothing . russia gave them 14 bil dollars . the west after the coup only gave the 1 bil
Andor2001 Kaiama 12 Jul 2015 19:44
According to the eyewitnesses the RS shot a guard when he refused to summon the commanding officer. It was the beginning of the fight.
Andor2001 yataki 12 Jul 2015 19:41
Remember Shakespeare "Othello"? Moor has done his job, Moor has to go.. The neo-Nazis have outlived their usefulness.
Bosula caaps02 12 Jul 2015 19:39
The BBC investigative reported earlier this year that a section of Maidan protesters deliberately started shooting the police. This story was also reported in the Guardian. Google and you will easily find it. The BBC also reported that the Prosecutors Office in Kiev was forbidden by Rada officials from investigating Maiden shooters.
Maybe the BBC is telling us a lie? The BBC investigation is worth a read - then you can make up your own mind.
Bosula William Fraser 12 Jul 2015 19:29
Kazakhstan had the highest percentage of deaths from Stalin's policies in this period when he prevented the nomad herders moving from the mountains to the planes to take advantage of the benefits of seasons and weather. Stalin forced the nomads to stay in one area and they perished in the cold of the mountains or the heat of the summer plains (whichever zone they were forced to stay in).
Some of my family is Ukrainian and some recognise that Stalin's policies weren't specifically aimed at Ukrainians - the people of Kazakhstan suffered the most (as a percentage of population). Either way, there is no genetic difference between Slavs or Russian or Ukrainian origin in Ukraine or Russia - they are all genetically the same people. This information should be better taught in Ukraine.
The problem is that it would undermine the holy grail story of right wing nationalism in Ukraine.
quorkquork annamarinja 12 Jul 2015 19:27
There are already jihadist groups fighting in Ukraine! IN MIDST OF WAR, UKRAINE BECOMES GATEWAY FOR JIHAD
https://firstlook.org/theintercept/2015/02/26/midst-war-ukraine-becomes-gateway-europe-jihad/Havingalavrov obscurant 12 Jul 2015 18:33
It's been one of the biggest mistakes ( although Ukraine's military started in a desperately poor condition ) , to allow militia groups to get so powerful. Right sector should not have arms and guns... The national Ukraine military should, If members of Right sector want to fight , they should leave Right sector and join the army.
This was and will happen if they don't disband such armed groups.
annamarinja silvaback 12 Jul 2015 18:18
have you ever studied geography? If yes, you should remember the proximity of Ukraine to Russia (next door) and the proximity of Ukraine to the US (thousands miles away). Also, have you heard about the CIA Director Brennan and his covert visit to Kiev on the eve of the beginning of the civil war in Ukraine? This could give you an informed hint about the causes of the war. Plus you may be interested to learn about Mrs. Nuland-Kagan (Ms. Nudelman), her cookies, and her foul language. She is, by the way, a student of Dick Cheney. If you were born before 2000, you might know his name and his role in the Iraq catastrophe. Mrs. Nuland-Kagan (and the family of Kagans she belongs to) finds particular pleasure in creating military conflicts around the globe. It is not for nothing that the current situation in Ukraine is called Iraqization of Eastern Europe.
Bev Linington JJRichardson 12 Jul 2015 18:10
Ukrainians shot down the plane. East, West does not matter as they were all Ukrainians before the government overthrow. Leaders of the new government could not look past some Ukrainian citizens ethnicity, instead of standing together united, they decided to oppress which lead to the referendum in Crimea and the rise of separatists in the East.
jgbg Chirographer 12 Jul 2015 17:53
And for the Pro-Russian posters the newsflash is that could also describe the situation inside the Donbass.
It certainly describes the situation in Donbass where Right Sector or the volunteer battalions are in charge. In Dnepropetrovsk, Right Sector would simply turn up at some factory or other business and order the owner to sign document transferring the enterprise to them. In other cases, they have kidnapped businessmen for ransom. Some people have simply disappeared under such circumstances.
The Ukrainian National Guard simply break into homes left empty by people fleeing the war and steal the contents. Such was the scale of looting, the Ukrainian postal service have now refused to ship electrical goods out of the ATO area unless the senders have the original boxes and receipts.
jgbg AlfredHerring 12 Jul 2015 17:45
jgbg caaps02, 12 Jul 2015 17:34Maybe Kiev just needs to bomb them some more.
Putin promised to protect the Russian speaking people in Ukraine - but he hasn't really done that. His government has indicated that they would not allow Kiev to simply overrun or obliterate the people of Donbass. Quite where their threshold of actual intervention lies is anyone's guess.
The "pro-Russian" government that you refer to was only elected because it promised to sign the EU trade agreement. It then reneged on that promise...
Yanukovych's government was elected the previous one was useless and corrupt.
Yanukovych wanted to postpone the decision to sign for six months, while he attempted to extract more from both the EU and Russia. Under Poroshenko, the implementation of the EU Association Agreement has been delayed for 15 months, as the governments of Ukraine, the EU and Russia all recognised that Russian trade (with the favourable terms which Ukraine enjoys) are vitail to Ukraine's economic recovery. Expect that postponement to be extended.
.... severely and brutally curtailing freedom of speech and concentrating all power in the hands of Yanukovich's little clan...
As opposed to sending the military to shell the crap out of those who objected to an elected government being removed by a few thousand nationalists in Kiev.
There was no "coup".
An agreement had been signed at the end of February 2014, which would see elections in September 2014. The far right immediately moved to remove the government (as Right Sector had promised on camera in December 2013). None of the few mechanisms for replacing the president listed in the Ukrainian constitution have been followed - that makes it a coup.
The Maidan protesters were not armed
This newspaper and other western media documented the armed members of far right groups on Maidan. One BBC journalist was actually shot at by a Svoboda sniper, operating from Hotel Ukraina - the video is still on the BBC website.
....the interim government that was put in place by the parliament in late February and the government that was elected in May and Oct. of 2014 were and are not fascist.
The interim government included several ministers from Svoboda, formerly the Socialist Nationalist Party of Ukraine. These were the first Nazi ministers in a European government since Franco's Spanish government that ended in the 1970's. In a 2013 resolution, the EU parliament had indicated that no Ukrainian government should include members of Svoboda or other far right parties.
pushkinsideburn vr13vr 12 Jul 2015 16:45
There has been a marked change in rhetoric over the last few weeks. Even CiF on Ukraine articles seems to attract less trolls (with a few notable exceptions on this article - though they feel more like squad trolls than the first team). Hopefully a sign of deescalation or perhaps just a temporary lull before the MH17 anniversary this week?
pushkinsideburn calum1 12 Jul 2015 16:38
His other comments should have been the clue that arithmetic, like independent critical thinking, is beyond him.
normankirk 12 Jul 2015 16:19
Right sector were the first to declare they wouldn't abide by the Minsk 2 peace agreement.Nevertheless, Dmitry Yarosh, their leader is adviser to Ukraine's Chief of staff. Given that he only received about 130,000 votes in the last election, he has a disproportionate amount of power.
pushkinsideburn sashasmirnoff 12 Jul 2015 16:13
That quote is a myth https://www.metabunk.org/debunked-the-cia-owns-everyone-of-any-significance-in-the-major-media.t158/
Though doesn't mean it's not true of course
greatwhitehunter 12 Jul 2015 15:47
As predicted the real civil war in Ukraine is still to happen. The split between the east and the ordinary Ukrainian was largely manufactured . In the long term no body would be able to live with the right sector or more precisely the right sector cant share a bed with anyone else.
sashasmirnoff RicardoJ 12 Jul 2015 15:44
"When the Guardian claims to be a fearless champion of investigative journalism - as it is, in some areas - why did it obey the dictats of the US neocon media machine which rules all Western mainstream media over the Ukrainian land grab, instead of telling the truth, at that time?"
This may be why: "The CIA owns everyone of any significance in the major media." - former CIA Director William Colby
Alexander_the_Great 12 Jul 2015 15:43
This was so, so predictable. The Right Sector were the main violent group during the coup in 2014 - in fact they were the ones to bring the first guns to the square following their storming of a military warehouse in west Ukraine a few days before the coup. It was this factor that forced the Police to arm themselves in preparation.
Being the vanguard of the illegal coup, they then provided a useful tool of manipulation for the illegal Kiev government to oppress any opposition, intimidate journalists who spoke the truth and lead the war against the legally-elected ELECTED governments of Donetsk and Lugansk.
Having failed in the war against the east, western leaders have signalled the right sector has now outlived its usefulness and has become an embarrassment to Kiev and their western backers.
The Right Sector meanwhile, feel betrayed by the establishment in Kiev. They have 19 battalions of fighters and they wont go away thats for sure. I think one can expect this getting more violent in the coming months.
SHappens jezzam 12 Jul 2015 15:40
Putin is a Fascist dictator.
Putin is not a dictator. He is a statist, authoritarian-inclined hybrid regime ruler that possesses some democratic elements and space for opposition groups. He has moderate nationalist tendencies in foreign affairs; his goal is a secure a strong Russia. He is a patriot and has a charismatic authority. Russians stay behind him.
ploughmanlunch samuel glover 12 Jul 2015 15:31
'this notion that absolutely everything Kiev does follows some master script drawn up in DC and Brussels is simplistic and tiresome'
Agreed. As is everything is Russia's fault.
ConradLodziak 12 Jul 2015 15:26
This is just the latest in a string of conflicts involving the right sector, as reported by RT, Russian media and until recently many Ukrainian outlets. The problem, of course, is that Porostinko has given 'official' status to the right sector. Blow back time for him.
CIAbot007 William Fraser 12 Jul 2015 15:06
Yes, Russia (USSR) from the USSR foundation had been forcing people of the then territory of Ukraine to identify themselves as Ukrainians under the process of rootisation - Ukrainization, then gave to Ukraine Donbass and left side Dniepr and Odessa, Herson and Nikolaev, and then decided to ethnically cleane them.. It doesn't make sense, does it? Oh, wait, sense is not your domain.
annamarinja William Fraser 12 Jul 2015 15:05
let me help you with arithmetics: 72 years ago Europe was inflamed with the WWII. There was a considerable number of Ukrainians that collaborated with Hitler' nazis: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/14th_Waffen_Grenadier_Division_of_the_SS_(1st_Galician)
Now moving to the present. The US-installed oligarchs in Kiev have been cooperating closely with Ruropean neo-nazis (the followers of the WWII scum): http://rt.com/news/155364-ukraine-nazi-division-march/
In short, your government finds it is OK to glorify the perpetrators of genocide in Europe during the WWII.
Nik2 12 Jul 2015 15:04
These tragic events, when YESTERDAY, on Saturday afternoon, several civilians were unintentionally wounded in gun battles in previously peaceful town near the Hungary and Slovakia borders, vividly exposes Western propaganda. Though mass media in Ukraine and Russia are full of reports about this from the start, The Guardian managed to give first information exactly 1 day later, and BBC was still keeping silence a few minutes ago. Since both sides are allies of the West (the Right Sector fighters were the core of the Maidan protesters at the later stages, and Poroshenko regime is presumably "democratic"), the Western media preferred to ignore the events that are so politically uncomfortable. Who are "good guys" to be praised? In fact, this may be the start of nationalists' revolt against Ukrainian authorities, and politically it is very important moment that can fundamentally change Ukrainian politics. But the West decides to be silent ...
annamarinja William Fraser 12 Jul 2015 14:59
Do your history book tell you that the Holodomor was a multiethnic endeavor? That the Ukrainians were among the victims and perpetrators and that the whole huge country had suffered the insanely cruel policies of multiethnic bolsheviks? The Holodomor was almost a century ago, whereas the Odessa massacre and the bombardments of civilian population in east Ukraine by the neo-nazi thugs (sent by Kiev), has been going during last year and half. Perhaps you have followed Mr. Brennan and Mrs. Nuland-Kagan too obediently.
foolisholdman zonzonel 12 Jul 2015 14:58
zonzonel
Oops, the presumably fascist govt. is fighting a fascist group.
What is a poor troll to do these days??
Antiukrainian copywriting just got more difficult, perhaps a raise is needed? Just sayin.What's your problem? Never heard of Fascist groups fighting each other? Never heard of the "Night of the Long Knives"? Fascists have no principles to unite them. They believe in Uebermenschen and of course they all think that either they themselves or their leader is The Ueberuebermensch. Anyone who disagrees is an enemy no matter how Fascist he may be.
samuel glover ploughmanlunch 12 Jul 2015 14:55
Y'know, I'm no fan of the Russophobic hysteria that dominates English-language media. I've been to Ukraine several times over the last 15 years or so, and I'm sorry to say that I think that in time Ukrainians will regard Maidan's aftermath as most of them view the Orange Revolution -- with regret and cynicism.
That said, this notion that everything, absolutely everything Kiev does follows some master script drawn up in DC and Brussels is simplistic and tiresome. Most post-revolution regimes purge one end or the other of the current ideological wings. Kiev has already tangled with the oligarch and militia patron Igor Kolomoisky. So perhaps this is another predictable factional struggle. Or maybe, as another comment speculates, this is a feud over cigarette tax revenue.
In any case, Ukraine is a complex place going through an **extremely** complex time. it's too soon to tell what the Lviv skirmish means, and **far** too soon to lay it all on nefarious puppetmasters.
TheTruthAnytime ADTaylor 12 Jul 2015 14:49
The only thing that makes me reconsider is their service to their country,...
Is the CIA their country? So far they've only seemed to serve the interests of American businesspeople, not Ukrainian interests. Also, murdering eastern Ukrainians cannot really be considered such a great service to Ukraine, can it?
annamarinja ID075732 12 Jul 2015 14:44
Maidan was indeed a popular apprising, but it was utilized by the US strategists for their geopolitical games. The Ukrainians are going to learn hard way that the US have never had any interest in well-being of the "locals" and that the ongoing civil war was designed in order to create a festering wound on a border with the Russia. The Iraqization of Ukraine was envisioned by the neocons as a tool to break both Russia and Ukraine. The sooner Ukrainians come to a peaceful solution uniting the whole Ukraine (for example, to federalization), the better for the general population (but not for the thieving oligarchs).
vr13vr 12 Jul 2015 14:38
"Couple of hundred Right Sector supporters demonstrated in Kiev?" Come on! Over the last week, there have been enough of videos of thousands of people in fatigues trying to block access to government buildings and shouting rather aggressive demands. The entire battalions of "National Guard." This is much bigger than just 100 people on a peaceful rally. Ukraine might be heading towards Maidan 3.0.
ID075732 12 Jul 2015 14:26
The situation in Ukraine has been unravelling for months and this news broke on Friday evening.
The Minsk II cease fire has not been honoured by Poroshenko, who has not managed to effect any of the pledges he signed up to. The right sector who rejected the cease-fire from the start are now refusing the rule of their post coup president in Kiev.
Time for Victoria Nuland to break out the cookies? Or maybe it's too late for that now. The country formerly know as Ukraine is turning out to be another outstanding success of American post -imperial foreign policy.
Meanwhile in UFA the BRIC's economic forum is drawing to a close, with representatives from the developing world and no reporting of the aspirations being discussed there of over 60% of the world's population. It's been a major success, but if you want to learn about it, you will have to turn to other media sources - those usually reported as Russian propaganda channels or Putin's apologists.
The same people who have been reporting on the deteriorating situation in Kiev since the February coup. Or as Washington likes to call it a popular up rising.
Dennis Levin 12 Jul 2015 13:29Canadian interviewed, fighting for 'Right Sector'.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=j65dBEWd7go
The Right Sector of Euromaidan https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9yFqUasBOUY
Lets reflect for a moment on the Editorial directives, that would have 'MORE GUNS' distributed to NAZIS..
http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2015/feb/01/putin-stopped-ukraine-military-support-russian-propaganda
The Guarn publishes, 'Britain should arm Ukraine, says Tory donor' - http://www.theguardian.com/world/2015/mar/11/britain-should-arm-ukraine
Al Jazeera says,'t's time to arm Ukraine' - http://www.aljazeera.com/indepth/opinion/2015/02/arms-ukraine-russia-separatists-150210075309643.html
Zbigniew Brzezinski: The West should arm Ukraine - http://www.kyivpost.com/opinion/op-ed/zbigniew-brzezinski-the-west-should-arm-ukraine-354770.html
ploughmanlunch ADTaylor 12 Jul 2015 13:06'The only thing that makes me reconsider is their service to their country'
Don't get me wrong. I detest the fascist militias and their evil deeds.
However, despite their callousness, brutality and stupidity, they have been the most effective fighting force for Kiev ( more sensible Ukrainians have been rather more reluctant to kill their fellow countrymen ).
Deluded ? Yes. Cowardly ? No.
Even more reprehensible, in my opinion are the calculating and unprincipled Kiev Government that have attempted to bully a region of the Ukraine that had expressed legitimate reservations, using those far right battalions, but accepting no responsibility for the carnage that they carried out.
mario n 12 Jul 2015 12:52
I think it's time Europe spoke up about dangers of Ukrainian nationalism. 72 years ago Ukrainian fascists committed one of the most hideous and brutal acts of genocide in the human history. Details are so horrifying it is beyond imagination. Sadly not many people remembers that, because it is not politically correct to say bad things about Ukraine. Today mass murderers are hailed as national heroes and private battalions and ultranationalist groups armed to the teeth terrorise not only Donbas but now different parts of the country like Zakarpattia where there is strong Hungarian, Russian and Romanian minority.
How many massacres and acts of genocide Europe needs before it learns to act firmly?
SHappens 12 Jul 2015 12:49
Kiev has allowed nationalist groups including Right Sector to operate despite allegations by groups like Amnesty International, that Right Sector has tortured civilian prisoners.
You know what, you dont play with fire or you will get burnt. It was written on the wall that these Bandera apologists would eventually turn to the hand that fed them. I wonder how Kiev will manage to blame the russians now.
RicardoJ 12 Jul 2015 12:33
Of course the Guardian doesn't like to explain that 'Right Sector' are genuine fascists - by their own admission! These fascists, who wear Nazi insignia, were the people who overthrew the elected government of Ukraine in the US / EU-supported coup - which the Guardianistas and other PC-brainwashed duly cheered on as a supposed triumph of democracy. Since that glorious US-financed and EU-backed coup, wholly illegal under international law, Ukraine's economy has collapsed, as has Ukrainians' living standards.
The US neocons are losing interest in their attempted land grab of Ukraine - and the EU cretins who backed the coup, thinking it would be a nice juicy further territorial acquisition for the EU, are desperately looking the other way, now that both the US and EU realize that Ukraine is a financial black hole.
When the Guardian claims to be a fearless champion of investigative journalism - as it is, in some areas - why did it obey the dictats of the US neocon media machine which rules all Western mainstream media over the Ukrainian land grab, instead of telling the truth, at that time?
jgbg 12 Jul 2015 12:15
The move came after a gunfight broke out on Saturday, when about 20 Right Sector gunmen arrived at a sports complex controlled by MP Mikhail Lano. They had been trying to stop the traffic of cigarettes and other contraband, a spokesman for the group said.
Put another way, one group of gangsters tried to muscle in on the cigarette smuggling operation of another group of gangsters. Smuggling cigarettes into nearby EU countries is extremely lucrative. Here's some video of some of the events:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hexRskhproc&feature=youtu.be
Note the registration plates driven by both Right Sector and the other gangsters i.e. not Ukrainian. In all likelihood, these cars are all stolen. Right Sector and fighters from "volunteer battalions" have become accustomed to muscling in on other people's activities (legal or not) in Donbass. This sort of thuggery is routine when these folk come to town. It is only when since they have continued such activities on their home turf in west and central Ukraine that the authorities have taken any notice.
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Feb 27, 2019 | failedevolution.blogspot.com
Right after the seven neoliberal Blairites left the Labour party towards the formation of a new "independent" party, three Tories decided to join them.
As the Guardian reported : "
Three Conservatives have quit their party to join the new Independent Group of MPs, declaring that hard Brexiters have taken over and that the modernising wing of the party has been 'destroyed'. Anna Soubry, Sarah Wollaston and Heidi Allen explained their decision to join the new group, founded this week by seven Labour MPs, who also left their party. "
It all happened too fast and someone would be rather naive to believe that these moves were not pre-agreed and fully coordinated.
All the picks appear to be carefully selected. The establishment takes back those who has raised carefully with the 'principles' of the neoliberal ideology in order to save them from the collapsing conservative party and the Corbynism-'contaminated' Labour. Next step, a third 'independent' party with the mission to save neoliberalism.It's not hard to guess the source of funding of this new party. It is the part of the big capital, especially the financial sector and the pro-Israeli lobby in the UK, that benefits from the neoliberal globalization. Therefore, it is the part of the big capital that seeks to reverse Brexit at all costs and shares common ideas and interests with the lobbies that control the EU.
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Feb 23, 2019 | www.moonofalabama.org
pretzelattack , Feb 22, 2019 9:58:52 AM | link
for the first time in weeks (months?) i don't see anything about mueller or russia on the featured articles at the guardian. are they implicitly going to admit it was all bullshit, without ever acknowledging it? (by "they" i mean the msm).Ghost Ship , Feb 22, 2019 1:06:41 PM | link>>>>: pretzelattack | Feb 22, 2019 9:58:52 AM | 3for the first time in weeks (months?) i don't see anything about mueller or russia on the featured articles at the guardianYou spoke too soon :
'Even Nixon wasn't like him': Trump's bid to upend Russia inquiry unprecedented, experts sayAnd now they've gone "live" about Manafort .
One last hurrah, one Hail Mary before Mueller says there was no provable collusion.
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Feb 18, 2019 | www.theguardian.com
Surrealistic -> libertate , 18 Feb 2019 08:55
I'm glad to take this opportunity to side with Wes here. I'm not against capitalism per se but unfettered free market capitalism is a disaster for everyone except the very few. The moves we've been making in that direction on both sides of the Atlantic over the past decades can clearly be shown to have concentrated wealth in the hands of the fewer and fewer. This is not a good thing.memo10 -> Scott Anderson , 18 Feb 2019 05:44memo10 -> libertate , 18 Feb 2019 05:21But there is an opportunity for Democrats. Trump has made a serious mess by being divisive and a liar. Trump is a would be dictator. It is unlikely Trump will get reelected since a lot of people see him for the psychopath that he is. But he may get reelected if Democrats select a tone deaf person like Elizabeth Warren to lead them. She falsely claimed to be an Indian. She reminds me of Hillary Clinton.
Democrats need someone who does not have faults similar to Trump. Amy Klobuchar, Kamala Harris, or someone else may be the best choice. Democrats need to recognize how much of a disaster Hillary Clinton was for them.
Would there be any practical difference on issues between Kamala Harris and Hillary Clinton? She reminds me of Hillary a lot more than more than Warren does.
Warren's entire campaign will probably contain fewer P.R. fuckups than Trump does in any single week. I think people will get over her Native American mistake.
I know Trump has a nickname for Warren. He's gonna come up with nicknames for anyone he runs against. If that is a deal-breaker then Trump will be running unopposed.
Anyone who thinks truly unregulated Capitalism won't fuck the public, needs to go back to history class. It's been experimented with just like Communism has.curiouswes -> libertate , 18 Feb 2019 03:25It failed for the same reason that Communism did -- you cannot make a few minor tweaks to human nature so the system works better. You have to work with human nature exactly the way it really is.
Scott Anderson , 18 Feb 2019 02:08Free market capitalism is a very simple concept: voluntary transactions among free people. This is what lifted the masses out of poverty, created the middle class
I disagree. This gave us the industrial revolution and the gilded age. It didn't give us the middle class. The unions did that and we wouldn't have needed the "new deal" if is wasn't for Wilson. Wilson gave us the great depression.
The reason I think of myself as a capitalist is because I want the means of production to stay with the private sector. Wilson gave monetary control to the private sector. I think fiscal and monetary control should have remained in the public sector.
Your idea of capitalism will wind up with all the money in the hands of a few (no middle class) because people can make more money without competition that with it. Deregulation leads to collision and the formation of cartels. The real hero was Teddy Roosevelt (not FDR). He was the trust buster. When two competitors form a trust, that isn't capitalism by the free market. Instead that is two capitalists trying to corner the market. That is a monopoly and together those two start to lock the small business man out of the market. It kills the middle class.
The reality is political parties don't do a good job governing. Trump is a train wreck. But there are a lot of Republicans who hate immigrants and black people. And that is his base. It is not just Republicans who push bad policy.libertate -> curiouswes , 18 Feb 2019 01:26The Democrats push policies that also are bad policy. Affirmative action fundamentally is based on racism. It has not lead to a colorblind society and it serves as a convenient way to ignore problems rather than deal with them. Obamacare pushed expensive health care programs on people without cost controls. Democrats need to focus on infrastructure.
But there is an opportunity for Democrats. Trump has made a serious mess by being divisive and a liar. Trump is a would be dictator. It is unlikely Trump will get reelected since a lot of people see him for the psychopath that he is. But he may get reelected if Democrats select a tone deaf person like Elizabeth Warren to lead them. She falsely claimed to be an Indian. She reminds me of Hillary Clinton.
Democrats need someone who does not have faults similar to Trump. Amy Klobuchar, Kamala Harris, or someone else may be the best choice. Democrats need to recognize how much of a disaster Hillary Clinton was for them.
California has always been a leader among the States. Whether that continues remains to be seen. I hope it does.
The US may look weak right now to other countries. But I think that is a wrong conclusion. Our economy is strong despite poor political leadership over the last fifty years. Trump is an aberration. I don't see China overtaking the US. In particular, Xi Jinping will be dictator for life and he makes bad decisions. He likely will strike an alliance with Russia and find out too late that he made a mistake. Putin seeks to turn China into a colony. Democracy may not be pretty, but it auto-corrects itself over time.
memo10 -> libertate , 17 Feb 2019 21:20However "capitalism" isn't capitalism for the poor and socialism for the rich.
No, that is known as progressivism. Free market capitalism is a very simple concept: voluntary transactions among free people .
This is what lifted the masses out of poverty, created the middle class, and has not existed in the "free world" since Wilson saddled us with the income tax and the central bank (a.k.a the Federal Reserve) and FDR sealed the deal by imposing his fascist, disastrous New Deal.
I'm a self proclaimed capitalist.
Please. You said this just a few hours ago:
Have you ever heard the term doublethink ?I am a self proclaimed capitalist. I detest deregulation and I'm pro union
You are no more a capitalist than I am an Etruscan. You are a big-government statist that likes just enough "free enterprise" to support the ruling class who will pass on some of their loot to whomever you think deserves it. You don't realize that "regulation" is a ruse to protect large business interests from competition while providing the appearance of accountability.
In other words, you are a progressive, just like most of the U.S. population, be they the left-wing Dems or so-called right-wing GOP.
Together, they have utterly corrupted and bankrupted the nation, just as leftists do everywhere and always when they seize control of a nation.
curiouswes -> apacheman , 17 Feb 2019 20:02Given that socialists of one flavor or another slaughtered " https://fee.org/articles/death-by-government/?gclid=CjwKCAiAqaTjBRAdEiwAOdx9xnneMhaqvHwARaE8iFvo3WVN265UO8PYklsV_XOTpjoRd78M97ulYRoC7fQQAvD_BwE">slaughtered close to 170 million souls in the last century, I'm not sure "tribal" is the proper term.
To this day, one can walk the streets of major western cities and see ignorant barbarian leftists (or do I repeat myself) glorifying their favorite mass-murderers such as Lenin, Mao and Che on T-Shirts and windows.
And now, of course, in Congress, where borderline morons like AOC want to accomplish a "massive transformation of our society" via a "special panel" of commissars to dictate all aspects of the energy economy.
One can only speculate if during her Boston University education she was ever exposed to the terms "Bolshevik", "USSR", "Dictatorship of the Proletariat", "Purge", "Holodomor", and, particularly apropos, "Politburo" and "Cultural Revolution".
If she was, any lesson to be learned was clearly lost in the vacuous fog wafting about between her ears.
You can call the rejection and demonization of these wannabe totalitarian monsters, along with the "community organizers" and "educators" that taught them to be useful idiots "tribalism" if you like.
Those of us who actually know something of history and reality will just keep calling it "saving civilization
So I guess you hate the 1940s-70s America the.
- Getting the extreme private profits out of healthcare?
- Getting education costs back under control?
- Taxing the very (not mildly) rich?
This proposed "transformation of society" is not to a new form, it's to undo the right-wing transformation since Reagan.
We already tried it your way. We've done it for 40 years. Every time we got the opposite effect of what was promised, we tried doubling down harder on it. It just kept getting WORSE. It's time for the right wing to admit it that it has been a total trainwreck. If this was your idea of a good plan then your judgment is flawed.
Ideology < Facts
curiouswes -> libertate , 17 Feb 2019 19:20We agree on the plausibility of the scenario.
Great. we can have a rational conversation if you like
You shouldn't. if you love the constitution then stay and fight for her. Your posts were sounding like you were trying to get around her. Seemed like it would just be easier to move away. We need help. Rational people can help. Patriotic Americans will helpAs for moving elsewhere, why should we?
I call it tribalism when one wishes to see things as either supply-side econ or socialism. I'm a self proclaimed capitalist. I just don't think deregulation will lead to anywhere other than where Marx said it would.TheBorderGuard -> curiouswes , 17 Feb 2019 17:13Socialism isn't the answer per se because it doesn't work as well as capitalism. However "capitalism" isn't capitalism for the poor and socialism for the rich. Capitalism is only self regulating when competition is preserved, so if the people at the top believe "competition is a sin" the so called free market isn't free any more. If you can talk about that, you aren't being tribal. If you cannot, reason isn't really a part of this. It is more about whose side you are on and less about who is trying to look at this using reason.
I hate totalitarianism
curiouswes -> apacheman , 17 Feb 2019 13:48Unfortunately the way the democrats silenced Omar, I'm betting they have no intention of nominating somebody that can beat Trump.
I don't think Ilhan Omar was silenced, only (and justly) criticised for her use of anti-Semitic tropes. Criticism of the Israeli government's actions and policies, OTOH, are fair game. And I do think Trump will be defeated in 2020. There are some serious, solid Democratic candidates on offer, and I think one of them will get the nomination. (I'm backing John Delaney , BTW.)
apacheman -> curiouswes , 17 Feb 2019 12:47What I've been discussing is the feasibility of seceding and the reasons for it.
I would argue that it is definitely feasible. However I don't think it is plausible. There are a few different directions you could go and I don't think you are picking the path that is:
1. most likely to succeed and
2. the least painful whether it is successful or notWhy you want to secede is well articulated even if I don't agree. If you want what you want, take the best means in order to achieve the goal. For example, if you like authoritarianism, wouldn't it be easier to move to China rather than risk killing a bunch of people and doing it your way? You say you like the constitution but instead of learning about who is messing with it, you assume the people with whom you agree, don't threaten it. They do. They don't like the 2nd amendment. They don't like the electoral college. They'd just as soon rewrite the constitution rather than read it first.
Average white Americans support the GOP because the average white American fears facing minorities as a minority themselves, because they know how they've treated others.curiouswes -> Kennyryan1 , 17 Feb 2019 08:54You know, that "Do unto others" thing? That's what a large lot white Americans fear, and why they support the GOP. The ones who don't tend to live in California and other West Coast states.
In has final state of the union address, Obama told the people that they get the government they deserve. I'm not really an Obama fan because a neoliberal is just a neocon wearing a blue blazer, but Obama was right and I gave him a lot more respect after he said it.curiouswes -> PepperoniPizza , 17 Feb 2019 01:37
- Some people just want to be told the truth.
- Others don't even care what the truth is.
I think the opioid crisis is caused by economic woes of the guy who can't get a living wage job. That problem isn't going away despite how well Trump says things are going (#2). Trickle down econ has never worked for the little guy and if the democrats nominate the right person, Trump will lose.
Unfortunately the way the democrats silenced Omar , I'm betting they have no intention of nominating somebody that can beat Trump. Both parties are in bed with AIPAC. That means their constituents come second and the rationally thinking person isn't inspired by the democrats.
curiouswes -> apacheman , 17 Feb 2019 01:27its the media; they are brainwashing people and it is working. if there was no free internet, they'd have an excuse, but anybody with access to the G ought to know better. The media BS doesn't stand up in the face of honest debate and hyperlinks.Why is that so hard for people to grasp?
this 2 hour interview sheds so much light on things inquiring minds would like to know, imho.
curiouswes -> TheBorderGuard , 17 Feb 2019 01:16Most of the rest chose to cast their lot with Trump and the Republicans, and with supply-side economics and trickle down, with predictable and predicted results.
I'm not a supply sider, but I am a self proclaimed capitalist. I detest deregulation and I'm pro union. Trump should have been impeached the day he went on TV and told why he fired Comey.
1. The media is broken
2. Congress is brokenIt may be a better chess move to try to fix what is broken (don't expect a broken Congress to impeach Trump), instead of trying to make an enemy of the most powerful military on earth by trying to leave the union. You don't have the legal right nor the military means to pull that off.
Where do you get your news from?
first thing I found: https://www.forbes.com/sites/thomasdelbeccaro/2018/04/19/the-top-four-reasons-california-is-unsustainable/#9f461533a239
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Feb 18, 2019 | www.theguardian.com
Company broke privacy and competition law and should be regulated urgently, say MPs
Facebook deliberately broke privacy and competition law and should urgently be subject to statutory regulation, according to a devastating parliamentary report denouncing the company and its executives as "digital gangsters".The final report of the Digital, Culture, Media and Sport select committee's 18-month investigation into disinformation and fake news accused Facebook of purposefully obstructing its inquiry and failing to tackle attempts by Russia to manipulate elections.
"Democracy is at risk from the malicious and relentless targeting of citizens with disinformation and personalised 'dark adverts' from unidentifiable sources, delivered through the major social media platforms we use every day," warned the committee's chairman, Damian Collins.
The report accuses Mark Zuckerberg , Facebook's co-founder and chief executive, of contempt for parliament in refusing three separate demands for him to give evidence, instead sending junior employees unable to answer the committee's questions.
Warns British electoral law is unfit for purpose and vulnerable to interference by hostile foreign actors, including agents of the Russian government attempting to discredit democracy.
Calls on the British government to establish an independent investigation into "foreign influence, disinformation, funding, voter manipulation and the sharing of data" in the 2014 Scottish independence referendum, the 2016 EU referendum and the 2017 general election.
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Feb 13, 2019 | www.moonofalabama.org
pretzelattack , Feb 13, 2019 11:07:59 AM | link
fu guardian.
Hello "pretzelattack",When you take issue with Editorial decisions of the Guardian, the Moderation team is the wrong place to address it. You would have better luck following the procedures outlined on https://www.theguardian.com/info/complaints-and-corrections.
As far as upholding our Community Standards is concerned, The Guardian has decided to stand by the article and thus The Guardian views comments such as yours as misrepresentation.
There is also the matter that most of your removed comments are Off Topic for the discussions on which you post them, which breaches point 8 of our Community Standards.
8. Keep it relevant. We know that some conversations can be wide-ranging, but if you post something which is unrelated to the original topic ("off-topic") then it may be removed, in order to keep the thread on track. This also applies to queries or comments about moderation, which should not be posted as comments.
Premoderation is usually only a temporary measure. Post consistently in line with the community standards you agreed to abide by when creating your account and the sanction will be lifted and full commenting privileges restored to your account. Post consistently against the spirit of the community standards and you risk a permanent ban.
Best wishes
Meg,
Community Moderator
Links: The Guardian's Community Standards & FAQs
This was about the blatant bullshit, by Luke Harding, about Assange and manning meeting at the Ecuadorian embassy in London.
"The guardian stands by the story" by censoring critical comments, while never bothering to try to defend the actual reporting.
Of course, that would be difficult since there is no evidence that Manafort somehow whisked himself (maybe a dr. who tardis) in and out of one of the most heavily surveilled sites in the world.
"Independent journalism" at its finest.
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Feb 10, 2019 | www.theguardian.com
Political ideologies appear to have contributed to inequality and disadvantage in Australia in that time, he argues.
Fraser in large part blames "neoliberalism" and its influence on policymaking for the "disconnect between Australia's impressive economic growth story and its failure on so many markers to show progress towards a better, fairer society".
"Favouring the market system ahead of the state system, and individual interests ahead of community interests, can lead to profoundly unfair social outcomes.
ss="rich-link"> More than three million Australians living in poverty, Acoss report reveals Read more
"Those unable to afford access to decent standards of housing, healthcare, and other essential services have to settle for inferior arrangements, or go without."
Fraser says charitable organisations see the effects of "real poverty" that result in "misery, anxiety and loss of self-esteem of mothers unable to put food on the table for their kids, of old and young homeless people, and the victims of domestic violence and drug overdoses".
Fraser summarises the key thrusts of neoliberalism as "the pursuit of the lowest possible rates of income and most other taxes and the maximum restraint on government interventions and spending programs".
Evidence in Australia and overseas shows the influence of neoliberalism on fiscal policy "and the misery and social polarisation that has come with it", he says.
The global financial crisis "should have" marked a tipping point, when the "idealised view of financial markets being self-regulating" was shattered. While Australia "avoided the worst traumas of the GFC" with prompt fiscal and monetary policy responses, in Europe "taxes were increased and spending programs slashed", resulting in a further five or six years of severe recession.
Fraser says that all political ideologies -- taken to extremes -- can be divisive and cause damage, including an ideology "based on a state system".
But the former Reserve Bank governor focuses on neoliberalism because it "remains in vogue". The Morrison government "continues to reaffirm its over-riding commitment to lower taxation, and to assert that this is the best way to increase investment, jobs and economic growth" - despite the lack of evidence to support the theory .
Although Fraser recognises that politics never can or should be taken out of policymaking, he suggests the best course is to "hammer away" at flaws of particular approaches.
For example, Fraser praises "the avoidance of costly tax cuts accruing to large corporations" as a positive development -- referring to the Turnbull government abandoning the big business component of its $50bn 10-year company tax cut plan.
He suggests the "quick done-deal" of Labor signing up to the Coalition's proposed acceleration of the cut to taxes on small and medium business was an example that "political interests are always lurking nearby".
In a separate presentation Keating -- who headed PM&C from 1991 to 1996 -- warns the government's promise to cap expenditure while simultaneously cutting taxes and returning the budget to surplus is based on overly optimistic assumptions of growth in GDP, wages and productivity.
ss="rich-link"> Why are stock markets falling and how far will they go? Read more
According to Keating, the government must stop assuming there have been no structural changes in the relationship between unemployment and the rate of wage increases.
He notes that predictions of a tightening labour market leading to higher wages are predicated on assumptions of growth averaging 3% or as much as 3.5%.
He will also say a sustained return to past rates of economic growth will be impossible unless we can ensure a reasonably equitable distribution of income, involving a faster rate of wage increases, especially for the low-paid.
Matt Quinn , 19 Oct 2018 12:33
Excellent that neoliberalism is being put under the spotlight. To fully understand it, and the root causes of its "thrusts", one need only refer to its history, helpfully chronicled by economist Mason Gaffney in his little known but devastating 1994 work The Corruption of Economics . It begins:petesweetbix -> FelixKruell , 19 Oct 2018 04:00
Neoclassical economics is the idiom of most economic discourse today. It is the paradigm that bends the twigs of young minds. Then it confines the florescence of older ones, like chicken-wire shaping a topiary.
It took form about a hundred years ago, when Henry George and his reform proposals were a clear and present political danger and challenge to the landed and intellectual establishments of the world.
Few people realize to what degree the founders of Neo-classical economics changed the discipline for the express purpose of deflecting George and frustrating future students seeking to follow his arguments.
It can be argued that the 20th century was a disastrous wrong-turn leading to the subversion of a rising economic democracy for the benefit of rent-takers. Unnecessary privation, war and destruction of the living world were it's necessary consequence, but it's not to late to revisit the keen insights of a (deliberately) forgotten genius like Henry George.
How Land Barons, Industrialists and Bankers Corrupted Economics , Dierdre Kent 2016.
In a nutshell, Land (aka nature) causes Wealth causes Money for some definition of wealth and money:
What Money is : Seven Deadly Innocent Frauds of Economic Policy , Mosler 2010 P1.
What Wealth is : Progress and Poverty , Henry George 1879, esp intro, ch3, 17.
How we got to Now : The Corruption of Economics , Mason Gaffney 1994 p 29-44. Excellent Prologue by Fred Harrison: Who's Afraid of Henry George? .For sincere and willing truth-seekers, this short list cannot fail to deeply reward even a cursory treatment.
And you appear not to understand the difference between an "average" and a "median". The median measure the mid-point, above and below which 50% of the sample population falls. The average is just an average over all, and become increasingly different from the median, the more the inequalities (i.e., skewness of the distribution) increase. This is precisely what has happened in most western societies since the 1980s. The report mentions AVERAGE wealth, but this hides a large spread, with large increases at the top, while the bottom 10 to 20% in most western societies have almost nothing, and have not seen their new wealth increase for decades. How can it, if you don't own a house and don't have shares/super, etc.?? I think you are generalising too much from your own (probably limited) social circle and experiences.MobileAtheist -> PieSwine , 17 Oct 2018 23:54Your welcome, yes its an informative site, I might add, Neo-liberalism is only half the problem Globalisation goes hand in hand with it and both are supported if not controlled by the IMF, with the aim of crushing the working people of third world nations, and the ALP explicitly support Globalisation whilst emphatically deny involvement with Neoliberalism.justdreamingguss , 17 Oct 2018 06:21Wages have stagnated and corporate profits have soared! Privatisation of public assets and corporatization in this capitalist system, is the biggest fail of all times for the majority of our society! Back in my day, If there were two working, (Which there wasn't) my wage was enough to own my own house in 2.8 years.justdreamingguss , 17 Oct 2018 05:52
The system is defunct and fucked!Neoliberalism seems to be a nice name, conjured up by a nasty think tank. given to a system that enhances massive profits for the few. A system that allows public owned assets (Infrastructure) to be sold at devalued prices and a system where people are to be considered as a commodity, with those of no use to their system being skinned and left out to dry.RUSiriUs , 17 Oct 2018 05:29I have been hammering the same line for years now, it so good to have someone as articulate and respected as Bernie Fraser damning neoliberalism for what it is as an economic cover story for implementing right-wing ideology. Trickle down theory has been routinely assessed as a failure to deliver equity and as a result the LNP are polarising society.HofBrisbane , 17 Oct 2018 04:34When neoliberalism is broken down, it's just the same old chestnut of socialism for the privileged (via lobbying to create an environment best for rent seekers) and capitalism for the rest of us where if we fail, too bad so sad.Friarbird , 17 Oct 2018 04:18Neoliberalism is fraud.20reeds , 17 Oct 2018 03:28
It is the speedo wound back, that 'glorious beachside situation' under water, a pea-and-thimble trick to baffle and fleece the suckers.
Being the creation of Libertarians, it has their trademark ideological motivation, a visceral loathing of government, in whatever form.
That determination to demonise and even dismantle govt is made plain by Neoliberalism's numerous facilitating porkies, pushed as the unvarnished truth.
One example.
Neoliberal ideologues dogmatically insist the Commonwealth needs to somehow 'borrow' to fund the deficit.
This assertion has no basis in reality.
It is a whopper designed to serve the needs of ideology, nothing more.
For Neoliberal ideologues, this piece of deceit kicks two significant goals.
First, it enables them to depict govt as so inherently inefficient, so inept, it cannot even raise dollar one of the very currency which it is allegedly controls.
Down, down goes disgraced govt.
From where can it obtain the desperately-needed funds?
Here comes the second goal.
To fund the deficit, the C' wealth goes crawling, cap-in-hand, to the private sector.
Fearless, freedom-loving, shit-hot-and-shiny private sector !
But it's total myth.
The Commonwealth is a sovereign currency issuer.
Ergo sum, it always has its own money, AUD.
Saying it needs to borrow something it creates and controls-- and of which it has an infinite supply-- only makes sense as a propaganda-driven porkie.It's like claiming you need to borrow somebody else's piss.
Neoliberalism (ie rule market forces) is a binary system - it produces winners and losers.Banter76 -> Lovedogg , 17 Oct 2018 03:12The winners are those paid to lobby, write the legislation, secure the profits, get the shares, run the corporations, the banks, the accountancies, the insurers etc.
The losers are the majority us who remain outside in the cold. The winners are not going to change their ways and why should they - they hold the power and we the masses pose no threat to them.
Its way past time that those who are not winning in this binary game started to threaten the winners. This is what McManus is doing with her ACTU 'change the rules' campaign - it is seriously threatening the neoliberal agenda.
The Wentworth by-election is threatening the Morrison neoliberal coalition with annihilation and just might be the turning point for Australians to take back their democracy and their economy from the thieves who hold power.
No. With a couple of exceptions the communities that delivered the highest Brexit vote tended to have the least migrants.Colinn -> FelixKruell , 17 Oct 2018 02:01I am advocating Social Democracy, a mixed economy where there is a private sector and a state sector and more state intervention to stop communities being 'left behind'. Investment in education & training and renationalisation of natural monopolies such as water and rail is what's needed in the UK.
For far too long all the mainstream MSM including the BBC and this paper have acted as a propaganda machine for the Neoliberal outsourcing of workers to undermine salaries while putting money into the off shore accounts of fat cats.
Meanwhile the Mail, Sky & Sun (Murdoch) and Express, LBC radio have jumped on the opportunity of a divided Britain to encourage hatred of the other.
I used to buy crap chinese marine ply, my new supplier has Australian made, high quality marine ply for 2/3 the price. I always prefer to keep my money local.RobLeighton , 17 Oct 2018 01:58
2/3 of Australia isn't surviving, they're drowning, not waving.
It is about the 1% who think robbing the poor is good business. The strongest economy in Australia was when wage growth was good. Businesses only look at their small picture and the larger economy is none of their concern. Business has been able to buy politicians for their own profit, not the good of the country.Obviously, everything is horrible in Australia these days and is getting worse.Banter76 , 17 Oct 2018 01:31
Even though Australia is ranked #3 on the Human Development Index out of some
192 countries and has an awesomely high per capita GDP. Australia is also among the
most respected, most reputable countries on the planet and has 3 cities in the top 10
of best cities in the world to live in. Other than that, it is horrible there."Favouring the market system ahead of the state system, and individual interests ahead of community interests, can lead to profoundly unfair social outcomes"PieSwine -> CosmoCrawley , 16 Oct 2018 23:14Australians take note. Neoliberalism has led to the rise of the far right in the UK and across EU countries. Doesn't help that people like Murdoch encourage finger pointing at foreigners while supporting the right-wing economic policies creating the massive division and job insecurity.
Neo-liberalism: low taxes to encourage employment; deregulation of labour market and business "red-tape" and privatisation of public assets and utilities. You may also throw in an unhealthy obsession with micro economics and interest rates.daveinbalmain -> Foxlike , 16 Oct 2018 23:09All of which have been shown to have negligible impact on their stated goals (see lower taxes) and have been terrible for consumers, workers and society.
Seventy years (give or take) have passed since the end of WW2.HellBrokeLuce -> leon depope , 16 Oct 2018 22:26In Europe, the first half of that period could broadly be described as social democracy, the second as neo-liberal.
To your point Fox, let's see the data on a simple line chart:
Real individual wages per capita
GDP per capita
National indebtedness
Private indebtednessI'm willing to be corrected but I'd bet you London to a brick that the social democratic shits all over the neo-liberal from a great height when it comes to improvements in these core data.
That's it.. the world moved to the right back in the mid to late 80's ..as the Soviet Union collapsed ..and the wall came down.Pararto , 16 Oct 2018 22:25Now both Russia and China are on the free market merry go round.. except that they keep controls on certain aspects .. of the economy, an iron fist control, taking advantage and abusing the free market to meet their own ends. Conservatism is about individualism .. as put forward by Howard.. aspirational to achieve for yourself.. Nothing to do with your community. That's why they hate the UN.. generally and particularly in regards to climate change.. the world acting as one community for the benefit of all communities.. So they want to build walls.. trade barriers... it's all characterized as impinging on the countries sovereignty.. The interesting thing is ..that back in the 80's ..the left was all about protectionism.. and isolationist policy. So to speak.. now Trump wants to turn back the clock.. 40 years or so. It's a bit late for that.
So...never give conservatism a chance. Actually..the inevitable consequence of climate change making the world re calibrate economics ..through sustainability, not greed first, will put and end to conservatism. It's a high price to pay.. but I have no doubt it will happen.
Income is important, but it has been the progressive concentration of wealth that is causing the real damage and polarization. If we no longer belong in the same society, if we no longer care for others as being our own, if we no longer look at other living things as our relations, then we are looking into a catastrophic void.
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Oct 31, 2018 | www.theguardian.com
The opposite of a neoliberal economic agenda isn't a progressive economic agenda, but democratic re-engagement. Neoliberalism taught us that "there is no alternative" to cutting taxes, cutting services and letting the banks treat us as they see fit. But of course not even the Coalition believes that any more. These days they proudly subsidise their friends and regulate their enemies in order to reshape Australia in their preferred form.
While the hypocrisy is staggering, at least voters can now see that politics, and elections, matter. Having been told for decades that it was "global markets" that shaped our society, it's now clear that it is actually the likes of Barnaby Joyce and Tony Abbott who decide whether we get new coal mines or power stations. Luckily, millions of voters now realise that if it's OK to subsidise new coal mines, there's no reason we can't subsidise renewables instead.
Neoliberalism: the idea that swallowed the world Read more
The parliament is filling with people of all political persuasions who, if nothing else, decry the neoliberal agenda to shrink our government and our national vision. While there's obviously quite a distance between MPs who want to build the nation, one new coal mine at a time, and those who want to fill our cities with renewable energy, the whole purpose of democracy is to settle such disputes at the ballot box.
The Liberals want to nationalise coal-fired power stations and pour public money into Snowy 2.0 . The ALP want much bigger renewable energy targets and to collect more revenue by closing billions of dollars in tax-loopholes . The Greens want a publicly owned bank and some unions are pushing to nationalise aged care. It's never been a more exciting time to support a bigger role for government.
So, what to nationalise? What new machinery of state should we build first? Should we create a national anti-corruption watchdog, replace the productivity commission with a national interest commission, or abolish the failed network of finance sector regulators and build a new one from scratch?
... ... ...
The death of neoliberalism means we can finally have a national debate about the size and role of government, and the shape of the economy and society we want to build. But we need to do more than talk about tax and regulation. Australia is one of the oldest parliamentary democracies in the world, and we once helped lead the world in the design of democratic institutions and the creation of an open democratic culture. Let's not allow the legacy of neoliberalism to be a cynical belief that there is no point repairing and rebuilding the democratic institutions that ensure not just our economy thrives, but our society as well. A quick look around the world provides clear evidence that there really are a lot of alternatives.
Richard Denniss is chief economist for the Australia Institute
R_Ambrose_Raven , 1 Nov 2018 16:38
Mmmm, well, class warfare (by the rich against the 99%, though I should not need to say that) is still very much alive.Colinn -> bushranga , 1 Nov 2018 16:14Globalisation-driven financial deregulation was commenced here by Hawke Labor from 1983 as a Laberal facade for the Australian chapter of the transnational ruling class policy of self-enrichment. It was sold to the aspirationals as the ever-popular This Will Make You Rich - as ever-rising house prices did, for home-owners then (paid for now through housing unaffordability for their descendants). Then, transnational capital was able to loot both aspirationals' productivity gains (easily 10% of GDP) plus usurious interest from the borrowings made by the said aspirationals (easily 6% of GDP) to keep up with the Joneses. Now, it loots 90% of all increases in GDP, leaving just 10% in crumbs from the filthy rich man's table for 15 million workers to share.
We don't notice as much as we should, because the mainstream (mainly but not only Murdoch) media is very good at persuading us - then and now - that there is nothing to see. It is a tool of that transnational class, its role being to manufacture our consent to our own exploitation. Thus they play the man because it is politically easier than open demands that the public be robbed. In the case of penalty rates, thus adopting the obvious hypocrisy of which "The Australian" accuses Shorten. Or they play the woman, in the case of the ferocious, relentless media vilification of Julia Gillard and Gillard Labor – five years after the demonization of Gillard Labor's Great Big New (Carbon) Tax, the need for one is now almost universally accepted. Or they play the players, hence a focus on Dutton's challenge that pretends that he has meaningful policies.
Labor's class traitors clearly intended to aggressively apply the standard neoliberal model – look at how it helps their careers after politics (ask Anna Blight)! Shorten is not working to promote some progressive agenda, he is doing as little as possible, and expects to simply be voted into The Lodge as a committed servant of transnational capitalism.
Wait till the revolution comes and we get the bastards up against the wall.Colinn , 1 Nov 2018 15:53I stopped voting 40 years ago because the voting system is mathematically rigged to favor the duopoly. Until a large number of minor parties can share their preferences and beat the majors, which is now starting to happen. This is not just voting for a good representative, but voting against the corrupt parties. A minority government should lead to proper debate in parliament. More women will lead to lower levels of testosterone fuelled sledging and better communication. A "Coalition of Representative Independents" could form government in the future, leading by consensus and constantly listening to the community.tjt77 -> BlueThird , 1 Nov 2018 11:35The rise of nationalism is indeed worrying situation.. but its clear that mass discontent is driving a 'shift' away from the status quo and that opportunists of every creed are all trying to get in on the action..MeRaffey , 1 Nov 2018 08:05The big nut to crack is HOW do we collectively find sane and honest leadership ? A huge part of the problem is the ongoing trend of disdain for government in favor of embracing private monopolies as the be all and end all for solving the ongoing societal rift. .. which has created a centralization of wealth and the power that that wealth yields.. allied to the fact that huge swaths of the population in EVERY nation were hiding when the brains were allocated.. and hence are very easy to dupe..
the elephant in the room that no one wants to discuss is population growth and lack of natural resources and meaningful 'employment' .. which self serving politicians are exploiting via playing the fear card and creating further division in society in order to embrace and increase their own power. Further more, no one, it seems, has any valid answers as regards resolving the division and creating a path forward.. thereby making more conflict an inevitability.
Like Octopus, the globalists have every one of their eight legs in a different pot of gold. On their arms, suction cups maintain an iron grip. Trying to pull those suckers out, leaves us raw and bleeding. To release their grip, without hurting ourselves, we must aim for the brain.Proselytiser -> FarmerDave , 1 Nov 2018 07:30Murdoch's media empire has arms in every Democracy on earth. As his poisonous ink spread across our lands, we wallowed in the dark.
The Oil and Coal Tycoons have arms in every black hole on earth. As their suckers pull black gold from the land beneath our feet, we choke on the air we breathe.
The Financial Tyrants have arms in our buildings, factories, farms and homes. Their suckers stripped our pockets bare and we ran out of money.
The False Prophets spread their arms into our private lives. Their suckers turned our modest, humble faiths into global empires filled with mega-churches, televangelists, jet-setting preachers and evangelical armies Hell bent on disruption and destruction.
Denniss offers us the cure! Start thinking fresh and new and starve the globalists to death. They fed us BS, we ate BS and now we are mal-nourished. We need good, healthy ideas.
Land. Infrastructure. Time.
Time - "WE" increased productivity and the globalists stole the rewards. Time to increase our FREE time. 32 hours is the NEW full time. Pay us full time wages, give us full time benefits, and reduce our work days by 20% and suddenly we have 20% more jobs. As the incomes of billionaires drop, the money in circulation will increase. We are the job creators - not globalists.
21st Century Infrastructure is about healthy human beings - not the effing economy. Think healthcare, education, senior care and child care. If we find out you have sent your money off-shore, your local taxes will increase by ten. So please, do, send your money off-shore - our cities and towns would love to increase taxes on your stores, offices and real estate by ten.
No more caps on taxes. If you are a citizen, you pay social taxes on every dime you get. In America you will be paying 15.3% of every dollar to social security. That's $153,000.00 a year for every million dollars you take out of our economy.
Land is not something you put in a museum, lock away in a vault, or wear on your neck. Think fresh and new. If you own land, you are responsible for meeting community rules.
No more empty, weed filled lots allowed. If you have empty land, you better put in a nice garden, pretty trees and walkways or we will do it for you and employ "eminent-domain" on your bank accounts to pay for it.
No more empty buildings. If you own an empty building you will put it to good use, or we will do it for you - and keep the profits to fund our local governments, schools, hospitals, and senior/child care centers.
No more slumlords allowed. We have basic standards, for everyone. If we catch you renting a slum to anyone, we will make repairs for you, and if you do not pay the bill, we will put a lien on your building and wait until you sell it to pay ourselves back.
We do not trust you big-box types anymore. If you want to build your mega-store in our cities, towns or communities, you must, first, deposit the entire cost of tearing it down, and landscaping a park, or playground when you leave. While you stay, we will invest your deposit in index funds and assure ourselves enough money down the road.
Sorry you BIG guys and gals, but you will find our countries are very expensive places for you to invest. We put our families, our neighborhoods and our lives first.
That would be fantastic.childofmine , 1 Nov 2018 04:04However - and it's a big however - there is a very real danger that at the next election the libs will again win by default due to the fact that many traditional labour voters are defecting to the greens instead. Sadly, LNP supporters are a lot less likely to vote green. Our best hope is to wipe the LNP out at the next election by voting labour, and then at the election after that establishing the greens in opposition. It is unfortunatly unlikely to happen at the next election....and I just hope that voters in certain seats understand that by voting for the greens they might be in fact unwittingly handing the reins back to the least green party of all: the LNP.
Neoliberalism may be dead but the former Trotskyites who invented it are still alive and they still have an agenda.Idiotgods , 1 Nov 2018 03:25Neo Liberalism was a project cooked up back in the late 1970s by the Capital owning classes & enacted by successive govts of "right" or "left" ever since. They feared the growing power of the working & middle classes which they felt threatened their own power & wealth. So they set out to destroy any ability of the working class to organise & to gut the middle class.Phalaris -> fabfreddy , 1 Nov 2018 03:18Key to this was decoupling wages from productivity & forcing us all into debt peonage. Deregulation of the financial markets & the globalization of capital markets, disastorous multilateral trade deals & off shoring jobs, slashing state social programmes, Union busting laws all part of the plan. All covered with a lie that we live in meritocracies & the "best & brightest" are in charge. The result has been evermore riches funneled to the wealthiest few percent & a wealth gap bigger than that of the gilded age
The essential infrastructure to ensure a base level quality of life for all. Really it's not difficult. What are you afraid of?Phalaris , 1 Nov 2018 03:15The majority press are so organised around the idea that neoliberalism in the sense captured economically and to some extent socially as construed in the article above; as normal and natural that nothing can be done. As the system folds we see in its place Brexit, neoconservatism, Trump.Citizen0 , 1 Nov 2018 00:52This is not new found freedom or Liberatarianism but a post liberal world where decency and open mindedness and open nuanced debate take a a back seat to populism and demagoguery.
The whole purpose of Anglophone liberal democracy has been twofold: 1. to establish and protect private property rights and 2. TO guarantee some individual liberties. Guess who benefits from the enshrinement of private property rights as absolute? Big owners, and you know who they are. ... Individual tights are just not that sacred, summon the latest bogeyman, and they can be shrunken or tossed.Alan Ritchie , 31 Oct 2018 22:24Neoliberalism, the economic stablemate of big religion's Prosperity Evangelism cult. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Prosperity_theology . Dual streams of bull shit to confuse the citizens while the Country's immense wealth is stolen.PaulC_Fitzroy -> Bearmuchly , 31 Oct 2018 22:19I certainly agree with you.HonestQuestion , 31 Oct 2018 19:00It seems there's been a turning point recently though in the ideas of neoliberalism, as pointed out by Denniss that suddenly it's okay for all and sundry to talk about nationalising industries and infrastructure. It will probably take a couple of decades to turn things around in practical ways. And there are surely plenty of powerful supporters of the ideas of neoliberalism still around.
Is neo-liberalism really dead or is it wishful thinking?MrTallangatta , 31 Oct 2018 18:58
If neo-liberalism really is on the decline in Australia, all i can say is bravo to Australia, use this opportunity to build a stronger government and regain the terrain that was lost during the TINA (there is no alternative) years.
Here in Canada neo-liberalism is stronger than ever, maybe because of the proximity to the cancerous tumor at the south, so when i read this article, i did it with a bit of skepticism but also with a bit of envy and a bit of hope for the future.Neoliberalism is *not* dead, and it is counter-productive to claim that it is. It is clearly the driver of what passes for policy by the LNP government. Just as trickle-down economics remains as the basis of the government's economic actions.sangela -> mikedow , 31 Oct 2018 18:50I love it!!Nintiblue , 31 Oct 2018 18:48It will look like it's dead when back bone services and infrastructure utilities are returned to public ownership.PaulMan , 31 Oct 2018 18:47Those things are not fit for market style private ownership for a few big reasons:
They are by their nature natural monopolies (so a market private ownership won't work and will rapidly creep up prices of reduced service precisely because they not in a natural market context.
These core services and utilities are mega scale operations beyond a natural market ROI value.
These core sovereign services and utilities, are nation critical to the national economy and political stability. The last thing we want to do is hand that sovereign power over to private control.
Australia is a very fortunate country. It enjoys national sovereignty, unshackled by crippling bonds to anything like the neoliberal EU. It is thus able to concentrate on solving its own issues.StephenO -> ildfluer , 31 Oct 2018 18:47When The Guardian's editorial staff goes down to Guatamala City, they can stand on a soap box in front of Subway sandwich or McDonalds or Radio Shack.sangela -> Matt4720 , 31 Oct 2018 18:46Europe doesn't do socialism. It's a capitalist system with a high rate of taxes to support a generous social welfare.
Jane is too radical and progressive for Warringah...maybe they don't know that?sangela , 31 Oct 2018 18:45Great article. Must say that we do have more than one vote per electorate. They're called preference votes. Kerryn Phelps get 23% of the primary PLUS a heap of preferences! But a proportional system would change a whole lot of resultsildfluer -> Matt4720 , 31 Oct 2018 18:41Yes. But only if she relinquishes her British citizenship in time.Fred1 -> Alpo88 , 31 Oct 2018 18:38Firstly we are not in America. America is a basket case and has been since, well, forever.JustInterest , 31 Oct 2018 18:37Secondly the so called "housing crisis" is a simple consequence of a growing population. In the 1950s there were just 8m people in Australia, there 10m in the 1960s and 12m in the 1970s. And, no, neo-liebralism didn't cause the growing population. People having sex and living longer caused the growing population. It is therefore all the more remarkable that we have actually built enough houses to house a population which has doubled in size.
Thirdly, in the last 30 years 1 billion people have been lifted out of poverty. When you talk about huge, unprecedented, un-fucking-believable levels of poverty, super-massive inequality, dissatisfaction (Really? This is now a measure?), unemployment/sub-employment and casualization, collapse (collapse?) of public services, high(er) costs of living.....do you think you're being a little overly dramatic?
Do you really think it all comes to back to one silly economic theory?
Nothing to do with the reality of automation, globalisation, growing populations and the realities of living in 2018 rather than 1978?
Are voters around the world going hard against Neoliberalism? (I note it's now a capitalised term).
In the US they voted for a billionaire who blamed immigrants for people's problems while promising tax and spending cuts.....sounds like an even more extreme version of neo-liberlaism to me.
In Britain they voted for Brexit to....oh that's right....kick out immigrants and burn "red tape".
In Brazil, yep, more neo-liberalism on steroids.
In fact, looking around the world it's actually the far right which are seizing power.
And this is the issue with the obsessive preoccupation with community decline. It feeds directly into the hands of fascism and the far right.
I'm not saying things are perfect. I would prefer to see much more government investment. The only way we'll get that is to educate ourselves about how government finances work so that we're not frightened off by talk of deficits.
However, by laying this all on the door of one rather silly economic theory is to ignore that economics is nothing without human beings. It is human beings who are responsible for all of the good and bad in the world. No theory is going change that. If the world is the way it is it's because humans made it like this.
The "deterioration of the environment"? We did that not neo-liberalism .....
In answer to the headline article question, yes WE citizens should collectively strive to think radically, bigger and better than the existing status quo.JustInterest -> NoSoupforNanna , 31 Oct 2018 18:35PAY CITIZENS TO VOTE!
We must bypass the vested interests and create a new system which encourages active, regular participation in democracy.... lest we wake up one day and realise too late that, by stealth and citizen apathy, the plutocrats and their corporate fascist servants have usurped our nation state, corrupted our law and weakened our institutions, to such a point that our individual rights are permanently crushed.
Change is coming, like it or not. This century - there is great risk to society that advanced technologies such as artificial intelligence, robotics and lifespan enhancing genetic engineering will be used by ultra-rich plutocrats to make the vast majority of humanity redundant (within a couple of generations).
Citizens should advocate for DIRECT DEMOCRACY in which citizens are PAID on a per vote per issue basis (subject to verification checks that support the rewarding of effort- citizens should be asked to first demonstrate that they have made effort to obtain sufficient knowledge on a particular topic, prior to being rewarded for their service of voting. Such a process can be opt-in, those who want to be paid, work to do so by learning about the governance issue which is to be voted upon. In this way, a minimum wage can be obtained by direct citizen participation in the governance of communities and our nation). We have the technologies TODAY to undertake open-ledger, smart-phone enabled, digital/postal voting on a per issue basis... which can be funded by EFFECTIVE taxation on large multinational corporations and ultra-wealthy (foreign) shareholders. Citizen will is needed to influence change - the major political parties did not want a Federal ICAC and they certainly will not support paid direct citizen democracy unless voters overwhelming demand it.
Citizens already accept that politicians are paid to vote (and frequently "rewarded" for their "service" to large corporations and wealthy (foreign) shareholders by unethical, corrupt means). Thus, in principle, why can society not collectively accept direct payment to citizens for their individual vote upon an issue? Why do citizens continue to accept archaic systems of democracy which have clearly FAILED to meet the needs of our population in the 21st century?
Citizens are not sufficiently politically engaged in democracy and their civic responsibilities BECAUSE they are not incentivised to do so and because they are economic slaves without the luxury of time to sort through deliberate overload of disinformation, distortion, distraction and deception. Citizens are struggling to obtain objective understanding and to think critically because these crucial functions of democracy are innately discouraged by our existing 20th century economy (that is, slaves are busy support the systems of plutocrats in order that they may live, ants to a queen).
We must advocate for change in the systems of democracy which are failing our communities, our nation, our planet. For too long, plutocrats and their servants have maintained control over economic slaves and the vast majority of the population because citizens have accepted the status quo of being governed by the powerful.
Technology has permanently changed our species. We must all collectively act before innate human greed, lust for power and fear of loss of control (by the wealthy few) lead the majority on an irrational path toward destruction - using the very technologies which helped set us free from the natural world!
In answer to the headline article question, yes WE citizens should collectively strive to think radically, bigger and better than the existing status quo.exTen , 31 Oct 2018 17:13
PAY CITIZENS TO VOTE!We must bypass the vested interests and create a new system which encourages active, regular participation in democracy.... lest we wake up one day and realise too late that, by stealth and citizen apathy, the plutocrats and their corporate fascist servants have usurped our nation state, corrupted our law and weakened our institutions, to such a point that our individual rights are permanently crushed.
Change is coming, like it or not. This century - there is great risk to society that advanced technologies such as artificial intelligence, robotics and lifespan enhancing genetic engineering will be used by ultra-rich plutocrats to make the vast majority of humanity redundant (within a couple of generations).
Citizens should advocate for DIRECT DEMOCRACY in which citizens are PAID on a per vote per issue basis (subject to verification checks that support the rewarding of effort- citizens should be asked to first demonstrate that they have made effort to obtain sufficient knowledge on a particular topic, prior to being rewarded for their service of voting. Such a process can be opt-in, those who want to be paid, work to do so by learning about the governance issue which is to be voted upon. In this way, a minimum wage can be obtained by direct citizen participation in the governance of communities and our nation). We have the technologies TODAY to undertake open-ledger, smart-phone enabled, digital/postal voting on a per issue basis... which can be funded by EFFECTIVE taxation on large multinational corporations and ultra-wealthy (foreign) shareholders. Citizen will is needed to influence change - the major political parties did not want a Federal ICAC and they certainly will not support paid direct citizen democracy unless voters overwhelming demand it.
Citizens already accept that politicians are paid to vote (and frequently "rewarded" for their "service" to large corporations and wealthy (foreign) shareholders by unethical, corrupt means). Thus, in principle, why can society not collectively accept direct payment to citizens for their individual vote upon an issue? Why do citizens continue to accept archaic systems of democracy which have clearly FAILED to meet the needs of our population in the 21st century?
Citizens are not sufficiently politically engaged in democracy and their civic responsibilities BECAUSE they are not incentivised to do so and because they are economic slaves without the luxury of time to sort through deliberate overload of disinformation, distortion, distraction and deception. Citizens are struggling to obtain objective understanding and to think critically because these crucial functions of democracy are innately discouraged by our existing 20th century economy (that is, slaves are busy support the systems of plutocrats in order that they may live, ants to a queen).
We must advocate for change in the systems of democracy which are failing our communities, our nation, our planet. For too long, plutocrats and their servants have maintained control over economic slaves and the vast majority of the population because citizens have accepted the status quo of being governed by the powerful.
Technology has permanently changed our species. We must all collectively act before innate human greed, lust for power and fear of loss of control (by the wealthy few) lead the majority on an irrational path toward destruction - using the very technologies which helped set us free from the natural world!
Richard went off the rails in his opening sentence: "The opposite of a neoliberal economic agenda isn't a progressive economic agenda, but democratic re-engagement."Thorlar1 , 31 Oct 2018 08:13I say this because economically misinformed democratic engagement is a shackle around democracy, at best, if not fatal to democracy. And the biggest and most fundamental misinformation, spouted every bit as much by ALP and Greens as the Libs, is that we must strive for a "sustainable surplus".
As Richard rightly observes, "Neoliberalism taught us that "there is no alternative" to cutting taxes, cutting services and letting the banks treat us as they see fit. But of course not even the Coalition believes that any more." But that doesn't stop them, or Labor, or the Greens from guaranteeing the continuance of the neoliberal cut & privatise mania by insisting that they believe in "budget repair" and "return to surplus" - an insistence which their economically illiterate or misled supporters accept. If you believe in the obviously ridiculous necessity for a currency issuer to run balanced budgets, you are forced into invalid neoliberal thinking, into accepting a false "necessity" for cuts and privatisations, or economy-sedating taxation increases.
Rumours of neoliberalism's death have been somewhat exaggerated. Its been on life support provided by the LNP since John Howard and there are still a few market fundamentalists lurking in the ranks of the ALP, just waiting for their chance to do New Labor MkII in memory of Paul Keating.exTen -> Loco Jack , 31 Oct 2018 08:05Neoliberalism's lasting legacy will not be the ludicrous economic programs, privatizations and deregulation, those can all be rolled back if some party would grow a spine. The real damage was caused by the aping of the US and UK's cult of individual responsibility, the atomizing effects of neoliberal anti-social policy and demonization of collective action including unionism.
All of which have hastened the atrophy of our democracy.
First things first lets get rid of the neo-liberal national dinosaurs still wallowing in parliament unaware of the mass extinction awaiting them in March next year. At the same time vote in a minority Labor government with enough independent cross benchers, including a preponderance of Greens to keep the bastards honest.
Then just maybe we can start looking at the wider project of repairing Australian society and democracy while we try and reverse the near-decade of damage the LNP have done with their dangerous pro-fossil fuel stance, their insane climate change denial and hypocritical big business friendly economic policies.
Should be a snap!
The irony is that it's simple. It's the Heath Robinson contraptions that the economic priesthood for the plutocracy snow us with that are complicated, that turn us off economic thinking because they are impenetrable and make no sense. The simplicity comes from accepting the blinding obvious truth, once you think about it. The federal government is the monopoly issuer of the AUD. The rest of the world are users, not issuers. Its "budgets" are not our budgets. Nothing like them. Kind of the opposite. Its surpluses are the economy's deficits. Its deficits are the economy's surpluses.
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Feb 10, 2019 | discussion.theguardian.com
KiwiInStraya , 16 Oct 2018 22:14
Neoliberalism is about maintaining success to the successful. As such, the policy has delivered as promised.Runerunner -> Fred1 , 16 Oct 2018 22:08No fred but I've seen a lot of places with the 9 billion and there isn't much there now, just ruined deserts.CaptainFlacid , 16 Oct 2018 22:06Just seeing the chaos in Egypt in 2012 was enough and that huge population fighting over fuel, water and food is around 75% under the age of 25.
I don'r believe we do have bigger problems than the population explosion.
Neoliberalism has been a spectacular failure that has seen the rich get richer and the poor more indebted to them.20thcenturycoyote , 16 Oct 2018 21:55Show me a neoliberal and I'll show you a self-serving prick with an over-inflated sense of self-entitlement.Mikey70 , 16 Oct 2018 21:36Former RBA governor says "Coalition pursues low-tax road to jobs and growth despite lack of evidence to support it"Bearmuchly , 16 Oct 2018 21:34The incumbent political cabal of grifters and leaners aren't interested in evidence, for the self righteous it has always been inconvenient & unnecessary.
Neo liberal capitalism is based on the premise that the Govt. sectorLovelyDaffodils , 16 Oct 2018 21:32
has a minimal role to play in the economy in a regulatory manner
, in the provision of goods/services and in redistributing wealth
........basically, the less Govt. the better.As a starting point, it is best to consider what level of services
society expects from Govt. and to cost these, that then gives
you an amount of revenue required to fund these.......in Australia
our figure in 2017 was 28.2% of GDP (which also allowed for a
$6.2b. deficit and for some debt repayment)...the Federal share of this
was 21.6 % of GDP. In the world of wealthy countries (the OECD)
we sit at 27th of 35 ie: we are a low taxing country....the OECD average
is 34.3%.The next part of any debate is what range and quality of services we expect
...in the US their social services/$'s provided by Govt. has plummeted by 50%
since neo liberalism was introduced (the Reagan era) whilst, for example Defence/
Security has risen by 5% of GDP and is by far the highest proportion in the world.
In Australia our proportions have changed far less......even with Medicare,
PBS, Child care subsidies, Education spending etc. our revenue rate has
dropped from an average of 33.5% of GDP to an average of 26.2% since the
1980's. (NDIS is too recent to be included but will up the ante).The next step to consider is WHERE will the revenue come from and this
is where we have NOT followed the US in their lunacy.......since Reagan
their tax take from corporate profits and income taxes from the rich have
plummeted (and their deficits risen inexorably).Putting it simply, Australia has indeed swallowed the neoliberal pill, but
has largely preserved its social amenity and the size of its Govt. sector.
It has privatised much but kept many aspects in public hands eg; much
of our healthcare. The pressures continue to privatise more, however
it still sees the Govt. being the funder but not the provider.....THAT has
been our massive change. Our reality has also been that household
incomes have been stagnant for years for at least 50% of our population
(it is worse in the US) as have been our income support payments ie:
Pensions and benefits (especially the latter that have gone backwards).
and our social mobility ie: the support/opportunity for people to move
from low to higher incomes (mostly via higher educational achievement)
have also stagnated in many cohorts.......in other words neoliberalism
has changed Australia, it has allowed the affluent and rich to improve
their situations but has seen stagnation for everyone else .......not
exactly a success after > 35 years, but at least not as bad as the US !Neo-liberalism and it's form of capitalism is obviously not working; it's more of a Ponzi scheme, and causes societal division and inequality to an extreme. These intransigent politicians will keep taking us down the road of destruction unless we stop them.Cosmo_Wilson , 16 Oct 2018 21:32Morrison and his cohort are dangerous, very dangerous, and will become even worse because what they do is transparent, and we let them get away with it. To them, they see their positions of power, and their actions, as being approved by the voting public to keep the unethical behaviour going.
This comment was removed by a moderator because it didn't abide by our community standards . Replies may also be deleted. For more detail see our FAQs .Bewareofnazihippies , 16 Oct 2018 21:32Neo-liberalism = Failed Democracy/Corrupt government/Corporate feudalism.Runerunner -> happylittledebunkera , 16 Oct 2018 21:30
Really no other way to describe it, and it's consequences.
And more and more people are waking up to this fact.
It's the 'what to do about it' that is the problem.
Overturn the government?
Revolution?
Bring back the tumbrils?
Personally, I'd think an aware, involved, and empowered citizenry would be the best solution.Capitalism has brought lots of debt to the masses. $4 trillion of it in fact and that will lead to poverty and misery if it can't be paid back readily.leon depope -> HellBrokeLuce , 16 Oct 2018 21:29
Capitalism is fine until it enters this debt binge stage and then it needs a great big correction to get it back on an even keel.Since the 1980's and Thatcher and Reagan, the dominant political and economic rational has been neo-liberalism. Even under Blair and Brown (labour PM's in the UK) the thinking was neo-liberalism, as it largely was under Rudd and Gillard in Australia.Thorlar1 , 16 Oct 2018 20:24
It is decades of right wing thinking which has been all pervasive in western societies and it will take decades to correct the faults that have been created in society; starting with changing the perceived accepted idea that govts do not exist to create jobs and that we exist, as individuals, to serve the economy (as is evidenced by the punishing of the unemployed and the drive to get women back into work as soon as possible after having children).Its not so much polarisation as atomisation.Oneron , 16 Oct 2018 20:19Neoliberalism's great strength is its ability to divide and rule effectively via its emphasis on individual responsibility and its insistence (as Thatcher cynically thundered) that there is no such thing as society.
In the absence of any kind of inspirational narrative or indeed hope, the morally bankrupt LNP have actually come to believe their own TINA propaganda. Their impoverished imaginations just can't imagine any other way of maintaining the status quo for their constituency than by keeping as much of the population as possible undereducated but surviving sufficiently to be jealous of what they have and fearful of the state taking it away.
An atomised population is one in which daily life, in the words of Thomas Hobbes, is a 'war of all against all'. How pathetic that conservative governments in 2018 remain intent on driving us back to a 'state of nature' Hobbes was condemning in 1651.
While our governments continue to be run by and for the benefit of big business and the wealthy at the expense of the rest of society, low-taxing neoliberal dogma will remain the order of the day.
Dear Bernie, when have ideologues of any persuasion ever, ever relied on evidence...Fred1 , 16 Oct 2018 20:08The Neo-liberal project was conceived as an ideology- a way to hollow out the democratic legitimacy, and replace it with a Corporatocracy... This was based less on an economic rationale but more as a reaction to the democratization of voices and the challenges they posed to the 'old world' spheres of authority and power that emerged front he 60's and early 70's.
The Washington Consensus was the ideological product of this reaction- so vigorously championed by Reagan and Thatcher- who could forget her silly remark that there is no such thing as a society...
That's why the electorate in today's democratic countries seem to be only left with "rhetorical" Leaders- windbags, whose pronouncements signify nothing.I'm not a conspiracy theorist but* if was I would say that the lizard people introduced the word "neo-liberalism" to distract people from the real issues......JustAnotherPenguin , 16 Oct 2018 20:06But seriously, what the hell do people even mean by this term? darkbluedragon bless his/her/their/its cotton socks has done his/her/their/its best to explain what it is. In fact, if in 2019 we no longer identify along the lines of traditional gender roles why does anyone think we can agree on a over-arching economic theory which apparently is responsible for all of the woes in the world?
And actually the premise of all of this is of course how shit everything is today. People love talking about how the world was so much better 40 years ago or whenever. You know when women and minorities were discriminated against and so there were more jobs for white men. Good times I say.
The reality is that the world is the way it is because of people. If neo-liberalism is all about greed and meanness then frankly it's because people are greedy and mean. 100 years ago we were killing each other with bayonets. Bankers screwing vulnerable customers is an improvement compared to that shit.
Many people who talk about "neo-liebralism" in the political sense instead of the economic sense are also terrified of government deficits and think government finances are like a households. So what are you going to do?
If we're all going to become economists overnight (which I would strongly advise against) then we may as well go the whole hog and understand the other side of the coin i.e. the different monetary theories. But no side of the coin is going to be perfect because....because....people, people. People in the shit sense and a people in the glorious sense. People in all senses....
*Why does "I'm not.....but" always mean "I am"? I'm not racist but...I don't mean to be rude but........
During their undergraduate years future politicians and business people learn about ideas that then form the foundations of their understanding of the world and how it works. Unfortunately, while the scholarship moves on, the politicians and business people don't, having dedicated their lives to their careers. So we end up with governments of people operating on principles some decades out of date, and often discredited. And when they want advice, who do they turn to? Not academia (and if they do they usually ignore it), but to business people, who are working off the same base.Foxlike , 16 Oct 2018 19:55
It is often noticed that politicians in the twenty-first century seem to be applying nineteenth century solutions to twentieth century problems. What can be done?Bring on the royal commission into privatisation!1908kangaroos , 16 Oct 2018 19:48In the absence of an RC, then at least a twenty-year comparative analysis of the economic and social 'benefits' (few) and costs (incalculable) of privatisation to the taxpayers of Australia, and the 'benefits' (massive) and costs (none) to the private sector. Surely someone has his data at their fingertips?
Neoliberalism is usually just a term to justify selfish arseholes making more money, usually by ripping off workers..Bho Ghan-Pryde , 16 Oct 2018 19:33At long freaking last some sanity is creeping back into the discussion of economics amongst those who have run the economy. Neo-liberal capitalism has run its course. It ended ten years ago in the GFC and probably before. Whatever good it has done is being undone in its extremes.Isitruegoodoruseful , 16 Oct 2018 19:21
Even the capitalists at capitalist central do not believe in capitalism. When broke during the GFC they declared they were "too big to fail" and so market forces no longer applied to them. The people who own and run the capitalist system have long abandoned it but the Corporate State and its serfs - such as the liberal party - want to foist it on the peasants as a means of control.
The "too big to fail" capitalists park their business risk in the treasuries of the West and pocket the profits and then blame the poor for the lack of public money. It would be funny if it wasn't doing so much damage.On climate change capitalism has failed. It has no way to deal with such an emergency. Capitalism has always taken such things as clean air, water and land from others without compensation and turned them into massive profit for the few. It can never tackle climate change as it means paying for environmental damage and other public resources and that contradict centuries of capitalist exploitation.
The answer for the right-wing neo-liberal capitalist is what it has always been when confronted with the contradictions of capitalism. Racism and division. Exactly what the IPA-liberal party has been about this last week big time. It is all normal for this system.Because its based on Neo-Classical economics. A universally enforced scam economic dogma designed by and for the rich landowning classes to destroy any attempt at land value taxation.
https://www.prosper.org.au/2007/11/07/the-corruption-of-economics /
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Feb 10, 2019 | www.theguardian.com
Warren's official entry into the race has differed sharply from when she captured widespread liberal enthusiasm in her unlikely bid for the Senate seven years ago.
The two-term senator will join a crowded Democratic primary field with no clear frontrunner – and several contenders jockeying to claim the progressive mantle that she aspires to grasp. She has also found herself contending with a lingering controversy for previously identifying as Native American over the course of nearly two decades.
The question now is whether Warren, who moved early to build an expansive field operation in anticipation of her presidential run, can overcome early setbacks and reclaim her role as the Democratic party's top foil to Donald Trump.
dividerBorn to middle-class parents in Norman, Oklahoma , Warren has spoken candidly about how her family's livelihood was upended when her father's heart attack forced him out of work. Addressing crowds across the country, Warren often recalls how her late mother – determined not to lose the family's home – "pulled on her best dress" and got her first paying job at the department store Sears.
The job paid minimum wage and exposed Warren firsthand to the topics that would later define her career: the power of corporations and the effects of bankruptcy on the American consumer.
Her research in bankruptcy law – and the impact on the average person's medical bills, mortgage payments and other installments – led Warren to become a leading expert on the subject and rise in the academia world.
"These are the issues she still cares about," said Charles Fried, a professor at Harvard Law School who helped recruit Warren to its faculty.
"I think she is extraordinary for this reason, that she got into politics because she cared about some issues. She didn't get into politics because she wanted to be in office and then tried to figure out what issues she cared about."
Warren cultivated a profile as a populist firebrand against the backdrop of the Great Recession, earning the ire of Wall Street by spearheading the creation of the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau – an agency established under the Obama administration as part of the Dodd-Frank financial reform bill of 2010.
Upon being passed over to head the agency she helped create, Warren decided to continue the fight from within the government, embarking on a campaign to win back the late senator and liberal icon Ted Kennedy's seat from the Republican incumbent, Scott Brown, in the high-profile 2012 Massachusetts Senate race.
Roughly $70m was spent on the bitterly waged contest, which catapulted Warren to the national stage.
Facebook Twitter Pinterest Elizabeth Warren speaks during day two of the Democratic national convention in Charlotte, North Carolina, on 5 September 2012. Photograph: Joe Raedle/Getty ImagesThe race also saw Warren cement herself as a leader of the burgeoning progressive movement within the Democratic party; branding the choice before voters as "Wall Street versus you", Warren viewed the election as an opportunity to hand a major defeat to what she once dubbed as "the largest lobbying force ever assembled on the face of the earth".
Following her victory, Warren's profile grew so rapidly that speculation swiftly emerged over a potential White House run in 2016, despite the inevitability of Hillary Clinton's candidacy. A group of progressives even mounted a #DraftWarren campaign.
Warren, who had been sharply critical of Clinton in part over her ties to Wall Street, ultimately chose not to challenge her for the Democratic party's nomination and endorsed the former secretary of state's campaign. It was also during this time that Warren proved among the few capable of getting under then candidate Donald Trump's skin.
After Trump derided Clinton as a "nasty woman", Warren famously riffed: "Get this, Donald. Nasty women are tough, nasty women are smart and nasty women vote, and on November 8, we nasty women are going to march our nasty feet to cast our nasty votes to get you out of our lives forever."
The 2016 presidential election did not, however, produce the groundswell of unified opposition to Trump that Democrats had hoped for. Instead, it left the party in search of a clear leader to fill the void left by Obama's departure from the White House.
For Warren, it looked as though her moment had arrived.
In the early days of the Trump administration, Warren quickly emerged as the face of the Democratic opposition, matching the president's tweets with sharp ripostes of her own and holding his cabinet nominees to account when they appeared for consideration before congressional committees.
During the confirmation process for the former attorney general Jeff Sessions, Warren famously read a letter written 30 years prior by Coretta Scott King, in which the widow of Dr Martin Luther King Jr warned of Sessions' civil rights record from the time of his nomination for a federal judgeship.
Silenced by Republicans mid-speech on the Senate floor, Warren read the letter on Facebook Live. The hashtag #LetLizSpeak trended on Twitter and the phrase "Nevertheless, she persisted" was coined.
At the same time, Warren became a top target of conservatives and Trump himself. The president has repeatedly mocked Warren with the derisive nickname "Pocahontas" – including at an event intended to honor Native Americans.
Although Warren long ignored the president's taunts, she took the unusual step of addressing the issue head on in October by making public the results of a DNA test revealing that she did, in fact, have some Native American ancestry.
Rather than putting the topic to rest, Warren's move was rebuked by some tribal leaders, who felt it politicized their identity, and reignited the story.
Republicans first tried to push the notion that Warren used her Native American ancestry to further her career in the 2012 Senate race, homing in on a single questionnaire in which she claimed mixed ancestry.
An exhaustive investigation by the Boston Globe found no evidence that Warren benefited from doing so, and nearly every living Harvard law professor involved in her hiring has said it was not a factor in their votes to offer her a tenured position.
"When we brought her to Harvard, no one had a clue that she thought of herself as Native American," said Laurence Tribe, the school's professor of constitutional law.
"I think she's had an unfair rap," he added. "I don't think it's the case that she ever exploited her family's background or ancestry in a way that some people seem to think she did."
The Cherokee nation, one of the groups that was critical of Warren, said she privately apologized to to tribal leaders.
But the matter did not end there. The Washington Post published a story revealing Warren listed her race as "American Indian" while seeking a Texas bar registration card in 1986. Warren apologized once more, telling reporters: "I'm not a tribal citizen.
"My apology is an apology for not having been more sensitive about tribal citizenship and tribal sovereignty. I really want to underline the point, tribes and only tribes determine tribal citizenship."
Warren remains a popular figure in the Democratic party and was easily re-elected to a second Senate term in the 2018 midterm elections.
Even so, she received fewer votes in her home state than Charlie Baker, the Republican governor of Massachusetts, prompting Warren's hometown paper to urge the senator to reconsider a presidential bid.
"While Warren won re-election, her margin of victory in November suggests there's a ceiling on her popularity," the Boston Globe editorial board wrote. "Baker garnered more votes than she did in a state that is supposed to be a Democratic haven."
She's hard-edged, not personally, but ideologically. She takes very sharp and controversial positions
Barney Frank"While Warren is an effective and impactful senator with an important voice nationally, she has become a divisive figure," the board added. "A unifying voice is what the country needs now after the polarizing politics of Donald Trump." Those close to Warren dismissed the editorial as having more to do with the personal biographies and inclinations of those who sit on the board. "She's hard-edged, not personally, but ideologically," said Frank. "She takes very sharp and controversial positions."
"So, yeah, they're going to be people who are unhappy with her."
More challenging for Warren, friends and former colleagues said, would be the task of distinguishing herself within a diverse field of Democratic candidates that includes at least three of her Senate colleagues and a record number of women seeking the party's nomination.
Warren's platform includes the single-payer healthcare system Medicare for All, debt-free college tuition and anti-corruption legislation designed to restore accountability in government. She is also poised to unveil a proposal that would impose a wealth tax on Americans worth over $50m.
Fried, who served as solicitor general under Ronald Reagan, said he disagreed with some of the more expansive economic policies touted by Warren. But her greatest asset as a candidate, he acknowledged, would be to approach the campaign with the same steely resolve to elevate the middle class that endeared her to voters seven years ago.
Although he is only occasionally in touch with Warren as she embarks on what will undoubtedly be a grueling campaign for America's highest office, Fried recalled recently sending Warren a lengthy article about capitalism and income inequality.
To his surprise, he received a response from Warren 10 days later. She had not only taken the time to read the article, but highlighted a portion that stood out to her. "How many presidential candidates would do that?" Fried asked. In her email, Warren also recounted to her old colleague how not very long ago they sat together on a flight discussing the prospects of a Clinton presidency. That day never came to fruition, Warren noted. "I don't know what lies ahead," she added. "But I know what I'm fighting for."
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Feb 09, 2019 | -> www.theguardian.com
While controversy around her heritage lingers, voters call the Democrat's fight against economic injustice 'inspiring' On a cold, blustery January day in 1912, immigrant women walked out of the Everett Mill in the -> Massachusetts factory town of Lawrence demanding higher wages and better working conditions. Mill owners and city government responded in a swift and heavy-handed manner; local militias and police forces were called to the streets. Protesters died. Many more were arrested.
On a cold, blustery February day 117 years later, the Massachusetts senator Elizabeth Warren stood in front of Everett Mill -> to announce her candidacy for president of the United States , channeling the spirit of those women as she told her supporters that they were in a fight for their lives against a rigged system that favors the rich and powerful.
ss="rich-link"> Why women 2020 candidates face 'likability' question even as they make history Read more
"These workers – led by women – didn't have much. Not even a common language. Nevertheless, they persisted," she said. "The story of Lawrence is about how real change happens in America. It's a story about power – our power – when we fight together."
For Warren, who grew up in an economically struggling Oklahoma household and who first rose to mainstream prominence by handing out practical financial advice to American families, the word "fight" is central to her platform and political ethos – it was a word peppered throughout her speech.
But on Saturday, she made clear that hers was not just a fight against president Donald Trump, but against a system she described as one where the rich, privileged and powerful oppress the rest of the country.
-> Facebook Twitter Pinterest Supporters in Lawrence, Massachusetts. Photograph: Brian Snyder/Reuters"The man in the White House is not the cause of what is broken, he is just the latest – and most extreme – symptom of what's gone wrong in America, a product of a rigged system that props up the rich and the powerful and kicks dirt on everyone else," she said. "So once he's gone, we can't pretend that all of this never happened."
The backdrop of the mill, where the so-called Bread and Roses strikes originated, was symbolic. But so too was the choice of the modern day city of Lawrence, which is one of those places in America that has felt left behind in recent times. To many in New England, Lawrence is synonymous with crime, drugs and poverty. The Republican governors of Maine and New Hampshire have invoked the city's name when laying blame for the opioid crises in their states. As was the case at the time of the strikes, Lawrence is a working class city of immigrants, with a population that is about 80% Latino. It is a city where wealth is nearby, but out of reach for many.
Sebastian Brown, 31, moved to Lawrence five years ago. While he had yet to choose a candidate to support, he was excited by Warren's message and was happy Warren chose the town as the site of her announcement.
ass="inline-garnett-quote inline-icon ">
I think we need a woman president and I think it will be the fight of our lives
Vicki Ward, rally attendee"This is a working class city. And I think her – and Bernie [Sanders] – are running on platforms that speak to the working class and how they're being screwed over by the rich and powerful," he said. "And I think she's a great messenger for it."
While there was optimism about Warren's candidacy at her rally, she enters an already crowded Democratic field amid -> r enewed controversy over her past identification as Native American.
For years now – since even before he was president – -> Trump has needled Warren on the issue , calling her "Pocahontas". He and others accuse Warren of falsely presenting herself as Native American to gain unfair advantages in life.
The controversy was re-ignited last week when the Washington Post -> published Warren's 1986 registration card for the Texas State Bar. In it, she listed "American Indian" as her race.
Warren has now apologised repeatedly for identifying as Native American, saying in recent days that she "should have been more mindful of the distinction with tribal citizenship and tribal sovereignty". She still maintains that Native American ancestry was part of her family's story passed down to her.
-> Facebook Twitter Pinterest Elizabeth Warren called Donald Trump the 'most extreme' symptom of a broken system. Photograph: Cj Gunther/EPAHow damaging the controversy will be remains to be see. Warren enters a diverse Democratic field where other candidates belong to minority groups: New Jersey senator -> Cory Booker is African American ; -> California senator Kamala Harris was born to an Indian mother and a Jamaican father. -> Hawaii congresswoman Tulsi Gabbard is both the first Hindu and first Samoan-American member of Congress, and the former San Antonio mayor -> Julián Castro is Latino . When the Democratic race gets heated, Warren's portrayal of race could prove to be a point of attack.
Peter Devlin, a 56-year-old dentist from the nearby town of North Andover, said he was at the rally to hear what Warren had to say but said that the Native American controversy "is going to be a problem" for her campaign.
"I voted for her as senator, but I'm concerned about her electability," he said. "It's going to be a tough run. She's got a bit of baggage and she's so sort of cliche progressive liberal that I think there's a lot of America that's not up for that. But I want to hear what she's up to."
ss="rich-link"> Stacey Abrams on the ticket? Democrat's star turn fuels talk for 2020 Read more
However, other attendees, like 64-year-old Vicki Ward, who drove two hours to the event from Vermont, were ready to throw their support behind Warren on the first day of the senator's presidential campaign.
"I think she's got the qualities that we need," she said. "I think we need a woman president and I think it will be the fight of our lives."
Maryann Johnson, who came to Warren's announcement from New Hampshire, also said she was already sold on Warren.
"I basically agreed with everything she said. We need to have more equality, there needs to be less corruption in government," she said. "She's inspiring."
Topics -> Elizabeth Warren -> US elections 2020 -> Massachusetts -> Democrats -> US politics analysis Share on Facebook Share on Twitter
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Feb 09, 2019 | off-guardian.org
vexarb says Feb, 4, 2019
Analyst Canthama agrees with Pepe (BTL SyrPer #286513):vexarb says Feb, 4, 2019The Saker has a nice article on Venezuela, few days old, but quite balanced on his analysis, people could disagree with one or two things but in general quite to the point on all fronts.
http://www.unz.com/tsaker/the-us-aggression-against-venezuela-as-a-diagnostic-tool/
Though Colombia and Brazil border Venezuela on its West and South, any sort of military invasion from those directions will first have to conquer nature.
So there are only two ways to remove Maduro:
1) US cruise missiles hitting hundreds of spots in Venezuela would be completely unacceptable for any Latina America population, a violence that would cause the US to lose support even its most vassal States.
In parallel, such violence would spark the return of the Colombian guerrilla, blowback will be very bad and wide spread. Thus military intervention is not likely.2) The second option is assassination of Maduro , and this is where some of Venezuela's allies are trying to help, either with security guards, intel and direct protection.
As in Syria, time is an ally for Venezuela, the Venezuela Government will become stronger and diplomacy will take shape, There is a real danger though for a false flag, and this is in fact what Bolton and Pompeo are preparing with Guaidó's supporters knowledge [as in Syria].
Time is also important since the US regime and its dying fiat economy, 2019 will be a tough year for the G7, meaning theses regimes will either have to create another massive QE that will bring them down or start a big war, which the vast majority of their country citizens will never support, see France with yellow vest, many more countries would see the same -- even the US.
So, time is good friend to the Venezuela, they must push it as long as they can, and things will be all right.
Pepe Escobar gives the global view; with Venezuela, Iran, Russia and China abandoning the mythical petrodollar, Uncle $cam's fiat currency is heading for the dustbin of history: https://thesaker.is/venezuela-lets-cut-to-the-chase/vexarb says Feb, 4, 2019Latest from MOA. Uncle $cam is couped in all alone: https://www.moonofalabama.org/2019/02/us-coup-attempt-in-venezuela-lacks-international-support.htmlFrank Russell says Feb, 3, 2019Frank Russell says Feb, 3, 2019https://youtu.be/R_2sf6qnuNUvexarb says Feb, 2, 2019UN rejects Venezuela's Guaido, will only cooperate with recognized government of Maduro: https://www.presstv.com/Detail/2019/02/01/587387/UN-reject-Guaido-cooperate-Madurovexarb says Feb, 1, 2019Refusal to hand over Venezuelan gold means end of Britain as a financial center -- Prof. WolffLochearn says Feb, 1, 2019https://www.rt.com/business/450144-venezuela-gold-boe-wolff/
"That is a signal to every country that has or may have difficulties with the US, [that they had] better get their money out of England and out of London because it's not the safe place as it once was," he said.
"One of the few things left for Britain is to be the financial center that London has been for so long. And one of the ways you stay a financial center is if you don't play games with other people's money," he said.
Jimmy Dore, Abby Martin and others on Venezuela: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=98pBLXe7Bmkcrank says Feb, 1, 2019
Listening to David Graeber in this interview there is no mention of declining energy surpluses in the discussion of the economic paradigm of the coming future. No consideration of the role of the labour of fossil fuels in the economy of the past two centuries. It's amazing, the argument seems not to have reached them, such that it is doesn't even get a look in. (Listen from 40 min mark, and you will hear a completely opposite view of what is to come -- " We are not going to have the problem of how to deploy scarce resources, given an only moderate level of productivity ").
https://novaramedia.com/2019/02/01/david-graeber-bullshit-jobs-direct-democracy-the-end-of-capitalism/Fittingly, there is a fascinating section (52.min 30 sec onwards) exploring Graeber's new book project about how much of the enlightenment thinking of pre-revolutionary France was either a pilfering of, or a reaction to, the ideas of social organisation coming from pre-European Americans.
DunGroanin says Feb, 1, 2019
The Graun seems to have been anti-Chavez from the get go. With a set of 'journalists' who seem to jave made it their lifes work to reverse that democratic revolution. It is not easy to find their biogs.Johan Meyer says Jan, 31, 2019This whole business of "recognizing a president" not yet in power has a precedent: Rwanda.Glasshopper says Jan, 31, 2019When the bUgandan army invaded Rwanda (with US, Canadian, British and Belgian backing) in 1990 (1 October), or in propaganda terms, the RPA started its "liberation," the US moved its embassy to Mulindi, and sent the bUgandan chief of intelligence from his IMET junket at Fort Leavenworth, to take over in northern Rwanda. I refer to Paul Kagame.
International institutions also started to deal with Mulindi, rather than Kigali. Accusations of genocide within a year
Loathsome though he is, Bolton is probably the only honest neocon around. In Iraq, while the likes of Blair were banging on about 45 minutes, human rights and democracy etc, Bolton always made it clear that is was simply a matter of US interests. AKA Oil. He has never pretended to represent anything but rapacious US self interest.Stonky says Jan, 31, 2019Fair play. At least you know what you're getting with that tash.
Prior to being assigned to Latin America, Phillips was the Guardian's China correspondent for five years or so. His task, which he diligently accomplished, was to produce a couple of articles a week on "Why China Is No Good" . I don't think he ever once found anything positive to say about the place.Tim Jenkins says Jan, 31, 2019As an individual he's a complete Jodrell, but there are few to compare with him in his ability to relentlessly toe the Washington neocon line. You couldn't get a fag paper in between him and Luke Harding. I wonder if he's paid for it, or whether it's just that seductive sense of 'belonging' that comes from rubbing shoulders with really powerful people .
Principally, the principles , better said the absence of statute & principle in Law, behind mass surveillance, was what Snowden was desperate to highlight and that the public's principal concern of the Guardian's hard drives, were the least of our problems, legally speaking , coz' other copies existed already elsewhere, anywayAndy says Jan, 31, 2019OFFG could always ask Glen Greenwald to explain why he ceased to 'copulate' with the Guardian and maybe even 'intercept' an opinion or two from Snowden, whilst he's at it intercepting. Indeed , a few extra nails in the Guardian's coffin , could be delivered quite speedily & succinctly , with some professional journalistic exchange of Question & Answer, with nail-gun loaded & mutual benefit would seem to be an all round obvious win-win debate on matters of principle, legal permissions & submissions.
In some ways it is refreshing to have these power hungry narcissists in charge of the US as they cannot seem to not blurt out their naked ambitions, which in this example ftom the ft basically shows kidnap is an agreeable part of trade negotiation.lundiel says Jan, 31, 2019'Five days after a top executive of Huawei, the Chinese telecoms group, was arrested on a US request in Canada, President Donald Trump said he was willing to intervene -- if it helped secure "the largest trade deal ever made". The detention of Meng Wanzhou, one of China's best known executives, was undoubtedly an incendiary step, escalating trade tensions with Beijing. But presidential interference in the case would send entirely the wrong message about the US justice system -- and about how the administration conducts international affairs.
The US and western allies have legitimate concerns about China's reputation for digital espionage and theft of intellectual property. They agree a more robust stance is needed towards Beijing. But arresting a star of Chinese business -- Ms Meng has been called China's Sheryl Sandberg -- on a Canadian stopover en route to Mexico from Hong Kong is not the way to persuade Beijing to change its behaviour.
Even if the Huawei chief financial officer was held on unrelated charges of violating US sanctions on Iran, the move smacks of using individuals as pawns in negotiations. It is seen in Beijing as Washington rewriting the rules of engagement. Such waywardness and unpredictability from a country that used to portray itself as a pillar of the international rules-based order will tempt China to respond in kind, leading to a downward spiral of tit-for-tat behaviour. Indeed, the detention of a former Canadian diplomat, Michael Kovrig, in Beijing looks worryingly like retaliation.
It may be necessary to take at face value Mr Trump's claims that he was unaware of the US extradition application, and of the detention itself -- which occurred on the day he was holding talks on a trade truce with his Chinese counterpart Xi Jinping in Buenos Aires. Had he known, even Mr Trump seems unlikely to have been cynical enough not to mention the arrest to Mr Xi. Presidential ignorance, however, offers little reassurance.
That Mr Trump would not be notified of such a sensitive case by his justice department strengthens the impression of a dysfunctional administration, whose different arms pursue their agendas with little co-ordination, if not in open competition. It strains credibility that his recent presidential predecessors would have been left in the dark in similar situations. The Huawei incident comes in the same week that John Kelly's departure as chief of staff seemed to confirm the extent to which the Trump White House defies conventional management.
The president's offer to do "whatever's good for this country" regarding Ms Meng's case reflects a dealmaker's desire to put his talks with Mr Xi back on track, while extracting whatever advantage he can. But it amounts, in effect, to saying he is holding the Huawei CFO hostage as a trade negotiating chip. The situation carries echoes of the White House's reversal in July of a seven-year executive ban on ZTE, the Chinese telecoms equipment maker, on purchasing critical equipment from the US, in what appeared a tactical concession to Beijing.
Presidential interference in Ms Meng's case would send a worse signal: that rule of law in the US is a function of the whim of the chief executive, or that illegal behaviour can be up for negotiation. It risks creating an impression that there is little difference between America's judicial system and that of, say, Turkey -- or indeed China. The Huawei executive's detention was damaging. It is, however, not for the White House, but for independent courts in Canada and -- if Ms Meng is extradited -- the US to determine what happens next.'
It all depends on your acceptance of "legality" of American sanctions on Iran. I don't, therefore American action against Ms Meng imo is political and nothing to do with the rule of law. Mr Trump's opinions are irrelevant.Jen says Jan, 31, 2019President Trump's comments and opinions as expressed on Twitter will become relevant in Sabrina Meng's court case. Her legal defence could use Trump's opinions as evidence that her arrest was politically motivated and therefore she should not be extradited.harry stotle says Jan, 31, 2019Canadian PM Justin Bieber Trudeau sacked the Ambassador to China for saying this and expressing other opinions, among them Canada's view as to whether the current (and new) US sanctions on Iran are binding on Canada.
Just to add I see the US are sending their finest war criminals to 'help' Venezuela.Kathy says Jan, 31, 2019Elliot Abrams really is a piece of work -- perhaps not everybody realises quite how bad this guy is.
Absolutely shocking allegations here.
The hypocrisy of the MSM in all this is yet again. So blatant it is sickening. At the same time as Yemen is being battered by bombs with the Wests names on them. Deliberately starved to death. With Western MSM indifference. Not to even mention. All the other countries Western powers have illegally devastated. The hand ringing over the plight of the Venezuelan people under Maduro is suddenly more then they can all bare. Western sanctioning and deliberate sabotage by the West against the country. Undermining any chance of peace. Don't get a peep of a mention by the MSM.Yarkob says Jan, 31, 2019
Here we go again. Roll up roll up. This is the latest hypocritical propaganda media show. Maduro is evil we must save his country from this evil. Saintly peace bringing Western alliance must save Venezuela. All that's needed is a more pliant Western puppet or chaos and civil war. Oil Opps sorry shh don't mention the oil. Does any one really buy into this deranged demented narrative any more. For gods sake how many more times do we have to say. NO NOT IN MY NAME.This is good: https://grayzoneproject.com/2019/01/29/the-making-of-juan-guaido-how-the-us-regime-change-laboratory-created-venezuelas-coup-leader/wardropper says Jan, 31, 2019same old characters..OTPOR in particular has a rosy past. Mixed up with DynCorp and the Serbian "police" abuse fiasco
The likes of Bolton haven't seen any reason to conceal their wicked agenda for some time. They are so sure that their god has made them untouchable.mark says Jan, 31, 2019$13 billion in Venezuelan assets have been stolen by Uncle Sam and his satraps over the past few days. Why oh why oh why do countries and foreign individuals persist in keeping their assets in the US/ UK??????. Billions were stolen from Libya in a few days in 2011. Where it all went is one of life's big mysteries. Cameron even stole a boat load of Libyan currency that had been printed in the UK.Francis Lee says Jan, 31, 2019Yes, guilt by omission, the preferred mendacity of the MSM. 'When truth is met by silence, silence is a lie.' Yevgeny Yevtushenko.mark says Feb, 3, 2019A Parliamentary Committee has been set up to agitate for sanctions against China on behalf of the "poor oppressed Uighurs" in China. Shedding buckets of tears over the lack of "yuman rights." While supplying British sniper rifles to the Zionists to gun down Palestinian kids with dum dum bullets and planes, cluster bombs and RAF advisors to slaughter kids in Yemen.harry stotle says Jan, 31, 2019Trump imposed broader economic sanctions on Venezuela because;Maggie says Jan, 31, 2019
*serious human rights abuses (by Maduro),
*antidemocratic actions, and,
*responsibility for the deepening humanitarian crisis.
https://fas.org/sgp/crs/row/IF10715.pdfSo definitely nothing to do with the oil, or international relations between Venezuela and other powers that neocons are at war with (wars being conducted in the media, financial markets and on the ground) while the phony who preceeded Trump (Obama) claimed Venezeula posed an "unusual and extraordinary threat" to US national security (which is a bit like Tyson Fury saying he is frightened by a 90 year old woman who is blind and only has one leg).
https://venezuelanalysis.com/news/12885Isn't there just one soul at the Guardian who will stand up for what is really happening here (as in all other parts of the world where the US has harmed so many people because of its insatiable pursuit of oil and power) -- just one?
I must admit I am not getting my hopes up -- while the Guardian excels at drawing attention to Maduros failings they seem to be deaf, dumb and blind to the geopolitical context in which Venezuela is doing its utmost to escape the tentacles of US-backed neocons in their endless quest for violent regime change.
Here is a most excellent expose by Jimmy Dore:harry stotle says Jan, 31, 2019
?v=whgOvbw53WYArticle 7 of the Rome Statute says US sanctions are illegal because they were not sanctioned by the UN.
So WHY THE FCK DON;'T THEY TURN THE UN TROOPS ON THEM.:
Oh, I know why.. because they are toothless windbags.Time to sanction the US,,,, NOW!!!
Jimmy is an exception.Ingwe says Jan, 31, 2019In general those in the know loath the MSM because of the role they play in backing the gangsters.
"Our own fate as Latin American writers is linked to the need for profound social transformations. To narrate is to give oneself: it seems obvious that literature, as an effort to communicate fully, will continue to be blocked so long as misery and illiteracy exist, and so long as the possessors of power continue to carry on with impunity their policy of collective imbecilization through the mass media. (Open veins of Latin America -- Eduardo Galeano)
http://library.uniteddiversity.coop/More_Books_and_Reports/Open_Veins_of_Latin_America.pdf
A good article on the Graun's pro-USA stance on Venezuela. But the analysis in the linked article provides a more nuanced analysis of what's really going on there and it's not just about oil.vexarb says Jan, 31, 2019
https://www.counterpunch.org/2019/01/30/trumps-coup-in-venezuela-the-full-story/Ingwe, I started reading the Counter Punch, agreed it was not _only_ the oil so what were the other motives for U$ Grand Theft Larceny Fraud with Violence? Got as far as this:Ingwe says Jan, 31, 2019"It should be remembered that the Obama Administration had imposed sanctions against Moscow in March 2014 over the Russian annexation of Crimea, and later involvement in the civil war in Eastern Ukraine."
Could not read follow that, because I remember no such things as Russian annexation of Crimea (at least, not since Catherine the Great), nor do I remember a civil war in Eastern Ukraine (though quite aware that the U$-imposed Jewish Junta with their neo-Nazi stormtroops are continually shelling Russian-speaking Eastern Ukraine).
vexarb, pity you didn't bother to read further for, if you did, you'd get a rather more serious analysis than "USA bad and after the oil; Russia good and bringing enlightenment to the world" .Francis Lee says Jan, 31, 2019Excuse me but where did Vexarb say or intimated that 'Russia was good and bringing enlightenment to the world.' I can't seem to find this.Antonym says Jan, 31, 2019Why is anyone sane still reading (or referring to) the Guardian?RealPeter says Jan, 31, 2019I think the reason some of us still look at the Graun is that we can't quite believe how appalling it's got, especially when, like me, you're old enough to remember the old newspaper from the time when it had some principles and a lot of good writing. It has the sickly fascination of something you know is really bad for you, like Nutella or reality TV shows. You end up wallowing in its sheer awfulness, unlike, say, the Mail and the Sun, which you always know from the start are going to be barking mad and have no element of surprise.bc says Jan, 31, 2019It's pretty obvious Anthony. Because the Guardian, like the BBC and C4 News, presents itself as and is widely regarded to be an authorititative, non-biased news source. Hence it is hugely influential in forming opinion in the corridors of power and in educated society. Opinion that allow bad things to happen and ends up impacting lives. That is reality regardless of comments dismissing these news sources on the internet. And it is why it is appropriate for offguardian and others to try and highlight and expose the dangerous lies and omissions of these wide-reaching propagandists.bevin says Jan, 31, 2019It's good for cricket: the best paper in Canada for cricket news. Also for cycling. Since I first began to read the Manchester Guardian for Neville Cardus's famous writing on cricket, I stick with it.Jen says Jan, 31, 2019
As for foreign affairs, once it has been told by the Foreign Office, who the current enemies are it goes for them. Those who recall the 'good old days' when Latin America and the Middle East, including Palestine got reasonable coverage which sometimes was very good indeed, ought to bear in mind that, in those Cold War days, the main enemy was the Soviet Union and it was necessary to be equivocal about liberation struggles. After all, 'we' were pretending to be desperately sorry about the sufferings of the Russian people, and those of eastern Europe, so it was necessary to tone down the imperialist message.
Now the Establishment is dead set on recovering Latin America in toto, banishing alien (Chinese Russian) influences and consolidating its base in the western hemisphere.
Here comes the Atlantic Treaty Organisation ATO.Why is anyone sane still reading (or referring to) the Guardian?George Cornell says Feb, 1, 2019This is like the old Soviet joke: Why are the capitalist nations on the edge of a precipice?
Answer: To get a better view of us down here.
The reason sane people still occasionally read or refer to The Guardian is to see how far gone down the abyss the newspaper has descended.
Because the people they represent are the biggest threats to world peace.George Cornell says Feb, 1, 2019Because they represent and front the interests of the greatest threats to world peace.George Cornell says Feb, 1, 2019Sorry about the echolaliaRichard Audet says Jan, 31, 2019Can't resist.rogerglewis says Jan, 31, 2019The oft-used cliche of the kid (not brain washed yet) saying out loud that the emperor has no clothes amongst a crowd propagandized, hypnotized and incentivized not to see and not to know truth from falsehood.
The role of the MSM it seems is to perpetrate this mass denial. Thanks to kids like Kit and those that support sites such as this other kids are catching on. But, alas we are just kids after all and the grown ups have the power to spank us for such blasphemy. It is a risk we kids take to speak the truth we see. When you see and when you know remaining silent can make you sick (despair, anhedonia, addiction etc.). I'll take my chances with the spanking and say as loud as I can that the emperor is a fucking war-mongering liar and thief.
https://d.tube/#!/v/tonefreqhz/2zkhc50m This Russel Brand film did get a limited general release but was quickly dispatched to the memory hole,Gezzah Potts says Jan, 31, 2019This David Malone FIlm Icon Earth got him into a ton of trouble at the Beeb back in 1995 it presages stage 2 of the Liberalisation process
https://d.tube/#!/v/tonefreqhz/siz03mvr
I have uploaded various things to DTube and Steemit This film from the Guardian is very good and relevant to Venezuela its on Bit CHute and survives on Youtube for now.
Thank you Kit (and others) for starting up OffGuardian. Its a very precious place to vent, and to read the very enlightened, highly informative, and at times profound comments of all the other commenters here. Have made numerous comments about the situation in Venezuela on other recent stories here, so not going to keep repeating myself. Regards the state of the World: surreal and orwellian and just plain bonkers much of the time seems to be the case. At least Bolton was honest in stating the bleedin obvious, which anyone with even one eye open already knew. Thanks for your work.Loverat says Jan, 31, 2019Indeed. I came across Off Guardian not long ago and I'm highly impressed by the quality. A site to vent -- yes but that's just a small part of it. What is it now -- 3,000 articles published in just nearly 4 years?. A level of committment by its founders not matched in many places elsewhere that I can see.David William Pear says Jan, 31, 2019What I like about this is the quality and depth of the articles -- and the fact each attracts a large number of readers commenting.
I've been looking around various sites lately. It seems to be a mixture of those which produce good articles but don't seem to have the following -- or at least there's a lack of reader participation. Or sites where the analysis is not so good but attract a large volume of comments not necessarily of great quality.
Off G seems to have struck a really good balance which I think means it has more potential to grow further and build on its success.
I wonder (maybe this has been done before) if Off G thought about organising an event to celebrate its next birthday. Might be a good way to raise funds and further interest.
I am surprised that the Guardian even mentioned oil and Venezuela in the same story. Did they also say it has lots of gold, coltron, and many other natural resources. Neoliberals just can't stand seeing all those profits going to "waste on the serfs".notheonly1 says Jan, 31, 2019Very likely McCain. Fortunately though, he already croaked. There was never a regime change or war he did not support, or demand. The sooner his warmongering Fascist buddies follow him, the better for mankind. I can imagine what "Bomb. bomb, bomb, bomb, bomb Iran" would have said about Venezuela. As I said before, Venezuela is venomous to those who want to destroy it. For all American sheeple to understand: The Bucket stops here. Exactly here.Jerry Alatalo says Jan, 31, 2019Bolton's casual mention of U.S. oil corporations going into Venezuela and controlling operation of the nation's oil sector, as if it's already a "done deal", goes right along with Pompeo's focused use of the term "former president Maduro" in the psychological operation aspect of the fully-mapped out coup's full court press. Someone famously described the U.S.-led coup in Ukraine of February 2014 as the most blatant, obvious coup ever, but amazingly this one involving Venezuela has even surpassed Ukraine in insane illegal boldness.Tim Jenkins says Jan, 31, 2019USA Inc.'s use of criminal aggressive war as a business tactic since false flag 9/11 resulted in the self-destruction of American reputation in the Middle East and North Africa region. For that reason the attack on the Venezuelan people for their oil was not surprising. Who will stand for peace? People might think creatively and act to prevent any repeat of senseless violence and horror as experienced by people in Afghanistan, Iraq, Libya, Syria, Ukraine and Yemen.
Peace.
For the record, the "USA Inc.'s use of criminal aggressive war as a business tactic since false flag 9/11 resulted in the self-destruction of American reputation " Globally.Sorry to correct you, but no matter where I go, my first test of any persons intellect is "What do you think happened to WTC 7 ?" and until you get that sorted , the USA is the laughing stock of the 'brave new world' outside Government & MSM >>> Fact , clearly "you cannot be serious", nor the Guardian nor the BBC nor Die Zeit nor Swiss national Television, nor Le Monde &&& and the whole damn network of partners in deep state crimes against innocent people , to further corporate goals.
to even contemplate something in Venezuela is so absurd , when US Governance is so infiltrated with Deep State Dictators & actors, bolstered by Hollywood >>> get own house in order , before becoming guests elsewhere. This clearly applies to Britain & France , as well, indeed all NATO partners.
Trump is gonna' have a real tough time with Xi, coz' you don't get to insult the Chinese in public & arrest CFO's for extradition , without some form of comeback & consequence and Chinese & Russian Military towards region Panama seems almost assured and the USS Fitzgerald warning ? how quickly people forget the 7 dead ! from just a container ship, lol connect the 9 Dot line -- -- --
The world does not want and never needed policing by the U$A, nor their methods of financial control & strangulation with credit on a scale far greater than Ponzi himself. And as for WTC 7 , this made not only the USA a laughing stock in the minds of all intelligent people, it dragged down & outed the very IN-credibility of every single politician in the western world , who accepted the award winning WTC 7 TonyAndyPandy story for CHILDREN !
it's time we got adults back into politics , coz' at present all we have, without exception, is precisely what George Carlin described in 'a few cultural issues' "Garbage in Garbage out" !
and we can be 100% sure that they are all GARBAGE, because they cannot even recognise a controlled explosion, let alone cooking the history books >>> not even one !
The USA has YANKed all their strings, on behalf of Zion and corporate control >>> fact, not one politician permitted to call a spade a spade or WTC 7 a controlled demolition let alone MSM.
Long live the revolution & evolution of political conscience !
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Feb 09, 2019 | off-guardian.org
mark says Jan, 31, 2019
Post Coup Agenda Items:-1. Switch payment for Venezuelan oil from yuan back to dollars.
2. Confiscate Chinese and Russian oil investments in Venezuela.
3. Privatise Venezuelan oil to Wall Street at knock down prices.Or, as the Orange Baboon himself croaked like a two bit Mafia hood, "Grab the oil! Grab the oil! Grab the oil!!"
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Feb 09, 2019 | off-guardian.org
mark says Feb, 7, 2019
What we are experiencing today is the worst and most extreme form of predatory and parasitic financialised monopoly crony capitalism (crapitalism), allied with blatant aggressive jingoistic militarism and the crudest form of imperialist exploitation.Archie1954 says Feb, 7, 2019I'm not sure even Marx envisaged anything this corrupt and degraded. This must be the terminal stage of crapitalism's death throes. It can only end in war and complete collapse.
It comes as no surprise to see the Faux Left Blairite Backstabbers and the Oh-So-Right-On-Politically-Correct Trudeau Regime leading the charge for a bog standard Pinochet style US coup behind the likes of Trump, Bolton, Pompeo and recycled neocon war criminal and death squad queen Abrams.
They have taken off the mask and showed their true colours. The final outcome is uncertain but the fall out will extend way beyond Venezuela. It may well sound the death knell of our current system.
Isn't it amazing how the scum of the Earth arrange to get into high places? I am totally outraged that Canada had anything to do with fostering a coup in Venezuela! It disturbs my sense of national sovereignty and I rue the day that Trudeau made this apostosy a member of his cabinet. What a poor choice for a Minister of Foreign Affairs! Just consider Canada's recent problems with Saudi Arabia, the Meng problem with /China, the chastising of Russia because it protected its sole military base on the Black Sea and now this foolish interference in Venezuela's internal affairs brought on by US sanctions. Canada's stupidity in all these matters makes me bilious.Michael says Feb, 7, 2019Trudeau made Soros' protege Chrystia Freeland part of his cabinet because it was on that condition that Soros generously funded and otherwise caused Trudeau's election bid to be well supported. Billionaires make "democratic" politics so very easy. Canadians, naive, unquestioning, insouciant, swayed by very well rewarded PR & media and with the transacted aquiesence of the other two warmongering neoliberal parties (Conservative & NDP) voted their hopes and Justin Trudeau to PM. But positioning Chrystia Freeland on the global stage and creating a neoliberal path to imperious fascist globalization is the assigned purpose of the swish disposable Canadian Dauphin. Harper played his Soros assigned role, Trudeau will play his and Chrystia hers and they, as quislings all, will exit rewarded as pet functionaries of Soros and his overly entitled ilk. We authorize Soros by wishing & believing this coup is at worst simply a flawed democracy. Ukraine was a Soros coup, Canada is a Soros coup and Venezuela is a Soros coup. All very, very profitable. Don't look, this is how omelettes are made. Our political parties are always for rent by billionaires –that is the main function of political parties. Being corrupt is a design characteristic not a flaw. Buying political parties in supposed democracies is easier, less risky and much more profitable than stealing candy from babies. Canada is undefended against billionaires, invest here, concentrated public assets and resources are available and the quaint people are professionally deactivated. m\\
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Feb 09, 2019 | off-guardian.org
Andy says Jan, 31, 2019
Trump making Bolton look like the paragon of discretion re oil https://youtu.be/4huS-3-Gs74
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Feb 08, 2019 | off-guardian.org
8 August 2017 in order to overthrow and replace Venezuela's current President Nicolás Maduro. She stated in her February 5th announcement :Today, we have been joined by our Lima Group partners, from Argentina, Brazil, Chile, Colombia, Costa Rica, Guatemala, Guyana, Honduras, Panama, Paraguay, Peru, and Saint Lucia. We have also been joined in our conversations with our partners from other countries, for this Lima Group ministerial meeting. These include Ecuador, the European Union, France, Germany, the Netherlands, Portugal, Spain, the United Kingdom, and the United States."
She, along with U.S. President Donald Trump, had, all along, been the actual leaders of this international diplomatic effort, to violate the Venezuelan Constitution blatantly , so as to perpetrate the coup in Venezuela. Her active effort to replace Venezuela's Government began with her formation of the Lima Group, nearly two years ago.
Canada's Ottawa Citizen headlined on 19 August 2017, "Choosing Danger" , and their reporter Peter Hum interviewed Canada's Ambassador to Venezuela, Ben Rowswell, who was then retiring from the post. Rowswell said that Venezuelans who wanted an overthrow of their Government would continue to have the full support of Canada's Government : "'I think that some of them were sort of anxious that it (the embassy's support for human rights and democracy in Venezuela) might not continue after I left,' Rowswell said. 'I don't think they have anything to worry about because Minister (of Foreign Affairs Chrystia) Freeland has Venezuela way at the top of her priority list.'"
Maybe it wasn't yet at the top of Trump's list, but it was at the top of hers. And she and Trump together chose whom to replace Venezuela's President, Nicholas Maduro, by: Juan Guaido . Guaido had secretly courted other Latin American leaders for this, just as Freeland had already done, by means of her secretly forming the Lima Group.
On 25 January 2019, the AP bannered "AP Exclusive: Anti-Maduro coalition grew from secret talks" and reported that the man who now claims to be Venezuela's legitimate President (though he had never even run for that post), Juan Guaido, had secretly visited foreign countries in order to win their blessings for what he was planning:
In mid-December, Guaido quietly traveled to Washington, Colombia and Brazil to brief officials on the opposition's strategy of mass demonstrations to coincide with Maduro's expected swearing-in for a second term on Jan. 10 in the face of widespread international condemnation, according to exiled former Caracas Mayor Antonio Ledezma, an ally.Playing a key role behind the scenes was Lima Group member Canada, whose Foreign Minister Chrystia Freeland spoke to Guaido [9 January 2019] the night before Maduro's swearing-in ceremony [on 10 January 2019] to offer her government's support should he confront the socialist leader [Maduro], the Canadian official said. Also active was Colombia, which shares a border with Venezuela and has received more than two million migrants fleeing economic chaos, along with Peru and Brazil's new far-right President Jair Bolsonaro.
To leave Venezuela, he sneaked across the lawless border with Colombia, so as not to raise suspicions among immigration officials who sometimes harass opposition figures at the airport and bar them from traveling abroad, said a different anti-government leader, speaking on condition of anonymity to discuss security arrangements.
During the last days in office of Canada's Ambassador to Venezuela Rowswell, U.S. President Donald Trump went public with his overt threat to invade Venezuela. On 11 August 2017, McClatchy's Miami Herald bannered "Trump was making friends in Latin America -- before he raised Venezuela 'military option'" , and Patricia Mazzei reported that "President Donald Trump's unexpected suggestion Friday that he might rely on military force to deal with Venezuela's pressing political crisis was an astonishing statement that strained not only credulity but also the White House's hard-won new friendships in Latin America."
Even a spokesperson from the Atlantic Council (which is the main PR agency for NATO) was quoted as saying that "U.S. diplomats, after weeks of carefully building the groundwork for a collective international response, suddenly find their efforts completely undercut by a ridiculously over the top and anachronistic assertion. It makes us look imperialistic and old-time. This is not how the U.S. has behaved in decades!" However, Peru's Foreign Minister, Ricardo Luna, was just as eager for a coup in Venezuela as were Trump and Freeland.
On 26 October 2017, Peru's Gestion TV reported that Luna was the co-chair of the meeting of the Lima Group in Toronto, which Freeland chaired, and that (as translated into English here) "Luna added that the objective of the meeting of the Group of Lima 'is to create a propitious situation' so that the regime of Nicolás Maduro 'feels obligated to negotiate' not only an exit to the crisis, 'but also an exit to his own regime'."
This gang was going to make Maduro an offer that he couldn't refuse. So, the Lima Group, which was founded by Luna and by Freeland, was taking the initiative as much and as boldly as Trump was, regardless of what NATO might think about it. The topic of that news-report, and its headline, was "Peru proposes Grupo de Lima to involve the UN to face the Venezuelan crisis." Four days later, Freeland and Luna met privately at the U.N., in New York, with the Secretary General, Antonio Guterres.
Inner City Press reported that "The title of the meeting is 'the situation in Venezuela and efforts by regional organizations to resolve the crisis per Chapter VIII of the UN Charter' [see it here ] and the briefer will be not USG [Under Secretary General] Jeffrey Feltman but his Assistant, ASG [Assistant Secretary-General for Political Affairs] Miroslav Jenca."
Jeffrey Feltman was the person who, in the secretly recorded 27 January 2014 phone-conversation in which U.S. President Barack Obama's agent, Victoria Nuland -- planning and overseeing the February 2014 coup that overthrew Ukraine's democratically elected President -- instructed the U.S. Ambassador to Ukraine, that, after Ukraine's President is ousted, Arseniy "Yats" Yatsenyuk was to be appointed as Ukraine's 'interim' leader as the new Prime Minister, to replace the President. She also said :
"I talked to Jeff Feltman this morning; he had a new name for the UN guy Robert Serry. He's now gotten both Serry and Ban ki-Moon to agree that Serry could come in Monday or Tuesday. That would be great, I think, to help glue this thing, and to have the UN help glue it, and, you know, fuck the EU."
So, the still Under Secretary General of the U.N, Mr. Feltman, is still America's fixer there, who "glues" whatever the U.S. President orders the U.N. to do, and his Assistant was filling in for him that day. Therefore, if Trump and Freeland turn out to be as successful as Obama was, then the U.N. will "glue" the outcome. Chrystia Freeland happens also to be a friend of Victoria Nuland, and a passionate supporter of her coup in Ukraine.
... ... ...
Of course, the man whom the U.S. and Canadian regimes and the Lima Group are trying to install as Venezuela's President, Juan Guaido, had been well-groomed for that job, but not by political and electoral experience, of which he has almost none, but by his foreign sponsors. On 29 January 2019 the Gray Zone Project bannered "The Making of Juan Guaidó: How the US Regime Change Laboratory Created Venezuela's Coup Leader" , and their two star investigative journalists, Dan Cohen and Max Blumenthal, opened: "Juan Guaidó is the product of a decade-long project overseen by Washington's elite regime change trainers. While posing as a champion of democracy, he has spent years at the forefront of a violent campaign of destabilization."
This report also noted that "The 'real work' began two years later, in 2007, when Guaidó graduated from Andrés Bello Catholic University of Caracas. He moved to Washington, DC to enroll in the Governance and Political Management Program at George Washington University, under the tutelage of Venezuelan economist Luis Enrique Berrizbeitia, one of the top Latin American neoliberal economists. Berrizbeitia is a former executive director of the International Monetary Fund (IMF) [and the IMF is a central part the operation that's described in John Perkins's now-classic Confessions of an Economic Hit Man] who spent more than a decade working in the Venezuelan energy sector, under the old oligarchic regime that was ousted by Chávez."
Moreover, "Stratfor and CANVAS – key advisors of Guaidó and his anti-government cadre – devised a shockingly cynical plan to drive a dagger through the heart of the Bolivarian revolution. The scheme hinged on a 70% collapse of the country's electrical system by as early as April 2010." Etc. This is how 'democracy' now functions. It's not democracy -- it is fascism. The euphemisms for it are "neoliberalism" and "neoconservatism."
Regardless of whether or not the Trump-Freeland-Luna program for Venezuela succeeds, democracy and human rights won't be advanced by it; but, if it succeeds, the fortunes of US-and-allied billionaires will be . It's part of their global privatization program .
Sidebar: If you want to understand what was the historical context where Inner City Press reported that "The title of the meeting is 'the situation in Venezuela and efforts by regional organizations to resolve the crisis per Chapter VIII of the UN Charter'" ; then Luk Van Langenhove has summarized that context , by saying:Few invocations of Chapter VIII's provisions were made during the cold war period. But when the bipolar world system collapsed and spawned new global security threats, the explosion of local and regional armed conflicts provoked a renewed interest in regional organizations and their role in the maintenance of regional peace and security. The United Nations was forced to acknowledge its inability to solely bear the responsibility for providing peace and security worldwide."
So, "during the cold war period," this provision of the UN Charter remained virtually inactive. Then, suddenly, after 1991, when the Soviet Union and its communism and its Warsaw Pact military alliance to counter America's NATO military alliance, all ended (with no concessions being made on the American side ), America could no longer use 'communism' as a 'justification' to invade or perpetrate coups against foreign governments that were friendly toward or else allied with Russia.
So, now, this provision of the U.N.'s Charter became activated by the U.S. and its allies, in order to be able to say that The West's coups and invasions aren't actually to build-out the U.S. empire, but are instead for (in the terms of this part of the U.N.'s Charter) "the maintenance of international peace and security" -- so as to 'authorize' coups and international invasions by the U.S. and its vassal nations, such as are the members of NATO.
This is what U.S. President G.H.W. Bush had in mind to rely upon, when he told the leaders of the U.S. regime's vassal states, secretly at Camp David, on the night of 24 February 1990, that the 'Cold War' would now continue secretly on the U.S.-allied side, against Russia and against any nation's leaders (such as Saddam Hussein, Muammar Qaddafi, Bashar al-Assad, and Viktor Yanukovych) that aren't hostile toward Russia, by Bush's saying then to them, that no compromise must ever be allowed "with Moscow," because "To hell with that! We prevailed, they didn't."
In other words, whereas the U.N. had been set up by FDR to evolve ultimately into the global democratic federation of nation-states -- a democratic world-government -- so as to become the sole possessor of control over all strategic weaponry, and thus to become the democratic republic of the entire world authorized to settle international disputes peacefully, the subterranean Nazis and other fascists whom U.S. President Truman and the Bilderberg group represented, were determined that the U.S. and its vassal nations would ultimately become the dictatorship over all nations, the entire world. That's what Ukraine, and now Venezuela, and many other U.S. coups and invasions, are -- and have been -- really about. It's about the 'peace' of the graveyard, NOT any democracy, anywhere at all.
That's their dream. They want to monopolize the corruption everywhere, not to end it, anywhere. And that's why they distort and blatantly lie about Venezuela's democratic constitution now , just as they did about Ukraine's democratic constitution in February 2014. It's, essentially, a lawless international gang of billionaire thugs. It is the international Deep State . It consists of the under 2,000 people who are international billionaires in the U.S. and secondarily in the U.S.-allied countries, and of those billionaires' millions of hirees. 585 of those under-2,000 are Americans .
But the wealthiest person on the planet isn't even listed on any of the standard lists of billionaires, and he is the King of Saudi Arabia . That person is the U.S. aristocracy's #1 international ally, because ever since the 1970s when gold no longer backed the U.S. dollar but instead oil did, that person's decisions have enabled the U.S. dollar to continue as being the world's reserve currency, no matter how big the U.S. economy's trade deficits are, and no matter how high the U.S. Government's fiscal deficits are.
Below those billionaires (and trillionaire), and below their millions of hirees, are the billions of serfs; and, below those, at the very bottom, are the approximately 40 million slaves , and the many millions imprisoned -- virtually all of whom have extremely low (if any) net worth at all, since slavery and imprisonment are, in the real world, only for the very poor, not at all for the international gangsters, except for a very few exceptions (such as, perhaps, "El Chapo").
The billionaires command, and the governments obey; that's 'democracy', and it's 'the rule of law', today. Everything to the contrary is propaganda, such as that what Trump-Freeland-Luna want for Venezuela is to decrease corruption and to increase democracy and human rights.
At least the more blatant fascist John Bolton was honest when he said on January 28th : "It will make a big difference to the United States economically if we could have American oil companies invest in and produce the oil capabilities in Venezuela." But he would have been lots more honest if he had acknowledged, instead, that "It will make a big difference to the United States billionaires economically if we could have American oil companies invest in and produce the oil capabilities in Venezuela."
This is all that the fascists ever really cared about. Mussolini called it "corporationism." Now, decades in the wake of the Allies' supposed 'victory against fascism' -- against the Axis powers -- in WW II, we all (at least the realists) are acknowledging that we clearly are staring in the face the raw fact that fascism has finally won, or at least very nearly totally won, in the world.
Hitler, Mussolini, and Hirohito, died; but their ideological followers today rule the world, and FDR would be turning in his grave.
Yes, they will never stop. Just think of this brand-new propaganda lie of Maduro allegedly preventing aid shipment to come into Venezuela. See BBC: https://www.bbc.com/news/world-latin-america-47143492 : "Venezuelan soldiers have blocked the crossing ahead of a delivery arranged by opposition leader Juan Guaidó, who has declared himself interim president".Notice the word "ahead" in this sentence. This word appears because there was never a "delivery" (truck) with aid shipment at the bridge!
The Venezuelan government ("Maduro") blocked the bridge only because of war-threatening Columbia and USA.
If you want to send aid shipment to Venezuela you can send as much as you want anytime. Of course you have to respect the regulations of the custom (like in every other country!). But that's all!Whets foul with this story?
Well, this aid "delivery" cannot have been collected in Colombia – and thus being taken away from the people of Colombia, who are much poorer than the people of Venezuela. So it would have to come from other country (USA, Europe, China, Japan). And then you would not land this aid shipment in Columbia (a harbour, an airport), drive it, in hot-humid air, through half of Colombia to the border crossing bridge of Cúcuta. Then cross the bridge and then drive it through half of Venezuela!
Instead aid shipments for Venezuela would be landed directly in Venezuela – in an Venezuelan harbour or airport."Everything (to the contrary) is propaganda".
Or "Fake News"! So don't miss James Corbett's "FAKE NEWS AWARD" – https://www.corbettreport.com/episode-351-the-2nd-annual-real-fake-news-awards/
Of course I'm speaking rhetorically: we all know what the answer is and it ain't looking very pretty.
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Feb 08, 2019 | off-guardian.org
Narrative says Feb, 1, 2019
Nations should explore better system to break US hegemonycrank says Feb, 1, 2019"The US dollar is used for the international oil and gas trade and a wide part of global trade. This gives the US an exorbitant privilege to sanction countries it opposes.
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The latest sanctions on Venezuela's state-owned oil company aim to cut off source of foreign currency of Venezuelan strongman Nicolas Maduro's government and eventually force him to step down.
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A new mechanism should be devised to thwart such a vicious circle"Francis Lee; Big B,BigB says Feb, 1, 2019OK I phrased that badly.
My question is really about those at the top of the power pyramid (those few hundred families who own the controling share of the wealth of the world) -- those who position idiots like Bolton to do their work, do they comprehend 'exergy' decline ?
If we can, then can they not? I agree with Parenti that they are not 'somnambulists'. They are strategists looking out for their own interests, and that means scrutinising trends in political movements, culture, technology and, well, just about everything. I find it hard, the idea that all these people -- people who have seen their businesses shaped by resource discovery, exploitation and then depletion, have no firm grasp on the realities of dwindling returns on energy.
The models were drawn up 47 years ago. I think that some of them at least, do understand that economic growth is coming to a halt, and have understood for decades. If true then they are planning that transition in their favour.
These hard to swallow facts about oil are still on the far fringes of any political conversation. The neoliberal cultists are deaf to them for obvious reasons; the socialist idealists believe that a 'New Deal' can lead us off the death train, but mostly ignore the intractable relationship between energy decline and financial problems; even the anarchists want their work free utopia run by robots and AI but stop short of asking whether solar panels and wind turbines can actually provide the power for all that tech. It's the news that nobody wants to think about, but which they will be forced to thinking about in the very near future.
The Twitter feed 'Limits to Growth' has less than 800 followers (excellent though it is).
CrankBigB says Feb, 2, 2019I do not want to get into the mind of the Walrus of Death Bolton! I do not want to know what he does, as he does. But at lower levels of government, and corporatism, there is an awareness of surplus energy economics. And as Nafeez has also pointed out, the military (the Pentagon) are taking an interest. And though it could rapidly change, who really appreciates the nuances of EROEI? I'm guessing at less than a single percent of all populations? And how many include its effects in a integrated political sense?
Its appreciation is sporadic: ranging from tech-utopia hopium to a defeated fatalism of the inevitability of collapse. Unless and until people want to face the harshness of the reality that capitalism has created: we are going to be involved in a marginal analysis. There are very few people who have realised that capitalism is long dead.
Dr Tim Morgan estimates that world capitalism has conservatively had $140tn in stimulus since 2008 -- without stimulating anything or reviving it at all. In fact, that amounts to the greatest robbery in history -- the theft of the future. Inasmuch as they can, those unrepayable debts -- transferred to inflate the parasitic assets of capitalists -- will be socialised. Except they cannot be. Not without surplus energy.
https://surplusenergyeconomics.wordpress.com/2019/01/20/145-fire-and-ice-part-two/
Brexit, gilets jaunes, Venezuela, unending crises in MENA, China's economic slowdown, etc -- all linked by EROEI.
It is a common socio-politico-economic energy nexus -- but linked together by whom? And the emergent surplus energy-mind-environmental ecology nexus? All the information is available. The formation of a new political manifesto started in the 1960s with the New Left but it seems to have been in stasis since. Perhaps this might stimulate the conversation.
According to Nate Hagens: there is 4.5 years of human muscle power leveraged by each barrel of oil. We are all going to be working for a very long time to pay back the debts the possessing classes have built up for us -- with absolutely no marginal utility for ourselves.
We are subsidising our own voluntary slavery unless we develop an emergent ecosocialist and ecosophical alternative to carbon capitalism. We cannot expect paleoconservative carbon relics like Bolton -- or anyone else -- to do it for us. The current political landscape is dominated by a hierarchical, vested interest, carbon aristocracy. We can't expect that to change for our benefit any time ever. Expect the opposite.
Graeber has a point, though. We could already have a post-scarcity, post-production society but for the egregious maldistribution of resources and employment. Andre Gorz said as much 50 years ago (Critique of Economic Reason). Why do we organise around production: it makes no sense but for the relations of production are, and remain, the relations of hierarchical rule. So long as we assign value to a human life on the basis of meritocratic productivity -- we will have dehumanisation, marginalisation, and subjugation (haves and have nots). So why not organisation around care, freedom and play?crank says Feb, 2, 2019Such a solution would require the transversalistion of society and not-full-employment: so that no part of the system is subordinate, and no part is privileged. All systems and sub-ordinate (care) systems would be co-equal, of corresponding value and worth. So, without invoking EROEI, that would go a long way to solve our exergy, waste, pollution, and inequality problems. It is the profligate, unproductive superstructure: supporting rentier, surplus energy accumulating, profit-seeking suprasocieties -- that squanders our excess energy and puts expansive spatio-temporal pressures on already stretched biophysical ecological systems that engenders potential collapse. It is their -- the possessing classes -- assets that are being inflated, at our environmental expense. When it comes to survivability, we cannot afford a parasitic globalised superstructure draining the host -- the ecologically productive base. Without the over-accumulation, overconsumption, and wastage (the accursed share) associated with the superstructure of the advanced economies -- and their cultural, credit, military imperialisms I expect we could live quite well. Without the pressures of globalised transportation networks, and unnecessary military budgets -- the pressure on oil is minimised. It could be used for the 1001 other uses it has, rather than fuelling Saudi Eurofighters bombing Yemeni schoolchildren, for instance. The surplus energy could be used to educate, clothe and feed them instead. That would be a better use of resources, for sure.
If we took stock of what we really have, and what we really are -- a form of spiritual neo-self-sufficiency, augmented and extended into co-mutual care and freedom valorising ecologies we wouldn't need to chase the perceived loss all over the globe, killing everything that moves. The solutions are not hard, they are normative, once we are shocked out of this awful near-life trance state of separationism. Thanks for the link.
It seems to me that there are two parallel arguments going on.BigB says Feb, 2, 2019
One is about social organisation, attitudes towards and policies determining work, money, paid employment, technological development and the distribution of weath.
The other is fundamentally based on the laws of thermodynamics and concerns resource limits, energy surpluses, the role of 'stored sunlight' in producing things and doing work for each other, pollution and projections about these into the future.I am surprised that Graeber (just as an example) seems to basically ignore the second of these even though he clearly is an incisive thinker and makes good points about the first. It is taken as a given that, theoretically at least, human civilisation could re-organise around a new ethic, transform the economy into a 'caring economy', re-structure money, government and do away with militarism. In terms of what to do now, as an individual, what choices to make, it is disconcerting to me when talk of these ideals seems to ignore those latter questions about overshoot.
I wonder if the egalitarian nature of much of indiginous North American society was inescapably bound with the realities of a low population density, low technology, intimate relationship with the natural world and a culture completely steeped in reverence for Mother Earth.
The talk I hear from Bastani or Graeber along the lines of 'we could be flying around in jet packs on the moon, if only society was organised sensibly' rings hollow to me.Crankcrank says Jan, 31, 2019Welcome to my world! Apart from as a managerial tool, systems thinking has yet to catch on in the wider population. According to reductive materialism: there are two unlinked arguments. According to Dynamic Systems Theory (DST) there is only one integrated argument -- with two inter-connected correlative aspects. We can only organise around what we can energetically afford. Consequently, we cannot organise around what we cannot afford -- that is, global industrialised production with a supervenient elitist superstructure.
Let's face it : ethical arguments carry little weight against organisation around hierarchical rule. The current talk of an ethical capitalism -- in mixed economies with 'commons' elements -- is an appeasement. and distractional to the gathering and ineluctable reality.
The current (2012) EROI for the UK is 6.2:1 -- barely above the 'energy cliff' of 5:1. The GDP 'growth' and bullshit jobs are funded by monetised debt (we borrow around £5 to make every £1 -- from Tim Morgan's SEEDS). From the Earth Overshoot Day website: the UK is in economic overshoot from May 8th onward.
These are indicators that we will not be "flying jetpacks on the moon": even if we reorganise. Everyone, and I mean everyone, will have to make do with less. A lot less. Everything would have to be localised and sustainable. Production would be minimised, and not at all full. Two major systems of production -- food (agroecology) and energy -- would have to be sustainable and self-sovereign. And financialisation and the rentier, service economy? Now you can see why no one, not even Dave the crypto-anarchist, is talking about reality. Elitism, establishment and entitlement do not figure in an equitable future. We can't afford it, energetically or ethically.
So when will the debate move on? Not any time the populace is bought into ideational deferred prosperity. All the time that EROEI is ignored as the fundamental concept governing dwindling prosperity -- no one, and I mean no one, will be talking about a minimal surplus energy future. The magic realism is that the economic affordances of cheap oil (unsustainably mimicked by debt-funding) will return sometime, somehow (the technocratic superfix). The aporia is that the longer the delay, the less surplus energy we will have available to utilise. Something like the Green New Deal -- that has been proposed for around two decades now -- may give us some quality of life to sustain. Pseudo-talk of a Customs Union, 'clean' coal, and nuclear power, will not.
An integrated reality -- along the model of Guattari's 'Three Ecologies' -- of mind, economy, and environment is well, we are not alone, but we are ahead of the curve. The other cultural aporia is that we need to implement such vision now. Actually, about thirty years ago but let's not get depressive!
We are going to need that cooperative organisation around care and freedom just to get through the coming century.
As mentioned elsewhere here, Venezualan oil deposits are not all that the hype cracks them up to be. They are mostly oil sands that produce little in the way of net energy gain after the lengthy process of extraction.The Venezuala drama is about the empire crushing democracy (i.e. socialism), not oil. [not that this detracts from Kit's essential point in the article].Francis Lee says Jan, 31, 2019
The Left (as well as the Right), by and large have not come to terms with the realities of the decline in net surplus energy that is unfolding around the world and driving the political changes that we see. So they still view geopolitics in terms of the oil economy of pre-2008.
The productive economies of Europe are falling apart (check Steve Keen's latest on Max and Stacy -- although even i he doesn't delve into the energy decline aspect).
The carbon density of the global economy has not changed in the 27 years since the founding of the UNFCCC.The Peak Oil phenomenon was oversimplified, misrepresented and misunderstood as a simple turning point in overall oil production. In truth it was a turning point in energy surplus.
I predict that by the end of this or next year, everyone will be talking about ERoEI. Everyone will realise that there is no way out of this predicament. Maybe there are ways to lessen the catastrophe, but no way to avert it. This will change the conversation, and even change what 'politics' means (i.e. you cannot campaign on a 'new start' or a 'better, brighter future' if everyone knows that that physically cannot happen).
Everyone will understand that their civilisation is collapsing.
Does Bolton understand this?"Does Bolton Understand this/? I think this might qualify as a rhetorical question.BigB says Feb, 1, 2019CrankBigB says Feb, 1, 2019If you were referring to my earlier comments about Venezuelan extra heavy crude: it's still massively about the oil. The current carbon capitalist world system does not understand surplus energy or EROEI, as it is so fixated on maximal short term returns for shareholders. It can't comprehend that their entire business model is unsustainable and self cannibalising. Which is bad for us: because carbon net-energy (exergy) economics it is foundational to all civilisation. The ignorance of it and subsequent environmental and social convergence crises threatens the systemic failure of our entire civilisation. The Venezuelan crisis affects us all: and is symptomatic of a decline in cheap oil due to rapidly falling EROEI.
I can't find the EROEI specifically for Venezuelan heavy oil: but it is only slightly more viscous than bitumen -- which has an EROEI of 3:1. Let's call it 4:1: the same as other tight oils and shale. Anything less than 5:1 is more or less an energy sink: with virtually no net energy left for society. The minimum EROEI for societal needs is 11:1. Does Bolton understand this? Francis hit the nail on the head there.
Do any of our leaders? No. If they did, a transition to decentralisation would be well under way. Globalised supply chains are systemically threatened and fragile. A globalised economy is spectacularly vulnerable. Especially a debt-ridden one. Which way are our leaders trying to take us? At what point will humanity realise we are following clueless Pied Pipers off the Seneca Cliff -- into globalised energy oblivion?
The rapid investment -- not in a post-carbon transition -- but in increased militarisation, and resource and market driven aggressive foreign intervention policies reveal the mindset of insanity. As people come to understand the energy basis of the world crisis: the fact of permanent austerity and increased pauperisation looms large. What will the outcome be when an armed nuclear madhouse becomes increasingly protectionsist of their dwindling share? Too alarmist, perhaps? Let's play pretend that we can plant a few trees and captive breed a few rhinos and it will all be fine. BAU?
The world runs on cheap oil: our socio-politico-economic expectations of progress depend on it. Which means that the modern human mind is, in effect, a thought-process predicated on cheap oil. Oleum ergo sum? Apart from the Middle East: we are already past the point where oil is a liability, not a viability. Debt funding its extraction, selling below the cost of production -- both assume the continual expansion of global GDP. Oil is a highly subsidised -- with our surplus socialisation capital -- negative asset. We foot the bill. A bill that EROEI predicts will keep on rising. At what point do we realise this? Or do we live in hopium of a return to historical prosperity? Or hang on the every word of the populist magic realism demagogue who promises a future social utopia?
If it's based on cheap oil, it ain't happenin'.
Erratum: less viscous than bitumen.wildtalents says Feb, 1, 2019Is it no longer considered a courtesy to the reader to spell out, and who knows maybe even explain, the abbreviations one uses?Jen says Feb, 1, 2019EROEI = Energy Returned on Energy Invested (also known as EROI = Energy Return on Investment)BigB says Feb, 1, 2019EROEI refers to the amount of usable energy that can be extracted from a resource compared to the amount of energy (usually considered to come from the same resource) used to extract it. It's calculated by dividing the amount of energy obtained from a source by the amount of energy needed to get it out.
An EROEI of 1:1 means that the amount of usable energy that a resource generates is the same as the amount of energy that went into getting it out. A resource with an EROEI of 1:1 or anything less isn't considered a viable resource if it delivers the same or less energy than what was invested in it. A viable resource is one with an EROEI of at least 3:1.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Energy_returned_on_energy_invested
The concept of EROEI assumes that the energy needed to get more energy out of a resource is the same as the extracted energy ie you need oil to extract oil or you need electricity to extract electricity. In real life, you often need another source of energy to extract energy eg in some countries, to extract electricity, you need to burn coal, and in other countries, to extract electricity you need to build dams on rivers. So comparing the EROEI of electricity extraction across different countries will be difficult because you have to consider how and where they're generating electricity and factor in the opportunity costs involved (that is, what the coal or the water or other energy source -- like solar or wind energy -- could have been used for instead of electricity generation).
That is probably why EROEI is used mainly in the context of oil or natural gas extraction.
wildtalents: Yes, I normally do. But the thread started from, and includes Crank's link that explains it.Thomas Peterson says Feb, 1, 2019That's true, Venezuela's 'oil' is mostly not oil.
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Feb 08, 2019 | off-guardian.org
mark says Jan, 31, 2019
There was one leading US politician whose name escapes me for the moment. When Chavez was president, he complained bitterly that Venezuela's oil wealth was being squandered on things like healthcare, education, literacy and welfare. It could have been given instead to hard pressed Wall Street fund managers in bigger bonuses. He wasn't being ironic.
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Feb 08, 2019 | off-guardian.org
Joerg says Feb, 7, 2019
"Everything (to the contrary) is propaganda"
Yes, they will never stop. Just think of this brand-new propaganda lie of Maduro allegedly preventing aid shipment to come into Venezuela. See BBC: https://www.bbc.com/news/world-latin-america-47143492 : " Venezuelan soldiers have blocked the crossing ahead of a delivery arranged by opposition leader Juan Guaidó, who has declared himself interim president ".Notice the word " ahead " in this sentence. This word appears because there was never a " delivery " (truck) with aid shipment at the bridge!
The Venezuelan government ("Maduro") blocked the bridge only because of war-threatening Columbia and USA.If you want to send aid shipment to Venezuela you can send as much as you want anytime. Of course you have to respect the regulations of the custom (like in every other country!). But that's all!
Whets foul with this story?
Well, this aid " delivery " cannot have been collected in Colombia – and thus being taken away from the people of Colombia, who are much poorer than the people of Venezuela. So it would have to come from other country (USA, Europe, China, Japan). And then you would not land this aid shipment in Columbia (a harbour, an airport), drive it, in hot-humid air, through half of Colombia to the border crossing bridge of Cúcuta. Then cross the bridge and then drive it through half of Venezuela!
Instead aid shipments for Venezuela would be landed directly in Venezuela – in an Venezuelan harbour or airport.
"Everything (to the contrary) is propaganda". Or "Fake News"! So don't miss James Corbett's "FAKE NEWS AWARD" – https://www.corbettreport.com/episode-351-the-2nd-annual-real-fake-news-awards/
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Sep 19, 2015 | The Guardian
Why does the US continually send deadly weapons to the Middle East, make things even more chaotic than they were before and expect better results the next time?As pretty much everyone who was paying attention predicted, the $500m program to train and arm "moderate" Syrian rebels is an unmitigated, Bay of Pigs-style disaster, with the head of US central command admitting to Congress this week that the year-old program now only has "four or five" rebels fighting inside Syria, with dozens more killed or captured.
Even more bizarre, the White House is claiming little to do with it. White House spokesman Josh Earnest attempted to distance Obama from the program, claiming that it was actually the president's "critics" who "were wrong." The New York Times reported, "In effect, Mr Obama is arguing that he reluctantly went along with those who said it was the way to combat the Islamic State, but that he never wanted to do it and has now has been vindicated in his original judgment."
This bizarre "I was peer pressured into sending more weapons into the Middle East" argument by the president is possibly the most blatant example of blame shifting in recent memory, since he had every opportunity to speak out against it, or veto the bill. Instead, this is what Obama said at the time: "I am pleased that Congress...have now voted to support a key element of our strategy: our plan to train and equip the opposition in Syria."
But besides the fact that he clearly did support the policy at the time, it's ridiculous for another reason: years before Congress approved the $500m program to arm the Syrian rebels, the CIA had been running its own separate Syrian rebel-arming program since at least 2012. It was reported prominently by the New York Times at the time and approved by the president.
In fact, just before Congress voted, Senator Tom Udall told Secretary of State John Kerry, who was testifying in front of the foreign relations committee, "Everybody's well aware there's been a covert operation, operating in the region to train forces, moderate forces, to go into Syria and to be out there, that we've been doing this the last two years." In true Orwellian fashion, Kerry responded at the time: "I hate to do this. But I can't confirm or deny whatever that's been written about and I can't really go into any kind of possible program."
Also conveniently ignored by Congress and those advocating for arming the rebels was a classified study the CIA did at the time showing that arming rebel factions against sitting governments almost always ends in disaster or tragedy.
You'd think whether or not the current weapons-running program was effective – or whether any similar program ever was – would have been a key factor in the debate. But alas, the CIA program is never mentioned, not by politicians, and not by journalists. It's just been conveniently forgotten.
It is true that perhaps the best advocate for why we never should've armed the Syrian rebels to begin with came from President Obama himself. He told the New Yorker in early 2014 that "you have an opposition that is disorganized, ill-equipped, ill-trained and is self-divided. All of that is on top of some of the sectarian divisions." Critically, he cited that same above-mentioned classified study:
Very early in this process, I actually asked the CIA to analyze examples of America financing and supplying arms to an insurgency in a country that actually worked out well. And they couldn't come up with much.
He didn't mention the CIA's already-active weapons-running program. Why he didn't stick to his guns since he supposedly was weary of getting the US military involved in yet another quagmire it could not get out of is beyond anyone's comprehension. Instead, he supported Congress's measure to create yet another program that sent even more weapons to the war-torn region.
Per usual, Republicans are taking the entirely wrong lessons from this disaster, arguing that if only there was more force then everything would've worked out. Marco Rubio exclaimed during the GOP presidential debate on Wednesday that if we armed the rebels earlier – like he allegedly wanted, before voting against arming them when he had the chance – then the program would've worked out. Like seemingly everyone else in this debate, Rubio has decided to ignore the actual facts.
Sadly, instead of a debate about whether we should continue sending weapons to the Middle East at all, we'll probably hear arguments that we should double down in Syria in the coming days and get US troops more cemented into a war we can call our own (that still to this day has not been authorized by Congress). There are already reports that there are US special operations forces on the ground in Syria now, assisting Kurdish forces who are also fighting Isis.
When the vicious and tragic cycle will end is anyone's guess. But all signs point to: not anytime soon.
Oliver2014 19 Sep 2015 21:27
" Why does the US continually send deadly weapons to the Middle East, make things even more chaotic than they were before and expect better results the next time? "
Because the US doesn't understand the culture of the people it meddles with.
The US goes in with a messianic belief in the righteousness of its objective. This objective is framed in naive terms to convince itself and the people that it's motives are benevolent - such as "we must fight communism" or "we will bring democracy to Iraq" or "Saddam Hussein is an evil man who uses chemical weapons on his own people and hence must be ousted" or "Assad is an evil man who is fighting a civil war with his own people".
As a superpower it feels compelled to interfere in conflicts lest it be seen as impotent. When it does not interfere, as in WW2, things do indeed get out of control. So it's damned if it does and damned if it doesn't.
The CIA did not understand Afghan history of fighting off invaders when it was arming the Mujaheddin and that after the Soviets were defeated it would perceive the Americans as invaders and not as liberators who were there to bring them democracy and teach them that growing poppy was bad. (Like alcohol in the 1930s, a national addiction problem cannot be solved on the supply side - as the CIA and DEA learnt in South America.)
Bush Sr. was right when he left Saddam alone after bloodying his nose for invading Kuwait because he understood that Saddam was playing a vital Tito-esque role in keeping his country and the neighborhood in check. He had no WMDs but wanted his adversaries in the region to believe otherwise. If Saddam were alive today we wouldn't have an Iraq problem, an ISIS problem, an Iran problem and a Syria problem.
Smedley Butler 19 Sep 2015 21:12
"Why he didn't stick to his guns since he supposedly was weary of getting the US military involved in yet another quagmire it could not get out of is beyond anyone's comprehension."
Maybe it's because he hasn't stuck to his guns on anything during the entire time he's been President. He always takes the path of least resistance, the easy way out, and a "conservative-lite" position that tries to satisfy everyone and actually satisfies no one.
What an utter disappointment.
DavidEG 19 Sep 2015 20:01
The Machiavellian machinations of the empire become less relevant with every passing day. It's Europeans now who are eating sweet fruits of "mission accomplished". And they may rebel, and kick out last remnants of their "unity", and sacred NATO alliance alongside.
PamelaKatz AndyMcCarthy 19 Sep 2015 18:33Obama said the US would take 10,000 Syrian refugees. When I heard this, I thought surely a zero must be missing from this figure. And what no one has publicly mentioned is the immigration process for these few will require at least a year of investigative background checks.
PamelaKatz jvillain 19 Sep 2015 18:15
The largest manufacturers and global distributors of weaponry are the US, the UK, France, Russia and China, in that order....... also known as the 5 permanent members of the UN Security Council. One should read the UN Charter, which states the purpose and parameters for forming this international organization. The word 'irony' comes to mind.
ID108738 19 Sep 2015 17:36
Saddam Hussein was a friend while he gassed the Iranians, then he invaded Kuwait; as long as Bin Laden fought the Russians, he was tolerated and funded; now there's Syria. The only thing needed to take the strategy to new levels of idiocy was a compliant nincompoop as prime minister in Britain. Will they ever learn?
Toi Jon 19 Sep 2015 17:27
The US understands how to create a market for their military hardware industry but has never understood how their interference in the Middle East creates mass human misery.
Samantha Stevens 19 Sep 2015 17:09
Quite simply the US is breaking international law by doing this. Every time they do it the world ends up with another shit storm. If they cannot behave responsibly they should be removed from the security council of the UN. Same goes for the Russians and any other power abusing their position.
Syria may not have been the epitome of humanity before being destabilised but it is certainly worse now. The same is true of Iraq. In fact have the US successfully overturned any government they deem un-American (LOL) without it leading to a civil war?Andy Freeman 19 Sep 2015 17:06
Sorry but you're wrong. The funding a training of rebel forces by the west has done exactly what is was intended to do, mainly destabilise an entire region, sell billions in extra arms, introduce extra anti-terrorism laws in the west, create more fear and panic, then destabilise Europe through the mass-migration. This was the plan and it worked!
People will call for a solution, the solution will be tighter integration in Europe, the abolition of national governments, the removal of cash to stop payments to "terrorists", more draconian spying laws, less from and eventually compulsory registration and ID for all Europeans.
Meanwhile, we'll have a few more false flag attacks supposedly caused by the refugees and more fear in the news. Open your eyes
Laurie Calhoun 19 Sep 2015 16:49"Why he didn't stick to his guns..." Not the most felicitous metaphor in this case, but here is the answer to your question:
To the great disappointment of those of us who voted for Obama, the first time out of hope for change, and the second time out of fear for someone even worse, he is a weak and chameleonic leader whose policies are determined by the strongest willed person in the room. Recall that he was also "talked into" bombing Libya!
Sad but true. For more details on how this works, read Daniel Klaidman's book Kill or Capture: The war on terror and the soul of the Obama presidency.
littlewoodenblock geniusofmozart 19 Sep 2015 16:39turkey should be thrown out of NATO immediately!
littlewoodenblock 19 Sep 2015 16:36
nnedjo -> Havingalavrov , 19 Sep 2015 15:40after the libya disaster the US should have abandoned plans for regim change in syria.
and the US missed a golden opportunity to recitfy what had already become a syria disaster by allowing turkey and the ludicrous SNC to so thoroughly undermine the Geneva talks.
Just as I thought that you can not surpass yourself in writing stupid comments, and you are immediately reassured me.The U.S and U.K's commitment should be to those in Iraq. Secure, rebuild and invest in helping that Nation come with the best solution to a, rid itself of ISIS, b, be able to stay that way, c have a government that is inclusive to the needs of the Sunni's, Shia's and Kurds
Thus, the US and the UK spent nearly ten years in Iraq and failed to make any of this what you write, but but the whole mess practically they themselves have created. And now you're saying that if the US and UK troops returned again to Iraq they will be able to fix everything that they had previously screwed and to create an "inclusive society" of Iraq. So, if the US and UK troops set foot again on the soil of Iraq, it will be the strongest reason for Iraqi Sunnis to reject the inclusion in the Iraqi society. Iraqi officials themselves are aware of this very well, and for that reason they are the first to oppose such an intervention.Iraq's prime minister says no to foreign troopsWell, Well, whether i notice here distrust even of Iraqi Shiites toward the US Air Force. On the other hand, they want to strengthen friendship with neighboring governments in Syria and Iran: ;BAGHDAD - Iraq's prime minister strongly rejected the idea of the U.S. or other nations sending ground forces to his country to help fight the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria, saying Wednesday that foreign troops are "out of the question."...
Al-Abadi, a Shiite lawmaker who faces the enormous task of trying to hold Iraq together as a vast array of forces threaten to rip it apart, welcomed the emerging international effort, but stressed that he sees no need for other nations to send troops to help fight ISIS."Not only is it not necessary," he said, "We don't want them. We won't allow them. Full stop."
"The only contribution the American forces or the international coalition is going to help us with is from the sky," al-Abadi said. "We are not giving any blank check to the international coalition to hit any target in Iraq."
He said that the Iraqi military will choose and approve targets, and that the U.S. will not take action without consulting with Baghdad first. Failure to do so, he warned, risks causing civilian casualties like in Pakistan and Yemen, where the U.S. has conducted drone strikes for years.So, it is obvious that the Iraqi government is not against inclusion, but they're for such inclusion, which will exclude the US and UK of interfering in their internal affairs. I think it is a good step towards reconciliation with their Sunni brothers because they also seem to support such a thing. And if they managed to do it, maybe Ukrainians will also draw some lesson from it and be able to reconcile with their brothers Russians.Al-Abadi, however, said that Iraq doesn't have the luxury of testy relations with Damascus, and instead pushed for some sort of coordination.
"We cannot afford to fight our neighbor, even if we disagree on many things," al-Abadi said. "We don't want to enter into problems with them. For us sovereignty of Syria is very important." The two countries, both of which are allies of Iran, appear to already be coordinating on some level, and Iraq's national security adviser met Tuesday with Assad in the Syrian capital, where the two agreed to strengthen cooperation in fighting "terrorism," according to Syria's state news agency.
The U.S. hopes to pull together a broad coalition to help defeat the extremist group, but has ruled out cooperating with neighboring Iran or Syria, both of which also view ISIS as a threat. Both countries were excluded from a conference this week in Paris that brought the U.S., France and other allies together to discuss how to address the militant threat.
Al-Abadi said that excluding Damascus and Tehran was counterproductive.
Ieuan ytrewq 19 Sep 2015 14:04ytrewq said: "USSR and China supplied a lot of support and material to N. Vietnam."
Very true.
However the Viet Minh were formed and initially supplied by OSS (later called the CIA) forces from the US. In fact Ho Chi Min had a naive hope that the US would support him in his struggle against foreign occupation of the country after the war (French colonialism) and made several appeals to President Truman for help (all of which were ignored).
Instead of which, the US supported the French, so Ho asked around and got help from the Russians and Chinese. The rest we know.
marginline AndyMcCarthy 19 Sep 2015 13:54The UK and France [...], they destroyed Libya.
The causality of which led to an Islamic terror attack on June 26th, 2015 ten kilometers north of the city of Sousse, Tunisia, where thirty-eight people; thirty of whom were British - were murdered.
sashasmirnoff JoJo McJoJo 19 Sep 2015 13:40The US is always wrong, and always responsible for every bad thing that happens on Earth.
They are always wrong, and are indeed responsible for almost every geopolitical disaster, usually a result of overthrowing governments and installing their own tyrant, or else leaving a vacuum that Islamists fill.
Zaarth 19 Sep 2015 13:34This $500m program cost less than 0.1% of the US annual defense budget. When you're dealing with sums of money as obscenely large as the US spends on its military, its inevitable that huge quantities will be wasted because you've passed the point where there's worthwhile things to spend it on. This isn't Bay of Pigs; its a bloated military trying to figure out what to do with its extra cash. Financially, it doesn't matter if the program is a failure. The cost is minuscule for the budget they have.
In recent years the right has been very concerned with balancing the national budget and shrinking debt. They're willing to cut spending for social programs and research, but god forbid you take money away from the military. It just wouldn't be patriotic.
marginline -> GeneralMittens 19 Sep 2015 13:14Great summary GeneralMittens. You have expressed in layman's terms the facts eluded to by journalist Mehdi Hasan when he quantified the depth of the strategic disaster the Iraq war actually was – or, as the Conservative minister Kenneth Clarke put it back in a 2013 BBC radio discussion...
the most disastrous foreign policy decision of my lifetime [ ] worse than Suez
The invasion and occupation of Iraq undermined the moral standing of the western powers; empowered Iran and its proxies; heightened the threat from al-Qaeda at home and abroad; and sent a clear signal to 'rogue' regimes that the best (the only?) means of deterring a preemptive, US-led attack was to acquire weapons of mass destruction. [ ] Iraq has been destroyed and hundreds of thousands of innocent people have lost their lives, as the direct result of an unnecessary, unprovoked war that, according to the former chief justice Lord Bingham, was a...
serious violation of international law
This leads me to the conclusion and I apologies for flogging this dead horse yet again BUT...why are Bush and Bliar not being detained at The Hague?
Ieuan 19 Sep 2015 12:45" I actually asked the CIA to analyze examples of America financing and supplying arms to an insurgency in a country that actually worked out well."
Well, they (the OSS at the time) supplied arms and training to the Viet Minh. When they were fighting the Japanese. Which worked out well, when they were only fighting the Japanese.
But when they used their expertise (and the arms they had left over) to carry on fighting the French, and later the Americans themselves, it worked out very well for the Viet Minh, not so well for the French and Americans.
GangZhouEsq 19 Sep 2015 12:27The first President Bush, who decided not to topple President Saddam Hussein after routing his military forces out of Kuwait, and instead to leave him in power for the sake of the Middle East stability is, in retrospect, probably the wisest foreign policy decision ever made by the 41st President, thanks not only to his own personal judgment but also to his foreign policy aides' wisdom. Though it is now too late for the son to learn from his father, it is still not too late for the present administration to learn a thing or two from the former senior President Bush.
twoheadednightingale 19 Sep 2015 12:25
Nice to read an article coming at the war from this angle, seems like people are finally starting to question the effectiveness US foreign policy - ie bombing for peace. However the article is fairly nieve in places - like who actually believes the president of the US has control over all its intelligence agencies? JFK told the world in april '61, not long after the CIA had set him up over the bay of pigs and months before being assassinated exactly that. So enough of the 'blame the president' bullshit, it doesn't get to the root of the problem
GangZhouEsq 19 Sep 2015 12:17The last major armament, including heavy guns, tanks and armored personnel carriers, as sent by the United States to the now notoriously incompetent Iraqi military forces is now reportedly in the hands of ISIS after these US-trained Iraqi military personnel simply abandoned their posts of defense and deserted for their own dear lives, thus leaving the centuries-old, formerly safe haven of Mosul for Iraqi Christians to the mercy of ISIS. See "60 Minutes", Sunday, September 13, 2015, "Iraq's Christians", at http://www.cbsnews.com/videos/iraqs-christians-the-shooting-at-chardon-high-king-of-crossfit.
pfox33 19 Sep 2015 12:04The fact that Putin is coming to Assad's aid is a game-changer that the US was unprepared for. For one thing, it's highlighted how inconsequential US efforts to bolster "moderate" rebels and degrade ISIS capabilities have been.
From the time it was reported that the Russians were upgrading an airbase at Latakia to the time that it was reported that they had dispatched helicopters and jets and that the Syrians had started to take the fight to ISIS in Raqqah and Palmyra was only a matter of weeks. The CIA's program, after a year, had produced five soldiers at a cost of 500 million.
Previously the US had free reign over Syrian skies as did Israel who would bomb what they deemed to be convoys of military supplies for Hezbollah. Things aren't so free and easy now with the Russians in town. And both the Americans and Israelis now realize they have to check in with them before them they make sorties over northern Syria.
It's fairly obvious, to me anyway, that the US and Israel's only endgame was the fall of Assad and that ISIS had their tacit approval. Assad's good relations with Iran and Hezbollah meant he was a marked man. Putin, as is his wont, has complicated their plans and the results are yet to be seen.
BradfordChild TastySalmon 19 Sep 2015 11:58"Iraq, Libya, Syria. What do/did these countries have in common? Unfriendly leaders who want nothing to do with the US."
Actually, Gaddafi had shown an interest in engaging with the West-- happened under Bush, but was never really followed up on. Still, it was headed in a more positive direction until Obama rather arbitrarily decided that Gaddafi had to go.
The real net effect of US intervention in the Middle East has been to destabilize Europe.
Tony Page bravo7490 19 Sep 2015 11:32I would agree but, as a former intelligence professional, I'd remind you that there's always a story behind the story. Not that it's a "good" story! But more must be going on there...
ByThePeople 19 Sep 2015 11:12"Why does the US continually send deadly weapons to the Middle East, make things even more chaotic than they were before and expect better results the next time?"
It depends on how you define better. To think that these ops take place with the intent to solve an issue is naive, they don't. You state yourself that the CIA freely admits it's never worked.
The reason the United States funds and arms groups in the Middle East is that 9 times out of 10, these same groups are then later labeled 'terrorists' and a new US war campaign is justified.
It's not about solving problems - unless the problem being solved is: How do we create more opportunities to half-ass justify engaging in another war effort so the US coffers can be continuously raped.
Iraq is the perfect example of succeeding in achieving this goal. Years before the Iraq war ever began, US war planners knew that a power vacuum, attracting the likes of Al-Qaeda and or ISIS would subsequently result. Thus, providing a for a second war, derived from the first seemingly pointless invasion. The Iraq plan worked fabulously as not only did the newly created enemy materialize, they also became a much more formidable enemy once they conveniently came into possession of all the military equipment we let behind.
Point is, they wouldn't continue implementing all these operations if the goal wasn't being achieved.
I will add too - McCain and Co. clamored so hard to arm the al-Assad opposition McCain might as well have claimed that if we did not, then America would be blown up in its entirety in 48 hours the same as all the other fear mongering done in a effort to continue the war efforts. Who knows, maybe he did, I try not to listen to him anymore - he needs to be put out to pasture.
TastySalmon 19 Sep 2015 11:10
Iraq, Libya, Syria. What do/did these countries have in common? Unfriendly leaders who want nothing to do with the US.
To suggest that funding radicals to overthrow these governments is a "whoops" or something that will never work is completely wrong. The plan has worked exactly as planned: destabilize the region by promoting dissent, covertly arm and fund "rebels" through back-channels (Saudi, UAE, Turkey, etc.), create a new boogeyman (ISIS), and reforge alliances with enemies (AQ) who will then turn on us again in the future.
The goal is to flatten Syria, and it seems to be working out very well. When you consider what the ultimate outcome will be, it starts becoming fairly clear: push Russia into a corner militarily and economically, open new LNG pipelines, appease allied caliphates, and put billions of dollars into the pockets of the wealthiest people.
LeftOrRightSameShite -> teaandchocolate 19 Sep 2015 10:51
Their policy is chaotic and consists of repeating the same thing over and over again hoping to get different results, which is, as we all know, the definition of madness.
I think the problem may well be the bloated MIC in the US. Too many strategic game plans for to many, often contradictory ends.
There are no doubt there are intelligence analysts in the US MIC who have a genuine interest in collecting actual information and present it honestly. The numerous leaks show us this.
The problem is, this often good information, once it's been spun through political/economic vested interests, think tanks, cold war jar head imperialists and so forth, it (foreign policy) ends up complete fubar.
To the point where, as you rightly say imo, their foreign policy looks like nothing more than "malicious wily manipulators, deliberately buggering up the world to make money out of the consequences."
david wright 19 Sep 2015 10:49For a full century now, from the Balfour Declaration and the secret Sykes-Picot arrangement, the currently-top 'Western' dog (UK; then US) has been meddling and futzing around in the Middle East, notionally in someone's 'National Interest.'
Oil, access to Empire (route to India etc) and 'national prestige' have been the usual excuses. The result has been unmitigated disaster.
Ignoring everything up to Gulf 1 (1991) we've a quarter century century of determined scoring of own-goals. This shows no sign of changing. This is a helter-skelter race to destruction, greatly presently aided and abetted by Asad. So far, it's lasted two-and-a-half times longer than the combined lengths of both World Wars.
One conclusion is that by any rational assessment, we don't deserve to 'win', whatever that would constitute, any more than did one side or the other in the 16th -17th century's European religious wars. An equally rational assessment is that we neither have, nor can. The final rational conclusion, that we find a way to disengage - remarkably simply, by stopping doing all the things we have been - is a fence refused by the relevant horses - again, mainly US and (as very eager, jr partner indeed) UK.All apart from the monstrous outcomes for the people in the region, we destabilize our own security then make things worse by tightening our own internal 'security' at the expense of civil liberties. This gives away, at no gain, the slow and scrabbling accretion of these, over centuries. And Cameron and co remain sufficiently delusional to want to keep on bombing, but whatever toys they have, whatever seems a good idea on the day. How can we win? the war isn't on 'terror', but ion logic. Ours. |Neither the US nor UK governments have ever shown much interest in the fates of the millions of people their casual actions have ended, or made hell. Of the multiple ironies (shall I count the ways?) attending all this is that Saddam, while a murderous thug, and no friend to his own people, was doing for us, for free, what we've been unable to do for ourselves - keep Iraq al-Quaida free. AS to his murderous propensities, clearly far fewer of his people (alone) would have been killed had we not intervened, than we have directly or indirectly killed. Much of this stems from the fact that during the same recent period (1991 on) there has been no effective counter to Western power and inclination, which has simply projectile-vomited its baneful influence. Ironic too that the reason we armed and greatly helped create al-Quaida was to destabilize Russia by getting it bogged down in Afghanistan. Thus the only real fear which limited US action, was removed when that policy was successful. We removed the brakes as the train was beginning to accelerate down the incline. Wheeee!
teaandchocolate smifee 19 Sep 2015 10:47Bush reached the Oval Office not because he was bright, for indeed he was not, he reached the Oval Office because he was dumb enough not to realise he was clearly easily manipulated, believed in neoliberalism and was rich and rich backers and a rich Dad.
As to "not having a serious mark against his name", forgive me if I laugh hysterically while crying with pain.
The least said about the moron Reagan and his jolly pal Thatcher the better. Oh how well their unregulated market shenanigans have turned out.
Crackpots the lot of them.
LethShibbo AndyMcCarthy 19 Sep 2015 10:35Doing nothing and minding your own business is kinda the same thing.
And the civil war in Syria isn't purely a result of what happened in neighbouring Iraq.
What you're essentially saying is 'America, you've started this fire. Now let it burn.'
pansapians DrDrug 19 Sep 2015 10:28Well of course ISIS were miffed that the U.S. was paying lip service to not arming ISIS. If you think there was ever any serious difference between the FSA and ISIS then I hear that the Queen having to sell Buckingham palace due to losses gambling on corgi races and I can get you a good deal for a cash sale
IrateHarry Havingalavrov 19 Sep 2015 10:17Make Iraq work first..
ROFLMFAO...
Iraq has been so thoroughly screwed over by the UKUSA clusterfuck, there is no chance of it working ever again.
AndyMcCarthy LethShibbo 19 Sep 2015 10:12Sorry, the US doesn't HAVE to make a choice, do nothing or bomb. All the US needs to do is mind it's own business.
We wouldn't be having this refugee crises if the US hadn't invaded Iraq.
Tomasgolfer 19 Sep 2015 10:10For a little insight, see "The Red Line and the Rat Line", by Seymour M. Hersh. Published in the
London Review of Books
LeftOrRightSameShite contextandreality 19 Sep 2015 10:01you write a article on myth that US armed rebels
The US (and the UK and France for that matter) has been openly arming and training the "rebels". The US had a vote in congress to openly do just that last year. Covertly, they've been doing it since 2012, again this has been well reported and admitted to.
The problem for the US is their so called "moderates" don't exist. They either switch allegiance once back in Syria or end up captured or killed just as quickly.
Your user name seems somewhat of a parody.
ArtofLies richardoxford 19 Sep 2015 10:00How does that compute ?
it computes once one answers this slightly naive question from the article
Why does the US continually send deadly weapons to the Middle East, make things even more chaotic than they were before and expect better results the next time?
surely at some point people have to realise that chaos is the result the US is looking for.
IrateHarry 19 Sep 2015 09:56
Why does the US continually send deadly weapons to the Middle East
Because that is the backbone business of America - making and selling deadly weapons. Deadlier the better, and no matter whom they are supplied to. If foreign governments don't buy, does not matter, just supply it to "rebels", and they will be paid for by the tax payers across the west (not just the American ones, NATO has been set up as the mechanism to tap into European tax payers as well).
The rest of the bullshit like democracy, freedom, etc are marketeers' crap.
LeftOrRightSameShite -> geedeesee 19 Sep 2015 09:53
No wonder there's only "four to five" left. This is one big fustercluck!
There was a report in the NY Times last year by a reporter who was kidnapped by the FSA (his mission was to find them and find out who they were) and handed straight over to Al-Nusra. Twice. He was imprisoned and tortured by them.
In his revealing report, talking of the couple of days he spent back with the "FSA", his release having been negotiated by the west, he asked the "FSA" fighters about the training they received from the US in Jordan. The reporter put it to the fighters that the training was to fight AN/IS. Their response? "We lied to the Americans about that".
The WSJ also recently reported that the CIA mission to arm/train "moderates/FSA" had gone totally tits up. Most of them reported as defecting to one of the number of more extreme groups, some having been captured or killed.It's been clear for about 2 years now that these so called "moderates" only exist in the deluded minds of western policy makers.
JacobHowarth MushyP8 19 Sep 2015 09:51ISIS do not control that large a number of people. Many Kurds are fleeing because of IS, that's true, but for the most part the civil war is a horror show from both sides and Syrians are - rightly - getting the hell out of there.
Or are all of those 'taking advantage of the opportunity to move to Europeans [sic] countries' proposing to do so by going to Lebanon and Jordan?
Quadspect -> kingcreosote 19 Sep 2015 09:22The suspiciously unasked questions as to motives of all parties at Benghazi, by all twelve (12) members of the Select Committee, suggests collaboration to question Hillary Clinton to make her appear responsible only for bungling security and rescue, for the sole purpose of diverting attention from Hillary Clinton's role in the CIA and the CIA operative Ambassador Stevens' arming of terrorists. The obvious question to ask would have gone to motives: "What activities were Stevens and the CIA engaged in, when they were attacked at Benghazi?"
GreenRevolution 19 Sep 2015 09:10The use of religion(Islam specifically) in politics was first employed by the British in the Middle East in the early parts of the 20th century. In Iran, we have a saying which says; take off a Mullah's turban and you will find the words "Made in England" stamped on his head.
nnedjo 19 Sep 2015 09:09Even more bizarre, the White House is claiming little to do with it. White House spokesman Josh Earnest attempted to distance Obama from the program, claiming that it was actually the president's "critics" who "were wrong."
Yes, it seems that it has become a tradition of US presidents to boast with the fact that "they do not interfere much in their own job".
For example, in the last campaign for the GOP candidate for the US president, Jeb Bush defended his brother George for a false pretext for war in Iraq in the form of non-existent WMD, claiming that everyone else would bring the same decision on the start of the war, if the same false intelligence would be presented to him.
Thus, the president of the United States can not be held accountable for its decisions if the CIA deliver him false intelligence, or deliberately conceal the true intelligence. On the other hand, since no one has heard of any person from the CIA which is held responsible for the wrong war in Iraq, it turns out that nobody is responsible for this war.
And, to us, mere mortals, it remains only to conclude that the most powerful war machine in the world moves "without a driver", or maybe it is "driven by some automatic pilot".
So, how tragic it is, and yet we can not help laughing. :-)
mikiencolor 19 Sep 2015 09:06It was obvious to anyone with a modicum of sense from the beginning that the "moderate" rebel training programme would be an utter disaster. But if the lessons you are taking is that nothing should be done at all, I'd submit you are taking the wrong lessons from the debacle. Doing nothing at all would have condemned tens of thousands more to genocide. Doing something saved thousands of Yezidi and saved Rojava.
Wherever the Kurds have been supported they have proved capable, trustworthy and have created functional civil societies. To broadly and undiscerningly dismiss "sending weapons to the Middle East" is disingenuous. Something must be done, and things can be done to help rather than harm if there is a sensible policy maker, and doing nothing certainly can be more immoral and evil than doing something - as I thought we'd learned from Nazi Germany.
The reality is one that neither right wing nor left wing hardliners are willing to face: the Sunni Arab jihadis are the source of most of the problems and the reason is entirely to do with their noxious genocidal and imperialistic ideology and culture. They are a source of instability, enmity and fear, and not just in the Middle East either. And they are being supported and bankrolled by Western allies in the Gulf. The world is a big place with many peoples and ways of thought, and many disagreements - but we nearly all of us seem able to find a way to coexist in this new globalised technological human civilisation. The jihadis are a barbarian throwback, a movement of violent primitivists. There is no place for jihadism in the future and they are a threat to everyone in the world.
ID0020237 -> teaandchocolate 19 Sep 2015 09:01Insanity I believe, not madness, but what's the difference. The CIA may get it right, but after political interference and manipulation, they change their conclusions. We've seen this with the Iraq debacle and elsewhere. Just as political interference in military operations, Viet Nam for example, causes imminent failure, so it is with intelligence ignored.
GeneralMittens 19 Sep 2015 09:01So basically America invades and bombs the shit out of everywhere and the europeans have to clean up the mess and deal with the resulting refugee crisis?
At some point America should be held accountable for their actions in the middle east. Whether thats taking their fair share of refugees from syria or footing the bill for this clusterfuck.
At the very least, other countries should stop enabling their warmongering.
LittleGhost 19 Sep 2015 08:58US foreign policy in the ME proves Einstein's maxim
Insanity is doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results.
GreenRevolution 19 Sep 2015 08:57
It has been 14 years since 911 and Bush's so called "war on terror". Not only barbaric wahabi terror has not been defeated it has grown its barbarism to magnitudes unimaginable previously. Qatar, Saudi Arabia and Turkey have been allowed to arm them to the teeth by the very states who claim to be waging "war on terror". Since Saudi Arabia, Qatar and Turkey are close allies of the west and one is a member of NATO, it follows that the west is in fact arming the wahabi terrorists who have turned the Middle East into a wasteland murdering and looting at will. Millions are now refugees, countries laid to waste and yet Mr Kerry and Hammond talk as if they have done such magnificent jobs and Russian involvement would only "complicate" things.
teaandchocolate 19 Sep 2015 08:56I don't think they have the brightest people working in the CIA and the military in the USA. They are probably bullies, relics from the Cold War, jar-heads, devout 6000-year-old-world Christians, neocons and fruitcakes. Their policy is chaotic and consists of repeating the same thing over and over again hoping to get different results, which is, as we all know, the definition of madness.
smifee 19 Sep 2015 08:52To be honest, I don't see any confusion.
Obama comes across as a (comparatively) humane person, and I am sure that his personal preference would be for there to be no violence in the middle east. As President of the USA, however, he has to set aside his personal preferences and act in the wider interests of his country.
The US set out to realign the political make up of the middle east. No doubt, they want to make sure Islam will never again be able attack US interests.
Successive Administrations have controlled the funding and arming of various factions within the Middle East to ensure that Muslims kill each other and weaken social structures. The US will fill the ensuing political vacuum and economic waste-land with local leaders loyal to 'freedom, democracy and the American Way'. The next Administration will continue to stoke up the violence, and the one after, and the one after that until the US is satisfied it has achieved its objective.
It seems almost all of us have to contain our personal views if we want to succeed in our place of work. Even the P of the USA.
GoldMoney -> celloswiss 19 Sep 2015 08:51
True, in a democracy, moderates don't need bombs and assault weapons.
Consider this - how would you feel if foreign governments were arming and funding the IRA in Northern Ireland?
What if foreign governments recognised the IRA as a legitimate opposition to the Belfast government and gave them bombs to take over the country?
MichaelGuess 19 Sep 2015 08:46Who are the real terrorists, the group that bombs indiscriminately, the group that sells arms to both sides, the group that's lies to its "coalition" partners, the group that spies on all its friends, the group that is happy to be starting wars everywhere and then blame other parties for their lack of support.
These are the real terrorists.MushyP8 19 Sep 2015 08:46
ISIS/ISIL is a creation of the US in an attempt to remove Assad. The long-term goal being to isolate Iran before going in there for the natural resources.
Assad won 89% of the vote in a 74% turnout, how many world leaders have 65% of the population supporting them, hence why Assad hasn't fallen. Naturally the US refuted this alongside its lapdogs, the EU and the UK, as it disproves all the propaganda they've been feeding the west. RT news did an interview with Assad which was very insightful.
Putin seems to be the only one who's got his head screwed on in this situation, which is of course leading to hissy fits by the US because he's proving a stumbling block. More nations need to get behind Putin and Assad, although of course the US wont.
GoldMoney DrDrug 19 Sep 2015 07:52
Moderates do, when the simple act of protesting against the mutilation of children detained by the states secret police are met with a volley of snipers.
No such evidence has been bought to the UN security council. Even the chemical attack that the media claimed from day one was Assad's forces doing turned out to be IS rebels actions. The two human rights groups operating in Syria are western funded NGO's - hardly a neutral point of view given the US's long stated aim of removing Assad (even before 2011).
geedeesee 19 Sep 2015 07:25
This $500 million from June 2014 was for recruiting Syrian rebels seeking to oust President Bashar al-Assad - not to fight iSIS.
The White House said at the time:
"This funding request would build on the administration's longstanding efforts to empower the moderate Syrian opposition, both civilian and armed, and will enable the Department of Defense to increase our support to vetted elements of the armed opposition."
The White House statement specifically refers to the "Syrian opposition". That's the term we use to describe anti-government forces. This recruitment and training programme has gone awry because the people originally recruited would have been anti-Assad. Now the Obama administration has tried to change the same people to fighting to ISIS instead. No wonder there's only "four to five" left. This is one big fustercluck!
kingcreosote 19 Sep 2015 07:12
The CIA has probably been the greatest destabalising force in the world since the second world war and seem like more a subsidiary of the weapons trade than a government department.
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Jan 31, 2019 | www.nakedcapitalism.com
The Rev Kev , , January 31, 2019 at 8:08 am
Do you think that the Guardian will shortly report that Iraq's WMD were snuck out of Iraq and hidden in Venezuela all those years ago?
Colonel Smithers , , January 31, 2019 at 8:36 am
Thank you, Kev.
Please don't give the scoundrels at King's Place any ideas.
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Jan 15, 2019 | www.theguardian.com
In their rhetoric and policy advocacy, this trio has been steadily moving to the left to keep pace with a leftward-moving Democratic party. Booker , Harris and Gillibrand know that voters demand action and are more supportive than ever of Medicare for All and universal childcare.
Gillibrand, long considered a moderate, has even gone as far as to endorse abolishing US Immigration and Customs Enforcement (Ice) and, along with Cory Booker, Bernie Sanders' single-payer healthcare bill. Harris has also backed universal healthcare and free college tuition for most Americans.But outward appearances aren't everything. Booker, Harris and Gillibrand have been making a very different pitch of late -- on Wall Street. According to CNBC , all three potential candidates have been reaching out to financial executives lately, including Blackstone's Jonathan Gray, Robert Wolf from 32 Advisors and the Centerbridge Partners founder Mark Gallogly.
Wall Street, after all, played an important role getting the senators where they are today. During his 2014 Senate run, in which just 7% of his contributions came from small donors, Booker raised $2.2m from the securities and investment industry. Harris and Gillibrand weren't far behind in 2018, and even the progressive Democrat Sherrod Brown has solicited donations from Gallogly and other powerful executives.
When CNBC's story about Gillibrand personally working the phones to woo Wall Street executives came out, her team responded defensively, noting her support for financial regulation and promising that if she did run she would take "no corporate Pac money". But what's most telling isn't that Gillibrand and others want Wall Street's money, it's that they want the blessings of financial CEOs. Even if she doesn't take their contributions, she's signaling that she's just playing politics with populist rhetoric. That will allow capitalists to focus their attention on candidates such as Bernie Sanders and Elizabeth Warren, who have shown a real willingness to abandon the traditional coziness of the Democratic party with the finance, insurance and real estate industries.
Gillibrand and others are behaving perfectly rationally. The last presidential election cost $6.6bn -- advertising, staff and conventions are expensive. But even more important than that, they know that while leftwing stances might help win Democratic primaries, the path of least resistance in the general election is capitulation to the big forces of capital that run this country. Those elites might allow some progressive tinkering on the margins, but nothing that challenges the inequities that keep them wealthy and their victims weak.
Big business is likely to bet heavily on the Democratic party in 2020, maybe even more so than it did in 2016. In normal circumstances, the Democratic party is the second-favorite party of capital; with an erratic Trump around, it is often the first.
The American ruling class has a nice hustle going with elections. We don't have a labor-backed social democratic party that could create barriers to avoid capture by monied interests. It's telling that when asked about the former Colorado governor John Hickenlooper's recent chats with Wall Street political financiers, a staff member told CNBC: "We meet with a wide range of donors with shared values across sectors."
Plenty of Democratic leaders believe in the neoliberal growth model. Many have gotten personally wealthy off of it. Others think there is no alternative to allying with finance and then trying to create progressive social policy on the margins. But with sentiments like that, it doesn't take fake news to convince working-class Americans that Democrats don't really have their interests at heart.
Of course, the Democratic party isn't a monolith. But the insurgency waged by newly elected representatives such as the democratic socialist Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, Rashida Tlaib, Ro Khanna and others is still in its infancy. At this stage, it isn't going to scare capital away from the Democratic party, it's going to make Wall Street invest more heavily to maintain its stake in it.
Men like Mark Gallogly know who their real enemy is: more than anyone else, the establishment is wary of Bernie Sanders . It seems likely that he will run for president, but he's been dismissed as a 2020 frontrunner despite his high favorability rates, name recognition, small-donor fundraising ability, appeal to independent voters, and his team's experience running a competitive national campaign. As 2019 goes on, that dismissal will morph into all-out war.
Wall Street isn't afraid of corporate Democrats gaining power. It's afraid of the Democrats who will take them on -- and those, unfortunately, are few and far between.
Bhaskar Sunkara is a Guardian US columnist and the founding editor of Jacobin
memo10 -> Karen Maddening , 15 Jan 2019 14:05
mp66 , 15 Jan 2019 13:38Just like universal health care, let's give up, it's too hard, we're not winners, we're not number one or problem solvers and besides, someone at some time for some reason might get something that someone else might not get regardless if that someone else needs it. Let's go with the Berners who seem to believe there will never be none so pure enough to become president.
The corporate state does not cast the votes. The public does.
Leaning farther to the left on issues like universal healthcare and foreign wars would be agreeing with the public. Not only the progressive public, but the GENERAL public. The big money donors are the ONLY force against the Democrats resisting these things.
2016 has shown that the Democratic party is beyond redemption. When it comes down to the choice of either win with a platform that may impact the wealth and power of their owners, or losing, they will always choose the latter, and continue as useful (and well paid) idiots in the charade presented as US democracy.Pete Healey , 15 Jan 2019 13:31Bernie's challenge will "morph into all-out war". "Wall Street isn't afraid of corporate Democrats", blah, blah, blah. But we're going to continue to play along? Why? Oh yeah, Bhaskar Sunkara will have us believe "There is no alternative". Remember TINA? Give it up, man, just give it up.yayUSA , 15 Jan 2019 13:17Tulsi entering is big news.Danexmachina , 15 Jan 2019 12:31One dollar, one vote.Tim Cahill , 15 Jan 2019 12:00
If you want Change, keep it in your pocket.
We can't turn this sinking ship around unless we know what direction it's going. So far, that direction is just delivering money to private islands.
Democrats have a lot of talk, but they still want to drive the nice cars and sell the same crapft that the Republicans are.
Taxing the rich only works when you worship the rich in the first place.Election financing is the single root cause for our democracy's failure. Period.Lenny Dirges -> Vintage59 , 15 Jan 2019 11:55I really don't care too much about the mouthing of progressive platitudes from any 2020 Dem Prez candidate. The only ones that will be worth voting for are the ones that sign onto Sanders' (or similar) legislation that calls for a Constitutional amendment that allows federal and state governments to limit campaign contributions.
And past committee votes to prevent amendment legislation from getting to a floor vote - as well as missed co-sponsorship opportunities - should be interesting history for all the candidates to explain.
Campaign financing is what keeps scum entrenched (because primary challengers can't overcome the streams of bribes from those wonderful people exercising their 'free speech' "rights" to keep their puppet in govt) and prevents any challenges to the corporate establishment who serve the same rich masters.
Lol, Social Security, Medicare, unemployement protections, so many of the things you mentioned, and so much more, were from the PROGRESSIVE New Deal, which managed to implement this slew of changes in 5 years! 5 years! You can't criticize "progressives" in one sentence and then use their accomplishments to support your argument. Today, the New Deal would be considered too far left by most so called "pragmatic liberals." I assume you are getting fully behind the proposed "Green New Deal" then, right?memo10 -> L C , 15 Jan 2019 11:54memo10 -> 2miners , 15 Jan 2019 11:49Vintage59 pointed out lots of things people have changed. Here's an exhaustive list of the legislation passed by people who didn't get elected but were more progressive than the people who did:
There is also a steadily growing list of Democrats who did worse in elections than a hypothetical Democratic candidate had been projected to do.
The party can either continue being GOP-Lite or it can start winning elections. It can't do both.
memo10 -> IamDolf , 15 Jan 2019 11:44Forget it Bernie and Co. -with the women haters in his ranks and his apparent tepid support from African Americans he's way off the pace
Way off the pace compared to who? Trump?
memo10 -> xxxaaaxxx , 15 Jan 2019 11:40Nobody is going to get elected on a far left platform. Not in the USA and not anywhere. That's just a fact. And everybody is going to need $$$ in the campaign. Of course candidates are going to suck up to Wall street and business in general.
And we would have been a thousand percent better off with HRC in the white house than we are now with the Trumpostor.We don't need a candidate with far-left platform, we need one that is left-leaning at all. HRC and her next generation of clones are mild Republicans.
memo10 -> Peter Krall , 15 Jan 2019 11:17Those who want to push the Democrats to the left in order to win perhaps need to stop talking to each other and talk to people who live outside of LA and NY. If you stay within your bubble it seems the whole world thinks like you.
How old will Sanders be in 2020?The people (outside the coasts) lean to the left some big issues. Medicare for all. Foreign wars. etc.
A sane person might ask why in the hell the left-side party is leaning farther to the right than the general public.
L C -> HobbesianWorlds , 15 Jan 2019 11:15Sanders is a dinosaur. If there is a reason for Wall Street to be wary of him then it is that the mentally challenged orange guy may win another term if the Democrats run with Sanders.
Hopefully, Sanders will understand what many of his supporters do not want to see: At some time age becomes a problem. If the Democrats decide to move to the left rather than pursuing a pragmatic centrist approach, Ocasio-Cortez might be an option. If they opt for the centrist alternative, it might be Harris or Gillibrand. Or, in both cases, a surprise candidate. But Sanders' time is over, just as Biden's Bloomberg's.
It's true, but Trump is such a clusterfuck that an 80yo president is still be a better situation. Many countries have had rulers in their 80s at one time or another.
Trump is clearly showing early-stage dementia now. Compare footage of him 10+ years ago to anything within the last 6-12 months and it's obvious. The stress levels of being the POTUS + blackmailed by Putin + investigations bearing down on him . . . it's wearing him down fast.
Anti-trust would be a very good place to start with.Vintage59 -> BaronVonAmericano , 15 Jan 2019 11:05Universal healthcare is a lot harder than you seem to think. I'd love it, but getting there means putting so many people out of work, it'll be a massive political challenge, even if corporations have no influence. Progressives might be better off focusing on how to ensure the existing system works better and Medicaid can slowly expand to fill the universal roll in the future.
Wall Street is a casino. The House never loses.Vintage59 -> Lenny Dirges , 15 Jan 2019 11:02Everything changes constantly.ytram -> ChesBay , 15 Jan 2019 10:30Where has offering candidates who actually have a chance to win gotten us? Medicare, Medicaid, food stamps, the ADA, Title 9, Social Security, and more. None of these exist without constant changes. All took years to pass against heavy opposition. None went far enough. All were improvements.
The list of wrongheaded things that were also passed is longer but thinking nothing changes because it takes time is faulty logic.
Our capitalist predators are still alive and well. The finance, insurance, and real estate
organizations are the worst predators in the USA.
They will eat your babies if you let them.
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Jun 12, 2015 | The Guardian
Convicted criminals. Such as disgraced former CIA boss, David Petraeus, who's just been handed a $100,000 (£64,000) fine and two years' probation for leaking classified information.Petraeus now works for the vulturous private equity firm KKR, run by Henry Kravis, who does arguably Bilderberg's best impression of Gordon Gecko out of Wall Street. Which he cleverly combines with a pretty good impression of an actual gecko.
... ... ...
"Can I go now?" Another no. So I continued my list of criminals. I moved on to someone closer to home: René Benko, the Austrian real estate baron, who had a conviction for bribery upheld recently by the supreme court. Which didn't stop him making the cut for this year's conference. "You know Benko?" The cop nodded. It wasn't easy to see in the glare of the searchlight, but he looked a little ashamed.
... ... ...
I decided to reward their vigilance with a chat about HSBC. The chairman of the troubled banking giant, Douglas Flint, is a regular attendee at Bilderberg, and he's heading here again this year, along with a member of the bank's board of directors, Rona Fairhead. Perhaps most tellingly, Flint is finding room in his Mercedes for the bank's busiest employee: its chief legal officer, Stuart Levey.
A Guardian editorial this week branded HSBC "a bank beyond shame" after it announced plans to cut 8,000 jobs in the UK, while at the same time threatening to shift its headquarters to Hong Kong. And having just been forced to pay £28m in fines to Swiss regulators investigating money-laundering claims. The big question, of course, is how will the chancellor of the exchequer, George Osborne, respond to all this? Easy – he'll go along to a luxury Austrian hotel and hole up with three senior members of HSBC in private. For three days.
High up on this year's conference agenda is "current economic issues", and without a doubt, one of the biggest economic issues for Osborne at the moment is the future and finances of Europe's largest bank. Luckily, the chancellor will have plenty of time at Bilderberg to chat all this through through with Flint, Levey and Fairhead. And the senior Swiss financial affairs official, Pierre Maudet, a member of the Geneva state council in charge of the department of security and the economy. It's all so incredibly convenient.
... ... ...
Related: The Guardian view on HSBC: a bank beyond shame | Editorial
consumersunite -> MickGJ 12 Jun 2015 15:23
Let's see, maybe because we have read over their leaked documents from the 1950s in which they discussed currency manipulation and GATT. Everything they have discussed in their meetings over the past decades has almost come to fruition. There are elected officials meeting with criminals such as HSBC. Did you even read the article? If you did, and you are not het up or whatever you call it, then you are of a peasant mentality, and there is no use talking to you.
The Bilderberg set call people like you either their "dogs" (if you are in politics or the military) or the "dead." I won't be looking for your response because you have confirmed that you do not matter.
Carpasia -> MickGJ 12 Jun 2015 10:52
Thank you for your comment, my good man. Hatred is human, and helps us all to avoid pain, for pain, especially unnecessary pain, is allowed to be hated by the agreement of all, if nothing else is. I would hate to be beaten by Nazis. Thus, I would avoid going to a place where that could occur. That is how hatred works for me. It is the only way it can work, and not be pernicious to the self and others.
I distrust the international order as it is the means, harnessed by money, whether corporate or state or individual or monarchical, by which this world is being destroyed. Could things have been better? Jesus is on one end of the spectrum, and Lord Acton on the other, of the spectrums of viewpoints from which that could be properly assessed.
If the corruption at the heart of the international order is not regulated properly, this world will come to an end, not the end of the world itself, but the end of the world as we know it. This is happening now. The world is finite.
I am not a xenophobe. In my experience, the people that are most likely to hurt me, and thus deserve fear, are those closest. Perhaps that is a cynical way of describing it, but anyone who thinks honestly about it would accede to the notion that it is the people who "love" us that hurt us the most, for we agree too be vulnerable to them. It is the matrix of love.
As for Austria and Bavaria, I have visited both places and they were, both, the cleanest locales I have ever seen, with Switzerland having to be mentioned in the same breath, of course.
I take a certain liberty in writing. I am not damning the human race, or strangers to me. If I did not entertain, but caused offence, I apologize to you. I do not possess omniscience, and my words will have to speak for themselves.
Thank you, again.
DemonicWarlordSlayer 12 Jun 2015 08:02
"How Geo Bush's Grandfather Helped Hitler's Rise to Power" in the UK Guardian >
"Did Geo H W Bush Coordinate a JFK Hit Team" at Veterans Today >
"9/11 Conspiracy Solved, Names, Connections, Details" on youtube....dot-to-dot of the
Demonic Warlord's Crimes Against Humanity....end feudalism.
Carpasia 12 Jun 2015 07:09Excellent article.
I visited Austria once, and I know of what he speaks. It was the one place I have ever visited that I thought I would be jailed if I littered. I was wandering at the time, but I tentatively had a meal of chicken and departed henceforth.
Austrians are an interesting lot, to be sure. That they are perfect goes without saying. Their main virtue is that they do not travel, and that strangers, which we call tourists these days, are not welcomed. If only we were all like that, the world would be a far better place.
Austrians do everything well, including crime. Some of the greatest crimes in the world have been committed by Austrians, but their crimes did not include not having their papers.
During World War 2, and I pass over Hitler, the German machine of death had an unusually high proportion of Austrians in commanding roles assisting it. It can not be explained away by saying they were some kind of faux Germans, and so it matters not. Indeed, if anything, Germans are faux Austrians, looked at in the broad brush of history. Men of many nations joined the Germans and adorned themselves with the Death's Head, but many Austrians might as well have tattooed it onto their foreheads. I know of what I speak, for I read on it, and will justify if questioned.
Reinhard Heydrich is an epitome of this, in the true sense of the word. Kurt Waldheim was another, too young too rise too far before the Ragnarok of May of 1945, but government of the world was not out of his reach, a man who had materially assisted the transportation of the Jews of Thessaloniki to the gas chambers of Auschwitz and, when challenged, was unrepentant, not as a racist, but as something worse even, as a man whose great virtue was that he followed orders. It is order that the Austrians value over everything. Even crime is ordered.
In the common-law west we think criminals are disordered beasts to be locked up. We do not give them papers. They are registered only to warn us of their existence, and we do not like to let them travel, as much as we could benefit by their absence, because we think they flee to license, and we think it wrong to inflict them upon innocents abroad. In Austria, the criminal is the man with no papers. If he has papers, all is well, and he is no criminal, whatever he has done.
colingorton 12 Jun 2015 03:19
What do you mean "where criminals mingle with ministers". That is assuming that ministers are not criminals. Considering that there will be ministers from the USA, Canada, France, Germany, Italy, Japan and the UK, I'd suggest that there is a near 100% certainty that some, if not all, the ministers there are criminals.
That one group of almost-certainly-criminals meets another group of almost-certainly-criminals is hardly surprising. That the whole shebang is protected by the host's police force is even less so.
How far can all this mutual back scratching go? It seems that the only alternative left is far too drastic, but there really seems to be no place for a legal alternative, does there?
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Dec 22, 2018 | off-guardian.org
Oslo - Norway, Dec 4, 2018
Let's never forget George H W Bush's love for incubator babies. He loved fake incubator babies.Philpot, Dec 4, 2018The incubator baby actress wasn't just any 15 year old, she was the daughter of the Kuwaiti ambassador to Canada –
British and most western media are either in the direct or indirect pay of their governments. What journalist can expose this for us? Any of you willing to make the biggest scoop of the 21st century? Tom Bradbury at ITN must be on the spook payroll, for starters? MI6 had foreign correspondents for years, but domestic mouthpieces must now be on the take too? All paid to demonise Russia and Putin.harry stotle, Dec 4, 2018Yarkob, Dec 4, 2018The Guardian has lost all sense of proportion – mention Tommy Robinson and the entire staff through themselves to floor and roll round like dying flies – yet for when it comes to US neocons they go all misty eyed, redolent of a broody couple when they come across a particularly adorable baby.
Simon 'white helmets' Tisdall is especially egregious – one can imagine him throwing darts at a picture of Putin while producing his latest homily to the murderous actions of gangsters like Bush and his crime family.
Its hard not to despair now this has become the official face of Britains so-called liberal media.
I would wager a medium sum that Tisdall is on a payroll other than the Grauniad's, or he's an actual asset per Ulfkötte's books and media appearances. As with Michael White, with whom I had a very illuminating argument via email a few years back. He *is* an asset, not a journalist (and a massive dick, to boot)George cornell, Dec 4, 2018I thought the attitude of the Bush family to their fellow Americans was best illustrated by Barbara's response to the plight of the homeless victims of Katrina who had been transported to the Houston domed stadium. They spent their nights there sleeping on hard benches and when good ole Babs heard of it, she opined that they probably had never had it so good so why were they complaining. Could Mother Theresa have had greater generosity of spirit?Gekaufte Journalisten (bought journalism), Dec 4, 2018Not just one article, the awful Guardian is full of contents eulogising [yet another] mongrel of a president.Norcal, Dec 4, 2018But look at conservative media. The crazy Infowars.com described this Bush as an Anti-American Globalist and Traitor!! .. and zerohedge.com is celebrating: "The Evil Has Died" and "In 2016 he voted for Hillary Clinton, because the Deep State Swamp sticks together". https://www.zerohedge.com/news/2018-12-02/exploring-dark-side-bush-41
Just tell me, who is the rabid neo-con right-wing rag that is glorifying wars and mass murderers?
Speaking of neighbors you might appreciate this excellent Journalism by Robert Parry: https://consortiumnews.com/2018/12/03/bush-41s-october-surprise-denials-2/DunGroanin, Dec 4, 2018The late Robert Parry, sad to say. Maybe that now both the 'MacBeths' are stains on the tarmac – Parry's notes of the bloodstained legacy of that dynasty can finally be displayed? That Barbara was one cold blooded mother! Would have happily pulled a trigger on JFK, MLK herself (some think).David Eire, Dec 3, 2018Just about the whole century from the setup of the Fed, the two world wars, the depression, Hitler, Korea, Cuba all of it, had a a Bush hand in it. He was the self crowned Caesar having publicly executed the whole of Camelot and left us with a poison toad, reminds us how low the Bush's took the USA.
George Bush spent his adult life organizing operations and wars that killed a few million people. Anyone who has spiritual beliefs must wonder how it is to die with so much killing on your record or conscience (if you have one).Loverat, Dec 4, 2018That's something I've wondered about many times. If you review John McCain's actions and comments before he died, it seems these people don't have a conscience. If you surround yourself with people of similar mindset and in a climate where war is considered obligatory for US Presidents, you go into self denial. Wars are probably like an addiction for these people and once you get to that stage you no longer have a conscience.mark, Dec 4, 2018During John McCain's funeral where all living ex-presidents were in attendance, someone remarked on Twitter, 'Quick, lock the church doors and hold the war crimes trial in the church!'. This was a far more realistic observation than the sickening McCain apologist BBC coverage we were subjected to.
At the weekend I went to the place where Oliver Cromwell lived. There was an American tourist who told us she was shocked about Oliver Cromwell being dug up from his grave and his head stuck on a pike. She said it was gruesome. I was tempted to say that at least that was 350 years ago, and similar things are happening today in Iraq, Syria and Libya – all places where the US has instigated the chaos and supports the perpretators. I resisted the temptation.
I note that Cromwell thought he was chosen by God to do what he did. But again that was in different times and there were some redeeming factors in what he did, Probably on par with Obama – who wreaked havoc on the Middle East but reached agreements on Iran and Cuba. Plus Obama looked cool while killing and droning.
But what goes around comes around. I sense the pure evil involved in the current regime change wars, government, media etc will pay a heavy price – whether in this life or the next.
The state controlled BBC has just done another puff piece on McCain saying what a splendid chap and great statesman and all round good egg he was.Gezzah Potts, Dec 4, 2018The MSM likes to slag off Vlad The Bad by droning on about how he was in the KGB. But Bush wasn't just IN the CIA, he was the BOSS of the CIA, at a time when hundreds of thousands of Central American peasant farmers and Indians were being killed by CIA trained and orchestrated death squads.
Mark: jayzus Mark, don't you just want to projectile vomit when you see all this absolute bullshit, just straight out revising of history, just the lies, on and on . I was involved in a Central American solidarity group in the 1980s – early 90s here in Aussie, found out then all about U.S style 'democracatic values' and 'human rights concerns' and death squads and various fascists fully supported by the United States, and places like Guatemala and Nicaragua. Its all an illusion for 'polite society' and the gullible to believe in. Sighmark, Dec 5, 2018I can't remember the exact figures but I think it was over 200,000 murdered in Guatemala out of a population of 4 million. It was the same story in El Salvador, Honduras, Nicaragua and Colombia. And of course the CIA satrap Noriega was hauled off in chains when that country was invaded. But Uncle Sam is finally paying a price for his antics south of the border. Those societies were wrecked and brutalised beyond repair. There is now an unbelievably high murder rate of women in Guatemala. Millions of those people have sought some kind of refuge in the belly of the beast, causing an immigration crisis, with an illegal immigrant population that may be as high as 30 million. Hence all the uproar over Trump's wall. The immigration crisis was a factor in Trump's election, just as the tidal wave of migrants from the destroyed countries of the Middle East was a factor in Brexit. Cameron, Sarko and Clinton thought it was a spiffing idea and quite a wizard wheeze to bomb Libya back to the Stone Age. So we now have a Mad Max failed state complete with warlords and slave markets just across the Med. What goes around, comes around. You can't expect to export violence and mayhem abroad and remain immune to it at home.Gezzah Potts, Dec 5, 2018Mark: after Efrain Rios Montt seized power in a coup in Guatemala in 1982, US Ambassador Frederick Chapin declared that thanks to the coup of Rios Montt "the Guatemalan Govt has come out of the darkness into the light". That sums it up in one sentence, and you're probably aware of the mass killing and disappearances under his genocidal tyranny. Reagan kindly submitted that Rios Montt was 'getting a bum rap on human rights, the same Reagan who declared the Contra's were 'The moral equal of our founding fathers'. In El Salvador, the same mass slaughter, the same mass upheaval, and even murdering Archbishop Romero. You only need to look at what happened in Central & South America to understand what the United States really represents.Jen, Dec 4, 2018I would have bypassed the war crimes trial, locked the church and then built a moat stocked with crocodiles and piranhas around it.mark, Dec 4, 2018That's entirely right. People understandably despise and revile people like Brady and Hindley, Sutcliffe, Dahmer, Bundy and the like. But they killed a handful of people and were often very damaged individuals to begin with. And at least they did their own dirty work. Subhuman scum sucking filth like Bush, Bush 2, Obama, Cheney, Rumsfeld, Wolfowitz, Rice, Blair, Straw and Campbell are a thousand times worse. They kill millions without getting their hands dirty, and preen and posture as great statesmen and public servants, expecting deference and state funerals and puff piece obituaries from nauseating, loathsome, lickspittle media hacks like Tisdall.Caitlin Ni Chonaill, Dec 6, 2018You left out Kissinger and Albright.Gezzah Potts, Dec 3, 2018Nailed it Kit. The attempt at revionism and rewriting history by these craven creatures, these sycophantic slimebag shills for Imperialism and War and the Anglo Zionist Empire. They don't speak truth to power, they protect and grovel to the powerful. The eulogising and fawning of Bush was stomach churning, as it was for the arch Imperialist McCain when he croaked. Thank God for alternative news sites, and yeah Caitlin Johnston @ medium nailed it as well, as Fair Dinkum mentioned. Where's John Pilger when you need him?Badger Down, Dec 3, 2018GBH Bush's Highway of Death deserves mention. I'll spare you the pictures.systemicfraud, Dec 3, 2018
https://duckduckgo.com/?q=highway+of+death+desert+storm&t=h_&atb=v92-2_f&ia=webWhat no one seems to realize is that the VP often takes charge of the US National Security Council when POTUS is not able to attend meetings, which are held weekly. Under Eisenhower it was Richard Nixon who often took charge of the meetings -- Tim Weiner's book "Legacy of Ashes: The History of the CIA" gives some details on this. Reagan was primarily a mantle piece for the banking, oil and defense sectors to run wild. Is it really so hard to believe GHW Bush was running the National Security Council? It was a CIA wet dream come true (especially after the alligator-armed "investigations" of the 70's.Fair dinkum, Dec 3, 2018Caitlin sums it up: https://caitlinjohnstone.com/2018/12/01/if-you-murdered-a-bunch-of-people-mass-murder-is-your-single-defining-legacy/Simon Hodges, Dec 3, 2018The Deep State Guardian. Why don't they just change their name to 'The Daily Thatcherite' and have done with it.Frankly Speaking, Dec 4, 2018They should just show it's full title: The Guardian Of The Establishmentkevin morris, Dec 3, 2018'Family of Secrets: The Bush Dynasty, America's Invisible Government, and the Hidden History of the Last Fifty Years' by Russ Baker -- a fascinating account of the Bush family's involvement in a great deal of nefarious activity. Bush senior is one of the few people who didn't remember where he was when Kennedy was shot. Baker puts him in Dallas.lysias, Dec 4, 2018Now that G.H.W. Bush hss died, is there anybody suspected of involvement in the JFK assassination still alive?kevin morris, Dec 4, 2018I don't know but as a fairly apolitical individual, I never much bothered with the Kennedy Assasination. All that changed when during the fiftieth anniversary, BBC Radio Four ran a program which included an interview with the Dallas police officer who was handcuffed to Lee Harvey Oswald when he was shot by Jack Ruby. The consensus of that program was that the case was open shut and Oswald did it. Around that time, several newspapers in the UK featured articles claiming that Oswald acted alone.Frankly Speaking, Dec 3, 2018Whether or not anyone actively involved still lives, their descendants still do and the probable organising body too. There still appears to be determination in some quarters to spread disinformation about the case. Given that as long ago as the late seventies the House of Representatives Assassination Committee concluded that JFK's death was probably the consequence of a conspiracy, determination amongst the mainstream media to lay Kennedy's death at the hands of Oswald alone suggests that there is still determination that the truth never becomes public.
Exactly what i was thinking!George cornell, Dec 4, 2018I'm sickened by the Guardian's and BBC's obedience to the US neocon project to seek, or create, and destroy "enemies" and whilst ignoring all the disgusting atrocities that arise as a consequence.
The Guardian is not even worth the paper it's printed on. It's become The Guardian Of The Establishment rather than of the Truth which it used to proclaim.
It is in danger of losing its budgie-cage-liner status. If budgies can talk they may refuse to evacuate on it. What kind of person maintains ties to such a a poor excuse for cage toiletry. The moral crunch time for their journalists (actually their opinionists) came and went a long time ago.Brutally Remastered, Dec 3, 2018What a great piece. My parents knew them in New York and they came over once and left behind an embossed packet of White House cigs. I asked my father (before he died) what he thought of them and all he ever said was he thought that Barbara was the intellect in the family.Marianne Birkby, Dec 3, 2018
Bloody annoying, thanks Pater.From 2004Badger Down, Dec 3, 2018"The induction of DU weapons in 1991 in Iraq broke a 46-year taboo. This Trojan Horse of nuclear war continues to be used more and more. DU remains radioactive longer than the age of the earth (estimated at 4.5 billion years). The long-term effects from over a decade of DU exposures are devastating. The increased quantities of radioactive material used in Afghanistan are 3 to 5 times greater than Iraq, 1991. In Iraq, 2003, they are already estimated to be 6 to 10 times 1991, and will travel through a larger area and affect many more people, babies and unborn. Countries within a 1000-mile radius of Baghdad and Kabul are being affected by radiation poisoning
"DU remains radioactive longer than [ ] 4.5 billion years." It's worse than that. It loses half of its radioactivity in that time. The good news is that that slow release means "D"U doesn't zap you much. The bad news is it's chemically toxic, like a heavy metal (which it is).nwwoods, Dec 3, 2018Also no mention of the body of circumstantial evidence linking Bush to JFK's murder, though Bush repeatedly insisted that he couldn't recall his whereabouts that day (I can precisely recall where I was, and I was 9 years old in 1963), in spite of the fact that solid documentary evidence exists that puts him in Dallas on Nov 22, 1963.Norcal, Dec 4, 2018The very first Google Search I did was this, (George H.W. Bush+November 22, 1963) and it yielded a page like the following link, which began my research into the JFK Assassination.nomad, Dec 3, 2018well, yeah. but for us mad people it goes deeper even than that: https://geopolitics.co/2018/12/02/in-memoriam-george-h-scherff-jr-aka-george-hw-bush-sr/
Bush Sr. : Crypto-Nazi patriarch and his disciples
https://eclinik.files.wordpress.com/2018/12/barbara-bush-funeral-four-presidents-four-first-ladies.jpg?w=672&h=372&crop=1
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Dec 17, 2018 | discussion.theguardian.com
Dave_P -> willpodmore , 23 Aug 2016 10:57
The EU didn't impose austerity on the UK, its own government did. We don't have the euro, in case you haven't noticed. The US is our top overseas buyer. If we want more of that, we'll have to take something like TTIP or worse.The EU was a voice for African, Caribbean and Pacific producers against US transnationals, and offered favorable terms. We've weakened that voice.
Brexit makes us more dependent on the IMF, Citigroup, Goldman Sachs, JP Morgan, Citigroup and Morgan Stanley. They're not EU bodies.
Britain opposed EU democratisation for forty years by upholding national governments' veto powers over proposals supported by elected MEPs.
You voted against everything you claim to uphold. Because it was a vote against everything.
None of that's even the issue. Do you have an insight to offer beyond antipathy to the EU?
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Jan 24, 2019 | off-guardian.org
grandstand says Jan, 16, 2019
Whatever the truth, and I become daily more distrustful of the media that regularly attack Putin in this way, I doubt very much if his crimes in this regard come anywhere near those of Bush, Cheney, Blair, Cameron, Obama, and Bill and Hillary Clinton.mark says Jan, 16, 2019This is just routinely parroted by the MSM and equally routinely expanded upon by them. Organs like the Guardian/ BBC casually announce that Putin has stolen £40 billion (sometimes this is casually raised to £200 billion, which would make him the richest man on the planet and people like Gates/ Buffett poor as church mice by comparison.)Occasionally someone does ask for details, like bank transfers, property holdings or whatever.George cornel l says Jan, 16, 2019Nothing is ever forthcoming. All they come up with is that he has some nice Italian suits and a nice gold watch that cost him $1,200.
Apart from that, these allegations must be true because some financial fraudster mate of Khordokovsky who sought refuge in the US said so. Sounds pretty convincing to us here in the MSM – what more evidence do you need? Of course Putin is just a kleptocratic thug and James Bond cartoon villain who has people murdered purely for the fun of it.
Very late in the game I finally saw the documentary Icarus recently. I had passed it up because I thought I could predict that it would be rampantly dishonest, and an exercise in propaganda. It having received an Academy award seemed to be an independent confirmation of my prejudice.mark says Jan, 17, 2019Well, I was right for once. It was disgraceful, and the most common image in it was of Putin, accompanied by feeble ad hominem claims, without any counterpoints of any kind. So the core issue, cheating at the Olympics, turned out to be presented with no context at all, for the anti-Russian smear job. No mention of Balco, Carl Lewis, Marion Jones, and just a few seconds of an unidentified Lance Armstrong.
So now we see awards for propaganda. The Americans don't do fairness or integrity, but now they don't even pretend.
They gave an Integrity in Journalism award to the Ukraine journalist who faked his own death.Fair dinkum says Jan, 16, 2019Tolkien also comes to mind here.Francis Lee says Jan, 16, 2019
Us 'hobbits' are treated as inferior beings by the 'Saurons', 'Nazguls' and 'Gollums' of this world.
Gandalf ?
We're waitingComments were true and apposite enough, but it's all been said really. But given that this is largely an information war the truth needs continuously asserting.Loverat says Jan, 16, 2019Our opponents – the Guardian (minitru on thames) the New York Post (Pravda on the Hudson) the Washington Post (Izvestia on the Potomac) – sole tactic is constant repetition, this should be our tactic also but with evidence to back it up.
We need to constantly expand our readership and challenge the lunatic narrative of the PTB. We are now in a pivotal historical moment. If we fail it will be Hunger Games.
Francis LeeI agree about the repetition but do you want to know what I think? I think you need to play MSM and others a little bit at their own game. They don't back anything up with evidence. They write short pieces of fiction as statements of fact. Yet they are believed.
The thing is all 'our' evidence is already out there just by taking a look. (e.g White Helmets will take you 15 minutes to doubt that narrative) You have an army of researchers/journalists (e.g Kit Klarenberg, Vanessa Beeley etc) posting detailed evidence out there. A lot of the independent/academic articles I read are well backed up with evidence but the problem is to someone not up to speed, is less inclined to read a long article backed up by detailed reasoning and evidence within it.
I think this article is clear and credible and prompts those new to independent thought to look at different sources of information.
So perhaps more independent writing, which is creative setting out the facts in an intelligent way as above and invite (through links) the reader to look at the evidence which is plentiful, at their leisure.
Humour is another good way of spreading the message. The CJ Hopkins piece a few days ago very effective.
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Jan 16, 2019 | off-guardian.org
Skripal. The final illustration is the alleged of poisoning with "Novichok" of Sergei Skripal and his daughter Yulia in Salisbury in March 2018. This was immediately blamed on Russia, again before an investigation had been concluded, followed by sanctions, the expulsion of Russian diplomats (including by Australia) and a general tirade of abuse against Russia in general and President Putin in particular.
The Skripal case is a classic illustration of Coleridge's willing suspension of disbelief, Roh's magical realism and Orwell's doublethink (the act of simultaneously accepting two mutually contradictory beliefs as correct) all rolled into one.
Rob Slane ( www.theblogmire.com 9 January 2019) has brilliantly deconstructed the many logical, scientific and political absurdities in the official story. One will wait in vain for the merest hint of this demolition in the mainstream media.
One possible reason for this non-coverage of the actual evidence and instead a non-stop barrage of disinformation, suppression of evidence and manipulation of the public can be found in the activities of a shadowy organisation known as the Institute for Statecraft, and one of its projects known as the Integrity Initiative (sic).
Fresh revelations are emerging about this project on a daily basis and a proper analysis must await developments. Suffice to note at this point that the Integrity Initiative is known to be funded by the United Kingdom government, ostensibly to counter 'Russian disinformation.' It is rather a major project to spread falsehoods about Russia through "clusters" of journalists working in mainstream media outlets.
The latter have gone beyond the willing suspension of disbelief and instead actively promote disinformation they know to be untrue. It is not only potential embarrassment that prevents this story getting the attention it deserves. It is a strong suspicion, no more than that at the time of writing, that a D Notice has been issued in the United Kingdom and Australia.
The effect has been to prevent discussion of what is an extraordinary campaign to mislead the public, attack opposition politicians and the alternative media, and generally undermine what used to be regarded as a free press.
That some of the same personnel involved in the Integrity Initiative are also involved in the Skripal matter (itself subject to a D Notice) reinforces the belief that this project has wider tentacles than originally thought .
Paul Carline says Jan, 18, 2019Major credit due to U.K. Column News who originally researched and broke the story about the Integrity Initiative. Loading...vexarb says Jan, 17, 2019The Integrity InitiativeSyrian Observatory For Human Wrongs says Jan, 17, 2019http://syriapropagandamedia.org/working-papers/briefing-note-on-the-integrity-initiative
"If I had a world of my own, everything would be nonsense. Nothing would be what it is, because everything would be what it isn't." Lewis Carroll.Syrian Observatory For Human Wrongs says Jan, 17, 2019"Integrity Initiative"
"United Nations"
"Free Press"
"Liberal"
"American Intelligence"All you need to know ; )
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Jan 22, 2019 | discussion.theguardian.com
ravioliollie -> lullu616 , 15 Jan 2019 08:55
As usual, the pledge ultimately never changes, New jobs and No increase in taxes. Americans love tag lines even though our infrastructure, poor education et al is the result of fear of taxation. Both parties use the same tag line, we certainly get what we pay for.TempsdesRoses , 15 Jan 2019 08:47Yep,
The party has circled its wagons.
They insist that the Evil Vlad stole the last election.
Therefore, no need to examine Obama's centrist/neoliberal policies and the socio-economic conditions that fueled the rejection of Hillary.
We're doomed to repeat our errors.
The farcical DNC leadership echoes the days of Brezhnev's intransigent politburo.
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Jan 22, 2019 | discussion.theguardian.com
The neoliberalism of the Democratic Party elite (and most of the rank and file) is one big factor in our 2016 loss. Even voters too ignorant to see Trump for what he really was - voters that are misinformed to the point that they unwittingly and continually vote against their own best interests - realized how much the Dems have sold out to Wall Street.HRC would have been nominated in '08 if she had kissed more Wall Street you-know-what. That's why they anointed Obama who then proceeded to squander eight years of opportunity to remove big money from politics and enact progressive reforms to health care, the environment, etc.
Bernie is a bit long in the tooth, so I am all in for Liz Warren. She's the only one with both the courage and the intelligence to take on the big money that controls our politics.
Therefore, you can expect the Russian trolls to be coming for her in force. If you read anything negative about Warren in the coming months, check the source and don't trust the accuracy.
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Jan 22, 2019 | discussion.theguardian.com
cagnusdei -> lullu616 , 15 Jan 2019 10:50
Didn't help that the ostensibly neutral DNC was sending emails saying that they should play up Bernie Sanders' Jewish faith (among other attack strategies), fed debate questions to the Clinton campaign or tried to limit opportunities for Bernie and Hillary to share a stage together.Bernie Sanders is widely considered by many to be one of the most popular American politicians, more than Trump and certainly more popular than Hillary. I think an interesting phenomenon to notice is the lengths the GOP, in particular, will go to in order to convince the average voter that anything that cuts taxes is inherently good for the 'little guy,' while anything that raises taxes is bad.
Trump's recent tax cuts are a good example. Most of the actual cuts go toward the corporations and ultra-wealthy, which just increases the deficit while shifting the proportion of taxes paid onto the middle class. It's a con that many Americans are inexplicably susceptible to believing, for some reason.
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Jan 22, 2019 | discussion.theguardian.com
William Anthony -> BoneyOCoonassa , 15 Jan 2019 09:40
We've known since WW2, that fighting fascism is difficult. Benito Mussolini defined fascism as "Barely able to slip a cigarette paper between business and government." And when business runs government, we have even exceeded fascism. The new battle against fascism is not going to be easy.
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Jan 22, 2019 | www.unz.com
So the corporate media have gone and done it again. As they have, repeatedly, for the last two and half years, they shook the earth with a "bombshell" story proving beyond any reasonable doubt that Donald Trump colluded with the Russians to steal the presidency from Hillary Clinton, or at least committed an impeachable felony in connection with something to do with the Russians, or Ukrainians, or other Slavic persons which story turned out to be inaccurate, or not entirely accurate, or a bunch of horseshit.
This time it was BuzzFeed's Jason Leopold, " a reporter with a checkered past " (i.e., a history of inventing his sources ) who broke the "bombshell" Russiagate story that turned out to be a bunch of horseshit. Leopold, and his colleague Anthony Cormier, reported that Trump had directed his attorney, Michael Cohen, to lie to Congress about plans to construct a Trump Tower in Moscow, thus suborning perjury and obstructing justice. Their sources for this "bombshell" story were allegedly "two federal law enforcement officials involved in an investigation of the matter."
Approximately twenty-four hours later, Special Counsel Robert Mueller's office (i.e., the office "involved in an investigation of the matter") stated that the BuzzFeed story was "not accurate," which is a legal term meaning "a bunch of horseshit." BuzzFeed is standing by its story , and is working to determine what, exactly, Mueller's office meant by "not accurate." Ben Smith, BuzzFeed's Editor-in-Chief, has called on Mueller "to make clear what he's disputing."
Liberals and other Trump-obsessives have joined in the effort to interpret the Special Counsel's office's cryptic utterance. French hermeneuticists have been reportedly called in to deconstruct the meaning of "accurate." Professional Twitter semioticians are explaining that "not accurate" doesn't mean "wrong," but, rather, refers to something that is "accurate," but which the user of the word doesn't want to disclose publicly, or that legal terms don't mean what they mean or something more or less along those lines.
Glenn Greenwald, in August 2018, reporting on another "bombshell" story that turned out to be a bunch of horseshit , compiled a partial list of Russiagate stories that the corporate media had published and promoted over the course of the previous eighteen months which turned out to be a bunch of horseshit (i.e., the stories did, not Greenwald's list). In the wake of this latest horseshit story, Greenwald revised and renamed this list " The 10 Worst, Most Embarrassing U.S. Media Failures on the Trump/Russia Story. "
But Greenwald's list is just a small sample of the Russiagate stories that have turned out to be horseshit. For the record, here are several more:
"Seventeen intelligence agencies" confirm Russia interfered in the U.S. elections ( New York Times ) Russia interfered in the Brexit referendum ( The Guardian ) Russia interfered in the German elections ( Reuters ) Russia hacked the French elections ( Politico and numerous other outlets ) Michael Cohen conspired with the Russians in Prague ( BuzzFeed )My personal favorite remains the one about how Hillary Clinton may have been poisoned by Putinist operatives back in 2016. And then there's the pot-smoking, prostitute-banging, incompetent Novichok perfume assassins , the African American-brainwashing memes , the Putin-orchestrated Yellow Vest rebellion , the brain-eating Russian-Cubano crickets , and various other bunches of horseshit.
I am using the terms "horseshit" and "a bunch of horseshit" (as opposed to terms like "failures" and "errors"), not just to be gratuitously vulgar, but, also, to try to make a point. One is not supposed to use these terms in connection with "serious," "respected" news outlets. Which is why journalists like Greenwald and Aaron Maté (who have extensively reported on the corporate media's ongoing production and dissemination of horseshit) do not use such terms in the course of their reporting, and instead use less inflammatory terms like "false," "inaccurate," "mistake," and "error." Principled journalists like Greenwald and Maté are constrained by (a) their journalistic ethics, (b) their integrity, and (c) their belief in the idea of a "free and independent press," which is one of the pillars of Western democracy.
Being neither a respected journalist nor a believer in the existence of an "independent press," I am under no such constraints. Because I'm not trying to get or keep a job, or maintain a "respectable" reputation, I'm free to call a spade a spade and a bunch of horseshit a bunch of horseshit. I am also free to describe "journalists" like Leopold, Luke Harding , Craig Timberg , Franklin Foer , and many of their corporate media colleagues (not to mention TV clowns like Rachel Maddow ) as the liars and rank propagandists they are. I don't need to pretend their fabricated stories are simply the result of "shoddy journalism," or "over-reliance on official sources," or any other type of "error" or "failure." These people know exactly what they are doing, and are being extremely well paid to do it. They went to school to learn how to do it. Then they butt-sucked and back-stabbed their way up the ladder of establishment power to be able to do it.
Yes, of course, there are still principled journalists working for the corporate media, but they are doing so by walking a very fine line. No one has to tell them where it is. Every professional journalist knows precisely where it is, and what it is there for. Though they are permitted to walk right up to it, occasionally (to keep them from feeling like abject whores), one step over it and they will be cast into the Outer Darkness of the Blogosphere and excommunicated from the Church of Respectable Journalism. If you don't believe me, just ask Seymour Hersh, or John Pilger, or any other journalistic heretic.
If Russiagate serves no other useful purpose, it is at least exposing the corporate media as the propaganda factories that they are. Given the amount of obviously fabricated horseshit they have disseminated during the last two years, you'd have to be a total moron or a diehard neoliberal cultist not to recognize the function they perform within the global capitalist ruling establishment (which is essentially no different than the function the establishment media perform in any other society, namely, to disseminate, maintain, and reify the official narrative of its ruling classes).
Sadly, there's no shortage of morons and cultists. I don't blame the morons, because well, they're morons. The cultists are another species entirely. These are people who, no matter how often the corporate media feed them another "explosive," "bombshell" Russiagate story that turns out to be a bunch of horseshit, will defend the concept of the "independent media" like head-shaven, bug-eyed Manson followers. Confront them with facts contradicting their beliefs and they close their eyes and start chanting and humming and repetitiously babbling banishing spells. The notion that the Western corporate media may serve the interests of the ruling establishment (just like the media in every other society serve that society's ruling classes) is unimaginable and tantamount to heresy.
This fetishization of "the independent press" is a phenomenon unique to Western capitalism. Basically, it's a childish fairy tale, like believing that Santa Claus is an actual person or that voting in elections in a corporate oligarchy has anything to do with actual democracy. Think about it dispassionately for a minute. Why would any ruling establishment permit a genuinely "independent" press to disseminate ideas and information willy-nilly throughout society? If it did, it wouldn't last very long.
Most people understand this intuitively, which is why the corporate media relentlessly repeat the mantra-like phrase, "free and independent press," over, and over, and over again. Seriously, switch on NPR, or have a look at The Guardian or the Washington Post, or any of the other corporate media repeatedly reminding you how "independent," "free" and "democratic" they are. It's essentially Neuro-linguistic programming.
So let's not be shocked when the corporate media continue to bombard us with "bombshell" stories about Trump and Russia that turn out to be horseshit. Personally, I welcome these stories. The more corporate media horseshit the better! Who knows, if they dish out enough blatant horseshit, more people might lose their "trust in the media," and begin to investigate matters themselves. I know, that makes me a Nazi, right? Or at least a Russian propagandist? I mean, encouraging folks to distrust the corporate media? Isn't there some kind of law against that? Or have they not quite gotten around to that yet?
C. J. Hopkins is an award-winning American playwright, novelist and political satirist based in Berlin. His plays are published by Bloomsbury Publishing (UK) and Broadway Play Publishing (USA). His debut novel, ZONE 23 , is published by Snoggsworthy, Swaine & Cormorant Paperbacks. He can be reached at cjhopkins.com or consentfactory.org .
Godfree Roberts , says: January 22, 2019 at 1:32 am GMT
The Associated Press (AP) reports the latest bad news for the press: " Just 6 Percent of People Say They Trust the Media ."Biff , says: January 22, 2019 at 1:41 am GMTCarole Feldman and Emily Swanson began: Trust in the news media is being eroded by perceptions of inaccuracy and bias, fueled in part by Americans' skepticism about what they read on social media. Just 6 percent of people say they have a lot of confidence in the media, putting the news industry about equal to Congress and well below the public's view of other institutions.
Fidelios Automata , says: January 22, 2019 at 3:14 am GMTMost people understand this intuitively, which is why the corporate media relentlessly repeat the mantra-like phrase, "free and independent press,"
People inversely brag about their short comings.
Militarized police states brag about their freedom.
A well heeled synchophant brags about his independence.
Dudes with small dicks -- big belt buckle and big hat.I used to listen to the BBC and NPR until the corporo-globalist bias became unbearable. I laughed at incidents such as Marketplace mocking the public's concern about GMO's. But it went off the rails in 2016. They may have backed off from Trump Derangement Syndrome a bit since then, but I've noticed that they have to call themselves "credible." Maybe if they say that enough times we'll believe it, eh?Bragadocious , says: January 22, 2019 at 4:32 am GMTThe Greenwald link is pretty important and I bookmarked it. These fake news outlets do everything in their power to scrub these mistakes from the Google machine once they happen. They remove stories, videos -- everything, in the hopes of shoving it all down the memory hole. And since other fake news outlets don't hold them accountable, they get away with it. This is why it's important to take screen shots of fake news and download videos if possible, to create a record that's permanent and useful when you need it.Richard Wicks , says: January 22, 2019 at 5:48 am GMT@Godfree Roberts 6%? I rather doubt that.utu , says: January 22, 2019 at 7:22 am GMTMore than 6% of the population are technically, and this is the technical term, retarded -- they are mentally disabled.
I know it's obvious our media is propaganda, but I don't think it's quite so obvious such that adults watching Sesame Street who fully enjoy it (nothing wrong with that!) are aware of it.
I would like to think it's true, but I think the Associated Press article is not true, after all, can you identify their funding sources?
jeff stryker , says: January 22, 2019 at 10:55 am GMTThis fetishization of "the independent press" is a phenomenon unique to Western capitalism. Basically, it's a childish fairy tale, like believing that Santa Claus is an actual person or that voting in elections in a corporate oligarchy has anything to do with actual democracy.
Great article. Articles on this theme should be published daily. The fetish must be destroyed.
I don't think the MSM has the power and influence it had in the Big Three Networks Era before the internet.jacques sheete , says: January 22, 2019 at 12:06 pm GMTIn those days, the minds of the public were more controlled and underground newspapers were barely read.
These days, more people read websites like this than watch any particular channel.
Print journalism had a massive hold on the world up to 1997 when the internet came into the mainstream.
Not no more.
Ah, elegant!Digital Samizdat , says: January 22, 2019 at 12:36 pm GMTWhat a pleasure to read this article!
There is at least one other person who calls corporate media what it is, and it ain't "mainstream."
"Sparkie" ain't gonna be happy about it either."Sparky" chewed me out good for correcting the incomparable and always superb Linh Dinh for using the disgusting and inaccurate term, "mainstream" when referring to coprophilic media. Oh, and speaking of "horseshit" one wag suggested we call it main steam media, for accuracy as well as for giggles and that's fine by me.
the corporate media relentlessly repeat the mantra-like phrase, "free and independent press," over, and over, and over again. Seriously, switch on NPR, or have a look at The Guardian or the Washington Post, or any of the other corporate media repeatedly reminding you how "independent," "free" and "democratic" they are. It's essentially Neuro-linguistic programming.
It's blatantly obvious that the same can be said about the self-legitimizing term, "mainstream," too, so bless you sir, and to (bleep) with the Sparkies of the world.
Jake , says: January 22, 2019 at 12:46 pm GMTConfront them with facts contradicting their beliefs and they close their eyes and start chanting and humming and repetitiously babbling banishing spells.
Orange Man bad! Mueller saves! -NPC
Not only is Hopkins correct, but what he says about corporate media is not new. The Civil Rights movement presented by the media was false. The media promotion of the US re-engaging in Europe in the post WW1 period so we could defend dear ole England and sacred democracy. The media preparing us for our need to fight WW1 so we could end all wars was false. The media stirring us to go into Cuba and end the awfully evil Spanish Empire so we could start the process of ending all empiresLarge numbers of newspapers located within the non January 22, 2019 at 3:13 pm GMT
@jacques sheeteHail , says: Website January 22, 2019 at 3:38 pm GMTAh, elegant!
What a pleasure to read this article!
N o doubt it is a pleasure for you because C.J. Hopkins managed to scribble 1500 words about fake news without even once mentioning the CIA.
"We'll know our disinformation program is complete when everything the American public believes is false."
-- CIA Director, William Casey
Of course, our resident Bumpkin of Unz would have you believe that the CIA is a corporation.
"The CIA owns everyone of any significance in the major media."
-- former CIA Director William Colby
So you see Sheete, the term "corporate media" is entirely inaccurate -- a red herring, a misleading label, a pig in a poke -- because it entirely excludes, avoids, overlooks, and completely dismisses the role of our intelligence agencies in creating fake news , a.k.a. disinformation and propaganda.
Agent76 , says: January 22, 2019 at 3:41 pm GMTThe notion that the Western corporate media may serve the interests of the ruling establishment (just like the media in every other society serve that society's ruling classes) is unimaginable and tantamount to heresy.
This comes close to the term "regime media," which I like as a replacement for the clunky-but-common terms "Mainstream Media" or MSM. "
Hopkins uses "corporate media," which appears fifteen times here including in the title.
Several commenters have noted the problems with the term "mainstream media":
While better than "mainstream media," I'm not sure "corporate media" is sufficient.
"Corporate media," as a term, may wrongly convey the notion that the 'media' in question complaisantly both [1] broadcasts the ruling ideology (interventionist capitalist liberal democracy and multicultacracy) and [2] 'megaphones' (Steve Sailer's useful term) against enemies thereto, coordinating our regular Two-Minute Hates.
That characterization misses an important point, to wit:
The 'media' (in the sense of the "MSM") as we know it today, is itself consciously part of the ruling apparatus . Not complaisantly, but actively; not lackeys on the side, but right at the regime's core. A useful distinction. Hence "regime media."
Jun. 14, 2012 These 6 Corporations Control 90% Of The Media In AmericaSean , says: January 22, 2019 at 4:13 pm GMTThat's consolidated from *50* companies back in 1983. But the fact that a few companies own everything demonstrates "the illusion of choice," Frugal Dad says.
http://www.businessinsider.com/these-6-corporations-control-90-of-the-media-in-america-2012-6
Church Committee Testimony
Tom Charles Huston testified before the Senate Select Committee to Study Governmental Operations with Respect to Intelligence Activities, commonly known as the Church Committee, on the 43-page plan he presented to the President Nixon and others on ways to collect information about anti-war and "radical" groups, including burglary, electronic surveillance, and opening of mail.
https://www.c-span.org/video/?408953-1/tom-charles-huston-testimony-church-committee
The Basic Problem of Democracyonebornfree , says: Website January 22, 2019 at 4:14 pm GMT
by Walter Lippmann
The Atlantic Monthly, November 1919, pp. 616-627http://sonicacts.com/portal/anthropocene-objects-art-and-politics-1
Lippmann-Dewey debate, which is known to academics but not the general public in the United States, the home country of both authors. Obviously, John Dewey is famous as one of the most important American philosophers, and for his international influence in the field of education. By contrast, Walter Lippmann has been somewhat forgotten, though he was a major journalist in the 1920s and 1930s. He was a widely familiar author at the time, and wrote some cynical things about American democracy. The story America tells itself politically is that since we're a democracy in which the citizens rule themselves, there is a paramount need for an excellent public education so that the citizens can vote wisely. We ourselves are the leaders. But of course it doesn't work that way in practice. We actually have a surplus of ignorant and uninformed people who pay no attention to the nuances of policy, and who vote based on the workings of demagoguery and short-sighted self-interest. Any number of foolish decisions have been made by the American public. This leads Lippmann to take the somewhat cynical line that America is destined to be ruled by technocrats. We need experts to run things; the people are too clueless to rule themselves. We'll pretend we have a democracy, but we actually don't. Now, Dewey reads this, and he is temperamentally more optimistic, and he thinks: 'This is a really stimulating book, but Lippmann is wrong. He is setting the bar too high for the people. People were never supposed to be educated in depth about every issue, which is an impossible demand. Even Lippmann doesn't have the time to master every issue, and he covers politics for a living. Instead, Dewey says, political issues generate their own publics in each case. I might care deeply about seven political issues. I might care about national health insurance, but I don't care about gay marriage, or vice versa. So I get involved in one debate and not the other. I take the trouble of becoming informed about issues that interest me.
@Hail Hail says: "The 'media' (in the sense of the "MSM") as we know it today, is itself consciously part of the ruling apparatus. Not complaisantly, but actively; not lackeys on the side, but right at the regime's core ":jacques sheete , says: January 22, 2019 at 4:23 pm GMTExactly. The MSM is the government [CIA/NSA/ etc. etc.] grinning right at you as it continually lies , albeit behind a very thin veil of supposed integrity/respectability that the general public still refuses to see through.
By way of illustration of this "outrageous" assertion of mine, here is part of a video analysis of the original 5 channel US MSM "live" coverage of the morning of Sept. 11 2001, which clearly demonstrates that on that morning, all 5 US networks broadcast entirely fake "live" footage [ i.e. C.G.I. prefabricated imagery] for about 102 minutes :
Regards, onebornfree
@SparkonNancy Pelosi's Latina Maid , says: January 22, 2019 at 4:30 pm GMTSo you see Sheete, the term "corporate media" is entirely inaccurate
I never claimed it was perfect. I do claim that the term, "mainstream," in this context is entirely inaccurate and misleading. And you should be nice, as you admonished me, regarding the author of this article. As for your complaint that he didn't mention the CIA, may I remind you that he wrote, as you noticed, an article, not an encyclopedia.
Anyway, you have yet to establish that the CIA and our corporate masters are entirely separate entities. Even a Dumb Sheete such as myself would find it somewhat, if not entirely, incredible if they were.
But of course too everyone knows by now that Jews, Israel and Mossad did 9/11 all by their lonesomes, and the CIA and the Air Force had nothing to do with it.
Ahem, you forgot to mention big, coprophilic, media. Please try to practice the inclusiveness that you preach.
onebornfree , says: Website January 22, 2019 at 4:35 pm GMTone step over [the line] and they will be cast into the Outer Darkness of the Blogosphere and excommunicated from the Church of Respectable Journalism. If you don't believe me, just ask Seymour Hersh, or John Pilger, or any other journalistic heretic.
To this list I might also add CBS' Sharyl Attkisson, and Larry Conners of KMOV-TV, who had the big brass balls to question the $85 million the Obamas spent on vacations.
NR kicked Derb to the curb, but that gutter's littered with Internet flotsam who presumed integrity.
@Sean Sean says: "Lippmann-Dewey debate, which is known to academics but not the general public in the United States, the home country of both authors. "Debate summary: 2 know-it-alls debating about how "best" to run everybody else's lives [and with straight faces, I've no doubt].
Two sides of the same [pro-statist] coin, in other words. Oh, and one minor issue one "thinks" that a ruling technocracy is "the answer".
Sean says: "Obviously, John Dewey is famous as one of the most important American philosophers, and for his international influence in the field of education."
You mean: Dewey was important in the field of "public education" , otherwise known as brainwashing.
" important American philosopher" my a$$.
Gawd help us all.
And so it goes
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Jan 16, 2019 | www.thenation.com
Baseless Russiagate allegations continue to risk war with Russia.
Anti-Trump Frenzy Threatens to End Superpower Diplomacy | The Nation The New Year has brought a torrent of ever-more-frenzied allegations that President Donald Trump has long had a conspiratorial relationship -- why mince words and call it "collusion"? -- with Kremlin leader Vladimir Putin.Why the frenzy now? Perhaps because Russiagate promoters in high places are concerned that special counsel Robert Mueller will not produce the hoped-for "bombshell" to end Trump's presidency. Certainly, New York Times columnist David Leonhardt seems worried, demanding, "The president must go," his drop line exhorting, "What are we waiting for?" (In some countries, articles like his, and there are very many, would be read as calling for a coup.) Perhaps to incite Democrats who have now taken control of House investigative committees. Perhaps simply because Russiagate has become a political-media cult that no facts, or any lack of evidence, can dissuade or diminish.
And there is no new credible evidence, preposterous claims notwithstanding. One of The New York Times ' own recent "bombshells," published on January 12, reported, for example, that in spring 2017, FBI officials "began investigating whether [President Trump] had been working on behalf of Russia against American interests." None of the three reporters bothered to point out that those "agents and officials" almost certainly included ones later reprimanded and retired by the FBI itself for their political biases. (As usual, the Times buried its self-protective disclaimer deep in the story: "No evidence has emerged publicly that Mr. Trump was secretly in contact with or took direction from Russian government officials.")
Whatever the explanation, the heightened frenzy is unmistakable, leading the "news" almost daily in the synergistic print and cable media outlets that have zealously promoted Russiagate for more than two years, in particular the Times , The Washington Post , MSNBC, CNN, and their kindred outlets. They have plenty of eager enablers, including the once-distinguished Strobe Talbott, President Bill Clinton's top adviser on Russia and until recently president of the Brookings Institution. According to Talbott , "We already know that the Kremlin helped put Trump into the White House and played him for a sucker . Trump has been colluding with a hostile Russia throughout his presidency." In fact, we do not "know" any of this. These remain merely widely disseminated suspicions and allegations.
In this cult-like commentary, the "threat" of "a hostile Russia" must be inflated along with charges against Trump. (In truth, Russia represents no threat to the United States that Washington itself did not provoke since the end of the Soviet Union in 1991.) For its own threat inflation, the Times featured not an expert with any plausible credentials but Lisa Page, the former FBI lawyer with no known Russia expertise, and who was one of those reprimanded by the agency for anti-Trump political bias. Nonetheless, the Times quotes Page at length : "In the Russian Federation and in President Putin himself you have an individual whose aim is to disrupt the Western alliance and whose aim is to make Western democracy more fractious in order to weaken our ability to spread our democratic ideals." Perhaps we should have guessed that the democracy-promotion genes of J. Edgar Hoover were still alive and breeding in the FBI, though for the Times , in its exploitation of the hapless and legally endangered Page, it seems not to matter.
Which brings us, or rather Russiagate zealots, to the heightened "threat" represented by "Putin's Russia." If true, we would expect the US president to negotiate with the Kremlin leader, including at summit meetings, as every president since Dwight Eisenhower has done. But, we are told, we cannot trust Trump to do so, because, according to The Washington Post , he has repeatedly met with Putin alone, with only translators present, and concealed the records of their private talks, sure signs of "treasonous" behavior, as the Russiagate media first insisted following the Trump-Putin summit in Helsinki in July 2018.
It's hard to know whether this is historical ignorance or Russiagate malice, though it is probably both. In any event, the truth is very different. In preparing US-Russian (Soviet and post-Soviet) summits since the 1950s, aides on both sides have arranged "private time" for their bosses for two essential reasons: so they can develop sufficient personal rapport to sustain any policy partnership they decide on; and so they can alert one another to constraints on their policy powers at home, to foes of such détente policies often centered in their respective intelligence agencies. (The KGB ran operations against Nikita Khrushchev's détente policies with Eisenhower, and, as is well established, US intelligence agencies have run operations against Trump's proclaimed goal of "cooperation with Russia.")
That is, in the modern history of US-Russian summits, we are told by a former American ambassador who knows, the "secrecy of presidential private meetings has been the rule, not the exception." He continues, "There's nothing unusual about withholding information from the bureaucracy about the president's private meetings with foreign leaders . Sometimes they would dictate a memo afterward, sometimes not." Indeed, President Richard Nixon, distrustful of the US "bureaucracy," sometimes met privately with Kremlin leader Leonid Brezhnev while only Brezhnev's translator was present.
Nor should we forget the national-security benefits that have come from private meetings between US and Kremlin leaders. In October 1986, President Ronald Reagan and Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev met alone with their translators and an American official who took notes -- the two leaders, despite their disagreements, agreed in principle that nuclear weapons should be abolished. The result, in 1987, was the first and still only treaty abolishing an entire category of such weapons, the exceedingly dangerous intermediate-range ones. (This is the historic treaty Trump has said he may abrogate.)
And yet, congressional zealots are now threatening to subpoena the American translator who was present during Trump's meetings with Putin. If this recklessness prevails, it will be the end of the nuclear-superpower summit diplomacy that has helped to keep America and the world safe from catastrophic war for nearly 70 years -- and as a new, more perilous nuclear arms race between the two countries is unfolding. It will amply confirm a thesis set out in my book War with Russia? -- that anti-Trump Russiagate allegations have become the gravest threat to our security.
The following correction and clarification were made to the original version of this article on January 17: Reagan and Gorbachev met privately with translators during their summit in Reykjavik, Iceland, in October 1986, not February, and Reagan was also accompanied by an American official who took notes. And it would be more precise to say that the two leaders, despite their disagreements, agreed in principle that nuclear weapons should be abolished.
Stephen F. Cohen is professor emeritus of politics and Russian studies at Princeton and NYU and author of the new book War with Russia? From Putin and Ukraine to Trump and Russiagate . This commentary is based on the most recent of his weekly discussions of the new US-Russian Cold War with the host of the John Batchelor radio show. (The podcast is here . Previous installments, now in their fifth year, are at TheNation.com . )
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Jan 21, 2019 | www.zerohedge.com
Authored by Glenn Greenwald via The Intercept,
Buzzfeed was once notorious for traffic-generating "listicles" , but has since become an impressive outlet for deep investigative journalism under editor-in-chief Ben Smith. That outlet was prominently in the news this week thanks to its "bombshell" story about President Trump and Michael Cohen: a story that, like so many others of its kind, blew up in its face , this time when the typically mute Robert Mueller's office took the extremely rare step to label its key claims "inaccurate."
But in homage to BuzzFeed's past viral glory, following are the top ten worst media failures in two-plus-years of Trump/Russia reporting. They are listed in reverse order, as measured by the magnitude of the embarrassment, the hysteria they generated on social media and cable news, the level of journalistic recklessness that produced them, and the amount of damage and danger they caused. This list was extremely difficult to compile in part because news outlets (particularly CNN and MSNBC) often delete from the internet the video segments of their most embarrassing moments. Even more challenging was the fact that the number of worthy nominees is so large that highly meritorious entrees had to be excluded, but are acknowledged at the end with (dis)honorable mention status.
Note that all of these "errors" go only in one direction: namely, exaggerating the grave threat posed by Moscow and the Trump circle's connection to it. It's inevitable that media outlets will make mistakes on complex stories. If that's being done in good faith, one would expect the errors would be roughly 50/50 in terms of the agenda served by the false stories. That is most definitely not the case here. Just as was true in 2002 and 2003, when the media clearly wanted to exaggerate the threat posed by Saddam Hussein and thus all of its "errors" went in that direction, virtually all of its major "errors" in this story are devoted to the same agenda and script:
10. RT Hacked Into and Took Over C-SPAN (Fortune)On June 12, 2017, Fortune claimed that RT had hacked into and taken over C-SPAN and that C-SPAN "confirmed" it had been hacked. The whole story was false :
9. Russian Hackers Invaded the U.S. Electricity Grid to Deny Vermonters Heat During the Winter (WashPost)On December 30, 2016, the Washington Post reported that "Russian hackers penetrated the U.S. electricity grid through a utility in Vermont," causing predictable outrage and panic, along with threats from U.S. political leaders. But then they kept diluting the story with editor's notes – to admit that the malware was found on a laptop not connected to the U.S. electric grid at all – until finally acknowledging, days later, that the whole story was false, since the malware had nothing to do with Russia or with the U.S. electric grid:
8. A New, Deranged, Anonymous Group Declares Mainstream Political Sites on the Left and Right to be Russian Propaganda Outlets and WashPost Touts its Report to Claim Massive Kremlin Infiltration of the Internet (WashPost)On November 24, 2016, the Washington Post published one of the most inflammatory, sensationalistic stories to date about Russian infiltration into U.S. politics using social media, accusing "more than 200 websites" of being "routine peddlers of Russian propaganda during the election season, with combined audiences of at least 15 million Americans." It added: "stories planted or promoted by the disinformation campaign [on Facebook] were viewed more than 213 million times."
Unfortunately for the paper, those statistics were provided by a new, anonymous group that reached these conclusions by classifying long-time, well-known sites – from the Drudge Report to Clinton-critical left-wing websites such as Truthout, Black Agenda Report, Truthdig, and Naked Capitalism, as well as libertarian venues such as Antiwar.com and the Ron Paul Institute. – as "Russian propaganda outlets," producing one of the longest Editor's Note in memory appended to the top of the article (but not until two weeks later , long after the story was mindlessly spread all throughout the media ecosystem):
7. Trump Aide Anthony Scaramucci is Involved in a Russian Hedge Fund Under Senate Investigation (CNN)On June 22, 2017, CNN reported that Trump aide Anthony Scaramucci was involved with the Russian Direct Investment Fund, under Senate investigation. He was not. CNN retracted the story and forced the three reporters who published it to leave the network.
6. Russia Attacked U.S. "Diplomats" (i.e. Spies) at the Cuban Embassy Using a Super-Sophisticated Sonic Microwave Weapon (NBC/MSNBC/CIA)On September 11, 2017, NBC News and MSNBC spread all over its airwaves a claim from its notorious CIA puppet Ken Dilanian that Russia was behind a series of dastardly attacks on U.S. personnel at the Embassy in Cuba using a sonic or microwave weapon so sophisticated and cunning that Pentagon and CIA scientists had no idea what to make of it.
But then teams of neurologists began calling into doubt that these personnel had suffered any brain injuries at all – that instead they appear to have experienced collective psychosomatic symptoms – and then biologists published findings that the "strange sounds" the U.S. "diplomats" reported hearing were identical to those emitted by a common Caribbean male cricket during mating season.
5. Trump Created a Secret Internet Server to Covertly Communicate with a Russian Bank (Slate)4. Paul Manafort Visited Julian Assange Three Times in the Ecuadorian Embassy and Nobody Noticed (Guardian/Luke Harding)
On November 27, 2018, the Guardian published a major "bombshell" that Trump campaign manager Paul Manafort had somehow managed to sneak inside one of the world's most surveilled buildings, the Ecuadorian Embassy in London, and visit Julian Assange on three different occasions. Cable and online commentators exploded.
Seven weeks later, no other media outlet has confirmed this ; no video or photographic evidence has emerged; the Guardian refuses to answer any questions; its leading editors have virtually gone into hiding; other media outlets have expressed serious doubts about its veracity; and an Ecuadorian official who worked at the embassy has called the story a complete fake:
3. CNN Explicitly Lied About Lanny Davis Being Its Source – For a Story Whose Substance Was Also False: Cohen Would Testify that Trump Knew in Advance About the Trump Tower Meeting (CNN)On July 27, 2018, CNN published a blockbuster story : that Michael Cohen was prepared to tell Robert Mueller that President Trump knew in advanced about the Trump Tower meeting. There were, however, two problems with this story: first, CNN got caught blatantly lying when its reporters claimed that "contacted by CNN, one of Cohen's attorneys, Lanny Davis, declined to comment" (in fact, Davis was one of CNN's key sources, if not its only source, for this story), and second, numerous other outlets retracted the story after the source, Davis, admitted it was a lie. CNN, however, to this date has refused to do either:
2. Robert Mueller Possesses Internal Emails and Witness Interviews Proving Trump Directed Cohen to Lie to Congress (BuzzFeed)1. Donald Trump Jr. Was Offered Advanced Access to the WikiLeaks Email Archive (CNN/MSNBC)
The morning of December 9, 2017, launched one of the most humiliating spectacles in the history of the U.S. media. With a tone so grave and bombastic that it is impossible to overstate, CNN went on the air and announced a major exclusive: Donald Trump, Jr. was offered by email advanced access to the trove of DNC and Podesta emails published by WikiLeaks – meaning before those emails were made public. Within an hour, MSNBC's Ken Dilanian, using a tone somehow even more unhinged, purported to have "independently confirmed" this mammoth, blockbuster scoop, which, they said, would have been the smoking gun showing collusion between the Trump campaign and WikiLeaks over the hacked emails (while the YouTube clips have been removed, you can still watch one of the amazing MSNBC videos here ).
There was, alas, just one small problem with this massive, blockbuster story: it was totally and completely false. The email which Trump, Jr. received that directed him to the WikiLeaks archive was sent after WikiLeaks published it online for the whole world to see, not before. Rather than some super secretive operative giving Trump, Jr. advanced access, as both CNN and MSNBC told the public for hours they had confirmed, it was instead just some totally pedestrian message from a random member of the public suggesting Trump, Jr. review documents the whole world was already talking about. All of the anonymous sources CNN and MSNBC cited somehow all got the date of the email wrong.
To date, when asked how they both could have gotten such a massive story so completely wrong in the same way, both CNN and MSNBC have adopted the posture of the CIA by maintaining complete silence and refusing to explain how it could possibly be that all of their "multiple, independent sources" got the date wrong on the email in the same way, to be as incriminating – and false – as possible. Nor, needless to say, will they identify their sources who, in concert, fed them such inflammatory and utterly false information.
Sadly, CNN and MSNBC have deleted most traces of the most humiliating videos from the internet, including demanding that YouTube remove copies. But enough survives to document just what a monumental, horrifying, and utterly inexcusable debacle this was. Particularly amazing is the clip of the CNN reporter (see below) having to admit the error for the first time, as he awkwardly struggles to pretend that it's not the massive, horrific debacle that it so obviously is:
Dishonorable Mention:
Special mention:
- ABC News' Brian Ross is fired for reporting Trump told Flynn to make contact with Russians when he was still a candidate; in fact, Trump did that after he won.
- The New York Times c laimed Manafort provided polling data to Russian oligarch Oleg Deripaska, a person "close to the Kremlin"; in fact, he provided them to Ukrainians, not Russians.
- Crowdstrike, the firm hired by the DNC, claimed they had evidence that Russia hacked Ukrainian artillery apps; they then retracted it .
- Bloomberg and the WSJ reported Mueller subpoenaed Deustche Bank for Trump's financial records; the NYT said that never happened .
- Rachel Maddow devoted 20 minutes at the start of her show to very melodramatically claiming a highly sophisticated party tried to trick her by sending her a fake Top Secret document modeled after the one published by the Intercept, and said it could only have come from the U.S. Government (or the Intercept) since the person obtained the document before it was published by us and thus must have had special access to it; in fact, Maddow and NBC completely misread the metadata on the document ; the fake sent to Maddow was created after we published the document, and was sent to her by a random member of the public who took the document from the Intercept's site and doctored it to see if she'd fall for an obvious scam. Maddow's entire timeline, on which her whole melodramatic conspiracy theory rested, was fictitious.
- The U.S. media and Democrats spent six months claiming that all "17 intelligence agencies" agreed Russia was behind the hacks; the NYT finally retracted that in June, 2017: "The assessment was made by four intelligence agencies -- the Office of the Director of National Intelligence, the Central Intelligence Agency, the Federal Bureau of Investigation and the National Security Agency. The assessment was not approved by all 17 organizations in the American intelligence community."
- AP claimed on February 2, 2018, that the Free Beacon commissioned the Steele Dossier; they thereafter acknowledged that was false and noted, instead: "Though the former spy, Christopher Steele, was hired by a firm that was initially funded by the Washington Free Beacon, he did not begin work on the project until after Democratic groups had begun funding it."
- The national media have offered multiple, conflicting accounts of how and why the FBI investigation into Trump/Russia began.
- Widespread government and media claims that accused Russian agent Maria Butina offered "sex for favors" were totally false (and scurrilous).
- After a Russian regional jet crashed on February 11, 2018, shortly after it took off from Moscow, killing all 71 people aboard, Harvard Law Professor and frequent MSNBC contributor Laurence Tribe strongly implied Putin purposely caused the plane to go down in order to murder Sergei Millian, a person vaguely linked to George Papadopoulos and Jared Kushner; in fact, Millian was not on the plane nor, to date, has anyone claimed they had any evidence that Putin ordered his own country's civilian passenger jet brought down.
As I've said many times, the U.S. media has become quite adept at expressing extreme indignation when people criticize them; when politicians conclude that it is advantageous to turn the U.S. media into their main adversary; and when people turn to "fake news" sites.
If, however, they were willing to devote just a small fraction of that energy to examining their own conduct, perhaps they would develop the tools necessary to combat those problems instead of just denouncing their critics and angrily demanding that politicians and news consumers accord them the respect to which they believe they are entitled.
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Jan 20, 2019 | off-guardian.org
... ... ...
Trump has been a disappointment to his base and is yet to implement half the policies he discussed on the campaign trail, but he's not fully and totally being controlled by the warhawking Deep State yet, either. His policy of peace with North Korea and decisions to pull out of Syria and Afghanistan show that there is a tug-of-war ongoing inside the administration. It's probably no coincidence that this latest of many "bombshells" comes so quickly on the heels of Trump's announcement of the Syria withdrawal. Careful "leaks", planted stories and social media witch-hunts remind Trump how precarious his position is, whilst simultaneously distracting the public – both pro-Trump and anti-Trump – from real issues.
The case-specific "why?" doesn't matter so much as the general aim of this type of manipulation. The important question is: Why does the media tell lies if they know they will be revealed as such? Clearly, the lies serve a purpose, regardless of their retraction or qualification. Telling a lie loudly and then taking it back quietly is an old propaganda trick – it allows the paper to maintain a facade of "accountability".
The point of this practice is to propagate lies into the public consciousness. It's a method that can be used to distract and disseminate and divide. The accuracy of the statement is immaterial.
The point is, once it has been said it cannot be unsaid. There are countless examples: "Assange was working for Russia", "Trump ordered Cohen to lie to Congress", "Russia hacked the US election", "Donald Trump worked for the KGB", "Assad gassed his own people", "Jeremy Corbyn is an antisemite". The list goes on and on and on. None these have been proven. All were asserted without evidence, fiercely defended as facts, and then discretely qualified.
That is the purpose of "fake news", to forge the Empire's "created reality" , and force us all to live in it. These are world-shaping, policy-informing, news-dominating narratives and are nothing but feathers in the wind .
A perfect exemplar of this occurred just two days ago on the BBC's flagship Political debate show Question Time : me title= The (notionally impartial) host not only sided with right-wing author Isabel Oakeshott in criticising Labour's polling, but then joined in mocking the Labour MP Diane Abbott for attempting to correct the record. Both Oakeshott and Fiona Bruce, the host, were factually incorrect – as shown a hundred times over since. But that doesn't matter.
The lie was told, the audience laughed, the reality was created. "Labour are behind in the polls, anybody who says otherwise is a laughingstock" . The lie goes around the world while the truth is still putting its boots on. That's why fake news is so important to them, and so dangerous us.
Kit Knightly is co-editor of OffGuardian. The Guardian banned him from commenting. Twice. He used to write for fun, but now he's forced to out of a near-permanent sense of outrage.
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Jan 19, 2019 | www.moonofalabama.org
Putin Asks And Trump Delivers - A List Of All The Good Things Trump Did For Russia
Slate's Fred Kaplan writes :
The Washington Post's Greg Miller reported Sunday that President Donald Trump's confiscation of the translator's notes from a one-on-one conversation with Russian President Vladimir Putin in 2017 was "unusual." This is incorrect. It was unprecedented. There is nothing like it in the annals of presidential history.Not really. Other U.S. leaders held long private meetings with their counterparts without notes being taken.
When Richard Nixon met Leonid Brezhnev he did not even bring his own interpreter:
George Szamuely @GeorgeSzamuely - 20:57 utc - 14 Jan 2019Nixon would meet Brezhnev alone, the only other person in attendance being Viktor Sukhodrev, the Soviet interpreter. "Our first meeting in the Oval Office was private, except for Viktor Sukhodrev, who, as in 1972, acted as translator." Nixon on Brezhnev's 1973 visit. RN, p.878 . Therefore, the only "notes" that would exist would be those of the Soviet interpreter. Not sure he would have time to make notes and translate and, even if he did so, whether those notes would be housed in any US archive.
Nixon's White House office was bugged. There are probably tape recordings of the talks. There might also be recordings of the Trump-Putin talks.
At their 1986 Reykjavik summit Ronald Reagan and Mikhail Gorbachev talked without their notetakers :
Mr. Reagan and Mr. Gorbachev began their second day of talks with a private meeting that had been scheduled to last 15 minutes but ran for nearly 70 minutes, with only interpreters present . They met in a small room in the Soviet Mission , with the Soviet leader seated in a small armchair and Mr. Reagan on a sofa.In the afternoon, they meet alone for a little over 20 minutes and then again for 90 minutes. All told, the two leaders have spent 4 hours and 51 minutes alone , except for interpreters, over the two days here.
The archives of the Reykjavik talks do not include any notes of those private talks.
But, who knows, maybe Nixon and Reagan where also on the Russian payroll, just like Donald Trump is today.
biggerOnly that Trump is controlled by Putin can explain why the FBI opened a counter-intelligence investigation against Trump (see section three).
That the FBI agents involved in the decision were avid haters of Russia and of Trump has surely nothing to do with it. That the opening of a counter-intelligence investigation gave them the legal ability under Obama's EO12333 to use NSA signal intelligence against Trump is surely irrelevant.
What the FBI people really were concerned about is Trump's public record of favoring Russia at each and every corner.
Trump obviously wants better diplomatic relations with Russia. He is reluctant to counter its military might. He is doing his best to make it richer. Just consider the headlines below. With all those good things Trump did for Putin, intense suspicions of Russian influence over him is surely justified.
Trump obviously wants better diplomatic relations with Russia. He is reluctant to counter its military might. He is doing his best to make it richer. Just consider the headlines below. With all those good things Trump did for Putin, intense suspicions of Russian influence over him is surely justified.
- Trump deploys TANKS to Estonia as NATO builds up HUGE army on Russian border - Express, Feb 7 2017
- Trump launches attack on Syria with 59 Tomahawk missiles - CNBC, Apr 6 2017
- U.S. Rejects Exxon Mobil Bid for Waiver on Russia Sanctions - NYT, Apr 21 2017
- Trump to promote U.S. natgas exports in Russia's backyard - Reuters, Jul 3 2017
- Trump Urges East Europe to Loosen Russia's Grip With U.S. Gas - Bloomberg, Jul 6 2017
- Trump signs bill approving new sanctions against Russia - CNN, Aug 3, 2017
- Justice Dept Asks Russia's RT to Register as Foreign Agent - Newsmax, Sep 13 2017
- US 'to restrict Russian military flights over America' - Independent, Sep 26 2017
- Trump signs into law U.S. government ban on Kaspersky Lab software - Reuters, Dec 12 2017
- Trump gives green light to selling lethal arms to Ukraine - The Hill, Dec 20 2017
- U.S. Punishes Chechen Leader in New Sanctions Against Russians - NYT, Dec 20 2017
- Sputnik Partner 'Required To Register' Under U.S. Foreign-Agent Law - RFERL, Jan 10 2018
- Trump says Russia is helping North Korea avoid sanctions - CBSNews, Jan 17 2018
- Trump's 'energy dominance' strategy is undercutting Russia's influence and business in Europe - Reuters, Feb 9 2018
- Trump looks to deter Russia, China with $686B ask for Pentagon - The Hill, Feb 12 2018
- American General In Syria Confirms US Forces Killed Hundreds Of Russians In Massive Battle - The Drive, Mar 16 2018
- Trump orders expulsion of 60 Russian diplomats, closure of Seattle consulate - CBS, Mar 26 2018
- Trump vows periodical dispatch of US troops to Baltic states, step up air defense - Lithuania Tribune, Apr 3 2018
- Trump opposes Nord Stream II, questions Germany - AA, Apr 4 2018
- Trump just hit Russian oligarchs with the most aggressive sanctions yet - Vice, Apr 6 2018
- Trump orders missile strike on Syria military targets - CBSNews, Apr 9 2018
- Aluminum Stocks Jump As Trump Sanctions Target Putin Pal - Investors, Apr 9 2018
- Russia 'deeply disappointed' at Trump's withdrawal from Iran deal - Times of Israel, May 9 2018
- Trump to NATO allies: Raise military spending to 4 percent of GDP - AlJazeerah, Jul 12 2018
- Trump says U.S. ties to NATO 'very strong' - Politico, Jul 12 2018
- U.S. to sanction Turkey for receiving S-400 missiles - Ahval, Jul 27 2018
- Trump administration to hit Russia with new sanctions for Skripal poisoning - NBC News Aug 8 2018
- Space Force Is Trump's Answer to New Russian and Chinese Weapons - FP, Aug 10 2018
- US Sanctions Chinese Entity Over Purchase of Russian Fighters, S-400s – Treasury - Sputnik, Sep 20 2018
- Trump hints at punitive action against India for buying S-400 from Russia - India Today, Oct 11 2018
- Trump Agrees to Boost Pentagon's Budget to $750 Bln in 2019 - Reports - Sputnik, Oct 12 2018
- Trump says US will withdraw from nuclear arms treaty with Russia - Guardian, Oct 21 2018
- Haley Condemns 'Outrageous' Russian Firing on Ukrainian Ships - Bloomberg, Nov 26 2018
- 2 Trump Moves Cost This Russian-American CEO $2.3B - Forbes, Jan 14 2019
When one adds up all those actions one can only find that Trump cares more about Russia, than about the U.S. and its NATO allies. Only with Trump being under Putin's influence, knowingly or unwittingly, could he end up doing Russia so many favors.
Not.
Posted by b at 02:12 PM | Comments (121)
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Jan 19, 2019 | www.moonofalabama.org
Sally Snyder , Jan 15, 2019 2:59:27 PM | link
As shown in this article, a recent Senate bill shows clearly how Washington has a two-faced approach when it comes to dealing with Russia and Syria:https://viableopposition.blogspot.com/2019/01/the-united-states-senate-saving-syria.html
Congress, with or without Donald Trump's influence, has proven that it simply doesn't care about the geopolitical repercussions of its actions.
Erelis , Jan 15, 2019 3:42:28 PM | link
A few more just for kicks.AshenLight , Jan 15, 2019 3:52:13 PM | link
- WAR READY: Trump deploys TANKS to Estonia as NATO builds up HUGE army on Russian border
https://www.express.co.uk/news/world/764014/Trump-US-military-Estonia-Nato-defence-Stoltenberg-Russia-border-Putin-threat- Tillerson. Oil. Russian dupe?
U.S. Rejects Exxon Mobil Bid for Waiver on Russia Sanctions
https://www.nytimes.com/2017/04/21/business/energy-environment/treasury-exxon-mobil-sanctions-waiver.html- U.S. reshaping budget to account for Russian military threat
https://www.reuters.com/article/us-usa-military-russia/u-s-reshaping-budget-to-account-for-russian-military-threat-idUSKBN13U0CX- RT and Sputnik forced to register as foreign agents.
Russia's RT America registers with DOJ as a foreign agent
http://money.cnn.com/2017/11/13/media/russia-rt-fara/index.html- What is happening at the UN with Trump's delegation?
Watch Nikki Haley's brutal takedown of Russia at the U.N.
http://theweek.com/speedreads/690467/watch-nikki-haleys-brutal-takedown-russia-un- Additional sanctions not under the old sanctions.
- U.S. Punishes Chechen Leader in New Sanctions Against Russians
https://www.nytimes.com/2017/12/20/us/politics/trump-sanctions-russia-chechnya.html- No more Russian flights over the US based on previous treaty US 'to restrict Russian military flights over America' Both Russia and the US are among the 34 signatories of the Treaty on Open Skies, which allows ratified member states to conduct unarmed aerial surveillance flights over each other's territory. The flights are intended to foster transparency about military activity. US officials are reportedly preparing to announce restrictions on Russian military flights over America. http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/americas/us-politics/us-russia-military-flights-america-planes-relations-washington-dc-moscow-trump-putin-nato-a7967496.html
- Kaspersky Labs banned. Trump signs into law U.S. government ban on Kaspersky Lab software https://www.reuters.com/article/us-usa-cyber-kaspersky/trump-signs-into-law-u-s-government-ban-on-kaspersky-lab-software-idUSKBN1E62V4 And this after Kaspersky helped the NSA find one major data breach. Russian firm that was barred from U.S. networks as a spy threat helped NSA nab suspect in massive breach
https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/national-security/russian-firm-barred-from-us-networks-as-a-spy-threat-helped-the-nsa-nab-suspect-in-massive-breach/2019/01/09/4cbae45e-141b-11e9-b6ad-9cfd62dbb0a8_story.html?utm_term=.a1c6bb2659ab- A Russian American was put on sanctions list based on Forbes list of Russian billionaires. This guy founded a high tech industrial laser company employing over a thousand American workers. Forbes realized they f'ed this guy over and took him off their Russian billionaire list. But too late--he remains sanctioned.
- 2 Trump Moves Cost This Russian-American CEO $2.3B https://www.forbes.com/sites/petercohan/2019/01/14/2-trump-moves-cost-this-russian-american-ceo-2-3b/#7dabae3f18af
@ NoOneYouKnow | Jan 15, 2019 2:20:33 PM | 2William Bowles , Jan 15, 2019 4:01:45 PM | linkIn my experience, just about everyone here, including hordes of supposedly educated people who really should know better, believe it. They really do. However, most of them don't care--it's merely something to snark about or score points in a political conversation with, not anything they perceive as an actual threat to their way of life.
It's nothing more than the undying legacy of anti-communism and racism thrown in for good measure. It echoes the German Nazis and their treatment of Slavs (slaves, unter menchen). We need only look at how the US viewed the Japanese (and the Germans) during WWII, with Roosevelt calling for their extermination (I'll find the source).Peter VE , Jan 15, 2019 4:12:40 PM | linkAnd of course, there's US slavery and extermination of the original inhabitants that also feeds into the psychosis.
But, Rachel Maddow told me that Trump is Putin's puppet. It was on TV, so it must be true.ashley albanese , Jan 15, 2019 4:19:37 PM | linkWilliam Bowles 8James sullivan , Jan 15, 2019 4:22:27 PM | linkLondon was said to be very subdued the day news came through that Sweden's Charles the twelfth had been crushed at Poltava in 1709 . North Western European economic interests have clashed with Russian across many centuries. Had Charles been successful in the Ukraine a new level of English and Swedish alliance was in the offing .
I just read about Trump's AG candidate, commenting on the 'Russian interference' in US elections ....and i'm struck that these are not stupid people....they are either totally IGNORANT of the facts and analysis .....or they are good ol boys, ready to tow the deep state lie, so they too can feed at the trough. It saddens me in either case ....what hope can one entertain when such cretins and low lifes are the supposed LEADERS of the democratic west. I hold no hopes.Jackrabbit , Jan 15, 2019 4:48:13 PM | linkProof by absurdity. Trump and Deep State work together. MAGA is a policy choice as much as it is a campaign slogan. Everyone wants to rail against the anti-Trump forces. Oh it feels so good. That Trump has proven to be a faux populist like Obama is ignored. WTF? Welcome to the rabbit hole.karlof1 , Jan 15, 2019 4:54:00 PM | linkI didn't live through the entire Anti-Communist Crusade, but was certainly cognitively aware of it from JFK's inauguration in 1961 until the USSR's dissolution. I very closely studied the events that led to an emergent Russian Federation and the device meant to corral the "Near-Abroad"--The Commonwealth of Independent States. Admittedly, I was somewhat horrified by Yeltsin's attack on Russia's Duma's White House in 1993 and eagerly read Kargalitsky's account as it was the only one written by a Parliamentarian in English and published in 1994. It was possible to discern the outright looting of Russia and former Soviet nations, but the depth of evil involved wasn't made clear until some publications in the late 1990s documenting the Rape of Russia; all of which made clear what the underlying intent of the Anti-Communist Crusade entailed, and that that Crusade wouldn't end until Russia was absolutely broken and enslaved by NATO/Outlaw US Empire. As many have opined, the Cold War/Anti-Communist Crusade never ended; rather, it just entered a new phase/chapter, and that's what we're living through today. But as b portrays, the level of hysterics paraded via BigLie Media go far beyond anything from the previous chapter and probably outweigh those employed during Red Scares I and II combined.Blooming Barricade , Jan 15, 2019 5:02:35 PM | linkIt seems fairly plain to see that delusional madness and anger have combined as the motivating factors, but why/what sparked them and when? IMO, when was during Carter's presidency with the why/what being several seemingly disparate but connected happenings: Church Committee Hearings; Stagflation; Iranian Islamic Revolution; OPEC actions; losing grip on Latin America; informal end to War on Poverty, and institution of Neoliberalism and Zerosumism; changing of Coldwarrior Guard to Israel First Coldwarrior Guard. The culmination was CIA gaining control of Executive with DCI GHW Bush becoming Veep to senile, dementia addled POTUS Reagan.
Interconnected with the above is the prepping of the World Trade Center buildings for demolition during Clinton's 2nd term, the operative question being: Would the False Flag be perpetrated by Gore/Liberman, or was Bush/Cheney deemed to do the deed by Deep State actors; or does this aspect even matter--Liberman was as much of a Neocon as Cheney, all 4 are Israel Firsters, and Gore was already a War Criminal due to his participation in Clinton's numerous illegalities. Sure, the Bush/Cheney cabal was more radical; but given what we observed during Clinton/Gore, Deep State support was quite abundant. The dismemberment of Yugoslavia was finished and Kosovo created, Afghanistan was already targeted and Joint Vision 2010 --the blueprint for the Outlaw US Empire's Full Spectrum Dominance Policy--was published in 1996. Interestingly, at no time known to me has the Policy articulated by the authors of Joint Vision 2010 or its update Joint Vision 2020 been announced by any POTUS or senior member of the Duopoly as THE #1 policy goal of the Outlaw US Empire despite both papers being available to the public. (If he were still alive, IF Stone would have written about both umpteen numbers of times; while true to form, BigLie media remains 100% mute.) Despite all the preparations and Trillions of dollars spent and looted, The failure to implement the Yinon Plan seems to be directed at Russia, although it was indigenous Iraqis who are responsible for the plan's defeat.
So, is the lying vitriol we're subjected to the result of Russian actions or the inability to attain the #1 policy goal due to mistakes made at all levels--Deep State and Federal Government? Recall that Russia/Putin didn't start to actively parry Outlaw Empire moves until 2008, well after the Yinon Plan's defeat by Iraqis.
This inane narrative has gone too far. It's actually threatening chances for human survival with its nationalism, poor focus, and banality:Anon , Jan 15, 2019 5:08:17 PM | link--
"The key focus of the so-called "left" in the world's most polluting country, run by an ecocidal vandal who deserves to be in the running for most destructive rulers of all time, is whether or not that vandal is taking orders from the Russian Federation.
Let me repeat that: in the most wasteful society in human history, the forces designated to oppose the rape of the planet and corporate slavery are concerned with treason and betrayal of the "nation."
MSNBC: "The worst case scenario that we`ve all been talking about, which is the possibility that the president had somehow been co-opted and was in the pocket of the Russians."
THIS is the "worst case scenario" according to the "social justice" network of the American "left?"
If we were to step back and look at this terrible situation honestly, we could only conclude that American liberals, and the Democratic Party, are right-wing nationalist forces concerned with geopolitical gambits and preservation of military alliances.
This isn't the politics of 2019, or 1999. It's the politics of 1819 - but even then, it's the right wing politics of 1819, as there was already a left dedicated to popular solidarity and social ownership existing, clandestinely, in the shadows of European cities.
It's worth analyzing how a "Seattle" would play out if it were to occur in the context of today's US political discourse: the protestors would be seen as nationalist anti-Semites doing the bidding of Putin, and perhaps Xi Jinping. The leaking of the Multilateral Agreement on Investment would be condemned instantly as "information warfare." A focus on environmental issues would be viewed in the context of "energy geopolitics." Indymedia would be shut down by the authorities as a vehicle for "sowing discord" in Europe against NATO and liberalism."
The current round of bullshit is not about justifying the investigation, it is about concealing MI6 taking a leading role in the attempted coup.james , Jan 15, 2019 5:09:32 PM | link@14 karlof1... good post.. i don't know the answer to your questions, but it seems like a bit of both but mostly the later... i am unaware of this joint vision 2010 paper..bevin , Jan 15, 2019 5:15:14 PM | linkAs b points out, and Erelis @6, among others confirms, Kaplan's article in Slate is worthless. Discredited by everything that has happened over the past two years.Jared , Jan 15, 2019 8:06:04 PM | linkThe question is whether it matters. Who reads Slate? Are those who follow Kaplan anything more than partisans, far beyond the reach of logical argument, committed to the Zionist project and US hegemony, who read him for comfort and laughs rather than critically.
Kaplan, after twenty odd years of consistently being wrong and consistently impelling the United States into foreign disasters, costly in lives and treasure, is a busted flush politically. The only people his ravings effect are the true believers who are simply looking for someone to articulate their idiotic prejudices.
This, after all is a man whose wife, an Obama/ Clinton favourite, parodying Marie Antionette, midwifed the Bandera Reich in Kiev.
There is little point in arguing with him, just feed him ever more rope and he will hang himself, his spouse, his country(s) and the Ukraine and its allies too.
Given the part we know about how self serving, corrupt and incompetent our IC is I fear it is the tip of the iceberg. So many decades they have learned they can do as they will with impunity. If I am not mistaken they are partly self financing through likely illegal and unethical activities. They have gone rogue. Currently the dems think it's fitting however they will also feel the bite. How will we ever gain control of our country.karlof1 , Jan 15, 2019 8:29:05 PM | linkWhich are more salient--domestically: The attacks on Russia or those against Trump? Lots of Trumpian, GOP and Corporate Democrat policy ploys go against the majority of the polity and the National Interest. Unfortunately, the bloc known as the Resistance includes a 5th Column consisting of most Corporate Democrats, who are essentially Republicans wearing donkey heads. BigLie Media wants to promote the GOP & Corporate Democrat policy ploys, so the anti-Russian news assault serves to cover-up popular domestic issues, like this one regarding taxation and related income disparity . (Amazing that 60 Minutes provided Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez airtime to outline her proposals--airtime that was meant to cut her down to size but backfired.)slit , Jan 15, 2019 11:16:29 PM | linkAs I outlined earlier, what I see as the struggle is for control of the Federal Government--CIA/Deep State vs the American People--with the Anti-Communist Crusade used as cover to diminish rights while enriching actors controlling government, which is exactly what we see now. Yes, Trump's a player, but with few friends and little coaching. Arguably, his only asset is the position he occupies.
Peter Ve @9Heres another cartoon meme that was doing the rounds in 2016:
https://pics.onsizzle.com/donald-trump-is-putins-puppet-the-puppeteer-red-panels-com-5254201.png
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Jan 17, 2019 | discussion.theguardian.com
The neoliberalism of the Democratic Party elite (and most of the rank and file) is one big factor in our 2016 loss. Even voters too ignorant to see Trump for what he really was - voters that are misinformed to the point that they unwittingly and continually vote against their own best interests - realized how much the Dems have sold out to Wall Street.Canuckistan , 15 Jan 2019 09:30HRC would have been nominated in '08 if she had kissed more Wall Street you-know-what. That's why they anointed Obama who then proceeded to squander eight years of opportunity to remove big money from politics and enact progressive reforms to health care, the environment, etc.
Bernie is a bit long in the tooth, so I am all in for Liz Warren. She's the only one with both the courage and the intelligence to take on the big money that controls our politics.
Therefore, you can expect the Russian trolls to be coming for her in force. If you read anything negative about Warren in the coming months, check the source and don't trust the accuracy.
Sanders or Warren would mean a change from neoliberal war mongering of the Clinton/W model. If the Democrats offer up another Clintonite they will lose. They need to offer something positive to the 90% who have lost the last 40 years of class war.
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Jan 17, 2019 | discussion.theguardian.com
JumpingSpider -> BluebellWood , 29 Nov 2018 13:34
Here are some articles about them.Para from one of these articles:
Broadly, authoritarianism is the desire to impose one's own worldview on others in one's society by institutionalized coercion. Authoritarians, therefore, see punishment as an appropriate response when members of the group with which they identify [...] diverge too far from values that the authoritarian believes are best for society – even if the punished person has neither caused direct harm to another nor infringed another's rights.
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Jan 17, 2019 | discussion.theguardian.com
TempsdesRoses , 15 Jan 2019 08:47
Yep,Brassic , 15 Jan 2019 08:21
The party has circled its wagons.
They insist that the Evil Vlad stole the last election.
Therefore, no need to examine Obama's centrist/neoliberal policies and the socio-economic conditions that fueled the rejection of Hillary.
We're doomed to repeat our errors.The farcical DNC leadership echoes the days of Brezhnev's intransigent politburo.
Excellent article. Thank you.This is the realistic perspective we have to adopt in the US: the Democratic establishment is part of the neoliberal machinery that has generated Bush's wars, Obama's bank bailouts, deportations, and drone executions, and now Trump's anti-democratic populism.
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Jan 17, 2019 | discussion.theguardian.com
cagnusdei -> cagnusdei , 15 Jan 2019 10:53
In regards to the Hillary v Bernie question, it also didn't help that the primary vote was wildly skewed by so-called 'superdelegates,' who don't actually commit their votes until the DNC convention, but were being counted by the media as having already voted for Hillary, which made it appear to many of the uninformed that Bernie didn't have any chance of winning, which may have been intended to keep Bernie supporters home on primary day under the assumption that Hillary was unbeatable.ehmaybe -> HobbesianWorlds , 15 Jan 2019 10:52As sensible as your suggestions may be, what you're calling for would require at least three constitutional amendments to be practical - including scrapping the first amendment.cagnusdei -> lullu616 , 15 Jan 2019 10:50Maybe we should strive towards attainable goals instead?
Didn't help that the ostensibly neutral DNC was sending emails saying that they should play up Bernie Sanders' Jewish faith (among other attack strategies), fed debate questions to the Clinton campaign or tried to limit opportunities for Bernie and Hillary to share a stage together.ConBrio -> cnzewi , 15 Jan 2019 10:45Bernie Sanders is widely considered by many to be one of the most popular American politicians, more than Trump and certainly more popular than Hillary. I think an interesting phenomenon to notice is the lengths the GOP, in particular, will go to in order to convince the average voter that anything that cuts taxes is inherently good for the 'little guy,' while anything that raises taxes is bad. Trump's recent tax cuts are a good example. Most of the actual cuts go toward the corporations and ultra-wealthy, which just increases the deficit while shifting the proportion of taxes paid onto the middle class. It's a con that many Americans are inexplicably susceptible to believing, for some reason.
memo10 -> GRBnative , 15 Jan 2019 10:34Progressive believe in inclusion and if that is "moralistic rhetoric" then so be it.
The litany goes "round and round.
Hillary Clinton:
" you could put half of Trump's supporters into what I call the basket of deplorables. Right? The racist, sexist, homophobic, xenophobic, Islamaphobic -- you name it!
"Barack Obama:
"Referring to working-class voters in old industrial towns decimated by job losses, the presidential hopeful said: "They get bitter, they cling to guns or religion "
There's liberal "inclusion" for you!
Bernie's bid was crushed by Clinton's superdelegates. No amount of throwing money against him in the direct sense was doing any good. He took popular positions on issues and stubbornly stayed on-message.
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Jan 17, 2019 | discussion.theguardian.com
JulesBywaterLees -> Zagradotryad , 29 Nov 2018 08:29
Managerialism is a state of European/Western politics, power has moved to large corporations. In 2008 the finance industry held countries to ransom...Zagradotryad , 29 Nov 2018 08:03power that has become too distant from the people.
That's the problem.
It's not technology, or Russians, or Trump or any other of the things you throw up to convince yourself the problem is external.
Managerialism has merely delivered gross inequality. The tools don't matter.
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Jan 16, 2019 | theguardian.com
William Williamson, 15 Jan 2019 10:38
Well put. All the USA has is Coke or Pepsi. With a lot of masquerading in between. A couple people who aren't on THE payroll, or wanting to be.MyGenericUsername , 15 Jan 2019 07:38Half of Americans don't bother voting for president. Why is the American media full only of people who insist that the country is divided in half between Democrat and Republican supporters? Where are the people of influence who think it's a problem and reflects poorly on the country that half of eligible voters don't see a reason to participate, and that it's worth changing things in order to get more people to change their minds about that?CanSoc , 15 Jan 2019 07:34Both parties are content with being unpopular, but with political mechanisms ensuring they stay in power anyway. The Democrats aren't concerned with being popular. They're content with being a token opposition party that every once in a while gets a few token years with power they don't put to any good anyway. It pays more, I guess.
It still looks like if Americans want to live in a progressive country, they'll have to move to one. But as it is clear that the neoliberalism of establishment Democrats has little or nothing to offer the poor and working class, or to non-wealthy millennials, the times they are a-changing.
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Jan 17, 2019 | discussion.theguardian.com
RogerPalmer -> 5nufk1n4prez , 29 Nov 2018 07:30
True but incredibly naive.The rise of National Socialism in Germany in the 30s had many causes and some surprising supporters.
Part of the problem was undeniably the crippling reparations for WWI forced on Germany by the victorious allies.
Part of the problem was communism strengthening in Russia and a growing communist threat in Germany.
Part of the problem was a desire by the entrenched elites to use the National Socialists as a counter to challenge the populism of the communism.
There are many contributing factors and the responsibility for the Nazis reaches far beyond the German border.
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Jan 17, 2019 | discussion.theguardian.com
Selousscout1 , 29 Nov 2018 12:20
''Tis booming because the left/liberal/metropolitan muesli crunching elites (and I include the Tories in that) who have reigned disdainfully over us since the Second World War have ignored our fears over mass immigration and the changing of our established traditions and cultures. They have also connived in the insanity of insisting every hair brained liberal idea is worthy of being protected by the human rights legislative farce. Rapists being offered a say in the upbringing of their issue, school uniforms being dragged into law and a thousand and other one 'special issues' to a tiny minority being rammed down the throats of the fed up majority at every opportunity by activists.
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Jan 17, 2019 | discussion.theguardian.com
DanInTheDesert -> Tiny Toy , 29 Nov 2018 15:20
But that's the point, isn't it? That populist has been so vaguely defined that it encompasses anything the authors don't like. It's a straw man, a pejorative.lagoalberche , 29 Nov 2018 15:00Populism is a belief in the goodness of people, a belief that masses make better decisions than elites and that the the rule of the elite come at the expense of the demos.
It's a term synonymous with grassroots, popular democracy. Proponents of elite rule with reductionistic views democracy (rule with the consent of the governed and all that trash) call their grassroots opponents 'populists' in attempt to tie them to strong men.
Signed, a left populist.
Noam Chomsky has a view on this issue and I am inclined to think he has a better understanding of it than the author of this piece.DanInTheDesert , 29 Nov 2018 12:06Chomsky rejects the term "populism" in this matter and offers, instead, the proposal that ;
"Working people are turning against elites and dominant institutions that have been punishing them for a generation"
The theory of 'cause and effect' seems eminently more sensible to me than the shrill cries of "It was the internet wot dun it"
The elites and dominant institutions that Chomsky refers to ( including mainstream media ) precipitated the current shift and would do better to acknowledge the part they played in it, rather than insult and demean the consequential reaction of people on the receiving end of it.
Before people get out the pitchforks and burn the populists in effigy, perhaps we could hear from some left populists?AnglophileDe -> JulesBywaterLees , 29 Nov 2018 11:39https://www.truthdig.com/articles/elites-no-credibility-left-interview-journalist-chris-hedges /
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CA7NA2TgXBQ&feature=youtu.be
The enemy is not populism, it's the right's capture of the populist narrative. Trump is a faux populist that has nothing but disdain for the people he employs and the people rules.
Well, here's a very apposite quote:DanInTheDesert -> JulesBywaterLees , 29 Nov 2018 11:38The strain of anti-intellectualism has been a constant thread winding its way through our political and cultural life, nurtured by the false notion that democracy means that "my ignorance is just as good as your knowledge."
Isaac Asimov
"A Cult of Ignorance". Newsweek, January 21, 1980.Brian_Drain -> The_Common_Potato , 29 Nov 2018 11:38the very old school Christian conservative libertarians and old skool nutty right have seized on the success populist narrative has had in recent elections and referendum.
I would argue that is is because establishment figures in the Democratic party -- the New Democrats -- decided that the days of class struggle were over, that 'we are all capitalists now' and ceded the populist narrative to the right. Yes, this a populist moment and the question is not if we can reestablish faith in the elite but whether we can ensure that the new populism goes is a left rather than right direction.
I don't agree that populism lacks depth -- probably because when I think of populism I think of left populist intellectuals like Friere, Martin-Baro and the like who thought that democracy should be built on the virtues of the people.
The occupy movement was a populist movement. It said we, the people on the ground, know better than the elites in the towers. It made decisions democratically, this in stark contrast to the hierarchical structures of decision making exercised by the financial elite. I think populism, or grassroots, popular democracy has intellectual depth and sophistication. Take a look a the writing of Sheldin Wolin, Noam Chomsky, Chris Hedges, David Graeber . . .
I don't agree with most of the definitions of populism we've been offered -- I think they are little more that pejoratives dressed in academic language and have as much depth as the right's favored "snowflake" pejorative.
I remember watching 'Tomorrows World' ' in the 1970s and they showed us an unpuncturable cycle tyre that would last 25,000 miles.BluebellWood -> CheshireSalt , 29 Nov 2018 11:30
The patent was bought by Europe's largest cycle tyre manufacturer, and AFAIK that was the last ever heard of it.
If that happened why is the water fuel idea so fanciful?
If you inject water into the inlet port or combustion chamber of a petrol engine, compression ratios, power output and efficiency can be raised dramatically, this has been known since WW1 and was employed in high altitude aero engines during WW2, yet has never been taken up by any major car manufacturer as far as I know, why?
So the notion that inventions could be suppressed for commercial reasons is really not fanciful at all, it would make less sense for such technology, if it existed, to be made altruistically available on a single purchase basis than to shitcan it.But who are the 'liberal elite' exactly?JulesBywaterLees -> Albert Ravey , 29 Nov 2018 11:28As far as I can see, our country has been ruled by a right-wing, monied elite for many years- not a 'liberal' one. Liberals at least tend to think in terms of economic equality and social freedoms, whatever their other faults might be.
But many working class and middle class people still carry on voting Tory even though it's against their own interests.
We don't have a 'liberal elite' in the UK. We still have the old-fashioned right wing Tory elite in power based on class and wealth. Why 'liberals' get all the abuse these days is beyond me.
(I'm a socialist, btw.)
I'm researching populism on youtube - and it is seedy- and I have yet to turn on the FB news feed, but the algorithms do support populism- watch a PragerU video and the feed is full of other rightwing nonsense.fredmb -> BluebellWood , 29 Nov 2018 11:25
And all of it has the same empty lines.I watched the Oxford Union Steve Bannon address- and it could have come from a left winger- the globalised corporate world has abandoned the little guy, and Trump is fixing it.
The on message is the MSM is lying
PC and activists are totalitarian = commies
either capitalism or socialism [commies] = freedom vs enslavementand an over whelming anti intellectualism - where have we heard that before.
True but there is still a case for having decent housing etc and training our own professionals as well and not hollow out professionals from less advantaged countries. When we took hundreds of nurses from the Philippines in 2000 and whole clinics there had to shut to terrible detriment of ill locals
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Jan 17, 2019 | discussion.theguardian.com
"But populism has two chief characteristics. First, it offers immediate and supposedly obvious answers to complicated problems, which usually blame some other group along the way."HippoMan -> PSmd , 29 Nov 2018 08:30I think this point (simple solutions to complex problems) is often overstated. If you take the issue of immigration (an issue that has fuelled populism) , it actually shouldn't necessarily be that difficult to bring the number of new immigrants down, except that the political and media establishment pretend that it is.
Take Trump's plan to build a wall on the Mexican border. I see absolutely nothing wrong with this as it is ultimately every country's prerogative to defend its borders.
Ditto for intra-EU immigration (perhaps the main reason for Brexit): the EU acts as if this principle of free movement is sacred, but why should that be the case? Or Germany, where I live, where the constitution guarantees a right to asylum for those seeking refuge in the country. Again, this is spoken of as though it were cast in stone, when it really shouldn't be that difficult to amend. So I don't necessarily believe that solutions to problems always have to be difficult and complicated.
I agree that advances in people's abilities to interact with greater numbers of other people tend to usher in periods of social upheaval. A lot of the current nationalistic, anti-foreigner sentiments are the result of our initial reactions against unfamiliar influences coming from groups with whom we previously had relatively little contact.
Brexit, "Make America Great Again", and similar movements are the collective screams of resistance against dealing with unfamiliarity, learning new things, and growing. Over time, we will adapt, but this will probably require a generation or so, at minimum.
Of course, given the high pace of technological change, we are likely to be collectively bonded together even more tightly before we are able to adapt to the current state of the world. It won't be long before people will all be interconnected via implants, which means that each and every thing we do and every emotion we have will be sent out over the net.
It will be a brave new world.
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Jan 17, 2019 | discussion.theguardian.com
JulesBywaterLees -> Jason1925 , 29 Nov 2018 07:50
the wiki page is a bit more expansive you should try reading it.Populism is a range of political approaches that deliberately appeal to "the people," often juxtaposing this group against a so-called "elite." There is no single definition of the term, which developed in the 19th century and has been used to mean various things since that time. Few politicians or political groups describe themselves as "populists", and in political discourse the term is often applied to others pejoratively. Within political science and other social sciences, various different definitions of populism have been used, although some scholars propose rejecting the term altogether.
The left is also guilty of populist ideas- blaming the rich, or banking [when in the UK we get a lot of tax from international banking as a service].
The right has just seized on populism and mainly through social media- brexit and trump are proof its works- but the people behind the populist message are the same old tired neo con christian right of the Reagan era and the sad old far right conspiracy nut jobs. Their message failed in the past- but people like Rees-mogg can now seize on this technique.
Your misunderstanding of what socialism means indicates you swallow the new right wing propaganda. Poorly funded education will result in people without proper opportunity- S.Korea is not a socialist country but they spend a huge amount on education and reap the rewards. But they have a culture where children doing well academically is praised but can also have negative pressure consequences.
It is complicated and worth discussion but populism wants the easy message.
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Jan 17, 2019 | discussion.theguardian.com
Writeangle , 29 Nov 2018 07:19
One of the better reports on populism I've see recently is ''European Disunion'' by Yascha Mounk, a lecturer on government at Harvard https://newrepublic.com/article/143604/european-disunion-rise-populist-movements-means-democracy .kbg541 , 29 Nov 2018 06:59
A analysis by Harvard ''Trump, Brexit, and the Rise of Populism: Economic Have-Nots and Cultural Backlash'' found that the primary factor driving populism is a cultural backlash i.e. against [neo]liberal policies and immigration.Populism is growing because wealth is being concentrated into the hands of the wealthy, at the expense of everyone else.Candidly -> 5nufk1n4prez , 29 Nov 2018 06:54Generations, instead of doing better, through working are doing worse because governments are allowing individuals and corporations to reduce terms and conditions of the workforce.
Twenty years ago, many UK workers had company pension schemes and jobs that paid the rent & bills. Now, the pensions have largely dried up and as housing has got more expensive, and incomes have shrunk.
Those at the top are pushing those beneath them closer to a bowl of rice a day, and shrug at the social consequences as inevitable - and a necessary step to protect shareholder values and profits.
In essence, it is the same situation that gave rise to populism in the thirties.
Who do you blame for the fact that house prices have gone up?
Who do you blame for the fact that your pension is going to be smaller than your parents'?
Thing is the populist politicians are the very same people who cut your pension and made money out of it. They just want you to blame someone else.
The Long Read: https://www.theguardian.com/news/2018/nov/29/why-we-stopped-trusting-elites-the-new-populism
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Jan 17, 2019 | discussion.theguardian.com
Albert Ravey , 29 Nov 2018 10:45
Some highlights from this thread (no names, no pack drill):TheBorderGuard -> SomlanderBrit , 29 Nov 2018 10:44Populism is a kickback and correction to the forty years of political correctness where the white masses of Europe and America were forbidden by the liberal establishment to be their real selves
People are fed up with the elite consensus because of the failures of the elites.
Perhaps the reason that "populism" is thriving is that the liberal elites who ruled us in the entire post war period became complacent out of touch with those they were meant to represent.
there are millions of others whose voices have been ignored or silenced by the mainstream news
We are disenfranchised by what the elites are saying because the elites control the narrative in a way that makes sure the power will always reside with them.
The MSM has always been biased-
Why is democracy booming the article asks.
Well because the lies and bullshit of the liberal elite are there for all to see.Take a look at what the MSM refuses to report, or what it deliberately distorts,
You can see the problem. It's like they are all reading from the same limited script which has been handed to them. Given the freedom to express our opinions, we are regurgitating what someone else has told us to say.
Maybe we should not be too pessimistic. The levels of opportunity for expression that the internet and social media have given us might currently have exceeded our ability to think critically about whatever bullshit we are being fed, but future generations may be better. After all, it's only a small step from doubting whatever mainstream thought tells you, to starting to wonder who is telling you to doubt those things and why and then to actually go back and think for yourself about the issues.
TheBorderGuard , 29 Nov 2018 10:43... the white masses of Europe and America were forbidden by the liberal establishment to be their real selves.
Lifted straight from the pages of the Völkischer Beobachter , I suspect.
Some people are more attracted to certainties than subtleties -- and I suspect such people are ideologues in general and populists in particular.DanInTheDesert , 29 Nov 2018 09:46Sigh.So Corbyn and Trump are the same because they both have shirts. Well, color me convinced!
Like so many of these articles -- including the long but uninformative 'long read' on the same topic -- there is no mention of the failures of the elites.
Clinton sold us a false bill of goods. The Washington Consensus on economics would make the country richer and, after some 'pain', would benefit the working class. Sure you wouldn't be making cars but after some retraining you would work in tech.
This was a broken promise -- de industrialization has devastated the upper midwest. The goods are made in China and the money goes to Bezos. People are rightly upset.
The Washington Consensus on war sold us a false bill of goods. Instead of peace through strength we have seen a century of endless conflict. We have been caught in state of constant killing since 2001 and we are no safer for it. Indeed the conflicts have created new enemies and the only solution on offer is a hair of the dog solution.
People are fed up with the elite consensus because of the failures of the elites. Nowhere are the repeated failures of the elites, the decades of broken promises mentioned in the articles. Instead, those of us who prefer Sanders to Clinton, Corbyn to Blair are mesmerized by emotional appeals and seduced by simplistic appeals to complex problems. And they wonder why we don't accept their analyses . . .
TL;DR -- clickbait didn't get us here. The broken promises of the Washington consensus did.
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Jan 17, 2019 | discussion.theguardian.com
FallenApple , 29 Nov 2018 06:48
My Oxford English Dictionary defines a populist as "a member of a political party seeking to represent the interests of ordinary people."samuelbear , 29 Nov 2018 06:22Sounds good to me.
So why is "populist" now used as a derogatory term and populism seen as something to be feared?
Part of this is that government and the MSM realise that developments brought by internet means that they have lost control of the narrative.
Once only government pronouncements or newspaper commentary and propaganda could shape our views.
Newspapers in the UK could more or less bring down a government, such was their influence on the electorate.
Now we can search out information on the internet, fact-check for ourselves, listen to whom we want, and read a whole range of arguments and views.
No wonder the establishment is horrified and looking for ways to censor and control content available online!
Why is populism booming asks the writer - simple, because people feel that no-one's listening. Can it really be a surprise to The Guardian Opinion writers that people who have a zero hours contract, pay a high rent and have little job security won't vote for more of the same?
It's not a question as the writer suggests of 'if this wave of populism drifts into authoritarianism or worse' it's more a question of when - and when it does the liberal left will still be asking themselves - why?
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Jan 17, 2019 | discussion.theguardian.com
GBM1982 -> honeytree , 29 Nov 2018 10:25
I've grown very sceptical over the years about the whole issue of asylum. To me, the idea that an individual can cross a border illegally without a visa, or without even a passport, and then suddenly become quasi legal be declaring that they wish to seek asylum is a bit of a farce. The situation becomes even more farcical when failed asylum seekers still aren't deported. As for humanitarian and ethical obligations, I don't really buy into that either because the demographics of the world are such that the West is at risk of losing its very identity if it feels "obliged" to accept everyone seeking asylum and/or work from the world's more troubled regions. I see the admission of refugees as a generous gesture, not as an obligation.
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Jan 16, 2019 | discussion.theguardian.com
Tiny Toy , 15 Jan 2019 11:35"... That will allow capitalists to focus their attention on candidates such as Bernie Sanders and Elizabeth Warren, who have shown a real willingness to abandon the traditional coziness of the Democratic party with the finance, insurance and real estate industries ......".Yes and who's been on the end of media hit pieces recently? Not Booker, Harris, Gillibrand and the like but Sanders, Warren and Gabbard.
I like Tulsi Gabbard a lot. She knew that Hillary Clinton was a real menace so she not only endorsed Bernie Sanders but quit her vice-chair post at the DNC in order to do so since the DNC laws insisted that the DNC stay neutral (if only she knew then what we know now). Also, it will be delicious to watch the Hillary mouthpieces and stooges - who contended that any criticism of Hillary Clinton was just down to her being female - attackdog Tulsi Gabbard, oblivious to their rancid hypocrisy.
There actually is plenty to go on - Gabbard's links to Modi; her past comments about guns, about immigration, about gay rights when she was under the wing of her Dad's jaundiced outlook and her appalling comments about torture and that fictional 'ticking time bomb' scenario - but that's as nothing (and a lot of it probably has crossover appeal and shows an independent mind) compared to Hillary's decades of moral bankruptcy. Yet critiques of Clinton were inherently sexist, apparently.
They've never forgiven Gabbard for her righteous stand against the moral hazard of the Clintons. I think, and as others have said, that she's probably running for vice-president, at best, or to lay the groundwork for future runs and/or obtain a cabinet position. For 2020, Democrats will make it their business to take her down after they've invalidated Bernie Sanders. The current trick is beautiful in its simplicity. They shriek that Sanders will be divisive and their shrieking will be proof of that contention: quod erat demonstrandum. Sanders and Gabbard would have a much, much easier time in the general election than in the 'kill switch' Democratic primaries. Those primaries will be brutal beyond belief.
Warren's got many bridges and fences to mend with the US left but I think that she knows and that's why she's declared early. I think that she'll be the last progressive standing; that she should run with Sanders as her vice-president for 2020 and then with the now-of-age Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez as vice-president for her second term.
Tulsi Gabbard for president! Nobody's perfect but at least she isn't a lawyer!memo10 -> TempsdesRoses , 15 Jan 2019 11:25memo10 -> BoneyOCoonassa , 15 Jan 2019 10:58ID,
Could you be a conservative projecting your desire for the Dems to select a more conservative candidate?A progressive would stomp Trump in the rust belt if they ran on the issues where the public agrees with progressives. Medicare for all. No more bullshit foreign wars. Do something about higher education cost/debt. Decriminalize low-level pot offenses. Etc.
All it takes is disobeying the laws that corporate/Wall Street write for Dem candidates.
HobbesianWorlds , 15 Jan 2019 10:37I'm sure Wall Street will be quite happy to see the Republicans face some purer-than-pure left wing candidate at the next Presidential election.
Bernie would have cleaned Trump's clock in the 2016 general election and Wall Street knows it.
Trump would get curb-stomped by a genuinely left and competent candidate. It's the standard issue GOP-Lite Democrat that will have a harder time against him (although probably still win).
The best way to determine if one claims to be a Progressive is to fact-check the candidate's claim.BaronVonAmericano , 15 Jan 2019 10:37The first and foremost question that should be asked and researched: Does this candidate have as one of his or her top priorities to eliminate corporate/private/labor money in politics? This would require a major federal campaign finance reform law that would establish public funding for all campaigns, permanently bar corporate/labor union/private-entity money (including funding media-attack ads) from any political influence and require all broadcast/cable networks to allow every candidate equal air time to state his opinions, policies, promises, and to state why he believes he is the best candidate for the working class and/or corporations.
As well, such a law should permanently eliminate the revolving door through which many politicians scamper to become a lobbyist for Wall Street after he "retires" from politics and the law should block all former lobbyists from running for an office that would have a bearing on legislation that would affect the corporation for which he or she worked.
As well, such a law should bar any politicians or family members from purchasing or selling stocks in corporate entities that would be affected by the legislation on which the politician is working (insider trading).
Think about it. The lure of big bucks can, and does, corrupt politicians such that they will work mainly for the donor (corporate, labor, and/or private) and provide for just enough benefit politicians' the voters (America's working class) to make them think he cares most about them. Much of that money is hidden in super-pacs where the donor's identity is hidden. Too, super-pacs would have to be eliminated.
A Progressive should advocate for a large infrastructure project . Our bridges and highways are now in a state of disrepair. Other nations such as Japan now have high-speed bullet trains, the fastest so far is Shanghai Maglev and can travel 267.8 mph. The U.S. has none.
Poverty would be a major focus of Progressives. Corporations will pay as little as they can get by paying. So there must be a minimum wage boost to a living wage. To keep corporations from moving to a part-time labor force with less pay, part-time workers must make the same hourly wage as full time workers. As well, universal, proactive healthcare must become law (Medicare for all).
Another major way to eliminate poverty would be to reform the income tax structure such that those individuals whose income exceeds ~$10 million would be taxed at 70%. I would also suggest that every dollar exchanged on the Stock Exchange would be taxed at 3%.
Using a greater influx of money into the public coffers, education should be a top priority for lawmakers. College tuition in public schools would be no cost, thus providing completely tuition free higher education and allowing every student equal access. A major bill should be passed to provide money to modernize/upgrade all secondary schools to provide a better learning environment for study. Every primary school should have a child psychologist on staff. Every High School a psychologist as well as every public college.
There are other Progressive policies--such as reversing the conservative's trickle-down economics (also called supply-side economics) such that we return to demand-side economics--that would be highly beneficial to the working class and to the future intellectual strength of the U.S., especially by providing a course structure that equips students to face the quick shift of industry to electronics and robotics. Currently, those will little technical training are being left behind. We must end this or face a HUGE poorly educated working class that will have no place to work.
Quite likely, both the RNC and the DNC (Wall Street's favorite politicians) will be against such measures. They'd rather have more billionaires and an unfettered Wall Street than eliminate poverty. The only way, however, to have a truly just society is to push for and vote for a progressive government. But before any of the above can happen, we MUST eliminate corporate/private/labor money from our government.
The money is to ensure the rich do well whoever wins the general.They do the same in congressional races. If the Democrats who win the primaries are in their pocket, it doesn't matter who wins the general .
Wall Street gives money to the Dems not to help Dems win; it's to make sure Wall Street doesn't lose.
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Jan 16, 2019 | discussion.theguardian.com
Atlant -> partoftheproblem , 15 Jan 2019 09:55
Matthew Hartman -> Atlant , 15 Jan 2019 08:00If he can only succeed in a positive environment then there's not much hope for him, he needs to be able to fight and prove he's got what it takes. As it is I'm not sure he's got it.
That's not what I said at all and you know it.
Last time, the only stories that the NYTimes and (mostly) the Guardian could manage to run were Bernie-negative stories. The NYTimes has already begun the exact same campaign for the 2020 cycle. By comparison, the Guardian has been providing balanced Bernie coverage.
Do not count on the mainstream media to support him. They're already hard at work smearing him and he hasn't even announced yet. Half the time they dont even mention him as being a likely contender. It's Biden all day, all night. Might as well be Hillary again.Expect 2020 to be quite contentious, possibly even more than 2016. That just means as a supporter of Bernie you'll have to work twice, maybe three times as hard. The corporate media is going to suppress and challenge him as much as possible. They don't even mask it anymore.
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Jan 16, 2019 | profile.theguardian.com
ChesBay -> KMdude 15 Jan 2019 10:07
That is why we need a Constitutional amendment to get the money OUT of politics. Make bribery illegal. THEN, we will not need Wall Street, which doesn't serve MOST of the population of this country, and is mostly responsible for the wealth gap and lack of opportunities for most of the population.ChesBay , 15 Jan 2019 10:05I'm not fooled. These are not progressives, they are corporatists, beholden to their donors. They have no courage, no interest in serving their constituencies, but are only interested in the power and money. What our country , and the world, needs is radical change from the profit-first point of view. I won't support either one of them.William Anthony , 15 Jan 2019 09:28It comes as no surprise that Wall Street runs the US Government.Benito Mussolini defined fascism as "Barely able to slip a cigarette paper between business and government."
The US is a de-facto fascism.
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Jan 16, 2019 | discussion.theguardian.com
BaronVonAmericano , 15 Jan 2019 07:54
Surely, many will comment that Democrats have no choice but to take the money in order to be competitive. I have one truism for such folks to ponder: Why would you trust your allegiance to those who don't care if you win?Basic logic: rich people win the general election either way, so long as the primary-winning Democrat is in their pocket (the GOP is always on their side). So this monetary affection is certainly more about fixing an no-lose general than it is about ousting Trump, or any Republican.
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Jan 16, 2019 | discussion.theguardian.com
Tulsi Gabbard for president! Nobody's perfect but at least she isn't a lawyer!
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Jan 15, 2019 | discussion.theguardian.com
GuyCybershy -> -> BaronVonAmericano , 10 Dec 2016 17:0
"Truth is Treason in the Empire of Lies" - Ron Paulgreyford14 -> -> GuyCybershy , 10 Dec 2016 17:1Be careful there, Ron Paul is an FSB agent of Putin, according to the Washington Post.elias_ , 10 Dec 2016 17:0At least Tucker Carlson is able to see through the BS and asks searching question.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CRkeGkCjdHg
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Jan 14, 2019 | www.amazon.com
Amazon Customer 5.0 out of 5 stars October 2, 2018
Don't drink and readDon't drink wine and read this book, you'll get angry and make posts on social media that are completely accurate and your friends will hate you.
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Jan 11, 2019 | www.zerohedge.com
Authored by Caitlin Johnstone via Medium.com,
Earlier this week, President Donald Trump tweeted the following:
"Endless Wars, especially those which are fought out of judgement mistakes that were made many years ago, & those where we are getting little financial or military help from the rich countries that so greatly benefit from what we are doing, will eventually come to a glorious end!"
The tweet was warmly received and celebrated by Trump's supporters, despite the fact that it says essentially nothing since "eventually" could mean anything.
Indeed, it's looking increasingly possible that nothing will come of the president's stated agenda to withdraw troops from Syria other than a bunch of words which allow his anti-interventionist base to feel nice feelings inside. Yet everyone laps it up, on both ends of the political aisle, just like they always do:
- Trump supporters are acting like he's a swamp-draining, war-ending peacenik...
- ...his enemies are acting like he's feeding a bunch of Kurds on conveyor belts into Turkish meat grinders to be made into sausages for Vladimir Putin's breakfast, when in reality nothing has changed and may not change at all.
How are such wildly different pictures being painted about the same non-event? By the fact that both sides of the Trump-Syria debate have thus far been reacting solely to narrative.
This has consistently been the story throughout Trump's presidency: a heavy emphasis on words and narratives and a disinterest in facts and actions. A rude tweet can dominate headlines for days, while the actual behaviors of this administration can go almost completely ignored. Trump continues to more or less advance the same warmongering Orwellian globalist policies and agendas as his predecessors along more or less the same trajectory, but frantic mass media narratives are churned out every day painting him as some unprecedented deviation from the norm. Trump himself, seemingly aware that he's interacting entirely with perceptions and narratives instead of facts and reality, routinely makes things up whole cloth and often claims he's "never said" things he most certainly has said. And why not? Facts don't matter in this media environment, only narrative does.
Look at Russiagate. An excellent recent article by Ray McGovern for Consortium News titled "A Look Back at Clapper's Jan. 2017 'Assessment' on Russia-gate" reminds us on the two-year anniversary of the infamous ODNI assessment that the entire establishment Russia narrative is built upon nothing but the say-so of a couple dozen intelligence analysts hand-picked and guided by a man who helped deceive the world into Iraq, a man who is so virulently Russophobic that he's said on more than one occasion that Russians are genetically predisposed to subversive behavior.
That January 2017 intelligence assessment has formed the foundation underlying every breathless, conspiratorial Russia story you see in western news media to this very day, and it's completely empty. The idea that Russia interfered in the US election in any meaningful way is based on an assessment crafted by a known liar , from which countless relevant analysts were excluded, which makes no claims of certainty, and contains no publicly available evidence. It's pure narrative from top to bottom, and therefore the "collusion" story is as well since Trump could only have colluded with an actual thing that actually happened, and there's no evidence that it did.
So now you've got Trump being painted as a Putin lackey based on a completely fabricated election interference story, despite the fact that Trump has actually been far more hawkish towards Russia than any administration since the fall of the Soviet Union. With the nuclear brinkmanship this administration has been playing with its only nuclear rival on the planet, it would be so incredibly easy for Trump's opposition to attack him on his insanely hawkish escalation of a conflict which could easily end all life on earth if any little thing goes wrong, but they don't. Because this is all about narrative and not facts, Democrats have been paced into supporting even more sanctioning, proxy conflicts and nuclear posturing while loudly objecting to any sign of communication between the two nuclear superpowers, while Republicans are happy to see Trump increase tensions with Moscow because it combats the collusion narrative. Now both parties are supporting an anti-Russia agenda which existed in secretive US government agencies long before the 2016 election .
And this to me is the most significant thing about Trump's presidency. Not any of the things people tell me I'm supposed to care about, but the fact that the age of Trump has been highlighting in a very clear way how we're all being manipulated by manufactured narratives all the time.
Humanity lives in a world of mental narrative . We have a deeply conditioned societal habit of heaping a massive overlay of mental labels and stories on top of the raw data we take in through our senses, and those labels and stories tend to consume far more interest and attention than the actual data itself. We use labels and stories for a reason: without them it would be impossible to share abstract ideas and information with each other about what's going on in our world. But those labels and stories get imbued with an intense amount of belief and identification; we form tight, rigid belief structures about our world, our society, and our very selves that can generate a lot of fear, hatred and suffering. Which is why it feels so nice to go out into nature and relax in an environment that isn't shaped by human mental narrative.
This problem is exponentially exacerbated by the fact that these stories and labels are wildly subjective and very easily manipulated. Powerful people have learned that they can control the way everyone else thinks, acts and votes by controlling the stories they tell themselves about what's going on in the world using mass media control and financial political influence, allowing ostensible democracies to be conducted in a way which serves power far more efficiently than any dictatorship.
So now America has a president who is escalating a dangerous cold war against Russia , who is working to prosecute Julian Assange and shut down WikiLeaks , who is expanding the same war on whistleblowers and Orwellian surveillance network that was expanded by Bush and Obama before him, who has expanded existing wars and made no tangible move as yet to scale them back, who is advancing the longstanding neocon agenda of regime change in Iran with starvation sanctions and CIA covert ops , and yet the two prevailing narratives about him are that he's either (A) a swamp-draining, establishment-fighting hero of peace or that he's (B) a treasonous Putin lackey who isn't nearly hawkish enough toward Russia.
See how both A and B herd the public away from opposing the dangerous pro-establishment agendas being advanced by this administration? The dominant narratives could not possibly be more different from what's actually going on, and the only reason they're the dominant narratives is because an alliance of plutocrats and secretive government agencies exerts an immense amount of influence over the stories that are told by the political/media class.
The narrative matrix of America's political/media landscape is a confusing labyrinth of smoke and funhouse mirrors distorting and manipulating the public consciousness at every turn. It's psychologically torturous, which is largely why people who are deeply immersed in politics are so on-edge all the time regardless of where they're at on the political spectrum. The only potentially good thing I can see about this forceful brutalization of the public psyche is that it might push people over the edge and shatter the illusion altogether.
Trust in the mass media is already at an all-time low while our ability to network and share information that casts doubt on official narratives is at an all-time high, which is why the establishment propaganda machine is acting so weird as it scrambles to control the narrative, and why efforts to censor the internet are getting more and more severe. It is possible that this is what it looks like when a thinking species evolves into a sane and healthy relationship with thought. Perhaps the cracks that are appearing all over official narratives today are like the first cracks appearing in an eggshell as a bird begins to hatch into the world.
* * *
The best way to get around the internet censors and make sure you see the stuff I publish is to subscribe to the mailing list for my website , which will get you an email notification for everything I publish. My articles are entirely reader-supported, so if you enjoyed this piece please consider sharing it around, liking me on Facebook , following my antics on Twitter , throwing some money into my hat on Patreon or Paypal , purchasing some of my sweet new merchandise , buying my new book Rogue Nation: Psychonautical Adventures With Caitlin Johnstone , or my previous book Woke: A Field Guide for Utopia Preppers .
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Jan 08, 2019 | sputniknews.com
Hacking syndicate Anonymous has just released its fourth tranche of documents hacked from the internal servers of the Institute for Statecraft and its subsidiary, the Integrity Initiative. Several explosive files raise serious questions about the shadowy British state and NATO-funded 'think tank' and its connections with the Skripal affair.
The files were released just after 2:30pm GMT on January 4 -- I've barely scratched the surface of the content, but what I've seen so far contains a panoply of bombshell revelations -- to say the least, the organization(s) now have serious questions to answer about what role they played in the poisoning of Sergei Skripal in March, and its aftermath both nationally and internationally.
Sinister TimelineOne file apparently dating to "early 2015" -- "Russian Federation Sanctions" -- written by the Institute's Victor Madeira outlines "potential levers" to achieve Russian "behaviour change", "peace with Ukraine", "return [of] Crimea", "regime change" or "other?". The suggested "levers" span almost every conceivable area, including "civil society", "sports", "finance" and "technology".
In the section marked "intelligence", Madeira suggests simultaneously expelling "every RF [Russian Federation] intelligence officer and air/defense/naval attache from as many countries as possible". In parentheses, it references 'Operation Foot' , the expulsion of over 1000 Soviet officials from the UK in September 1971, the largest expulsion of intelligence officials by any government in history.
The section on sports also suggests "advocating the view [Russia] is unworthy of hosting [sporting] events" -- and the section marked "information" recommends the sanctioning of 'Russian' media "in West for not complying with regulators' standards".
2015 File Written By Victor Madeira on Possible Anti-Russian Actions
In April that year, Institute for Statecraft chief Chris Donnelly was promoted to Honorary Colonel of SGMI (Specialist Group Military Intelligence), and in October he met with General Sir Richard Barrons. Notes from the meeting don't make clear who said what, but one despaired that "if no catastrophe happens to wake people up and demand a response, then we need to find a way to get the core of government to realise the problem and take it out of the political space."
"We will need to impose changes over the heads of vested interests. We did this in the 1930s. My conclusion is it is we who must either generate the debate or wait for something dreadful to happen to shock us into action. We must generate an independent debate outside government. We need to ask when and how do we start to put all this right? Do we have the national capabilities [and/or] capacities to fix it? If so, how do we improve our harnessing of resources to do it? We need this debate now. There is not a moment to be lost," they said.
Operation IRIS Begins
On 4 March 2018, former Russian military officer and double agent for MI6 Sergei Skripal and his daughter Yulia were poisoned in Salisbury, England.
Within days, the Institute had submitted a proposal to the Foreign & Commonwealth Office, "to study social media activity in respect of the events that took place, how news spread and evaluate how the incident is being perceived" in a number of countries.
The bid was accepted, and the Initiative's 'Operation Iris' was launched. Under its auspices, the Institute employed 'global investigative solutions' firm Harod Associates to analyze social media activity related to Skripal the world over.
It also conducted media monitoring of its own, with Institute 'research fellow' Simon Bracey-Lane producing regular 'roundups' of media coverage overseas, based on insights submitted by individuals connected to the Initiative living in several countries. One submission, from an unnamed source in Moldova, says they "cannot firmly say" whether the country's media had its "own point of view" on the issue, or whether news organizations had taken "an obvious pro-Russian or pro-Western position", strongly suggesting these were key questions for the Initiative.
Integrity Initiative Seeks Intelligence On How Overseas Media Reported Skripal Incident
Moreover though, there are clear indications the Institute sought to shape the news narrative on the attack -- and indeed the UK government's response. One file dated March 11 appears to be a briefing document on the affair to date, with key messages bolded throughout.
It opens by setting out "The Narrative" of the incident -- namely "Russia has carried out yet another brutal attack, this time with a deadly nerve agent, on someone living in Britain".
"Use of the nerve agent posed a threat to innocent British subjects, affecting 21 people and seriously affecting a police officer. This is not the first time such an attack has been carried out in the UK 14 deaths are believed to be attributable to the Kremlin Russia has poisoned its enemies abroad on other occasions, most notably then-candidate for the Presidency of Ukraine, Viktor Yushchenko, in 2004. Russian political activist Vladimir Kara-Murza has been poisoned twice; and the journalist Anna Politkovskaya was also poisoned and later shot dead. Since Putin has been running Russia, the Kremlin has a history of poisoning its opponents in a gruesome way," the "narrative" reads.
The file goes on to declare the British response has been "far too weak it's essential the government makes a much stronger response this time" -- and then lists "possible, realistic, first actions", including banning RT and Sputnik from operating in the UK, boycotting the 2018 World Cup, withdrawing the UK ambassador from Moscow and expelling the Russian ambassador to the UK, and refusing/revoking visas to leading Russians within Vladimir Putin's "circle", and their families.
Post-Skripal Incident Anti-Russian Actions Recommended by Integrity Initiative
It's not clear who the document was distributed to -- but it may have been given to journalists within the Initiative's UK 'cluster', if not others. This may explain why the Institute's "narrative", and its various recommended "responses" utterly dominated mainstream media reporting of the affair for months afterwards, despite the glaring lack of evidence of Russian state involvement in the attack.
It's extremely curious so many of the briefing document's recommendations almost exactly -- if not exactly -- echo several of the suggested "levers" outlined in the 2015 document. It's also somewhat troubling the "Global Operation Foot" spoken of in that file duly came to pass on March 28 2018, with over 20 countries expelling over 100 Russian diplomats.
Likewise, it's striking Victor Madeira, the Institute staffer who made the recommendations in 2015, made many media appearances discussing the poisoning following the incident routinely documented by the Institute. Security consultant Dan Kaszeta also wrote a number of articles for the Integrity Initiative website about chemical weapons following the attack -- including a July 14 article, How could Novichok have poisoned people four months after the Skripal attack? -- receiving 40 pence per word .
Invoice submitted to Integrity Initiative by Dan Kaszeta Strange Connections
The Institute's bizarrely intimate connections with the incident don't end there. Another document apparently dating to July 2018 contains the contact details of Pablo Miller, Skripal's MI6 recruiter, handler and -- unbelievably -- neighbor in Salisbury. Anonymous claims the document is an invitee list for a meeting the Institute convened between a number of individuals and Syria's highly controversial White Helmets group, but this is yet to be verified.
Whatever the truth of the matter, the latest document dump raises yet further questions about how and why it was BBC Diplomatic and Defense Editor Mark Urban -- who was in the same tank regiment as Miller after leaving University -- came to meet with Skripal in the year before his poisoning. When I attended the launch of his book on the affair in October -- The Skripal Files -- he was evasive on whether he played a role in connecting him with Skripal, and denied Miller was Skripal's recruiter.
The latest trove also raises yet further questions about the activities of the Institute for Statecraft and Integrity Initiative. In light of these revelations, reading the record of Donnelly's meeting with General Barrons takes on an acutely chilling quality. It may be that purely serendipitously the pair got their "catastrophe", their "something dreadful", which "[woke] people up" and made the government "realise the problem" posed by Russia -- or it could be they one way or another played a facilitative role of some kind.
After months of refusing to answer the vast number of questions I and thousands of others have submitted to the paired organizations, it's high time for them to break cover, and be honest with the public.
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Moon of Alabama @MoonofA · Jan 4, 2019 @ Ian56789 @ MarkSleboda1 @ Malinka1102 @ ValLisitsa @ NinaByzantinaJan 05, 2019 | www.defenddemocracy.press
The Integrity Initiative, a UK-funded group exposed in leaked files as psyop network, played a key role in monitoring and molding media narratives after the poisoning of double agent Sergei Skripal, newly-dumped documents reveal. Created by the NATO-affiliated, UK-funded Institute for Statecraft in 2015, the Integrity Initiative was unmasked in November after hackers released documents detailing a web of politicians, journalists, military personnel, scientists and academics involved in purportedly fighting "Russian disinformation."
The secretive, government-bankrolled "network of networks" has found itself under scrutiny for smearing UK Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn as a Kremlin stooge – ostensibly as part of its noble crusade against anti-Russian disinformation. Now, new leaks show that the organization played a central role in shaping media narratives after Sergei Skripal and his daughter Yulia were mysteriously poisoned in Salisbury last March.
It's notable that many of the draconian anti-Russia measures that the group advocated as far back as 2015 were swiftly implemented following the Skripal affair – even as London refused to back up its finger-pointing with evidence.
Operation Iris
Days after the Skripals were poisoned, the Institute solicited its services to the Foreign & Commonwealth Office, offering to "study social media activity in respect of the events that took place, how news spread, and evaluate how the incident is being perceived" in a number of countries.
After receiving the government's blessing, the Integrity Initiative (II) launched 'Operation Iris,' enlisting "global investigative solutions" firm Harod Associates to analyze social media activity related to Skripal.
What role did # IntegrityInitiative play in the # Skripal affair? I looked for answers from a brief look at the newly released files. More very much to follow....
264 people are talking about this Twitter Ads info and privacy
- https:// sputniknews.com/europe/2019010 41071225427-skripal-integrity-initiative-miller/ # SergeiSkripal # Disinformation # Propaganda #
- InformationWar 236 1:25 PM - Jan 4, 2019 Twitter Ads info and privacy
- Shock Files: What Role Did Integrity Initiative Play in Sergei Skripal Affair?
- Hacking syndicate Anonymous has just released its fourth tranche of documents hacked from the internal servers of the Institute for Statecraft and its subsidiary, the Integrity Initiative. Several... sputniknews.com
However, Harod's confidential report did more than just parse social media reactions to the Skripal affair: It compiled a list of alleged "pro-Russia troll accounts" accused of "bombarding the audience with pro-Kremlin propaganda and disinformation relevant to the Skripal case."
Among those who found themselves listed as nefarious thought-criminals were Ukrainian-born pianist Valentina Lisitsa, and a gentleman from Kent who goes by Ian56 on Twitter.
Top Kremlin Trolls" aka Truth Tellers. Congratulations if you made the list.
Neocon Fascist, al-Qaeda Supporting Treasonous Scumbag @ Benimmo is having a laugh with £2m of Taxpayers money. Nimmo should be IN JAIL for Fraud & Treason
Ian56 @Ian56789 # IntegrityInitiativeexamples of Logical, Critical Thinking & Objective Analysis by yours truly Ian56.
They didn't even include my best ones and they didn't show the pic that went with each tweet. I wonder why?
# Skripal # Novichok # FalseFlag pic.twitter.com/Zq8W9iJshk 41 1:39 PM - Jan 4, 2019 Twitter Ads info and privacy
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Folks, you are all noted as "trolls" in some of the files of the new # IntegrityInitiative release
https://www. cyberguerrilla.org/blog/operation -integrity-initiative-british-informational-war-against-all-part-4/ https://www. pdf-archive.com/2018/12/28/app endix-o---russian-propaganda-troll-sites-for-monitoring/appendix-o---russian-propaganda-troll-sites-for-monitoring.pdf https://www. pdf-archive.com/2018/12/28/app endix-p---troll-accounts-mutual-connections-graph/appendix-p---troll-accounts-mutual-connections-graph.pdf https://www. pdf-archive.com/2018/12/28/app endix-q---troll-geolocation-graph/appendix-q---troll-geolocation-graph.pdf
Operation 'Integrity Initiative': British informational war against all. Part 4
Ruslana Boshirova @ValLisitsa94 people are talking about this Twitter Ads info and privacyWanna see something funny?
"The Insider" - the same "Insider", that was credited by Bellingcat with "outing Boshirov and Petrovas GRU agents" - has investigated and found me guilty of passing Putin orders to French yellow jackets. I kid you not.
https:// twitter.com/Antifake_Russi a/status/1073112488072437760?s=19 Antifake @Antifake_Russia СМИ выдали за манифест "желтых жилетов" твиты украинской пианистки с ником "Руслана Боширова" https:// theins.ru/antifake/131804 116 3:21 PM - Jan 4, 2019 Twitter Ads info and privacy
Pushing a narrative
Another document , dated March 11, 2018 – and titled "Sergei Skripal Affair: What if Russia is Responsible?" – contains a "narrative" of the Skripal incident, which blames Russia and President Vladimir Putin personally, as well as containing a number of recommended actions.
These included boycotting the 2018 World Cup, starting campaigns to boycott the Nord Stream 2 gas pipeline from Russia to Germany, blocking Russian access to the SWIFT international banking system, and banning "RT TV and Sputnik from operating in the UK."
Other suggestions included propaganda directed at British Muslims "to publicize what has been happening with their Muslim brethren in Crimea since the Russian invasion [sic]" and getting members of parliament to publicize the "threat Russia poses." It's not clear who the document was drawn up for, but it may have been provided to II-affiliated journalists in the UK and other countries.
This would certainly explain the evidence-deficient echo chamber that emerged in the aftermath of Skripal's poisoning – which the UK and its allies unanimously blamed on Moscow.
Ahead of its time?
One of the more intriguing revelations from the fresh leaks is a document from 2015, in which Victor Madeira of the Institute for Statecraft proposes a series of measures targeting Russia, including mass expulsion of diplomats along the lines of 1971's Operation Foot.
Coincidentally, more than 100 Russian diplomats were expelled from 20 Western countries in an apparently show of solidarity with the UK following the Skripal attack. At the time, UK Prime Minister Theresa May welcomed what she said was "the largest collective expulsion of Russian intelligence officers in history."
Former MP George Galloway noted that the documents, written long before the Salisbury events, also call for the arrest of RT and
Sputnik contributors (such as himself), adding: "Makes you think "
George Galloway ✔ @georgegallowaySo: # IntegrityInitiative funded by the British Govt called for the arrest of people like me like @ afshinrattansi @ JohnWight1 @ NeilClark66 et al in the event of an "incident" like the # Skripal affair.
Written incidentally before the # Salisbury events. Makes you think...
@ RT_com 688 12:53 PM - Jan 4, 2019 Twitter Ads info and privacy
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A curious connection
The new trove of hacked documents also revealed an unexplained link between the II and Skripal himself – a connection made
all the more noteworthy by the group's central role in coordinating an evidence-free campaign to blame and punish Moscow for the
alleged nerve-agent attack. A document from July 2018 contains contact details for Pablo Miller, Skripal's MI6 recruiter, handler
and (conveniently) neighbor in Salisbury. Miller, it seems, had been invited to a function hosted by the Institute.
Moon of Alabama @MoonofAFvnk @WhatTheFvnkIt was already known that Pablo Miller, the MI6 handler of Sergej Skripal, attended # IntegrityInitiative meetings. There is now more material to draw a connection. It is indeed possible that IfS/II initiated the affair.
- Kit Klarenberg @KitKlarenberg What role did # IntegrityInitiative play in the # Skripal affair? I looked for answers from a brief look at the newly released files. More very much to follow....
- https:// sputniknews.com/europe/2019010 41071225427-skripal-integrity-initiative-miller/
# SergeiSkripal # Disinformation # Propaganda # InformationWar 283 2:38 PM - Jan 4, 2019 Twitter Ads info and privacy
241 people are talking about this Twitter Ads info and privacyEXPLOSIVE: @ DanKaszeta of @ Strongpoint_UK invoiced @ InitIntegrity # IntegrityInitiative
£2,276.80 in July 2018 during the # Skripal # Novichok affair for writing articles on the subjects of poison gas; nerve agents; treatment; nerve agent persistency & # PortonDown @ RTUKproducer 160 1:24 PM - Jan 4, 2019
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It's not clear to what degree Miller is or was involved with the group, but his appearance on an Integrity Initiative guest list adds another layer of mystery to a coordinated campaign which sought to impose punishments on Moscow that were drawn up years in advance.
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Mar 30, 2017 | www.theguardian.com
Bankers, pharmaceutical giants, Google, Facebook ... a new breed of rentiers are at the very top of the pyramid and they're sucking the rest of us dry @rcbregman
'A big part of the modern banking sector is essentially a giant tapeworm gorging on a sick body'.
This piece is about one of the biggest taboos of our times. About a truth that is seldom acknowledged, and yet – on reflection – cannot be denied. The truth that we are living in an inverse welfare state. These days, politicians from the left to the right assume that most wealth is created at the top. By the visionaries, by the job creators, and by the people who have "made it". By the go-getters oozing talent and entrepreneurialism that are helping to advance the whole world.
Now, we may disagree about the extent to which success deserves to be rewarded – the philosophy of the left is that the strongest shoulders should bear the heaviest burden, while the right fears high taxes will blunt enterprise – but across the spectrum virtually all agree that wealth is created primarily at the top.
So entrenched is this assumption that it's even embedded in our language. When economists talk about "productivity", what they really mean is the size of your paycheck. And when we use terms like " welfare state ", "redistribution" and "solidarity", we're implicitly subscribing to the view that there are two strata: the makers and the takers, the producers and the couch potatoes, the hardworking citizens – and everybody else.
In reality, it is precisely the other way around. In reality, it is the waste collectors, the nurses, and the cleaners whose shoulders are supporting the apex of the pyramid. They are the true mechanism of social solidarity. Meanwhile, a growing share of those we hail as "successful" and "innovative" are earning their wealth at the expense of others. The people getting the biggest handouts are not down around the bottom, but at the very top. Yet their perilous dependence on others goes unseen. Almost no one talks about it. Even for politicians on the left, it's a non-issue.
To understand why, we need to recognise that there are two ways of making money. The first is what most of us do: work. That means tapping into our knowledge and know-how (our "human capital" in economic terms) to create something new, whether that's a takeout app, a wedding cake, a stylish updo, or a perfectly poured pint. To work is to create. Ergo, to work is to create new wealth.
But there is also a second way to make money. That's the rentier way : by leveraging control over something that already exists, such as land, knowledge, or money, to increase your wealth. You produce nothing, yet profit nonetheless. By definition, the rentier makes his living at others' expense, using his power to claim economic benefit.
'From Wall Street to Silicon Valley, zoom in and you'll see rentiers everywhere.'
For those who know their history, the term "rentier" conjures associations with heirs to estates, such as the 19th century's large class of useless rentiers, well-described by the French economist Thomas Piketty . These days, that class is making a comeback. (Ironically, however, conservative politicians adamantly defend the rentier's right to lounge around, deeming inheritance tax to be the height of unfairness.) But there are also other ways of rent-seeking. From Wall Street to Silicon Valley , from big pharma to the lobby machines in Washington and Westminster, zoom in and you'll see rentiers everywhere.
There is no longer a sharp dividing line between working and rentiering. In fact, the modern-day rentier often works damn hard. Countless people in the financial sector, for example, apply great ingenuity and effort to amass "rent" on their wealth. Even the big innovations of our age – businesses like Facebook and Uber – are interested mainly in expanding the rentier economy. The problem with most rich people therefore is not that they are coach potatoes. Many a CEO toils 80 hours a week to multiply his allowance. It's hardly surprising, then, that they feel wholly entitled to their wealth.
It may take quite a mental leap to see our economy as a system that shows solidarity with the rich rather than the poor. So I'll start with the clearest illustration of modern freeloaders at the top: bankers. Studies conducted by the International Monetary Fund and the Bank for International Settlements – not exactly leftist thinktanks – have revealed that much of the financial sector has become downright parasitic. How instead of creating wealth, they gobble it up whole.
Don't get me wrong. Banks can help to gauge risks and get money where it is needed, both of which are vital to a well-functioning economy. But consider this: economists tell us that the optimum level of total private-sector debt is 100% of GDP. Based on this equation, if the financial sector only grows, it won't equal more wealth, but less. So here's the bad news. In the United Kingdom, private-sector debt is now at 157.5% . In the United States, the figure is 188.8% .
In other words, a big part of the modern banking sector is essentially a giant tapeworm gorging on a sick body. It's not creating anything new, merely sucking others dry. Bankers have found a hundred and one ways to accomplish this. The basic mechanism, however, is always the same: offer loans like it's going out of style, which in turn inflates the price of things like houses and shares, then earn a tidy percentage off those overblown prices (in the form of interest, commissions, brokerage fees, or what have you), and if the shit hits the fan, let Uncle Sam mop it up.
The financial innovation concocted by all the math whizzes working in modern banking (instead of at universities or companies that contribute to real prosperity) basically boils down to maximizing the total amount of debt. And debt, of course, is a means of earning rent. So for those who believe that pay ought to be proportionate to the value of work, the conclusion we have to draw is that many bankers should be earning a negative salary; a fine, if you will, for destroying more wealth than they create.
Bankers are the most obvious class of closet freeloaders, but they are certainly not alone. Many a lawyer and an accountant wields a similar revenue model. Take tax evasion . Untold hardworking, academically degreed professionals make a good living at the expense of the populations of other countries. Or take the tide of privatisations over the past three decades, which have been all but a carte blanche for rentiers. One of the richest people in the world, Carlos Slim , earned his millions by obtaining a monopoly of the Mexican telecom market and then hiking prices sky high. The same goes for the Russian oligarchs who rose after the Berlin Wall fell , who bought up valuable state-owned assets for song to live off the rent.
But here comes the rub. Most rentiers are not as easily identified as the greedy banker or manager. Many are disguised. On the face of it, they look like industrious folks, because for part of the time they really are doing something worthwhile. Precisely that makes us overlook their massive rent-seeking.
Take the pharmaceutical industry. Companies like GlaxoSmithKline and Pfizer regularly unveil new drugs, yet most real medical breakthroughs are made quietly at government-subsidised labs. Private companies mostly manufacture medications that resemble what we've already got. They get it patented and, with a hefty dose of marketing, a legion of lawyers, and a strong lobby, can live off the profits for years. In other words, the vast revenues of the pharmaceutical industry are the result of a tiny pinch of innovation and fistfuls of rent.
Even paragons of modern progress like Apple, Amazon, Google , Facebook, Uber and Airbnb are woven from the fabric of rentierism. Firstly, because they owe their existence to government discoveries and inventions (every sliver of fundamental technology in the iPhone, from the internet to batteries and from touchscreens to voice recognition, was invented by researchers on the government payroll). And second, because they tie themselves into knots to avoid paying taxes, retaining countless bankers, lawyers, and lobbyists for this very purpose.
Even more important, many of these companies function as "natural monopolies", operating in a positive feedback loop of increasing growth and value as more and more people contribute free content to their platforms. Companies like this are incredibly difficult to compete with, because as they grow bigger, they only get stronger.
Aptly characterising this "platform capitalism" in an article, Tom Goodwin writes : "Uber, the world's largest taxi company, owns no vehicles. Facebook, the world's most popular media owner, creates no content. Alibaba, the most valuable retailer, has no inventory. And Airbnb, the world's largest accommodation provider, owns no real estate."
Facebook Twitter Pinterest 'Every sliver of fundamental technology in the iPhone, from the internet to batteries and from touchscreens to voice recognition, was invented by researchers on the government payroll.' Photograph: Regis Duvignau/ReutersSo what do these companies own? A platform. A platform that lots and lots of people want to use. Why? First and foremost, because they're cool and they're fun – and in that respect, they do offer something of value. However, the main reason why we're all happy to hand over free content to Facebook is because all of our friends are on Facebook too, because their friends are on Facebook because their friends are on Facebook.
Most of Mark Zuckerberg's income is just rent collected off the millions of picture and video posts that we give away daily for free. And sure, we have fun doing it. But we also have no alternative – after all, everybody is on Facebook these days. Zuckerberg has a website that advertisers are clamouring to get onto, and that doesn't come cheap. Don't be fooled by endearing pilots with free internet in Zambia. Stripped down to essentials, it's an ordinary ad agency. In fact, in 2015 Google and Facebook pocketed an astounding 64% of all online ad revenue in the US.
But don't Google and Facebook make anything useful at all? Sure they do. The irony, however, is that their best innovations only make the rentier economy even bigger. They employ scores of programmers to create new algorithms so that we'll all click on more and more ads. Uber has usurped the whole taxi sector just as Airbnb has upended the hotel industry and Amazon has overrun the book trade. The bigger such platforms grow the more powerful they become, enabling the lords of these digital feudalities to demand more and more rent.
Think back a minute to the definition of a rentier: someone who uses their control over something that already exists in order to increase their own wealth. The feudal lord of medieval times did that by building a tollgate along a road and making everybody who passed by pay. Today's tech giants are doing basically the same thing, but transposed to the digital highway. Using technology funded by taxpayers, they build tollgates between you and other people's free content and all the while pay almost no tax on their earnings.
This is the so-called innovation that has Silicon Valley gurus in raptures: ever bigger platforms that claim ever bigger handouts. So why do we accept this? Why does most of the population work itself to the bone to support these rentiers?
I think there are two answers. Firstly, the modern rentier knows to keep a low profile. There was a time when everybody knew who was freeloading. The king, the church, and the aristocrats controlled almost all the land and made peasants pay dearly to farm it. But in the modern economy, making rentierism work is a great deal more complicated. How many people can explain a credit default swap , or a collateralised debt obligation ? Or the revenue model behind those cute Google Doodles? And don't the folks on Wall Street and in Silicon Valley work themselves to the bone, too? Well then, they must be doing something useful, right?
Maybe not. The typical workday of Goldman Sachs' CEO may be worlds away from that of King Louis XIV, but their revenue models both essentially revolve around obtaining the biggest possible handouts. "The world's most powerful investment bank," wrote the journalist Matt Taibbi about Goldman Sachs , "is a great vampire squid wrapped around the face of humanity, relentlessly jamming its blood funnel into anything that smells like money."
But far from squids and vampires, the average rich freeloader manages to masquerade quite successfully as a decent hard worker. He goes to great lengths to present himself as a "job creator" and an "investor" who "earns" his income by virtue of his high "productivity". Most economists, journalists, and politicians from left to right are quite happy to swallow this story. Time and again language is twisted around to cloak funneling and exploitation as creation and generation.
However, it would be wrong to think that all this is part of some ingenious conspiracy. Many modern rentiers have convinced even themselves that they are bona fide value creators. When current Goldman Sachs CEO Lloyd Blankfein was asked about the purpose of his job, his straight-faced answer was that he is " doing God's work ". The Sun King would have approved.
The second thing that keeps rentiers safe is even more insidious. We're all wannabe rentiers. They have made millions of people complicit in their revenue model. Consider this: What are our financial sector's two biggest cash cows? Answer: the housing market and pensions. Both are markets in which many of us are deeply invested.
Recent decades have seen more and more people contract debts to buy a home, and naturally it's in their interest if house prices continue to scale new heights (read: burst bubble upon bubble). The same goes for pensions. Over the past few decades we've all scrimped and saved up a mountainous pension piggy bank. Now pension funds are under immense pressure to ally with the biggest exploiters in order to ensure they pay out enough to please their investors.
The fact of the matter is that feudalism has been democratised. To a lesser or greater extent, we are all depending on handouts. En masse, we have been made complicit in this exploitation by the rentier elite, resulting in a political covenant between the rich rent-seekers and the homeowners and retirees.
Don't get me wrong, most homeowners and retirees are not benefiting from this situation. On the contrary, the banks are bleeding them far beyond the extent to which they themselves profit from their houses and pensions. Still, it's hard to point fingers at a kleptomaniac when you have sticky fingers too.
So why is this happening? The answer can be summed up in three little words: Because it can.
Rentierism is, in essence, a question of power. That the Sun King Louis XIV was able to exploit millions was purely because he had the biggest army in Europe. It's no different for the modern rentier. He's got the law, politicians and journalists squarely in his court. That's why bankers get fined peanuts for preposterous fraud, while a mother on government assistance gets penalised within an inch of her life if she checks the wrong box.
The biggest tragedy of all, however, is that the rentier economy is gobbling up society's best and brightest. Where once upon a time Ivy League graduates chose careers in science, public service or education, these days they are more likely to opt for banks, law firms, or trumped up ad agencies like Google and Facebook. When you think about it, it's insane. We are forking over billions in taxes to help our brightest minds on and up the corporate ladder so they can learn how to score ever more outrageous handouts.
One thing is certain: countries where rentiers gain the upper hand gradually fall into decline. Just look at the Roman Empire. Or Venice in the 15th century. Look at the Dutch Republic in the 18th century. Like a parasite stunts a child's growth, so the rentier drains a country of its vitality.
What innovation remains in a rentier economy is mostly just concerned with further bolstering that very same economy. This may explain why the big dreams of the 1970s, like flying cars, curing cancer, and colonising Mars, have yet to be realised, while bankers and ad-makers have at their fingertips technologies a thousand times more powerful.
Yet it doesn't have to be this way. Tollgates can be torn down, financial products can be banned, tax havens dismantled, lobbies tamed, and patents rejected. Higher taxes on the ultra-rich can make rentierism less attractive, precisely because society's biggest freeloaders are at the very top of the pyramid. And we can more fairly distribute our earnings on land, oil, and innovation through a system of, say, employee shares, or a universal basic income .
But such a revolution will require a wholly different narrative about the origins of our wealth. It will require ditching the old-fashioned faith in "solidarity" with a miserable underclass that deserves to be borne aloft on the market-level salaried shoulders of society's strongest. All we need to do is to give real hard-working people what they deserve.
And, yes, by that I mean the waste collectors, the nurses, the cleaners – theirs are the shoulders that carry us all.
• Pre-order Utopia for Realists and How Can We Get There by Rutger Bregman
• Translated from the original Dutch by Elizabeth Manton
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Jan 06, 2019 | turcopolier.typepad.com
Pat Lang Mod -> David Habakkuk , 2 months ago
After contemplating the likely intelligence and propaganda efforts of HMG over the last 15 years or so I am puzzled as to motivation. Why? Why? The UK is now a regional power for which events in places like Syria would seem to have little to do with the welfare of Britain. Why? I suppose that the same question can be asked for the US and I have.David Habakkuk -> Pat Lang , 2 months agoIn re "Our man in Havana" I think there are many issues raised in the work that apply directly to the trade of espionage.
Colonel Lang,johnf -> David Habakkuk , 2 months agoThe question why? is a very interesting but also very dispiriting one, but also one which it is quite hard to get one's head round. I hope to have something more coherent to say about it.
Among many reasons, however, there has been a kind of intellectual disintegration.
If I had the talent and energy, I might write a sequel to the 'Quiet American', to be entitled 'The Noisy Englishmen.' It would feature a series of inept conspiracies, involving ludicrous means used in support of preposterous ends, necessitating one ham-fisted cover-up after another.
The central characters might be loosely based on Christopher Steele, Matt Tait, Eliot Higgins, and our former UN Ambassador Matthew Rycroft, author of the July 2002 Downing Street memorandum, in which Sir Richard Dearlove was quoted explaining how, in Washington, 'the intelligence and the facts were being fixed around the policy.'
Subsequently, of course, he set about colluding in the process. And, sixteen years later, Dearlove is still at it, with 'Russiagate' -- and the product being actually accepted much more uncritically by the MSM than it was then.
And that is one of the problems -- nobody any longer pays any penalty for failure, or indeed feels any sense of shame about it..
DHI agree with this.
There is a 1990's British historian (whose name I've been trying to rediscover without success) who wrote a sunny book saying Britain should return to its imperialist ways to bring light to the dark and repressive world we live in. It was a great hit with Blair and his henchmen. Blair used its arguments in his notorious 1999 Chicago neo-conservative/liberal interventionist speech.
As the Colonel eloquently asks:
"I am puzzled as to motivation. Why? Why? The UK is now a regional power for which events in places like Syria would seem to have little todo with the welfare of Britain. Why?"
I'd draw attention to "The Brideshead Revisited" generation especially at Oxford in the early 80's. Unashamedly celebrating their wealth and upper middle class privately-educated backgrounds, they viewed themselves as a gilded, golden generation, preened in narcissism, adept at networking and self-promotion. They are the generation now in power - politically, financially, in the deep state. Their fantasy of again ruling the world (with American and Zionist aid) has led to a series of catastrophic blunders and overreaches in both foreign and domestic policies.
Our economic power - the base of any imperial power - is shrinking daily. All the Oxfordites (chief amongst them Theresa May, Boris Johnson and Michael Gove) are still playing Oxford Union/PPE games and stabbing each other joyously in the back as though there's no tomorrow. It most ressembles the halluciogenic decadence of the court of late Imperial Rome.
(I don't include the Maurice Cowling-ites in this fandango because they strike me as more Little Englanders. Though Peterhouse is of course, shamefully, the HQ of the Henry Jackson Society).
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Last modified: March, 01, 2020
Unfortunately the Orange one is being wagged again by those who are most seriously plotting his demise and over reach in Venezuela may be just as much part of the plan as it was in pushing him into launching an attack on Syria. It is true that the global elites are at a loss what to do, as the fracturing of the global oligarchies is proving Marx right . capitalist are just a band of warring brothers [brigands, robbers, pirates – all!]. As there is no serious ideological threat to their hegemony at the moment they fight amongst themselves with imperial designs.
The threat to the imperium is the chaos which ensues when the elite power struggles fracture their hegemony and an uncontrollable uprising ensues. Who shapes that revolution will be central to this. Where it will come from is not evident yet but let's hope it's a grass roots one!