|
|
Home | Switchboard | Unix Administration | Red Hat | TCP/IP Networks | Neoliberalism | Toxic Managers |
| (slightly skeptical) Educational society promoting "Back to basics" movement against IT overcomplexity and bastardization of classic Unix | |||||||
| "There is one political party in this country, and that is the party of money. It has two branches, the Republicans
and the Democrats, the chief difference between which is that the Democrats are better at concealing their scorn for the average
man." -- Gore Vidal The Democrats are the foxes, and the Republicans are the wolves and they both want to devour you. So what does that make Libertarians? Avian flu viruses? -- Leonard Pinkney The race is no contest when you own both horses. That is why no matter which political party is in power nothing really changes other than the packaging. The puppets who drink at the champagne fountains of the powerful do the bidding of their masters. The people are superfluous to the process. The only people truly bound by campaign promises are the voters who believe them.
|
|
|
Due to the side an introduction was moved to the separate page Polyarchy, Authoritarianism and Deep State
|
|
Switchboard | ||||
| Latest | |||||
| Past week | |||||
| Past month | |||||
| Home | 2020 | 2019 | 2018 | 2017 | 2016 | 2015 | 2014 | 2013 | 2012 | 2011 | 2010 | 2010 |
For the list of top articles see Recommended Links section
 |
 |
 |
Dec 23, 2019 | newrepublic.com
Welcome to the Decade From Hell , our look back at an arbitrary 10-year period that began with a great outpouring of hope and ended in a cavalcade of despair.The long-dominant ideology brought us forever wars, the Great Recession, and extreme inequality. Good riddance.With the 2008 financial crash and the Great Recession, the ideology of neoliberalism lost its force. The approach to politics, global trade, and social philosophy that defined an era led not to never-ending prosperity but utter disaster. "Laissez-faire is finished," declared French President Nicolas Sarkozy. Federal Reserve Chairman Alan Greenspan admitted in testimony before Congress that his ideology was flawed. In an extraordinary statement, Australian Prime Minister Kevin Rudd declared that the crash "called into question the prevailing neoliberal economic orthodoxy of the past 30 years -- the orthodoxy that has underpinned the national and global regulatory frameworks that have so spectacularly failed to prevent the economic mayhem which has been visited upon us."
... ... ...
|
|
|
Dec 29, 2019 | www.truthdig.com
A central premise of conventional media wisdom has collapsed. On Thursday, both the New York Times and Politico published major articles reporting that Bernie Sanders really could win the Democratic presidential nomination. Such acknowledgments will add to the momentum of the Bernie 2020 campaign as the new year begins -- but they foreshadow a massive escalation of anti-Sanders misinformation and invective.
Throughout 2019, corporate media routinely asserted that the Sanders campaign had little chance of winning the nomination. As is so often the case, journalists were echoing each other more than paying attention to grassroots realities. But now, polling numbers and other indicators on the ground are finally sparking very different headlines from the media establishment.
From the Times : " Why Bernie Sanders Is Tough to Beat ." From Politico : " Democratic Insiders: Bernie Could Win the Nomination ."
Those stories, and others likely to follow in copycat news outlets, will heighten the energies of Sanders supporters and draw in many wavering voters. But the shift in media narratives about the Bernie campaign's chances will surely boost the decibels of alarm bells in elite circles where dousing the fires of progressive populism is a top priority.
For corporate Democrats and their profuse media allies, the approach of disparaging and minimizing Bernie Sanders in 2019 didn't work. In 2020, the next step will be to trash him with a vast array of full-bore attacks.
Along the way, the corporate media will occasionally give voice to some Sanders defenders and supporters. A few establishment Democrats will decide to make nice with him early in the year. But the overwhelming bulk of Sanders media coverage -- synced up with the likes of such prominent corporate flunkies as Rahm Emanuel and Neera Tanden as well as Wall Street Democrats accustomed to ruling the roost in the party -- will range from condescending to savage.
When the Bernie campaign wasn't being ignored by corporate media during 2019, innuendos and mud often flew in his direction. But we ain't seen nothing yet.
With so much at stake -- including the presidency and the top leadership of the Democratic Party -- no holds will be barred. For the forces of corporate greed and the military-industrial complex, it'll be all-out propaganda war on the Bernie campaign.
While reasons for pessimism are abundant, so are ample reasons to understand that a Sanders presidency is a real possibility . The last places we should look for political realism are corporate media outlets that distort options and encourage passivity.
Bernie is fond of quoting a statement from Nelson Mandela: "It always seems impossible until it is done."
From the grassroots, as 2020 gets underway, the solution should be clear: All left hands on deck.
Jan Goslinga 38 minutes ago ,
Maxwell Jan Goslinga 15 minutes ago ,Elections aren't real. Democrats will nominate Joe Biden to lose the election. Trump will remain as fascist strongman and the dems will continue to blame his neoconservative policies on his white trash constituency.
Bernie serves a few important functions.
1. he keeps the radicals from leaving the plantation and going 3rd party.
2. his promotion of progressive policies will make Biden less popular and help him lose to Trump
3. Bernie and his "socialism" can then be blamed for losing the election to TrumpMensch59 Maxwell 8 minutes ago edited ,Unfortunately this comment will be buried in this monstrosity of a thread- now at over 300 comments with only about a third of them having a much relevance.
You might consider re-posting in reply to one of the foremost comments. Your simple realism will certainly not be well received during the campaign hallucinations.
I've often wondered how it is people could believe the elections could have any positive and lasting impact on their lives if they have been through a couple of cycles. Do they not also wonder how it is that these election (marketing) campaigns now stretch out for well over a year nowadays demanding everyone's political attention, energy and resources. To say it is a colossal waste does not quite capture the enormity of the mind job being to people.
Mensch59 Jan Goslinga 21 minutes ago ,
Your simple realism will certainly not be well received during the campaign hallucinations.Yeah, yeah, sure, sure. You "realists" who are true believers that you have the Truth and have a calling to preach the Truth absolutely must stand against the unwashed masses who claim that your "reality" isn't even intersubjectively verifiable, much less dialectical & material [eta & historical ].
I quite enjoyed what SteelPirate/LaborSolidarity had to say about you attempting to gain a vanguard following by trolling lib-prog sites.
newestbeginning 2 hours ago ,
Elections aren't real.Never pay attention to anyone who claims what's "real" and what isn't. Politics certainly doesn't exist in the realm of an objective, concrete, physical, naturalistic, materialistic reality which is shared by a consensus of rational observers. At best, politics deals with intersubjectively verifiable social phenomena. Thus, politics is mostly idealistic in the belief that each mind generates its own reality.
This realization is the topic of intersubjective verifiability, as recounted, for example, by Max Born (1949, 1965) Natural Philosophy of Cause and Chance , who points out that all knowledge, including natural or social science, is also subjective. p. 162: "Thus it dawned upon me that fundamentally everything is subjective, everything without exception. That was a shock."V4V 2 hours ago edited ,Meanwhile the wealth of the world's top 500 grew 25% in 2019...
PGGreen V4V 2 hours ago edited ,Noam Chomsky on Bernie Sanders's Chances of Success- "...the chances he can be elected are pretty small." (Waiting with bated breath for copious downvotes by those who hate the truth and hate reality).
https://cdn.embedly.com/widgets/media.html?src=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.youtube.com%2Fembed%2FEpXJvWSa4FQ%3Ffeature%3Doembed&url=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.youtube.com%2Fwatch%3Fv%3DEpXJvWSa4FQ&image=https%3A%2F%2Fi.ytimg.com%2Fvi%2FEpXJvWSa4FQ%2Fhqdefault.jpg&key=21d07d84db7f4d66a55297735025d6d1&type=text%2Fhtml&schema=youtube
V4V PGGreen an hour ago ,Most of who support Sanders know that his presidency will involve an uphill battle. Chomsky is being realistic.
But there really is no better option for meaningful change working within the political system than supporting Sanders. it is also important to note that "Our Revolution" has energized many young activists, encouraging them to continue the fight. This goes beyond politics to social and economic issues. If Sanders leaves us with a movement, this may turn out to be more important than the presidency in the long run.
Keep working for effective moral and economic justice and democracy!
PGGreen V4V 21 minutes ago edited ,Well, I have said this several times, it's not the microscopic left that you need to convince, it's the majority of self-identifying Democrats not supporting Sanders that you need to convince. I am repelled by the Democratic Party, but there are millions who identify as Democrats and many are proud of it. You need to convince them, not us.
V4V PGGreen 6 minutes ago ,Yes, although I don't think that those who support a Leftist agenda--whether you actually call them Leftists or not--are quite so microscopic a group as you imply. But you don't need to convince me or most others here (probably) that Sanders isn't perfect, or that it will be difficult for him to be elected president. We already know; we simply consider him the best option within this context of voting.
Have you ever thought of turning your approach to systemic commentary (which is valid and interesting, BTW, I'm not discounting it) around and saying what candidates you support-- in this context being discussed of voting-- instead of which ones you don't? And then explaining why such support would be effective?
I would say that what is wrong with the world is more a fault of the economic and political system than of Sanders alone--who not only plays small part in causing what is wrong, but a significant part in trying to correct it. Yes, he works within the system. That is a given. It may be, as Chris Hedges thinks, that there is no hope working within the system. But Noam Chomsky's approach also bears serious consideration that even Hedges doesn't discount. Voting will only be a small part of what brings about change, but it may make some slight difference--if you can stomach it. And it only takes a small amount of time.
"In a system of immense power, small differences can translate into large outcomes."
I don't see much of an argument that Sanders will be no better as president than Trump (and if you think so, I'd like to hear you argue it). I suspect you find the compromise unpalatable. I can understand that. I, too, draw the line at a certain point. I couldn't vote for HRC.
Yes, Sanders isn't perfect. Chomsky also said another important thing: "We're all compromised." Everyone who is a citizen of the US is compromised, and bears some measure of responsibility for the military interventions undertaken by our government. Perhaps we should renounce our citizenship, refuse to pay taxes, etc. But most of us don't -- not even those of us committed to activist work in other ways -- significant ways -- to make things better.
So what are those ways, for you?
Mensch59 PGGreen 16 minutes ago ,But you don't need to convince me or most others here (probably) that Sanders isn't perfect
-for me it isn' that he's not perfect, it's that I think he sucks
"In a system of immense power, small differences can translate into large outcomes."
-funny, that's a favorite line of Democrats
I get that, but it doesn't negate that Sanders's chances are next to nil.
Your suggestion of me signaling whom I support would fall on deaf ears around here. I have said this many times- I will probably for the Green Party candidate or the Socialist Equality Party candidate. If only a Democrat and Republican appear on the ballot then I would refuse to vote even if I had to pay a fine. I am not in the habit of telling anyone whom to vote for unless asked.
Before a 3rd can succeed, the fantasy that the fix can come through the Democrats needs to be destroyed. Not to worry, in due time it will be obvious.
Patrick_Walker V4V 2 hours ago edited ,My guess/bet is that V4V believes that the truth "We're all compromised" doesn't apply to him.
He sees himself as a truth-knower and a truth-teller.
He won't commit to logical argumentation.
He'll preach the truth to you.V4V Patrick_Walker an hour ago edited ,I saw this video long ago--and agreed with it. But though Sanders' chances are small, they're still vastly larger than the NONEXISTENT chances of success of the purist, "Born to Lose" left. Why not just admit that you've totally given up and simply like to spent your time bitching and criticizing those of us with some (albeit small) hope?
acme V4V an hour ago ,simply like to spent your time bitching and criticizing those of us with some (albeit small) hope?
-straw man
That isn't what I do because I couldn't care less whom Democrats support and vote for. Typically, I post some unpleasant truth about Sanders, like his lackluster polling numbers or his support for neoliberal warmongers and sit back and watch the ad hominems and downvotes roll in. I am not normally on the attack, I am usually on the receiving end.
I admit that I see this forum as a form of entertainment. I admit I have zero expectation that someone to my liking will be elected president and that the system is going to change anytime soon. Do I believe it possible? Yes, I believe it is possible, I just don't believe it possible using the corrupt, Democratic Party as a vehicle and that's where we differ.
And that the crux of our issue- you believe the Democratic Party can be used a vehicle to convert the CIA/Wall Street/War Inc. Democrats into the peoples' party, and I do not. If the needed changes are ever to arrive, it will be in spite of the Democrats not because of them. I hope you stick around because in due time I'll be telling you, "Told ya so."
V4V acme an hour ago edited ,The problem with your position is that, unlike Sanders, you don't seem to understand that a third candidate party candidate hasn't a snowball's chance in hell of being president unless if s/he somehow gets more electoral votes that both the major parties combined. If not, it goes to the house, and in the current partisan atmosphere, would be decided for the candidate of the House majority.
The major parties have a death-grip on the presidency while the electoral college exists.Zsuzsi Kruska 4 hours ago edited ,You don't seem to understand that Sanders has a snowball's chance in hell of being the Democratic Party candidate for many reasons including the DNC arguing in court it is a private corporation and can legally rig primary and the trusty superdelegates for Biden.
What I propose is a movement outside the Democratic Party in inside it. I believe any attempt to reform the Democratic Party is doomed to fail. All this whistling in the dark over Sanders is a distraction and a kicking the can down the road to the time you Democrats finally realize it isn't going to work. You obviously didn't learn it in 2016, and I would be surprised if you learn it once Sanders tanks and begins campaigning for Biden just like he did Clinton. I will promise this, I'll say, "I told ya so" in a matter of months. That's okay, play it again, Sam.
People believe they need others to tell them what to do and give them the illusion somebody cares about them and has their best interests at heart. That's an archetype in the brain that goes back to our baby/childhood when we were dependent on our caregivers for sustenance, comfort and life itself.That's where the original concept of needing "leaders" comes from. But, what happens is psyco/sociopaths see this weakness in humanity and force their way to the top, to herd and exploit the gullible sheeple for their own agendas and selfish interests. No matter who rises to the top, she/he got their through the same system that's been going on since tribes had their chief; chief's lieutenant and witch doctor/shaman. Those three keep the tribe in line with their own desires. Chief through brute force, his lieutenant through information and witch doctor through religion and "spiritual" services; and all three require tribute and fees from the rest of the tribe. So, you will see, regardless of who the next POTUS will be, that same structure, although more complex today, will repeat itself. New boss/old boss, same ol' same ol'. All power has to be returned to the people at the local level before Wash. starts WWIII. But, if that happens, at least we won't have to worry about global warming with a nuclear winter after the bombs drop.
Nir Haramati 3 days ago edited ,As usual, I find your analysis and commentary honest and accurate. However, I do take exception to your pulling out these canards:
"Trump's contempt of Congress and attempt to get Volodymyr Zelensky, the Ukrainian president, to open an investigation of Joe Biden and his son, Hunter, in exchange for almost $400 million in U.S. military aid and allowing Zelensky to visit the White House are impeachable offenses"Trump has certain executive privileges and him being guilty of contempt of Congress should be up to the Supreme Court to decide. Jonathan Turley in his testimony made that quite clear. Military aid was never mentioned in the phone call. Zelensky was unaware aid would be withheld. So if Trump were using the money as a means to induce Zelensky to do those favors, it was a totally botched one. To quote Dr. Strangelove, "The whole point of the doomsday machine is lost...if you keep it a secret!"
Kaptain Amerika 3 days ago edited ,
New avenues for accountability and oversight became possible in Washington, D.C., in 2019, following the election of a new Democratic Party majority in the House (and the most diverse Congress ever) in the 2018 midterms. As a result, Democrats took hold of the subpoena power that rests in the House of Representatives, along with the power to set the agenda across congressional committees. As a result, 2019 has been full of important moments for congressional oversight of both the Trump administration and private business. Here are five of the most important moments in congressional oversight in 2019.1. Betsy DeVos, Are You "Too Corrupt" or "Too Incompetent"? ...
2. Big Bank CEOs Are Stumped by Simple Budgets ...
3. Wells Fargo Announces Plan to Divest From Private Prisons in Congressional Testimony ...
4. Rep. Ilhan Omar vs. Elliott Abrams ...
5. Voting to Impeach the President ...Congressional Oversight Claimed Important Victories in 2019. Here Are the Top 5
The only people who lie and obfuscate facts as much as Trump and his GOP cult are neo progressive demagogues and propaganda buffs like Chris 'regime-change-in-America' Hedges.
Dr Hacksaw Kaptain Amerika 3 days ago edited ,Absolutely bush should have been impeached, convicted, removed and executed for war crimes and mass murder.
But because he wasn't doesn't mean that our orange Fuhrer shouldn't be.
He is the most dangerous authoritarian propagandist and threat to this country since Hitler.rosemariejackowski Dr Hacksaw 3 days ago ,"[Trump] is the most dangerous authoritarian propagandist and threat to this country since Hitler."
Correction, Kaptain: Since Obama.
Kaptain Amerika Dr Hacksaw 3 days ago ,THE MOST DANGEROUS IN HISTORY....
https://countercurrents.org...Ron Ruggieri Dr Hacksaw 3 days ago ,NObama was a horrible POTUS for the 99% and is THE reason why we have trump, but he didn't poison every aspect of the government and everything else like your orange Fuhrer is doing, which is the exact same tactic that Hitler used to create Nazi Germany.
VallejoD 3 days ago ,The generic Left is ignoring this aspect of the Trump impeachment circus . The whole farce IS political. Now Senator Lisa Murkowski wants her Republican Party to rise above politics ( and do the wrong thing ? ). In the past three years when did the Democrat Party ever rise above politics ? Politics USA is always CLASS politics, always IMPERIALIST , MILITARIST politics . All the " liberal " Democrats have been slobbering over the UN-ELECTED shadow government of the United States , the National Security Police State , slobbering over FBI, CIA bureaucrats , uniformed officials of the Pentagon War Crimes Machine . Join them ?
This Senator Lisa Murkowski -no surprise - is in good standing with the Israel Lobby collectively determined to nullify the 2016 presidential election . NEWS clip :
[ "There are about 6 million Jewish people living in America, so as a percentage it's quite small, but in terms of influence its quite big," Farage said. Farage seemed to question why Israel was not facing election-meddling accusations, saying Israeli groups "have a voice within American politics" but "I don't think anybody is suggesting that the Israeli government tried to affect the result of the American elections."]
Did not the Kafkaesque Trump impeachment hearings look and sound like Old Yiddish Theater soap opera ? How many working class Christian Americans have heartfelt moral and cultural ties to the Ukraine of all places, now celebrating its first Jewish friend of Zionist Apartheid Israel president ? Who in the USA authorized this character to wage a proxy war against post-communist Russia ? WE THE PEOPLE ?
Guess WHO is promoting the HATE RUSSIA, New McCarthyism ?$748 billion in 2020 for the military death machine equals $23 MILLION A SECOND.
How many schools or hospitals could have been built, how many roads or bridges repaired, how many students educated with the money the MIC has squandered in the few seconds it has taken me to write this?
We are destroying our people from the inside out. This is treason.
|
|
|
Jan 01, 2020 | www.zerohedge.com
by Tyler Durden Tue, 12/31/2019 - 11:15 0 SHARESHawaii Rep. Tulsi Gabbard (D) has taken flack from the left after voting "present" during last week's formal House impeachment vote, and now says that the process may only "embolden" President Trump and increase his chances of reelection (which House Speaker Nancy Pelosi warned about before she caved to her party).
"I think impeachment, unfortunately, will only further embolden Donald Trump, increase his support and the likelihood that he'll have a better shot at getting elected while also seeing the likelihood that the House will lose a lot of seats to Republicans," said Gabbard in a Saturday interview with ABC News in Hudson, New Hampshire.
Tulsi Gabbard: "Unfortunately the House impeachment of the President has greatly increased the likelihood that Donald Trump will remain the President for the next 5 years... Furthermore the House impeachment has increased the likelihood that Republicans will take over the House." pic.twitter.com/gQIPssX0nS
-- The Hill (@thehill) December 31, 2019Gabbard also told CBS News that impeachment may allow Republicans to regain the majority in the House after the 2020 election.
WATCH: I sat down with @TulsiGabbard to discuss her "present" vote on impeachment. Gabbard says the Senate trial will strengthen President Trump.
Most Gabbard supporters I've spoken with in New Hampshire approve of her vote, particularly independents.
-- Nicole Sganga (@NicoleSganga) December 31, 2019Gabbard -- a 2020 president candidate -- noted that the prospect of a second term for Trump and a Republican-controlled House is a "serious concern" of hers, adding that she's worried about the potential ramifications that will be left if Trump is acquitted.
She told ABC News that it could leave "lasting damage" on the country as a whole.
The Democratic congresswoman -- who is known to be an outspoken critic of her own party -- was the lone lawmaker to not choose a side on impeachment, and has faced intense criticism for her choice. - ABC News
Gabbard defended her decision to vote present, calling it an "active protest" against the "terrible fallout of this zero sum mindset" between Democrats and Republicans. She told ABC News that her vote was "not a decision of neutrality," and that she was indeed "standing up for the people of this country and our ability to move forward together.
A rope leash , 4 minutes ago link
GALLGE , 12 minutes ago linkIf she isn't the Democratic nominee, the Democratic Party will cease to exist.
She is clearly the only uncorrupted adult running, including Trump.
She is running on foriegn policy. Those worried about her domestic policy forget it will go nowhere in a Republican Congress.
She's the only anti-war candidate. You want Tulsi or you want war.
Vince Clortho , 15 minutes ago linkDiGenova: Comey and Brennan were 'coup leaders'
ddiduck , 48 minutes ago linkObserve Tulsi while you can. She is the last of a dying breed -- a relatively moderate democrat. In today's Glo-Bol-Commiecrat party you have to be completely onboard with their 4 sheets to the wind extremist platform or you are the enemy.
ddiduck , 48 minutes ago linkNot to worry folks, if Tulsi is announcing president Trump and a majority in both the house and senate it is safe to say things are right on track. However, HERE COME THE CIA and NSA orchestrated false flag distractions and diversions I.e, Iran.. Also expect a much amped up domestic terrorism by the MKULTRA radical nut jobs they will be using to divert attention. Also creating a civil war starting in Virginia is examples of the allegiances to the satanic fraternity by certain governors. These retards will also becoming out of the woodwork.
Polymarkos , 50 minutes ago linkNot to worry folks, if Tulsi is announcing president Trump and a majority in both the house and senate it is safe to say things are right on track. However, HERE COME THE CIA and NSA orchestrated false flag distractions and diversions I.e, Iran.. Also expect a much amped up domestic terrorism by the MKULTRA radical nut jobs they will be using to divert attention. Also creating a civil war starting in Virginia is examples of the allegiances to the satanic fraternity by certain governors. These retards will also becoming out of the woodwork.
emmanuelthoreau , 34 minutes ago linkI wish you conspiracy twits would drop the MKULTRA nonsense. MKULTRA was an UMBRELLA PROGRAM that covered hundreds of classified operations, almost NONE of which had anything to do with anything you people think it did. Head out of ***, please!
MauiJeff , 51 minutes ago linkOh, yeah, MKULTRA was totally cool, normal stuff, really. Just the Dulles Brothers and a bunch of other psychos throwing people out of windows in the name of protecting Amurica from the dirty Reds.
Glad to know a self-identified former intel person is on here making death threats against Gabbard, by the way. Guess you have a get out of jail free card, huh? Why don't we find out?
Savyindallas , 1 hour ago linkShe is my Congresswoman. Tulsi is not perfect but she is good enough. Both the Democrat Senator (Schatz and Hirono) don't support her on our only other Democrat Congressperson does not support her. She is also despised by the national Dem party. This means she is doing something right.
kalboking , 1 hour ago linkLeave Tulsi alone. She's the best of the group by far. Some of you sound like all the George Bush supporters I knew who loved young Bush because he was so "pro-life". Give me a break. She has socially conservative roots. Unfortunately she has had to take on some of this progressive **** to be elected in a Democratic District. I have heard her views repeatedly on abortion, gun rights and immigration. She doesn't worry me at all. I trust her on all these issues more than Trump or any other establishment republican who I know are owned by the elites and who will sell us out when they are told to.
This is the real Tulsi. Look at her Christmas eve video--enjoy:
TULSI GABBARD IS true patriot Dont y'all remember when she called trump as Israel's bitch?
|
|
|
Dec 29, 2019 | www.truthdig.com
A central premise of conventional media wisdom has collapsed. On Thursday, both the New York Times and Politico published major articles reporting that Bernie Sanders really could win the Democratic presidential nomination. Such acknowledgments will add to the momentum of the Bernie 2020 campaign as the new year begins -- but they foreshadow a massive escalation of anti-Sanders misinformation and invective.
Throughout 2019, corporate media routinely asserted that the Sanders campaign had little chance of winning the nomination. As is so often the case, journalists were echoing each other more than paying attention to grassroots realities. But now, polling numbers and other indicators on the ground are finally sparking very different headlines from the media establishment.
From the Times : " Why Bernie Sanders Is Tough to Beat ." From Politico : " Democratic Insiders: Bernie Could Win the Nomination ."
Those stories, and others likely to follow in copycat news outlets, will heighten the energies of Sanders supporters and draw in many wavering voters. But the shift in media narratives about the Bernie campaign's chances will surely boost the decibels of alarm bells in elite circles where dousing the fires of progressive populism is a top priority.
For corporate Democrats and their profuse media allies, the approach of disparaging and minimizing Bernie Sanders in 2019 didn't work. In 2020, the next step will be to trash him with a vast array of full-bore attacks.
Along the way, the corporate media will occasionally give voice to some Sanders defenders and supporters. A few establishment Democrats will decide to make nice with him early in the year. But the overwhelming bulk of Sanders media coverage -- synced up with the likes of such prominent corporate flunkies as Rahm Emanuel and Neera Tanden as well as Wall Street Democrats accustomed to ruling the roost in the party -- will range from condescending to savage.
When the Bernie campaign wasn't being ignored by corporate media during 2019, innuendos and mud often flew in his direction. But we ain't seen nothing yet.
With so much at stake -- including the presidency and the top leadership of the Democratic Party -- no holds will be barred. For the forces of corporate greed and the military-industrial complex, it'll be all-out propaganda war on the Bernie campaign.
While reasons for pessimism are abundant, so are ample reasons to understand that a Sanders presidency is a real possibility . The last places we should look for political realism are corporate media outlets that distort options and encourage passivity.
Bernie is fond of quoting a statement from Nelson Mandela: "It always seems impossible until it is done."
From the grassroots, as 2020 gets underway, the solution should be clear: All left hands on deck.
Jan Goslinga 38 minutes ago ,
Maxwell Jan Goslinga 15 minutes ago ,Elections aren't real. Democrats will nominate Joe Biden to lose the election. Trump will remain as fascist strongman and the dems will continue to blame his neoconservative policies on his white trash constituency.
Bernie serves a few important functions.
1. he keeps the radicals from leaving the plantation and going 3rd party.
2. his promotion of progressive policies will make Biden less popular and help him lose to Trump
3. Bernie and his "socialism" can then be blamed for losing the election to TrumpMensch59 Maxwell 8 minutes ago edited ,Unfortunately this comment will be buried in this monstrosity of a thread- now at over 300 comments with only about a third of them having a much relevance.
You might consider re-posting in reply to one of the foremost comments. Your simple realism will certainly not be well received during the campaign hallucinations.
I've often wondered how it is people could believe the elections could have any positive and lasting impact on their lives if they have been through a couple of cycles. Do they not also wonder how it is that these election (marketing) campaigns now stretch out for well over a year nowadays demanding everyone's political attention, energy and resources. To say it is a colossal waste does not quite capture the enormity of the mind job being to people.
Mensch59 Jan Goslinga 21 minutes ago ,
Your simple realism will certainly not be well received during the campaign hallucinations.Yeah, yeah, sure, sure. You "realists" who are true believers that you have the Truth and have a calling to preach the Truth absolutely must stand against the unwashed masses who claim that your "reality" isn't even intersubjectively verifiable, much less dialectical & material [eta & historical ].
I quite enjoyed what SteelPirate/LaborSolidarity had to say about you attempting to gain a vanguard following by trolling lib-prog sites.
newestbeginning 2 hours ago ,
Elections aren't real.Never pay attention to anyone who claims what's "real" and what isn't. Politics certainly doesn't exist in the realm of an objective, concrete, physical, naturalistic, materialistic reality which is shared by a consensus of rational observers. At best, politics deals with intersubjectively verifiable social phenomena. Thus, politics is mostly idealistic in the belief that each mind generates its own reality.
This realization is the topic of intersubjective verifiability, as recounted, for example, by Max Born (1949, 1965) Natural Philosophy of Cause and Chance , who points out that all knowledge, including natural or social science, is also subjective. p. 162: "Thus it dawned upon me that fundamentally everything is subjective, everything without exception. That was a shock."V4V 2 hours ago edited ,Meanwhile the wealth of the world's top 500 grew 25% in 2019...
PGGreen V4V 2 hours ago edited ,Noam Chomsky on Bernie Sanders's Chances of Success- "...the chances he can be elected are pretty small." (Waiting with bated breath for copious downvotes by those who hate the truth and hate reality).
https://cdn.embedly.com/widgets/media.html?src=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.youtube.com%2Fembed%2FEpXJvWSa4FQ%3Ffeature%3Doembed&url=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.youtube.com%2Fwatch%3Fv%3DEpXJvWSa4FQ&image=https%3A%2F%2Fi.ytimg.com%2Fvi%2FEpXJvWSa4FQ%2Fhqdefault.jpg&key=21d07d84db7f4d66a55297735025d6d1&type=text%2Fhtml&schema=youtube
V4V PGGreen an hour ago ,Most of who support Sanders know that his presidency will involve an uphill battle. Chomsky is being realistic.
But there really is no better option for meaningful change working within the political system than supporting Sanders. it is also important to note that "Our Revolution" has energized many young activists, encouraging them to continue the fight. This goes beyond politics to social and economic issues. If Sanders leaves us with a movement, this may turn out to be more important than the presidency in the long run.
Keep working for effective moral and economic justice and democracy!
PGGreen V4V 21 minutes ago edited ,Well, I have said this several times, it's not the microscopic left that you need to convince, it's the majority of self-identifying Democrats not supporting Sanders that you need to convince. I am repelled by the Democratic Party, but there are millions who identify as Democrats and many are proud of it. You need to convince them, not us.
V4V PGGreen 6 minutes ago ,Yes, although I don't think that those who support a Leftist agenda--whether you actually call them Leftists or not--are quite so microscopic a group as you imply. But you don't need to convince me or most others here (probably) that Sanders isn't perfect, or that it will be difficult for him to be elected president. We already know; we simply consider him the best option within this context of voting.
Have you ever thought of turning your approach to systemic commentary (which is valid and interesting, BTW, I'm not discounting it) around and saying what candidates you support-- in this context being discussed of voting-- instead of which ones you don't? And then explaining why such support would be effective?
I would say that what is wrong with the world is more a fault of the economic and political system than of Sanders alone--who not only plays small part in causing what is wrong, but a significant part in trying to correct it. Yes, he works within the system. That is a given. It may be, as Chris Hedges thinks, that there is no hope working within the system. But Noam Chomsky's approach also bears serious consideration that even Hedges doesn't discount. Voting will only be a small part of what brings about change, but it may make some slight difference--if you can stomach it. And it only takes a small amount of time.
"In a system of immense power, small differences can translate into large outcomes."
I don't see much of an argument that Sanders will be no better as president than Trump (and if you think so, I'd like to hear you argue it). I suspect you find the compromise unpalatable. I can understand that. I, too, draw the line at a certain point. I couldn't vote for HRC.
Yes, Sanders isn't perfect. Chomsky also said another important thing: "We're all compromised." Everyone who is a citizen of the US is compromised, and bears some measure of responsibility for the military interventions undertaken by our government. Perhaps we should renounce our citizenship, refuse to pay taxes, etc. But most of us don't -- not even those of us committed to activist work in other ways -- significant ways -- to make things better.
So what are those ways, for you?
Mensch59 PGGreen 16 minutes ago ,But you don't need to convince me or most others here (probably) that Sanders isn't perfect
-for me it isn' that he's not perfect, it's that I think he sucks
"In a system of immense power, small differences can translate into large outcomes."
-funny, that's a favorite line of Democrats
I get that, but it doesn't negate that Sanders's chances are next to nil.
Your suggestion of me signaling whom I support would fall on deaf ears around here. I have said this many times- I will probably for the Green Party candidate or the Socialist Equality Party candidate. If only a Democrat and Republican appear on the ballot then I would refuse to vote even if I had to pay a fine. I am not in the habit of telling anyone whom to vote for unless asked.
Before a 3rd can succeed, the fantasy that the fix can come through the Democrats needs to be destroyed. Not to worry, in due time it will be obvious.
Patrick_Walker V4V 2 hours ago edited ,My guess/bet is that V4V believes that the truth "We're all compromised" doesn't apply to him.
He sees himself as a truth-knower and a truth-teller.
He won't commit to logical argumentation.
He'll preach the truth to you.V4V Patrick_Walker an hour ago edited ,I saw this video long ago--and agreed with it. But though Sanders' chances are small, they're still vastly larger than the NONEXISTENT chances of success of the purist, "Born to Lose" left. Why not just admit that you've totally given up and simply like to spent your time bitching and criticizing those of us with some (albeit small) hope?
acme V4V an hour ago ,simply like to spent your time bitching and criticizing those of us with some (albeit small) hope?
-straw man
That isn't what I do because I couldn't care less whom Democrats support and vote for. Typically, I post some unpleasant truth about Sanders, like his lackluster polling numbers or his support for neoliberal warmongers and sit back and watch the ad hominems and downvotes roll in. I am not normally on the attack, I am usually on the receiving end.
I admit that I see this forum as a form of entertainment. I admit I have zero expectation that someone to my liking will be elected president and that the system is going to change anytime soon. Do I believe it possible? Yes, I believe it is possible, I just don't believe it possible using the corrupt, Democratic Party as a vehicle and that's where we differ.
And that the crux of our issue- you believe the Democratic Party can be used a vehicle to convert the CIA/Wall Street/War Inc. Democrats into the peoples' party, and I do not. If the needed changes are ever to arrive, it will be in spite of the Democrats not because of them. I hope you stick around because in due time I'll be telling you, "Told ya so."
V4V acme an hour ago edited ,The problem with your position is that, unlike Sanders, you don't seem to understand that a third candidate party candidate hasn't a snowball's chance in hell of being president unless if s/he somehow gets more electoral votes that both the major parties combined. If not, it goes to the house, and in the current partisan atmosphere, would be decided for the candidate of the House majority.
The major parties have a death-grip on the presidency while the electoral college exists.Zsuzsi Kruska 4 hours ago edited ,You don't seem to understand that Sanders has a snowball's chance in hell of being the Democratic Party candidate for many reasons including the DNC arguing in court it is a private corporation and can legally rig primary and the trusty superdelegates for Biden.
What I propose is a movement outside the Democratic Party in inside it. I believe any attempt to reform the Democratic Party is doomed to fail. All this whistling in the dark over Sanders is a distraction and a kicking the can down the road to the time you Democrats finally realize it isn't going to work. You obviously didn't learn it in 2016, and I would be surprised if you learn it once Sanders tanks and begins campaigning for Biden just like he did Clinton. I will promise this, I'll say, "I told ya so" in a matter of months. That's okay, play it again, Sam.
People believe they need others to tell them what to do and give them the illusion somebody cares about them and has their best interests at heart. That's an archetype in the brain that goes back to our baby/childhood when we were dependent on our caregivers for sustenance, comfort and life itself.That's where the original concept of needing "leaders" comes from. But, what happens is psyco/sociopaths see this weakness in humanity and force their way to the top, to herd and exploit the gullible sheeple for their own agendas and selfish interests. No matter who rises to the top, she/he got their through the same system that's been going on since tribes had their chief; chief's lieutenant and witch doctor/shaman. Those three keep the tribe in line with their own desires. Chief through brute force, his lieutenant through information and witch doctor through religion and "spiritual" services; and all three require tribute and fees from the rest of the tribe. So, you will see, regardless of who the next POTUS will be, that same structure, although more complex today, will repeat itself. New boss/old boss, same ol' same ol'. All power has to be returned to the people at the local level before Wash. starts WWIII. But, if that happens, at least we won't have to worry about global warming with a nuclear winter after the bombs drop.
Nir Haramati 3 days ago edited ,As usual, I find your analysis and commentary honest and accurate. However, I do take exception to your pulling out these canards:
"Trump's contempt of Congress and attempt to get Volodymyr Zelensky, the Ukrainian president, to open an investigation of Joe Biden and his son, Hunter, in exchange for almost $400 million in U.S. military aid and allowing Zelensky to visit the White House are impeachable offenses"Trump has certain executive privileges and him being guilty of contempt of Congress should be up to the Supreme Court to decide. Jonathan Turley in his testimony made that quite clear. Military aid was never mentioned in the phone call. Zelensky was unaware aid would be withheld. So if Trump were using the money as a means to induce Zelensky to do those favors, it was a totally botched one. To quote Dr. Strangelove, "The whole point of the doomsday machine is lost...if you keep it a secret!"
Kaptain Amerika 3 days ago edited ,
New avenues for accountability and oversight became possible in Washington, D.C., in 2019, following the election of a new Democratic Party majority in the House (and the most diverse Congress ever) in the 2018 midterms. As a result, Democrats took hold of the subpoena power that rests in the House of Representatives, along with the power to set the agenda across congressional committees. As a result, 2019 has been full of important moments for congressional oversight of both the Trump administration and private business. Here are five of the most important moments in congressional oversight in 2019.1. Betsy DeVos, Are You "Too Corrupt" or "Too Incompetent"? ...
2. Big Bank CEOs Are Stumped by Simple Budgets ...
3. Wells Fargo Announces Plan to Divest From Private Prisons in Congressional Testimony ...
4. Rep. Ilhan Omar vs. Elliott Abrams ...
5. Voting to Impeach the President ...Congressional Oversight Claimed Important Victories in 2019. Here Are the Top 5
The only people who lie and obfuscate facts as much as Trump and his GOP cult are neo progressive demagogues and propaganda buffs like Chris 'regime-change-in-America' Hedges.
Dr Hacksaw Kaptain Amerika 3 days ago edited ,Absolutely bush should have been impeached, convicted, removed and executed for war crimes and mass murder.
But because he wasn't doesn't mean that our orange Fuhrer shouldn't be.
He is the most dangerous authoritarian propagandist and threat to this country since Hitler.rosemariejackowski Dr Hacksaw 3 days ago ,"[Trump] is the most dangerous authoritarian propagandist and threat to this country since Hitler."
Correction, Kaptain: Since Obama.
Kaptain Amerika Dr Hacksaw 3 days ago ,THE MOST DANGEROUS IN HISTORY....
https://countercurrents.org...Ron Ruggieri Dr Hacksaw 3 days ago ,NObama was a horrible POTUS for the 99% and is THE reason why we have trump, but he didn't poison every aspect of the government and everything else like your orange Fuhrer is doing, which is the exact same tactic that Hitler used to create Nazi Germany.
VallejoD 3 days ago ,The generic Left is ignoring this aspect of the Trump impeachment circus . The whole farce IS political. Now Senator Lisa Murkowski wants her Republican Party to rise above politics ( and do the wrong thing ? ). In the past three years when did the Democrat Party ever rise above politics ? Politics USA is always CLASS politics, always IMPERIALIST , MILITARIST politics . All the " liberal " Democrats have been slobbering over the UN-ELECTED shadow government of the United States , the National Security Police State , slobbering over FBI, CIA bureaucrats , uniformed officials of the Pentagon War Crimes Machine . Join them ?
This Senator Lisa Murkowski -no surprise - is in good standing with the Israel Lobby collectively determined to nullify the 2016 presidential election . NEWS clip :
[ "There are about 6 million Jewish people living in America, so as a percentage it's quite small, but in terms of influence its quite big," Farage said. Farage seemed to question why Israel was not facing election-meddling accusations, saying Israeli groups "have a voice within American politics" but "I don't think anybody is suggesting that the Israeli government tried to affect the result of the American elections."]
Did not the Kafkaesque Trump impeachment hearings look and sound like Old Yiddish Theater soap opera ? How many working class Christian Americans have heartfelt moral and cultural ties to the Ukraine of all places, now celebrating its first Jewish friend of Zionist Apartheid Israel president ? Who in the USA authorized this character to wage a proxy war against post-communist Russia ? WE THE PEOPLE ?
Guess WHO is promoting the HATE RUSSIA, New McCarthyism ?$748 billion in 2020 for the military death machine equals $23 MILLION A SECOND.
How many schools or hospitals could have been built, how many roads or bridges repaired, how many students educated with the money the MIC has squandered in the few seconds it has taken me to write this?
We are destroying our people from the inside out. This is treason.
|
|
|
Jan 01, 2020 | www.moonofalabama.org
Jay , Dec 31 2019 16:28 utc | 5
"The unreasonable campaign against Trump will hurt the Democrats in the 2020 elections. Unless something unforeseeable happens Trump will be reelected."
The Democrats are not helping themselves by pushing Russia-gate, or now Ukraine-gate.
However, the US economy is NOT good for 90 percent of workers, and this is what elected Trump 2016. Outside of his extremist fascistic+racist base, Trump is NOT widely popular. Now one way the Democrats could ease his re-election would be nominating Biden, Warren, or Buttigieg.
Here I remind you b how wrong you were about the Republicans retaining control of the House of Representatives in the 2018 elections.
Really?? , Dec 31 2019 16:34 utc | 6
Jay #5Russ , Dec 31 2019 16:50 utc | 8You may be right, but I just can't see either one of your three choices beating Trump. Biden has huge vulnerabilities, quite apart from being sleazier (plus there are more videos of him doing it) than Trump in Groping 101.
Warren does not appeal.
Buttigieg does not appeal.
The only Dem with a chance is Sanders. If they nominate a Sanders-Warren ticket that could well beat Trump.
Based on a hunch, I'll go out on a limb and say Warren will be the Dem nominee. Her fake-"progressiveness" is enough to satisfy most Sanders fans while being demonstrably fake enough to reassure enough Dem Party funders. And the Party could have a do-over on the whole "time for a woman president, any woman no matter what her record" thing.From there I agree with b, Trump will win "unless something unforeseeable happens." I expect Trump handily to beat any opponent but Sanders, but the Dems will certainly do all they can to prevent his candidacy.
A Trump-Sanders contest would be interesting, though, if only to see how the media, the political class, the well-heeled cultural elites of both parties, the Democrat Party as a whole handle their extreme conflict: Who do they hate more, Trump or Sanders?
|
|
|
Jan 01, 2020 | www.moonofalabama.org
Russ , Dec 31 2019 17:14 utc | 14
2020 looks like the year for the neocons at the helm to do whatever they must to get the hot war going with Iran, hell or high water. They're truly deranged psychopaths, they have a weak befuddled president who at least for the most part agrees with them, the balance of power in the Mideast can only get worse for the US and the Zionists, the KSA could collapse or be overthrown any time, the financial markets and dollar as well can't keep running in mid-air forever nor continue much longer to command global hegemony, the American people are narcoticized, neither China nor Russia seems ready to do anything significant about it (short of Russia's warning about nukes), Europe is still compliant or at least not resistant.They're as dead set on war as Hitler was by 1939, and they have the same sense that time is running out and the situation is not going to get better with age.
|
|
|
Jan 01, 2020 | www.unz.com
geokat62 , says: December 31, 2019 at 4:44 am GMT
@Ginger bread manThis was the Frankfurt School's great insight.
The best way to undermine a sense of nationalism is to divide the people through the promotion of identity politics, including LGBTQ.
|
|
|
Dec 29, 2019 | www.unz.com
"The life of the individual is a constant struggle, and not merely a metaphorical one, against want or boredom, but also an actual struggle against other people. He discovers adversaries everywhere, lives in continual conflict and dies with sword in hand."
Arthur Schopenhauer, On the Suffering of the WorldAlthough Nietzsche seems to be the philosopher of choice for many on the Dissident Right, I've always had a soft spot for Arthur Schopenhauer. His cantankerous philosophical pessimism has always struck a chord with my own temperament, and for many years I've found his quasi-Buddhist and highly compassionate conceptualisation of suffering to be strangely comforting. That life is a struggle involving endless adversaries and competitors also forms an aspect of Schopenhauer's philosophy, and this continues to be significant in shaping my political and philosophical outlook. Certainly, it goes without saying that adversaries have never been in short supply for members of the Dissident Right. They are arrayed before us now, emerging from all points of the political spectrum, and often even from within our own ranks. Dissident right political philosophies, more than any other, appear destined to be mired in continual conflict, and I often find it difficult to shake the dark impression that one day I will die, metaphorical sword in hand, with every battle raging but far from won. For this reason, I sometimes permit myself the relief of optimism (a form of cowardice to both Schopenhauer and Spengler), and part of this is the attempt to find allies where formerly one may have seen only foes. This brings me to the subject matter of this essay -- recent developments on the Left which appear to suggest the emergence of an anti-globalist, anti-immigration, and anti-Zionist/anti-Semitic politics.
Swedish Communists Wake Up
Just days ago, Sputnik reported on the fact that almost half of the members of the Communist Party in Malmö, Sweden, are resigning. They plan to establish a new workers' party that no longer features multiculturalism, LGBT interests, and climate change as key policy goals. Nils Littorin, one of the defectors, told a local newspaper that today's Left has become part of the elite and has come to "dismiss the views of the working class as alien and problematic." Littorin suggested that the Left "is going through a prolonged identity crisis" and that his group, instead, intends to stick to the original values, such as class politics. Littorin adds "[The Left] don't understand why so many workers don't think that multiculturalism, the LGBT movement and Greta Thunberg are something fantastic, but instead believe we are in the 1930s' Germany and that workers who vote [right-wing] Sweden Democrats have been infected by some Nazi sickness." In a piece of simple insight previously rare on the Left, he argues that the rise in right-wing votes for people like Donald Trump and Boris Johnson are in fact due to "widespread dissatisfaction with liberal economic migration that leads to low-wage competition and the ghettoisation of communities, a development that only benefits major companies." Rather than being beneficial to working class Whites, Littorin condemns a "chaotic" immigration policy that has led to "cultural clashes, segregation and exclusion due to an uncontrolled influx from parts of the world characterised by honour culture and clan mentalities."
Littorin continues to talk sense when it comes to the LGBT agenda. He explains that LGBT issues and the climate movement are merely "state ideologies" that are "rammed down people's throats". Littorin adds that phenomena like these happen at the expense of real issues, such as poverty, homelessness, and income equality: "Pride, for instance, has been reduced to dealing with sexual orientation. We believe that human dignity is primarily about having a job and having pension insurance that means that you are not forced to live on crumbs when you are old."
As well as prioritising jobs and pensions over the flamboyant celebration of buggery, Littorin and his colleagues have pledged to abandon the name and ethos of Communism, describing it as a
word drawn to the dirt, a nasty word today, and not entirely undeservedly. In communist parties, there is this risk of elitism, self-indulgence, and a belief that a certain avant-garde should lead a working class that does not know its own best interests, instead of asking people what they want. 20th-century Communism died with the Soviet Union, it has never been successfully updated for the 21st century but has been stuck in 100-year-old books.
Curiously, events in Malmö have been mirrored somewhat in broader Swedish Left politics, with Markus Allard, the leader of the left-wing Örebro Party, expressing similar thoughts in an op-ed titled "Socialists don't belong to the left," accusing the mainstream left of completely abandoning its base , switching from the working class to "parasitic grant-grabbing layers within the middle class."
British Socialists Reinvent Themselves
Almost simultaneously, an identical process is occurring in Britain with George Galloway 's announcement of a new Workers Party of Britain . At the time of its launch Galloway described the party as "hard Brexit and hard labour," and added: "If you're a liberal who thinks it's Left if you're still pining for the EU, if you think shouting "racist," "homophobic," "transphobic" at everybody who doesn't agree with you is the way forward, we're probably not for you." Galloway's pro-Brexit stance is rooted in his belief that the modern British Left "have no vision for an alternative to rampant neoliberalism and a deindustrialised, finance-led, low wage economy, they calculate the best way to make this work is within the EU." He argues that the cosmopolitan leadership of the Labour Party in particular "think we are some kind of uncivilised tribe, painting our faces blue, and only able to vote in a right-wing government," a view he finds "not only deeply insulting, but also self-defeating and overly optimistic about the EU." On immigration, Galloway argues that there is "nothing left-wing about unlimited mass immigration. It decapitates the countries from which the immigrants leave, and drives down wages in those where they arrive. The wealthy benefit from it, as they can afford cheap labor for their companies, or cheap au-pairs, cheap baristas, cheap plumbers. But the working class suffers."
Galloway has also stressed that his new party will strongly pursue anti-Israel politics, and is fully committed to opposing the IHRA definition of antisemitism.
Galloway and the Workers Party of Britain have also taken a stand against the more extreme forms of LGBT indoctrination, particularly the mass promotion of transgenderism. Galloway, who has previously been attacked by a self-styled "trans anarchist" while giving a speech, is here following the lead of the pro-Brexit Communist Party of Great Britain (Marxist-Leninist) which recently published Identity Politics and the Transgender Trend: Where is LGBT ideology taking us and Why does it matter? In this text, and other articles on the party's website, including this very interesting speech denouncing transgender ideology as anti-materialist and anti-scientific, the argument is made that
Biological differentiation between male and female is a real thing . It doesn't just exist in humanity, it exists in many species throughout the natural world. Sexual reproduction is a natural biological process that has persisted in nature due to the diversity it engenders; it is a phenomenon encountered in the natural world. And let's not forget how this debate impinged upon us. We've been following this ideological trend, and encountering identity politics (idpol) among supporters and candidates for membership of our party, and amongst people we've been working with for at least four or five years. Because idpol has become a fashion in that period. And it is a fashion; it is a trend. And it suddenly -- from being very marginal to certain academic institutions in the 1970s -- became mainstream globally worldwide; it was actively promoted. Not promoted by communists, not by socialists, but picked up on and accepted by many of them, because they are led by, and they blindly followed, bourgeoise society down this dead-end. There is a group of self-proclaimed 'socialists' who are not actually any longer fighting against our oppression, they're fighting against reality!
The Left in Crisis?
None of these developments are entirely surprising and, in fact, the argument could be made that they are the inevitable side effect of what Nils Littorin termed the Left's prolonged "identity crisis." The endorsement and promotion of multiculturalism and its sex-politics corollaries never did make much sense within the framework of rational critiques of capitalism, and the tension between the nominal desire for working class solidarity and divisive pseudo-Marxian doctrines (e.g. Whiteness Studies) designed to mobilise imported ethnic factions against the largest section of the working class (blue-collar Whites) was always destined to bring about significant stress fractures when Leftist fortunes began to decline.
And decline they have. Of course, we have to set aside rampant ideological and cultural success. Figures and cliques operating under the banner of social equality and eternal progress continue to hold the reins of power in government, academia, and the mass media. But the Left is without question currently subject to a period of political decline. It's losing votes, and more important, it's fast losing hearts and minds. I should also add that they aren't losing them to right-wing ideas, but to the hollow shells of right-wing ideas (Free Enterprise! Build the Wall!) and to the charismatic globalist play-actors who promote-these ideas like salesmen selling used cars or aftershave. White working-class people are voting for free enterprise without hesitation while Jewish vulture capitalism operates with impunity under that very banner, destroying their towns, exporting their jobs, and repossessing their homes. The same people vote for a wall they'll never get -- and would never really solve the problems resulting from capitalism or ensure a majority White future. And they do it not because of concern about identity or racial destiny, but in the same way one might decide to install CCTV in a grocery store -- the ever-elusive Wall will never be built so long as it represents nothing more than the aspiration to protect mere inventory. The hollow men of the pseudo-Right-wing offer flimsy placebos, and yet the political Left, supposedly the historical repository of hard materialism, can't seem to compete.
There's been a scramble to blame the situation on a lack of charismatic leaders , disunity, a lack of attractive policies, and even the idea that the European Left made the fatal mistake of trying to meet the Right on its own turf by "flirting with closed-border nationalism or neoliberalism." But the real reason is surely the fact the Left has consistently alienated and browbeat working class Whites, while slowly revealing itself to be an elite-run clique of cosmopolitans, who are living the high life while waxing lyrical about oppressions that are rarely real and often imaginary, and in any case never affect them personally. Added to this is the fact Leftist ideology has become so convoluted and contorted, with the square-peg doctrine of Marx endlessly forced into new and increasingly abstract circular and triangular holes, resulting in Marxist interpretations of such ephemera as graffiti, pop music, and drag queens, all of which strike the average blue-collar worker as a steaming pile of effeminate middle-class navel-gazing. All this plays out as young yet dithering social justice warriors, jobless and senseless, search for oppression like an old lady with dementia searches for a purse she hasn't owned in 20 years. As the pundits split hairs, I look on, and it occurs to me rather simply that right now the pseudo-Left-wing liars aren't quite as good as the pseudo-Right-wing liars.
Are These Rebels Potential Allies?
When I was around 11 years old, my mother made a new friend, a Scottish woman in her 30s, who always struck me as very strange. It was her eyes. I didn't know at first what schizophrenia was, though I would soon find out. One day she arrived at our house and, recognising her, I opened the door and welcomed her in. I called to my mother, who was upstairs, and made small talk with the Scottish woman, who, standing still and staring right at me, seemed perfectly cheerful and articulate. She asked about how I was doing at school, and we talked a little bit about science, which she seemed to know a lot about. It was only after a few minutes that I noticed the smell and deduced that the woman had fouled herself. By the time my mother arrived, the Scottish woman had descended into a stream-of-consciousness gibberish that culminated in her attempting unsuccessfully to retrieve a knife from the kitchen before running from the property. She'd simply stopped taking her medication. We later discovered she was found by police that night, dancing and weeping with bare, bloody feet in a nearby graveyard, wearing nothing but a nightgown and proclaiming to the dead that she was God, distraught at the death of the crucified son.
The episode has remained with me now for over two decades, shaping my perceptions of reality, relationships, and trust. Here it suffices only to remark that the insane talk sense at times, even as their psyche shatters. And if we dig deeply enough into the statements of these moderately "awakened" Leftists, do we yet see signs of madness? A look again at the statement from the Communist Party of Great Britain (Marxist-Leninist), along with some reading between the lines, suggests something decidedly off . Yes, "biological differentiation between male and female is a real thing." Of course it is. But so is biological differentiation between races, and yet here our erstwhile British hardcore materialists, currently led by a full-blooded ethnic Indian named Harpal Brar , decide to fight against reality. On that note, we should add that Brar's daughter, Joti Brar, has been announced as George Galloway's deputy leader at the "hard Brexit and hard labour" Worker's Party of Britain. Galloway, it's worth adding, has been married four times, with three marriages to non-Whites (Palestinian Amineh Abu-Zayyad in 1994, Lebanese Rima Husseini in 2007, and ethnic Indonesian Putri Gayatri Pertiwi in 2012). So for all his protestations of being against mass migration, one gets the distinct impression that Galloway is a committed multiculturalist and that his party will be internationalist in every meaningful sense of the term.
If there is any hope for some sanity in this camp of frustrated Leftists it is for the simple reason that these small new pockets of reason are for the most part free of Jewish influence and all the intellectual distortions such influence entails. In a 2018 essay titled " On "Leftist Anti-Semitism": Past and Present ," I considered the gradual shift of Jews away from the hard Left due to growing anti-Zionism, and their growing confinement in centrist neoliberalism:
Jewish blindness to their privileges, genuine or feigned, is of course one major cause for the undeniable friction between Jews and the modern Left. It was perhaps inevitable that foolish but earnest egalitarians on the Left would come to the slow realization that their 'comrades of the Jewish faith' were in fact not only elitists, but an elite of a very special sort. The simultaneous preaching of open borders/common property and 'the land of the Jewish people' was always going to strike a discordant note among the wearers of sweaty Che Guevara t-shirts, especially when accompanied so very often by the cacophony of Israeli gunfire and the screams of bloodied Palestinian children. Mass migration, that well-crafted toxin coursing through the highways and rail lines of Europe, has proven just as difficult to manage. Great waves of human detritus wash upon Western shores, bringing raw and passionate grievances even from the frontiers of Israel. These are people whose eyes have seen behind the veil, and who sit only with great discomfort alongside the kin of the IDF in league with the Western political Left -- the only common ground being a shared desire to dispossess the hated White man. For these reasons, the Left could well become a cold house for Jews without becoming authentically, systematically, or traditionally anti-Semitic. One might therefore expect Jews to regroup away from the radical left, occupying a political space best described as staunchly centrist -- a centrism that leans left only to pursue multiculturalism and other destructive 'egalitarian' social policies, and leans right only in order to obtain elite protections and privileges [domestically for the Jewish community, internationally for Israel]. A centrism based, in that old familiar formula, on 'what is best for Jews.'
As seen in the recent clash between Jews and the UK's Labour Party, the political relocation of Jews to a kind of amorphous and opportunistic centrism will bring them into direct conflict with those on the hard Left who not only pursue anti-Zionist politics but also object to manifestations of raw Jewish power like the mass adoption of the IHRA definition of anti-Semitism and the economic abuses of politically ambiguous (neither Left nor Right, but Jewish) oligarchs like Paul Singer. As such, and together with their natural aversion to being part of the Right, Jews will increasingly find it difficult to define themselves politically as anything other than Jews, leading to the increased visibility of their activities and interests -- something witnessed in the unprecedented step of Chief Rabbi Ephraim Mirvis openly calling for British Jews to move against Jeremy Corbyn. This increased visibility can only be a good thing for those concerned with Jewish influence, and who have been frustrated in previous periods by Jewish influence masquerading in various political guises.
A potential opportunity, imperfect but perhaps feasible, may therefore be arising whereby White interests could be subliminally or even publicly defended through savvy, nominally hard-Left activism against mass migration (on economic rather than racial grounds), against Israel and international Zionist influence, against some aspects of PC culture, and against the capitalist excesses of the Jewish vulture funds. It goes without saying that Leftist activists don't receive anywhere near the same level of social, professional, or legal punishment for their activism as those on the Right, especially the dissident Right. I don't think I'm too wide of the mark in suggesting that an anti-immigration agitator with "Workers Party of Britain" plastered over his social media is less likely to lose his job than someone with public National Front affiliations. It may therefore be worth serious consideration by young activists as to whether they might want to cultivate a kind of "Leftist" mask to defend White interests in much the same way as Jews in the past have adopted various convenient political masks while concealing deeper ethnic interests. I am suggesting a combination of infiltration and masquerade. What matters most is the private motivation and the potential benefits of the ultimate goal -- White interests and objectives serving them.
There are, of course, also dangers in supporting such movements. I am not suggesting the investment of serious time and money in these groups, since the risk is great that the majority of their members are committed to a politics that is ultimately antagonistic and destructive to our own ultimate goals. There is also huge potential for betrayal on many of the issues where we might have common ground -- immigration, LGBT madness, PC culture -- and I find it difficult to shake off the impression that these developments bear the mark of a temporary despair and are designed to dupe blue-collar Whites into voting Left once more.
Still, 2020 may open up a new front in the war, and as the New Year approaches, I'll silence my inner Schopenhauer and toast to that.
G. Poulin , says: Show Comment December 29, 2019 at 9:57 pm GMT
Gee, they're starting to sound like Mussolini.Anonymous [341] Disclaimer , says: Show Comment December 30, 2019 at 1:28 am GMTBoris Johnson seems to be a step in this direction, many of the policies he has openly stated would have been almost unthinkable for a Conservative PM previously, things like amnesty for illegal immigrants, vast amounts of public spending, he has even stated an intention to nationalise things like train operators.Ron Unz , says: Show Comment December 30, 2019 at 2:54 am GMTBoris is seen as very much right wing by most people in the UK, but if you look at his policies he could easily be described as a sort of left wing nationalist, especially in terms of his social policies. In terms of actual policy there is increasingly little difference between the Conservatives and Labour, the differentiation has become about abstract things like self-proclaimed patriotism and the level of pandering to Zionism.
WN-types such as the author of this article tend to focus so heavily on immigration as an issue. So here's a link to a long piece I published a couple of years ago proposing a solution to the American version of the problem, though I'm not sure how applicable it would be to Britain:Bolteric , says: Show Comment December 30, 2019 at 5:29 am GMThttps://www.unz.com/runz/a-grand-bargain-on-immigration-reform-2/
@Ron Unz I think, Mr. Unz, you highlight peaceful coexistence, at the same time many still pine for a separate nation of exclusively white Christians. While it's a lost cause at this point, it doesn't stop the WN types – a set that is difficult to exclude myself from – from imagining a different reality and the National policies that would accompany that. Is a grand bargain possible? It gives me pause.Priss Factor , says: Website Show Comment December 30, 2019 at 5:42 am GMTWe need the Left-Right, which is fascism.Frankie P , says: Show Comment December 30, 2019 at 5:45 am GMTIt's extremely surprising to me that Andrew Joyce, in his analysis of left/right potential cooperation for the benefit of the nation and its legacy population, would fail to mention or bring up the French Equality and Reconciliation movement of Alain Soral. Here is a movement with meaty ideas, and more importantly, results. For what ideas drive the Yellow Vest protests if not the very concepts that Joyce points out in this article, expressed so well by Soral and so many of the white French protesters? Soral, originally a Marxist who subsequently joined the National Front (now the National Rally), has a number of useful and accurate slogans. He is a brilliant analyst and an articulate commentator; unfortunately, his videos and activism is limited to the French language. "The Left for the worker, The Right for morality." Isn't this similar to Joyce's argument that the Left is losing members who are rejecting the identity politics, gender bender, climate change distraction issue driven narrative that is driving the Left today? Of course in France Soral is labeled a Rightist Antisemite, as he is not shy about calling out the stranglehold that CRIF holds over French politics and how this has warped foreign policy in the interests of apartheid Israel. When I watch some of his videos and commentary, I wonder why we don't have a similar figure and movement in the US.
|
|
|
Dec 31, 2019 | www.moonofalabama.org
Kali , Dec 29 2019 19:01 utc | 13
New article about Tulsi Gabbard being viciously attacked over religion during Christmas.Angry Bernie Sanders supporters whom I guess forgot to take their meds over the holidaze are viciously attacking Tulsi because of Jesus? LOL. This new article is specifically about Mike Figueroa from The Humanist Report, a semi-popular vlogger, and also a fanatic atheist type.
He used to be a Tulsi supporter, but since he is connected to the TYT network which is funded by Hollywood Billionaire and major DNC Clinton funder Katzenberg, he must have recently been told to toe the party line on smearing Tulsi if he wanted to reap the funding benefits of TYT who are hardcore Tulsi haters, following the DNC line.
I guess Tulsi showing the Christmas spirit gave him a reason to look hardcore to his fellow fanatics and appease TYT money folks. Anyways, here is the new article Like, In The Year 2024
|
|
|
Dec 30, 2019 | www.theamericanconservative.com
You can hear echoes of progressive realism in the statements of leading progressive lawmakers such as Senator Bernie Sanders and Congressman Ro Khanna. They have put ending America's support for the Saudi war on Yemen near the top of the progressive foreign policy agenda. On the stump, Sanders now singles out the military-industrial complex and the runaway defense budget for criticism. He promises, among other things, that "we will not continue to spend $700 billion a year on the military." These are welcome developments. Yet since November of 2016, something else has emerged alongside the antiwar component of progressive foreign policy that is not so welcome. Let's call it neoprogressive internationalism, or neoprogressivism for short.
Trump's administration brought with it the Russia scandal. To attack the president and his administration, critics revived Cold War attitudes. This is now part of the neoprogressive foreign policy critique. It places an "authoritarian axis" at its center. Now countries ruled by authoritarians, nationalists, and kleptocrats can and must be checked by an American-led crusade to make the world safe for progressive values. The problem with this neoprogressive narrative of a world divided between an authoritarian axis and the liberal West is what it will lead to: ever spiraling defense budgets, more foreign adventures, more Cold Wars -- and hot ones too.
Unfortunately, Senators Sanders and Elizabeth Warren have adopted elements of the neoprogressive program. At a much remarked upon address at Westminster College in Fulton, Missouri, the site of Churchill's 1946 address, Sanders put forth a vision of a Manichean world. Instead of a world divided by the "Iron Curtain" of Soviet Communism, Sanders sees a world divided between right-wing authoritarians and the forces of progress embodied by American and Western European progressive values.
"Today I say to Mr. Putin: We will not allow you to undermine American democracy or democracies around the world," Sanders said. "In fact, our goal is to not only strengthen American democracy, but to work in solidarity with supporters of democracy around the globe, including in Russia. In the struggle of democracy versus authoritarianism, we intend to win."
A year later, Sanders warned that the battle between the West and an "authoritarian axis" which is "committed to tearing down a post-Second World War global order that they see as limiting their access to power and wealth." Sanders calls this "a global struggle of enormous consequence. Nothing less than the future of the -- economically, socially and environmentally -- is at stake."
Sanders's focus on this authoritarian axis is one that is shared with his intraparty rivals at the Center for American Progress (a think-tank long funded by some of the least progressive regimes on the planet), which he has pointedly criticized for smearing progressive Democrats like himself. CAP issued a report last September about "the threat presented by opportunist authoritarian regimes" which "urgently requires a rapid response."
The preoccupation with the authoritarian menace is one Sanders and CAP share with prominent progressive activists who warn about the creeping influence of what some have cynically hyped as an "authoritarian Internationale."
Cold War Calling
Senator Warren spelled out her foreign policy vision in a speech at American University in November 2018. Admirably, she criticized Saudi Arabia's savage war on Yemen, the defense industry, and neoliberal free trade agreements that have beggared the American working and middle classes.
"Foreign policy," Warren has said, "should not be run exclusively by the Pentagon." In the second round of the Democratic primary debates, Warren also called for a nuclear "no first use" policy.
And yet, Warren too seems in thrall to the idea that the world order is shaping up to be one in which the white hats (Western democracies) must face off against the black hats (Eurasian authoritarians). Warren says that the "combination of authoritarianism and corrupt capitalism" of Putin's Russia and Xi's China "is a fundamental threat to democracy, both here in the United States and around the world."
Warren also sees a rising tide of corrupt authoritarians "from Hungary to Turkey, from the Philippines to Brazil," where "wealthy elites work together to grow the state's power while the state works to grow the wealth of those who remain loyal to the leader."
The concern with the emerging authoritarian tide has become a central concern of progressive writers and thinkers. "Today, around the world," write progressive foreign policy activists Kate Kinzer and Stephen Miles, "growing authoritarianism and hate are fueled by oligarchies preying on economic, gender, and racial inequality."
Daniel Nexon, a progressive scholar of international relations, believes that "progressives must recognize that we are in a moment of fundamental crisis, featuring coordination among right-wing movements throughout the West and with the Russian government as a sponsor and supporter."
Likewise, The Nation 's Jeet Heer lays the blame for the rise of global authoritarianism at the feet of Vladimir Putin, who "seems to be pushing for an international alt-right, an informal alliance of right-wing parties held together by a shared xenophobia."
Blithely waving away concerns over sparking a new and more dangerous Cold War between the world's two nuclear superpowers, Heer advises that "the dovish left shouldn't let Cold War nightmares prevent them [from] speaking out about it." He concludes: "Leftists have to be ready to battle [Putinism] in all its forms, at home and abroad."
The Cold War echoes here are as unmistakable as they are worrying. As Princeton and NYU professor emeritus Stephen F. Cohen has written, during the first Cold War, a "totalitarian school" of Soviet studies grew up around the idea "that a totalitarian 'quest for absolute power' at home always led to the 'dynamism' in Soviet behavior abroad was a fundamental axiom of cold-war Soviet studies and of American foreign policy."
Likewise, we are seeing the emergence of an "authoritarian school" which posits that the internal political dynamics of regimes such as Putin's cause them, ineffably, to follow revanchist, expansionist foreign policies.
Cold warriors in both parties frequently mistook communism as a monolithic global movement. Neoprogressives are making this mistake today when they gloss over national context, history, and culture in favor of an all-encompassing theory that puts the "authoritarian" nature of the governments they are criticizing at the center of their diagnosis.
By citing the threat to Western democracies posed by a global authoritarian axis, the neoprogressives are repeating the same mistake made by liberal interventionists and neoconservatives. They buy into the democratic peace theory, which holds without much evidence that a world order populated by democracies is likely to be a peaceful one because democracies allegedly don't fight wars against one another.
Yet as Richard Sakwa, a British scholar of Russia and Eastern Europe, writes, "it is often assumed that Russia is critical of the West because of its authoritarian character, but it cannot be taken for granted that a change of regime would automatically make the country align with the West."
George McGovern once observed that U.S. foreign policy "has been based on an obsession with an international Communist conspiracy that existed more in our minds than in reality." So too the current obsession with the global authoritarians. Communism wasn't a global monolith and neither is this. By portraying it as such, neoprogressives are midwifing bad policy.
True, some of the economic trends voters in Europe and South America are reacting to are global, but a diagnosis that links together the rise of Putin and Xi, the elections of Trump in the U.S., Bolsonaro in Brazil, Orban in Hungary, and Kaczyński in Poland with the right-wing insurgency movements of the Le Pens in France and Farage in the UK makes little sense.
Some of these elected figures, like Trump and Farage, are symptoms of the failure of the neoliberal economic order. Others, like Orban and Kaczyński, are responses to anti-European Union sentiment and the migrant crises that resulted from the Western interventions in Libya and Syria. Many have more to do with conditions and histories specific to their own countries. Targeting them by painting them with the same broad brush is a mistake.
Echoes of Neoconservatism
The progressive foreign policy organization Win Without War includes among its 10 foreign policy goals "ending economic, racial and gender inequality around the world." The U.S., according to WWW, "must safeguard universal human rights to dignity, equality, migration and refuge."
Is it a noble sentiment? Sure. But it's every bit as unrealistic as the crusade envisioned by George W. Bush in his second inaugural address, in which he declared, "The survival of liberty in our land increasingly depends on the success of liberty in other lands. The best hope for peace in our world is the expansion of freedom in all the world."
We know full well where appeals to "universal values" have taken us in the past. Such appeals are not reliable guides for progressives if they seek to reverse the tide of unchecked American intervention abroad. But maybe we should consider whether it's a policy of realism and restraint that they actually seek. Some progressive thinkers are at least honest enough to admit as much that it is not. Nexon admits that "abandoning the infrastructure of American international influence because of its many minuses and abuses will hamstring progressives for decades to come." In other words, America's hegemonic ambitions aren't in and of themselves objectionable or self-defeating, as long as we achieve our kind of hegemony. Progressive values crusades bear more than a passing resemblance to the neoconservative crusades to remake the world in the American self-image.
"Of all the geopolitical transformations confronting the liberal democratic world these days," writes neoconservative-turned-Hillary Clinton surrogate Robert Kagan, "the one for which we are least prepared is the ideological and strategic resurgence of authoritarianism." Max Boot also finds cause for concern. Boot, a modern-day reincarnation (minus the pedigree and war record) of the hawkish Cold War-era columnist Joe Alsop, believes that "the rise of populist authoritarianism is perhaps the greatest threat we face as a world right now."
Neoprogressivism, like neoconservatism, risks catering to the U.S. establishment's worst impulses by playing on a belief in American exceptionalism to embark upon yet another global crusade. This raises some questions, including whether a neoprogressive approach to the crises in Ukraine, Syria, or Libya would be substantively different from the liberal interventionist approach of Barack Obama, Joe Biden, and Hillary Clinton. Does a neoprogressive foreign policy organized around the concept of an "authoritarian axis" adequately address the concerns of voters in the American heartland who disproportionately suffer from the consequences of our wars and neoliberal economic policies? It was these voters, after all, who won the election for Trump.
Donald Trump's failure to keep his campaign promise to bring the forever wars to a close while fashioning a new foreign policy oriented around core U.S. national security interests provides Democrats with an opportunity. By repeatedly intervening in Syria, keeping troops in Afghanistan, kowtowing to the Israelis and Saudis, ratcheting up tensions with Venezuela, Iran, Russia, and China, Trump has ceded the anti-interventionist ground he occupied when he ran for office. He can no longer claim the mantle of restraint, a position that found support among six-in-ten Americans in 2016.
Yet with the exception of Tulsi Gabbard, for the most part the Democratic field is offering voters a foreign policy that amounts to "Trump minus belligerence." A truly progressive foreign policy must put questions of war and peace front and center. Addressing America's post 9/11 failures, military overextension, grotesquely bloated defense budget, and the ingrained militarism of our political-media establishment are the proper concerns of a progressive U.S. foreign policy.
But it is one that would place the welfare of our own citizens above all. As such, what is urgently required is the long-delayed realization of a peace dividend. The post-Cold War peace dividend that was envisioned in the early 1990s never materialized. Clinton's secretary of defense Les Aspin strangled the peace dividend in its crib by keeping the U.S. military on a footing that would allow it to fight and win two regional wars simultaneously. Unipolar fantasies of "full spectrum dominance" would come later in the decade.
One might have reasonably expected an effort by the Obama administration to realize a post-bin Laden peace dividend, but the forever wars dragged on and on. In a New Yorker profile from earlier this year, Sanders asked the right question: "Do we really need to spend more than the next ten nations combined on the military, when our infrastructure is collapsing and kids can't afford to go to college?"
The answer is obvious. And yet, how likely is it that progressives will be able realize their vision of a more just, more equal American society if we have to mobilize to face a global authoritarian axis led by Russia and China?
FDR's Good Neighbor Policy
The unipolar world of the first post-Cold War decade is well behind us now. As the world becomes more and more multipolar, powers like China, Russia, Iran, India, and the U.S. will find increasing occasion to clash. A peaceful multipolar world requires stability. And stability requires balance.
In the absence of stability, none of the goods progressives see as desirable can take root. This world order would put a premium on stability and security rather than any specific set of values. An ethical, progressive foreign policy is one which understands that great powers have security interests of their own. "Spheres of influence" are not 19th century anachronisms, but essential to regional security: in Europe, the Western Hemisphere and elsewhere.
It is a policy that would reject crusades to spread American values the world over. "The greatest thing America can do for the rest of the world," George Kennan once observed, "is to make a success of what it is doing here on this continent and to bring itself to a point where its own internal life is one of harmony, stability and self-assurance."
Progressive realism doesn't call for global crusades that seek to conquer the hearts and minds of others. It is not bound up in the hoary self-mythology of American Exceptionalism. It is boring. It puts a premium on the value of human life. It foreswears doing harm so that good may come. It is not a clarion call in the manner of John F. Kennedy who pledged to "to pay any price, bear any burden." It does not lend itself to the cheap moralizing of celebrity presidential speechwriters. In ordinary language, a summation of such a policy would go something like: "we will bear a reasonable price as long as identifiable U.S. security interests are at stake."
A policy that seeks to wind down the global war on terror, slash the defense budget, and shrink our global footprint won't inspire. It will, however, save lives. Such a policy has its roots in Franklin Delano Roosevelt's first inaugural address. "In the field of World policy," said Roosevelt, "I would dedicate this nation to the policy of the good neighbor, the neighbor who resolutely respects himself and, because he does so, respects the rights of others, the neighbor who respects his obligations and respects the sanctity of his agreements in and with a World of neighbors."
What came to be known as the "Good Neighbor" policy was further explicated by FDR's Secretary of State Cordell Hull at the Montevideo Conference in 1933, when he stated that "No country has the right to intervene in the internal or external affairs of another." Historian David C. Hendrickson sees this as an example of FDR's principles of "liberal pluralism," which included "respect for the integrity and importance of other states" and "non-intervention in the domestic affairs of neighboring states."
These ought to serve as the foundations on which to build a truly progressive foreign policy. They represent a return to the best traditions of the Democratic Party and would likely resonate with those very same blocs of voters that made up the New Deal coalition that the neoliberal iteration of the Democratic Party has largely shunned but will sorely need in order to unseat Trump. And yet, proponents of a neoprogressive foreign policy seem intent on running away from a popular policy of realism and restraint on which Trump has failed to deliver.
James W. Carden is contributing writer for foreign affairs at The Nation and a member of the Board of the Simone Weil Center for Political Philosophy.
|
|
|
Dec 29, 2019 | conservativesdaily.com
"THE HAMMER" CIA Contractor-Turned Whistleblower Dennis Montgomery Makes Damming Confession On How Obama Ruthlessly Spied Trump A Zillion Times
By CD's Team December 26, 2019
President Obama's Director of National Intelligence (DNI) James Clapper and his Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) director John Brennan oversaw a secret supercomputer system known as "THE HAMMER," according to former NSA/CIA contractor-turned whistleblower Dennis Montgomery.
Clapper and Brennan were using the supercomputer system to conduct illegal and unconstitutional government data harvesting and wiretapping. THE HAMMER was installed on federal property in Fort Washington, Maryland at a complex which some speculate is a secret CIA and NSA operation operating at a US Naval facility.
President Trump's allegation that the Obama Administration was wiretapping him is not only supported by Montgomery's whistleblower revelations about Brennan's and Clapper's computer system THE HAMMER, but also by statements made this week by William Binney, a former NSA Technical Director of the World Geopolitical and Military Analysis Reporting Group, by former CIA and State Department official Larry Johnson, and by Montgomery's attorney Larry Klayman.
Computer expert Dennis Montgomery developed software programs that could breach secure computer systems and collect massive amounts of data.
That system, THE HAMMER, according to the audio tapes, accessed the phone calls, emails and bank accounts of millions of ordinary Americans.
The tapes also reveal that the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance court (FISA), Supreme Court Chief Justice John Roberts, 156 other judges, members of Congress, and Donald J. Trump were targeted by the HAMMER.
One of the audio tapes made public by Federal Judge G. Murray Snow revealed that Brennan and Clapper particularly targeted and wiretapped Donald Trump a " zillion times."
Must read: Ben carson breaks silence on impeachment,drop nuke on immature democrats
Montgomery also contends that the government can plant files such as child *********** or state secrets on a target's computer, setting up the owner of that device for blackmail or framed prosecution.
Former CBS Reporter Sharyl Attkisson Alleged In 2013 She Was Under Electronic Surveillance For At Least Two Years And That Three Classified Documents Were Planted On Her "Compromised" Computer.
The audio tapes were released by Federal Judge G. Murray Snow in Maricopa County, Arizona in the Justice Department's civil contempt case against Sheriff Joseph M. Arpaio.
Attorney Klayman, founder of Freedom Watch, represented Montgomery before federal Judge Royce C. Lamberth. Klayman, who characterizes his client Montgomery as a "whistleblower," told Fox News that Montgomery "turned over 600 million plus pages of information to the FBI." Judge Lamberth was formerly the presiding judge over the FISA court.
After Montgomery produced his documentation, the FBI gave him two immunity agreements: one in the area of "production" and the other regarding "testimony."
The FBI then took possession of Montgomery's documentation.
Attorney Klayman asserts that this information precipitated James Clapper's resignation.
Clapper had gone before Congress to testify under oath that the NSA, and other intelligence agencies including the CIA," were not collecting massive amounts of telephonic and Internet metadata on hundreds of millions of innocent American citizens" according to Klayman.
Whistleblower Edward Snowden's revelations proved otherwise.
Clapper was subsequently found to be untruthful and resigned on November 17, 2016, effective January 20, 2017, the day Donald Trump was sworn in.
Clapper has not been prosecuted for perjury and we wonder why.
7 minutes ago Thanks Q! I bring up Montgomery all of the time here. The Eff Bee Eye and Dee oh Jay have all of the documents and are sitting on them. This is how the IC controls everything in the Swamp.
|
|
|
Dec 29, 2019 | www.zerohedge.com
BOMBSHELL: CIA Whistleblower Leaked Proof Trump Under "Systematic Illegal" Surveillance Over Two Years Ago: FBI Sat On It by ZeroPointNow Wed, 03/22/2017 - 22:37 0 SHARES
The same day House Intelligence Committee chairman Devin Nunes gave a press conference disclosing that President Trump had been under " incidental surveillance ," Attorney and FreedomWatch Chairman, Larry Klayman, sent a letter to the House Committee on Intelligence imploring them to pursue the claims and evidence presented under oath at a Washington DC FBI Field Office by his client - CIA / NSA Whistleblower Dennis Montgomery - who Klayman claims "holds the keys to disproving the false claims... ...that there is no evidence that the president and his men were wiretapped"
When Montgomery attempted to deliver this information through the appropriate channels two years ago , the former CIA and NSA contractor wasn't given the time of day:
[W]hen Montgomery came forward as a whistleblower to congressional intelligence committees and various other congressmen and senators, including Senator Charles Grassley , Chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee, who, like Comey, once had a reputation for integrity, he was "blown off;" no one wanted to even hear what he had to say.
As a result, Montgomery went to attorney and FreedomWatch founder Larry Klayman - who then approached the FBI:
Under grants of immunity, which I obtained through Assistant U.S. Attorney Deborah Curtis, Montgomery produced the hard drives and later was interviewed under oath in a secure room at the FBI Field Office in the District of Columbia . There he laid out how persons like then-businessman Donald Trump were illegally spied upon by Clapper, Brennan, and the spy agencies of the Obama administration.
Montgomery left the NSA and CIA with 47 hard drives and over 600 million pages of information , much of which is classified, and sought to come forward legally as a whistleblower to appropriate government entities, including congressional intelligence committees, to expose that the spy agencies were engaged for years in systematic illegal surveillance on prominent Americans, including the chief justice of the Supreme Court, other justices, 156 judges, prominent businessmen such as Donald Trump , and even yours truly. Working side by side with Obama's former Director of National Intelligence (DIA), James Clapper, and Obama's former Director of the CIA, John Brennan, Montgomery witnessed "up close and personal" this "Orwellian Big Brother" intrusion on privacy , likely for potential coercion, blackmail or other nefarious purposes.
He even claimed that these spy agencies had manipulated voting in Florida during the 2008 presidential election , which illegal tampering resulted in helping Obama to win the White House.
Given the fact that the FBI had Montgomery's testimony and evidence for over two years, Klayman traveled to Washington DC last Thursday to meet with Committee Chairman Devin Nunes in the hopes that he would ask FBI Director Comey why the FBI hadn't pursued Montgomery's evidence. When Klayman arrived to speak with Nunes, he was "blown off" and instead shared his information with committee attorney Allen R. Souza - who Klayman requested in turn brief Nunes on the situation.
During my meeting with House Intelligence Committee counsel Allen R. Sousa I politely warned him that if Chairman Nunes, who himself had that same day undercut President Trump by also claiming that there is no evidence of surveillance by the Obama administration, I would go public with what would appear to be the House Intelligence Committee's complicity in keeping the truth from the American people and allowing the FBI to continue its apparent cover-up of the Montgomery "investigation."
And, that is where it stands today. The big question: will House Intelligence Committee Chairman Nunes do his job and hold FBI Director Comey's feet to the fire about the Montgomery investigation?
Klayman has detailed all of this in a NewsMax article , followed up with an official letter to Chairman Nunes today, requesting that he question Comey on Montgomery's evidence. Perhaps this explains Nunes' impromptu press conference today admitting that Trump's team was under " Incidental Surveillance " before making his way to the White House to discuss with the President.
So - we know that evidence exists from a CIA / NSA contractor turned whistleblower, detailing a massive spy operation on 156 judges, the Supreme Court, and high profile Americans including Donald Trump. See the letter below:
Freedom Watch bombshell letter to Rep. Devin Nunes1/4 https://t.co/CZ4haCVauK pic.twitter.com/NnKogSytSC
-- ZeroPointNow(@ZeroPointNow) March 23, 2017Freedom Watch bombshell letter to Rep. Devin Nunes2/4 https://t.co/CZ4haCVauK pic.twitter.com/6Ls9a9kXAQ
-- ZeroPointNow(@ZeroPointNow) March 23, 2017Freedom Watch bombshell letter to Rep. Devin Nunes3/4 https://t.co/CZ4haCVauK pic.twitter.com/90KUdW9eH1
-- ZeroPointNow(@ZeroPointNow) March 23, 2017Freedom Watch bombshell letter to Rep. Devin Nunes 4/4 https://t.co/CZ4haCVauK pic.twitter.com/l29p9JzBsU
-- ZeroPointNow (@ZeroPointNow) March 23, 2017
|
|
|
Dec 29, 2019 | caucus99percent.com
gulfgal98 on Thu, 12/26/2019 - 1:38pm
Tulsi is a very strategc thinkerAlligator Ed on Thu, 12/26/2019 - 2:11pm@earthling1 I honestly do believe that she thinks long term and, for whatever reason, her decision not to run for her own congressional seat is a part of her long term plans. Despite her being smeared over and over by the media, Tulsi has the unique ability to effectively expand the electorate by appealing to rational people, regardless of party affiliation.
The establishment is terrified of her message. Otherwise, why would they be attacking her so viciously despite her reported low polling numbers?
While Tulsi is a practicing Hindu, she was raised in a multi faith family with her father being a still practicing Catholic. And she mentioned that they had attended a Baptist church in South Carolina on Christmas Eve. I noticed that her parents were in attendance at the dinner that her brother in law and his mother prepared.
is detonating.
Someone is gonna have to clean up the debri and make some kind of use of what is left over. Recycle the trash. Make it green. Bernie is past his best by date.
This is what I have suspected all along. To save the Party, we must completely destroy it.
Even if it means four more years of Trump. By then, climate change will be obvious to even the dullest among us.
Tulsi is angling to be there to clean up the mess.
IMHOTulsi gains by not running for Congress in 2020Cassiodorus on Fri, 12/27/2019 - 6:42am@gulfgal98 She will not be campaigning as a Dem this cycle, unless perhaps Bernie gets the nomination. The severance from Congress means de facto severance from the Democrat Party. The stink of said party becomes more and more apparent daily as Shiftless, No-Nads, Nervous Nancy et. al. continue their demeaning and angering stupidity. More Dems are getting turned off by the House sham impeachment daily.
#2 I honestly do believe that she thinks long term and, for whatever reason, her decision not to run for her own congressional seat is a part of her long term plans. Despite her being smeared over and over by the media, Tulsi has the unique ability to effectively expand the electorate by appealing to rational people, regardless of party affiliation.
The establishment is terrified of her message. Otherwise, why would they be attacking her so viciously despite her reported low polling numbers?
While Tulsi is a practicing Hindu, she was raised in a multi faith family with her father being a still practicing Catholic. And she mentioned that they had attended a Baptist church in South Carolina on Christmas Eve. I noticed that her parents were in attendance at the dinner that her brother in law and his mother prepared.
Do you have other signs --earthling1 on Fri, 12/27/2019 - 12:30pm@earthling1 that suggest that the Democratic Party is "detonating"?
It looks to me that the Democrats are settling in for a long period of existence as America's Vichy party. The Democrats are that party that exists so that those Americans who are afraid of Republican policymakers can vote for them so that, when elected, they can find clever ways of giving away power to the Republicans.
As for destroying the Democratic Party, we are on the same page.
is detonating.
Someone is gonna have to clean up the debri and make some kind of use of what is left over. Recycle the trash. Make it green. Bernie is past his best by date.
This is what I have suspected all along. To save the Party, we must completely destroy it.
Even if it means four more years of Trump. By then, climate change will be obvious to even the dullest among us.
Tulsi is angling to be there to clean up the mess.
IMHOI still seeCassiodorus on Fri, 12/27/2019 - 1:41pm@Cassiodorus
friends and family demexiting even today. Many of my union buddies are still pissed that the union bosses supported Her in 2016.
The teacher strikes last year and before showed the leadership out of step with the rack and file.
Now, in France the union leadership is being ignored entirely by the membership and see them as sell-outs to the labor movment.
Ditto in Chile, Peru, Ecuador, and numerous other countries around the globe.
It's the same all over the world. Working people are seeing their representation being deminished by union leaders.
IMHO
#2 that suggest that the Democratic Party is "detonating"?
It looks to me that the Democrats are settling in for a long period of existence as America's Vichy party. The Democrats are that party that exists so that those Americans who are afraid of Republican policymakers can vote for them so that, when elected, they can find clever ways of giving away power to the Republicans.
As for destroying the Democratic Party, we are on the same page.
yeah --doh1304 on Thu, 12/26/2019 - 12:22am@earthling1 Those French union bosses, btw, really like that lockstep marching. One of the primary reasons for the current general strike is that the union bosses in France finally gave their okay to the whole thing. Or at least this is what my source, who hails from Montpellier, tells me.
As for your friends and family, Demexiting has one really big advantage -- they will no longer be persecuted for not voting for Democrats. Can they still vote for Bernie Sanders?
#2.5
friends and family demexiting even today. Many of my union buddies are still pissed that the union bosses supported Her in 2016.
The teacher strikes last year and before showed the leadership out of step with the rack and file.
Now, in France the union leadership is being ignored entirely by the membership and see them as sell-outs to the labor movment.
Ditto in Chile, Peru, Ecuador, and numerous other countries around the globe.
It's the same all over the world. Working people are seeing their representation being deminished by union leaders.
IMHONeedless to say (but I'll say it anyway)davidgmillsatty on Thu, 12/26/2019 - 11:57amher chances will be much better in 2024 if Bernie wins in 2020. She will have a base to lead in place rather than in the wilderness. In short, there will still be an America.
Benie thinks he is immortalSituational Lefty on Thu, 12/26/2019 - 12:59am@doh1304 So maybe not should he win and hangs on for all four. (Two big hypotheticals). And unless he picks her for VP, she will still be in the wilderness in 2024.
her chances will be much better in 2024 if Bernie wins in 2020. She will have a base to lead in place rather than in the wilderness. In short, there will still be an America.
TULSI 2020!If she pisses off those people, she must be doing something right!
|
|
|
Dec 29, 2019 | caucus99percent.com
Tulsi Gabbard: Quo Vadis?
Alligator Ed on Wed, 12/25/2019 - 11:02pm After bravely contesting a nomination she knows she cannot win, Tulsi Gabbard has and continues to exhibit a tenacious adherence to achievement of purpose. What is that purpose? I believe it is evident if you only let your eyes see and your ears hear. Listen to what she says. Looks at what she does.
Humble surroundings. Real people. Good food.
What this does is obvious. However, please forgive me if I proceed to explain the meaning. People see what apparently is her home milieu. I've been to Filipino homes for dinner as many of my nurse friends were Filipino. Tulsi is so human. Despite Hindu belief, she is respectful to the presence and perhaps the essence of Jesus, and does not sound pandering or hypocritical.
Getting to know Tulsi at the beginning of her hoped-for (by me) political ascendancy. Get in on almost the ground floor of what will become an extremely powerful force in future American life.
Why? What's the hurry?
The more support and the earlier Tulsi receives it propel the campaign. That's what momentum means: a self-generating growing strength.
One doesn't have to be a Tulsi supporter to hopefully receive some ideas which may not have occurred to you. This essay does not concern any specific Gabbard policy. What I write here is what I perceive of her character and thus her selected path. Mind-reading, perhaps. Arm-chair speculation, possibly.
Tulsi has completed phase 2A in her career. The little that I know of her early life, especially politically (such as how she voted in HI state legislature) limits a deep understanding which such knowledge would provide. As the tree is bent, etc.
- Phase 1A: youth, formative years, military
- Phase 1B: state legislature
- Phase 1C: Congress
- Phase 2B and possibly subsequent: interim between Congress and Presidential campaigning with realistic chance of victory.
We are in Phase 2B. Tulsi, as I wrote in another essay, is letting the tainted shroud of Democrat corruption fall off her shoulders without any effort of her own. The Democrat party is eating itself alive. It is all things to all people at once. That is a philosophy incapable of satisfaction.
Omni Democraticorundum in tres partes est (pardon the reference to the opening of Caesar's Gallic Wars, with liberal substitution by me).
The Dems trifurcate and the division will be neither pleasant nor reconcilable. Tribalism will be reborn after Trump crushes whomever in 2020.
Tribe one: urban/techno/überkinden.
Tribe two: leftward bound to a place where no politician has ever ventured. Not socialism. Not Communism. We could call it Fantasy Land, although I fear Disney owns that name.
Tribe three: progressive realists. By using such positive wording, you will correctly suspect my bias as to which Tribe I belong to.
Once again, policy will not be discussed. Only strategy and reality. Can't have good strategy without a good grasp of reality. This is why Establidems are bereft of thematic variability. For the past 3.3 years, they have been singing from a hymn book containing but one song. You know the title. Orange Man Bad. Yeah, that's it. If they don't like that title, we establidems have another song for ya. It's called Orange Man Bad. Like that one, huh? Wazzat, ya didn't like the song the first time. Hey, we thought the song would grown on you.
Them Dems, noses up, can't see the sidewalk. Oops. Stepped in something there, huh? Oh, yeah like the Impeachment.
But I digress: The latter part of Phase 2B is not clear. Tulsi will continue to accept small donor contributions, even after not obtaining the nomination next year. Public appearances will be important but should be low key with little press attention. Press attention is something however that won't be available when most desirable. What else Tulsi will do may be to form a nucleus of like-minded activists, thinkers, and other supporters to promote an agenda for a more liberal, tolerant society.
If the Dem Party is going to be kaput . . .Alligator Ed on Thu, 12/26/2019 - 2:05pm. . . ah, never mind.
Don't be surprised if even Warren will fail to gather the 15% of votes needed in each early primary state to get awarded any delegates.
It's gonna Biden vs Bernie.
Bernie or Dust. Or she who shall not be named in which case even worse (and I don't mean Tulsi).
edit/add: Well, lookee here, hot off the presses as it were:
https://www.politico.com/news/2019/12/26/can-bernie-sanders-win-2020-ele...from your citation: If Sanders' candidacy ....Wally on Thu, 12/26/2019 - 3:08pmIf Sanders' candidacy continues to be taken seriously, he will eventually be subjected to the scrutiny that Warren and Biden have faced for prolonged stretches. That includes an examination of his electability. "That conversation has never worked well for anyone," Pfeiffer said.What a bunch of hypocritical horseshit. Bernie not getting scrutiny? In 2016, when not being derided for this, that or the other, Bernie was always scrutinized. There are only two things voters have learned since the DNC 2016 convention:
1. Bernie had a heart attack
2. Bernie supported H. Rodent Clinton in the general election.The reference was to 2020Alligator Ed on Thu, 12/26/2019 - 3:55pm. . . and to the much noted "Bernie blackout" up until now this time around.
It's gotten to the point given the polls and the first primary in being held in about a month where TPTB in conjunction with the MSM can no longer afford to turn a blind eye towards Bernie. It's gonna get really nasty.
The most recent tropes on the twitters, probably in response to Brock talking point memos, have been pushing Bernie as an anti-Semite and him purportedly triggering rape survivors. Of course it's horsehit but it's the propagandistic method of the Big Lie.
I'm genuinely curious. How will you react if Tulsi endorses the Dem nominee and it ain't Bernie? Bernie's endorsement of she-who-shall-not-be-named in 2016 seems to have pretty much completely soured him to you. Endorsing Biden better? Or at least acceptable? Not for me. Bernie doing so in 2016 I could understand and forgive. But this is my last go round absent a Bernie miracle.
If Sanders' candidacy continues to be taken seriously, he will eventually be subjected to the scrutiny that Warren and Biden have faced for prolonged stretches. That includes an examination of his electability. "That conversation has never worked well for anyone," Pfeiffer said.
What a bunch of hypocritical horseshit. Bernie not getting scrutiny? In 2016, when not being derided for this, that or the other, Bernie was always scrutinized. There are only two things voters have learned since the DNC 2016 convention:
1. Bernie had a heart attack
2. Bernie supported H. Rodent Clinton in the general election.Tulsi's support if Bernie's not nominatedWally on Thu, 12/26/2019 - 5:17pm@Wally She might back Yang--who won't get nominated. But I hope she doesn't do anything more than a neutral statement, somewhat to the effect that "We must defeat Donald Trump", then not campaign otherwise.
. . . and to the much noted "Bernie blackout" up until now this time around.
It's gotten to the point given the polls and the first primary in being held in about a month where TPTB in conjunction with the MSM can no longer afford to turn a blind eye towards Bernie. It's gonna get really nasty.
The most recent tropes on the twitters, probably in response to Brock talking point memos, have been pushing Bernie as an anti-Semite and him purportedly triggering rape survivors. Of course it's horsehit but it's the propagandistic method of the Big Lie.
I'm genuinely curious. How will you react if Tulsi endorses the Dem nominee and it ain't Bernie? Bernie's endorsement of she-who-shall-not-be-named in 2016 seems to have pretty much completely soured him to you. Endorsing Biden better? Or at least acceptable? Not for me. Bernie doing so in 2016 I could understand and forgive. But this is my last go round absent a Bernie miracle.
I don't think anyone other than Bernie or Yang would want Tulsiby Alligator Ed on Thu, 12/26/2019 - 6:28pm. . . to campaign in support of their candidacies.
Maybe Biden will accept her support. I've still never been able to figure why she never and probably still won't take any shots at his warmongering and otherwise cruddy record regarding domestic affairs.
#2.1.1.1.1 She might back Yang--who won't get nominated. But I hope she doesn't do anything more than a neutral statement, somewhat to the effect that "We must defeat Donald Trump", then not campaign otherwise.
She was working her way up the food chainwokkamile on Thu, 12/26/2019 - 5:29pm@Wally That's what intelligent predators do.
. . . to campaign in support of their candidacies.
Maybe Biden will accept her support. I've still never been able to figure why she never and probably still won't take any shots at his warmongering and otherwise cruddy record regarding domestic affairs.
Well, she wouldn'tby Alligator Ed on Thu, 12/26/2019 - 6:30pm@Alligator Ed @Alligator Ed be unfamiliar with the neutral position. Though I wonder if she would feel comfortable dipping into that well again given how much grief she got the last time.
Of course, if she again puts it in Neutral, and doesn't support the D nominee (anyone but Bloomberg), she will be finished as a Dem pol. She might as well go off and start a Neutral Party.
#2.1.1.1.1 She might back Yang--who won't get nominated. But I hope she doesn't do anything more than a neutral statement, somewhat to the effect that "We must defeat Donald Trump", then not campaign otherwise.
She IS finished as a DemWally on Thu, 12/26/2019 - 8:38pm@wokkamile Her dismissal papers will be submitted to her after she is barred entry into the DNC convention, regardless of how many delegates she may have won.
#2.1.1.1.1.1 #2.1.1.1.1.1 be unfamiliar with the neutral position. Though I wonder if she would feel comfortable dipping into that well again given how much grief she got the last time.
Of course, if she again puts it in Neutral, and doesn't support the D nominee (anyone but Bloomberg), she will be finished as a Dem pol. She might as well go off and start a Neutral Party.
Will Tulsi win any delegates?Alligator Ed on Thu, 12/26/2019 - 9:40pmDon't forget that 15% state threshold for eligibility to be awarded delegates.
#2.1.1.1.1.1.2 Her dismissal papers will be submitted to her after she is barred entry into the DNC convention, regardless of how many delegates she may have won.
My crystal ball has developed cataractsWally on Fri, 12/27/2019 - 6:54am@Wally Thus my powers of predicting the future have dimmed accordingly. But two things haven't dimmed:
1. It is readily apparent that the DNC won't let Bernie win. They'll rob him of votes in CA (100% probability) and NY (95% probability), etc.
2. The Demonrats will get destroyed in 2020 up and down ballot except in the fiefdoms of Californicate and Ny-no-nah-nah.
What, pray good Sir, do you predict or is that an impossibility at this time?
Don't forget that 15% state threshold for eligibility to be awarded delegates.
I certainly won't be surprised if Bernie gets cheated or worseI will be surprised if Tulsi gets so much as one delegate.
More than a few knowledgeable people think he has a very good shot of winning California. I am less optimistic about NYS but I think he will do well enough to get a good number of delegates especially if he does well in the earlier primaries (NYS comes April 28).
I don't feel solidly about making any kind of predictions at this point but given the nature of the Democratic Party, I don't see it as falling into oblivion anytime soon or in our lifetimes.
As far as Bernie goes, I am not optimistic but I still have some hope. I still fervantly believe that his candidacy is the best chance we will have in our lifetimes of bringing about any substantial change -- and if he and his critical mass of supporters can't pull it off this time around, we're all phluckled big time, even alligators, in terms of combating climate change and putting a kabosh on endless wars. I wish you good future luck with Tulsi though. I just don't see it. But I've been wrong on more than one occasion in my life.
|
|
|
Dec 29, 2019 | www.zerohedge.com
The Deplorables are ascending in America, with Trump, in Britain with Brexit, in Hong Kong, in much of Europe, in Latin America, in Iran.
...The Mandate of Heaven has been removed from the elitist establishment. It is passing to the Deplorables.
The Deplorables are ascending in America, with Trump, in Britain with Brexit, in Hong Kong, in much of Europe, in Latin America, in Iran. Deplorables are the antidote to arrogant globalists.
Deplorables everywhere say "from now on we will make our own decisions."
What is it with the Deplorables? What gives them such power?Three things, I believe, are elevating them.
Deplorables are pragmatic . They are not wedded to any extreme ideology. Deplorables will go with anything that works. It is no wonder that the Deplorables began in America. For, as Americans we inherit the pragmatism of our pioneering ancestors.
Boogity , 4 minutes ago link
FBaggins , 1 hour ago linkThe article incorrectly lumps the astro-turfed Hong Kong protests in with the "Deplorable" populist movements in the USA and western Europe.
The Hong Kong protests are being backed by Soros and the Davos globalist elites as well the the CIA, MIC, and the DC Uniparty. This same bunch of Swamp scum are enemies of the "Deplorables".
More pure American establishment propaganda as if the globalist movement is essentially a creature of the socialists, government bureaucracies, and the Asian block. The truth is that it is a creature mainly of the Rothschild banking cartel and with the support of most Western based multi-nationals, which have utilized the Rothschild & Soros backed international socialists, the Western mainstream media, most Western governments, plus the Catholic Church hierarchy, in order to bring about a world government. The Rothschild wet dream is control of world finances just like they control those in the West, and their stated intentions are for a One-World Bank with a one-world currency. However, the cartel cannot do that without a world government with real enforcement powers for trade and protection with their world currency. The multinonals mainly want borderless nations for freer access to resources and markets.
Trump has been used to whump up US stature and ultimately will be seen as much an instrument of the globalist cause as was Obama. Perhaps he was put in the game by his backers to secure a higher return on the US dollar when they are cashed in for the proposed one-world currency, and by the Zionists to secure more turf for Israel. Israel is getting very itchy with the old trigger finger and we await in the New Year another false flag at least on the scale of 9/11. It will likely have to involve a US city.
As we know, the term 'deplorables' came from Hillary in the last US presidential election and was applied to people who amplified "hateful views and voices" about her, but later the term was used to characterize mainly Trump supporters. The Hong Kong protesters as not "deplorables" because their cause in not for Trump or for the US. It is for their own liberty against the communist Chinese government usurping their basic legal and local rights, which Trump could care less about. Aslo, he is not a populist. He is an elitist and he is totally controlled by elitists with more money and power than even he every dreamed of.
Left or right, Democrat or Republican, the puppet masters are the same and run the show. They are all global elites using their money and power to swing the public audiences left and right with every pull at the strings of their dummy politicians. What they fear the most, is the people in the middle uniting without their money or the media and taking control of their lives and their nations.
|
|
|
Dec 29, 2019 | www.zerohedge.com
yaridanjo , 21 minutes ago link
Reality_checkers , 18 minutes ago linkCongress' constitutional duty is putting Israel first!
- House Dems Unanimously Vote to Condemn Withdrawal From Syria - Oct 16, 2019
In a Wednesday vote, the House overwhelmingly backed a resolution expressing opposition to the end of the US war in Syria, and calling on the US to protect the Syrian Kurds from Turkey. The vote was 354-60, with the majority of Republicans supporting it, and unanimous support from Democrats who cast votes .- Positions from Democrat leaders suggested an unconditional opposition to Trump ending any war and withdrawing any troops under any circumstances. They also objected to the notion that a president could end a war without their permission .
- Translation: 85.5% of the USA Congress opted to take 'bribes' from the Rothschild Banking Cartel instead of stopping the death and bloodshed in Syria. What is worse, they 'objected to the notion that a president could end a war without their permission (a war that they had not voted for to begin with).
H.J.Res. 77: Opposing The Decision To End Certain United States Efforts To Prevent Turkish Military Operations Against Syrian Kurdish Forces In Northeast Syria. - Oct 16, 2019
Yea 86% (354) Nay 14% (60)yaridanjo , 11 minutes ago linkMIGA!
You can find here who the warmongers in congress are:
https://www.govtrack.us/congress/votes/116-2019/h560
the warmongers voted 'yea' to get their bribes from the Rothschild Banking Cartel!
|
|
|
Dec 28, 2019 | www.moonofalabama.org
Mao , Dec 28 2019 18:17 utc | 11
Democrats and Republicans Aren't Just Divided. They Live in Different WorldsThe two parties represent radically different slices of the American economy.
America's political polarization is almost complete. Its two main political parties increasingly represent two different economies. And they barely overlap.
Democrats can be found in educated cities and suburbs where professional jobs are plentiful. Republicans live in working-class and rural communities, home to agriculture and low-skill manufacturing.
One Country, Two Nations
https://www.theamericanconservative.com/dreher/one-country-two-nations/America has two economies -- and they're diverging fast
https://www.brookings.edu/blog/the-avenue/2019/09/10/america-has-two-economies-and-theyre-diverging-fast/Red and Blue Voters Live in Different Economies
https://www.nytimes.com/2019/09/25/opinion/trump-economy.htmlEconomic divide in the US is becoming as stark as its politics
https://www.cnbc.com/2019/09/19/economic-divide-in-the-us-is-becoming-as-stark-as-its-politics.html
|
|
|
Dec 26, 2019 | twitter.com
Robespierre Garçon 5:43 PM - 25 Dec 2019
I don't think Warren is a stalking horse for neoliberalism or whatever, but her inability to fight back against bad press (combined with her occasional baffling decisions to give herself bad press) is a big mark against her candidacy. There will be bad press for either of them.
|
|
|
Dec 26, 2019 | twitter.com
Eric Blanc Dec 23
I'm really looking forward to this new special by the ever-amazing
@franifioDavid Sirota Dec 23
NEW POLL:
@BernieSanders is uniting the Democratic Party -- he's not only gaining momentum overall, the new Morning Consult post-debate poll shows that out of all the candidates, he is the second choice of the largest percentage of BOTH Biden supporters AND Warren supportersEric Blanc Dec 23
A friendly reminder
Eric Blanc Dec 23
The new book by
@rsgexp couldn't be coming out at a better time. Get a copy for yourself and one for a co-worker.Shaun King Dec 23
Bernie beats Biden nationwide against Trump.
Eric Blanc Dec 23
Please do
|
|
|
Dec 25, 2019 | www.nationalreview.com
The only real check left is impeachment. It is rarely invoked and (until very recently) has atrophied as a credible threat. But that doesn't make it any less indispensable.
The problem was exacerbated by the Clinton impeachment fiasco, which history has proved foolhardy. (I supported it at the time, but I was a government lawyer then, not a public commentator.) Republicans were sufficiently spooked by the experience that they seemed to regard impeachment as obsolete. Faithless Execution countered that this was the wrong lesson to take from the affair. Clinton's impeachment was a mistake because (a) his conduct, though disgraceful and indicative of unfitness, did not implicate the core responsibilities of the presidency; and more significantly, (b) the public, though appalled by the behavior, strongly opposed Clinton's removal. The right lesson was that impeachment must be reserved for grave misconduct that involves the president's essential Article II duties; and that because impeachment is so deeply divisive, it should never be launched in the absence of a public consensus that transcends partisan lines.
This is why, unlike many opponents of President Trump's impeachment, I have never questioned the legitimacy of the Democratic-controlled House's investigations of misconduct allegations against the president. I believe the House must act as a body (investigations should not be partisan attacks under the guise of House inquiries), and it must respect the lawful and essential privileges of the executive branch; but within those parameters, Congress has the authority and responsibility to expose executive misconduct.
Moreover, while egregious misconduct will usually be easy to spot and grasp, that will not always be the case. When members of Congress claim to see it, they should have a fair opportunity to expose and explain it. To my mind, President Obama was the kind of chief executive that the Framers feared, but this was not obvious because he was not committing felonies. Instead, he was consciously undermining our constitutional order. He usurped the right to dictate law rather than execute it. His extravagant theory of executive discretion to "waive" the enforcement of laws he opposed flouted his basic constitutional duty to execute the laws faithfully. He and his underlings willfully and serially deceived Congress and the public on such major matters as Obamacare and the Benghazi massacre. They misled Congress on, and obstructed its investigation of, the outrageous Fast and Furious "gun-walking" operation, in connection with which a border patrol agent was murdered. With his Iran deal, the president flouted the Constitution's treaty process and colluded with a hostile foreign power to withhold information from Congress, in an arrangement that empowered (and paid cash ransom to) the world's leading sponsor of anti-American terrorism.
My critics fairly noted that I opposed Obama politically, and therefore contended that I was masquerading as a constitutional objection what was really a series of policy disputes. I don't think that is right, though, for two reasons.
First, my impeachment argument was not that Obama was pursuing policies I deeply opposed. I was very clear that elections have consequences, and the president had every right to press his agenda. My objection was that he was imposing his agenda lawlessly, breaking the limitations within which the Framers cabined executive power, precisely to prevent presidents from becoming tyrants. If allowed to stand, Obama precedents would permanently alter our governing framework. Impeachment is there to protect our governing framework.
Second, I argued that, my objections notwithstanding, Obama should not be impeached in the absence of a public consensus for his removal. Yes, Republicans should try to build that case, try to edify the public about why the president's actions threatened the Constitution and its separation of powers. But they should not seek to file articles of impeachment simply because they could -- i.e., because control of the House theoretically gave them the numbers to do it. The House is not obliged to file impeachment articles just because there may be impeachable conduct. Because impeachment is so divisive, the Framers feared that it could be triggered on partisan rather than serious grounds. The two-thirds supermajority requirement for Senate conviction guards against that: The House should not impeach unless there is a reasonable possibility that the Senate would remove -- which, in Obama's case, there was not.
I also tried to focus on incentives. If impeachment were a credible threat, and Congress began investigating and publicly exposing abuses, a sensible president would desist in the misconduct, making it unnecessary to proceed with impeachment. On the other hand, a failed impeachment effort would likely embolden a rogue president to continue abusing power. If your real concern is executive lawlessness, then impeaching heedlessly and against public opinion would be counterproductive.
I've taken the same tack with President Trump.
The objections to Trump are very different from those to Obama. He is breaking not laws but norms of presidential behavior and decorum. For the most part, I object to this. There are lots of things about our government that need disruption, but even disruptive presidents should be mindful that they hold the office of Washington and Lincoln and aspire to their dignity, even if their greatness is out of reach.
That said, impeachment is about serious abuse of the presidency's core powers, not behavior that is intemperate or gauche. Critics must be mindful that the People, not the pundits, are sovereign, and they elected Donald Trump well aware of his flaws. That he turns out to be as president exactly what he appeared to be as a candidate is not a rationale for impeaching him.
The president's misconduct on Ukraine is small potatoes. Democrats were right to expose it, and we would be dealing with a more serious situation if the defense aid appropriated by Congress had actually been denied, rather than inconsequentially delayed. If Democrats had wanted to make a point about discouraging foreign interference in American politics (notwithstanding their long record of encouraging it), that would have been fine. They could have called for the president's censure, which would have put Republicans on the defensive. Ukraine could have been incorporated as part of their 2020 campaign that Trump should be defeated, despite a surging economy and relative peace.
Conducting an impeachment inquiry is one thing, but for the House to take the drastic step of impeaching the president is abusive on this record. Yes, it was foolish of Trump to mention the Bidens to President Zelensky and to seek Ukraine's help in investigating the Bidens. There may well be corruption worth probing, but the president ought to leave that to researchers in his campaign. If there is something that a government should be looking into, leave that to the Justice Department, which can (and routinely does) seek foreign assistance when necessary. The president, however, should have stayed out of it. Still, it is absurd to posit, as Democrats do, that, by not staying out of it, the president threatened election integrity and U.S. national security. Such outlandish arguments may make Ukraine more of a black eye for Democrats than for the president.
But whoever ultimately bears the brunt of the impeachment push, I have to ask myself a hard question: Is this the world I was asking for when I wrote a book contending that, for our system to work as designed, impeachment has to be a credible threat? I don't think so . . . but I do worry about it.
Back to the Clinton impeachment. I tried to make the point that that impeachment effort -- against public opinion, and based on misconduct that, while dreadful, was not central to the presidency -- has contributed significantly to the poisonous politics we have today. Democrats have been looking for payback ever since, and now they have it -- in a way that is very likely to make impeachment more routine in the future.
I don't see how our constitutional system can work without a viable impeachment remedy. But I may have been wrong to believe that we could be trusted to invoke the remedy responsibly. I used to poke fun at pols who would rather hide under their desks than utter the dreaded I-word. Turns out they knew something I didn't.
|
|
|
Dec 25, 2019 | thenewkremlinstooge.wordpress.com
Jen December 23, 2019 at 2:23 pm
If the British were the ones to organise an independence referendum in Crimea, they would probably push as many people as possible into postal voting and reduce the number of polling stations as part of this strategy.Postal vote fraud seems to be an ongoing problem in the UK as detailed a 2016 report on electoral fraud by Sir Eric Pickles:
https://www.gov.uk/government/news/sir-eric-pickles-publishes-report-into-tackling-electoral-fraud
|
|
|
Dec 25, 2019 | www.moonofalabama.org
John Doe , Dec 24 2019 12:33 utc | 92
Stratfor, December 2019: The death of the American middle class and, with it, large swaths of the American interior, is no secret. In March, we looked at how globalization, technological change and other factors have decimated the heartland of the country: https://archive.md/mu9cv
|
|
|
Dec 25, 2019 | www.zerohedge.com
Thinking123 , 10 minutes ago link
Please acknowledge the difference between Democrats/Liberals and Progressives. Establishment Democrats like to call themselves Progressives, because they want to gain popularity.
The real Progressives like Jimmy Dore, Status Coup, Michael Tracy, and anti-war real Jewish activists/journalists like "The Gray Zone" Max Blumenthal, Arron Matte, The Real News, Glen Greenwald have been against this fake #RussiaGate/ Muller/ Impeachment scandals.
"Jimmy Dore: until we fix Democratic Party elites' corruption, we won't defeat Trump's" https://youtu.be/ufduP0bLfAY
"Aaron Maté: from Russiagate to Ukrainegate, liberals enlist in self-defeating Cold War: https://youtu.be/M9ZzERen_U8
"Max Blumenthal on how corporate media manufactures consent for war and regime change": https://youtu.be/oOV-RYnpQH4
Google matched content |
[Jan 26, 2020] The Collapse of Neoliberalism by Ganesh Sitaraman Published on Dec 23, 2019 | newrepublic.com
Presidential election 2016:
Oligarchy - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Iron law of oligarchy - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
George Orwell Literary Criticism
polyarchy participation and opposition - Robert Alan Dahl - Google Books
Promoting polyarchy Globalization, US Intervention, and Hegemony (Cambridge Studies in International Relations) by William I. Robinson Also at Google Books.
by
polyarchy Participation and Opposition Robert A. Dahl Amazon.com Books
Society
Groupthink : Two Party System as Polyarchy : Corruption of Regulators : Bureaucracies : Understanding Micromanagers and Control Freaks : Toxic Managers : Harvard Mafia : Diplomatic Communication : Surviving a Bad Performance Review : Insufficient Retirement Funds as Immanent Problem of Neoliberal Regime : PseudoScience : Who Rules America : Neoliberalism : The Iron Law of Oligarchy : Libertarian Philosophy
Quotes
War and Peace : Skeptical Finance : John Kenneth Galbraith :Talleyrand : Oscar Wilde : Otto Von Bismarck : Keynes : George Carlin : Skeptics : Propaganda : SE quotes : Language Design and Programming Quotes : Random IT-related quotes : Somerset Maugham : Marcus Aurelius : Kurt Vonnegut : Eric Hoffer : Winston Churchill : Napoleon Bonaparte : Ambrose Bierce : Bernard Shaw : Mark Twain Quotes
Bulletin:
Vol 25, No.12 (December, 2013) Rational Fools vs. Efficient Crooks The efficient markets hypothesis : Political Skeptic Bulletin, 2013 : Unemployment Bulletin, 2010 : Vol 23, No.10 (October, 2011) An observation about corporate security departments : Slightly Skeptical Euromaydan Chronicles, June 2014 : Greenspan legacy bulletin, 2008 : Vol 25, No.10 (October, 2013) Cryptolocker Trojan (Win32/Crilock.A) : Vol 25, No.08 (August, 2013) Cloud providers as intelligence collection hubs : Financial Humor Bulletin, 2010 : Inequality Bulletin, 2009 : Financial Humor Bulletin, 2008 : Copyleft Problems Bulletin, 2004 : Financial Humor Bulletin, 2011 : Energy Bulletin, 2010 : Malware Protection Bulletin, 2010 : Vol 26, No.1 (January, 2013) Object-Oriented Cult : Political Skeptic Bulletin, 2011 : Vol 23, No.11 (November, 2011) Softpanorama classification of sysadmin horror stories : Vol 25, No.05 (May, 2013) Corporate bullshit as a communication method : Vol 25, No.06 (June, 2013) A Note on the Relationship of Brooks Law and Conway Law
History:
Fifty glorious years (1950-2000): the triumph of the US computer engineering : Donald Knuth : TAoCP and its Influence of Computer Science : Richard Stallman : Linus Torvalds : Larry Wall : John K. Ousterhout : CTSS : Multix OS Unix History : Unix shell history : VI editor : History of pipes concept : Solaris : MS DOS : Programming Languages History : PL/1 : Simula 67 : C : History of GCC development : Scripting Languages : Perl history : OS History : Mail : DNS : SSH : CPU Instruction Sets : SPARC systems 1987-2006 : Norton Commander : Norton Utilities : Norton Ghost : Frontpage history : Malware Defense History : GNU Screen : OSS early history
Classic books:
The Peter Principle : Parkinson Law : 1984 : The Mythical Man-Month : How to Solve It by George Polya : The Art of Computer Programming : The Elements of Programming Style : The Unix Haters Handbook : The Jargon file : The True Believer : Programming Pearls : The Good Soldier Svejk : The Power Elite
Most popular humor pages:
Manifest of the Softpanorama IT Slacker Society : Ten Commandments of the IT Slackers Society : Computer Humor Collection : BSD Logo Story : The Cuckoo's Egg : IT Slang : C++ Humor : ARE YOU A BBS ADDICT? : The Perl Purity Test : Object oriented programmers of all nations : Financial Humor : Financial Humor Bulletin, 2008 : Financial Humor Bulletin, 2010 : The Most Comprehensive Collection of Editor-related Humor : Programming Language Humor : Goldman Sachs related humor : Greenspan humor : C Humor : Scripting Humor : Real Programmers Humor : Web Humor : GPL-related Humor : OFM Humor : Politically Incorrect Humor : IDS Humor : "Linux Sucks" Humor : Russian Musical Humor : Best Russian Programmer Humor : Microsoft plans to buy Catholic Church : Richard Stallman Related Humor : Admin Humor : Perl-related Humor : Linus Torvalds Related humor : PseudoScience Related Humor : Networking Humor : Shell Humor : Financial Humor Bulletin, 2011 : Financial Humor Bulletin, 2012 : Financial Humor Bulletin, 2013 : Java Humor : Software Engineering Humor : Sun Solaris Related Humor : Education Humor : IBM Humor : Assembler-related Humor : VIM Humor : Computer Viruses Humor : Bright tomorrow is rescheduled to a day after tomorrow : Classic Computer Humor
The Last but not Least Technology is dominated by two types of people: those who understand what they do not manage and those who manage what they do not understand ~Archibald Putt. Ph.D
Copyright © 1996-2021 by Softpanorama Society. www.softpanorama.org was initially created as a service to the (now defunct) UN Sustainable Development Networking Programme (SDNP) without any remuneration. This document is an industrial compilation designed and created exclusively for educational use and is distributed under the Softpanorama Content License. Original materials copyright belong to respective owners. Quotes are made for educational purposes only in compliance with the fair use doctrine.
FAIR USE NOTICE This site contains copyrighted material the use of which has not always been specifically authorized by the copyright owner. We are making such material available to advance understanding of computer science, IT technology, economic, scientific, and social issues. We believe this constitutes a 'fair use' of any such copyrighted material as provided by section 107 of the US Copyright Law according to which such material can be distributed without profit exclusively for research and educational purposes.
This is a Spartan WHYFF (We Help You For Free) site written by people for whom English is not a native language. Grammar and spelling errors should be expected. The site contain some broken links as it develops like a living tree...
|
|
You can use PayPal to to buy a cup of coffee for authors of this site |
Disclaimer:
The statements, views and opinions presented on this web page are those of the author (or referenced source) and are not endorsed by, nor do they necessarily reflect, the opinions of the Softpanorama society. We do not warrant the correctness of the information provided or its fitness for any purpose. The site uses AdSense so you need to be aware of Google privacy policy. You you do not want to be tracked by Google please disable Javascript for this site. This site is perfectly usable without Javascript.
Last modified: January 20, 2021
