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[Dec 29, 2018] The problem is in 2008 unlike 1933 large sections of the electorate just wanted more Republican economics to "deal" with the aftermath

Politically Obama was a "despicable coward", or worse, a marionette.
Notable quotes:
"... A 50 state strategy, or no 50 state strategy, it really doesn't matter. Democrats were going to take losses. The key is, making sure the party is unified enough to run public policy courses. ..."
"... Your points make little sense in the face of what people wanted in 2016 that Obama could have delivered without interference from the Republicans. Things like anti-trust enforcement, SEC enforcement aka jailing the banksters, not going into Syria, not supporting the war in Yemen (remember he did both of those on his own without Congress), not making the Bush tax cuts permanent, not staying silent on union issues and actually wearing those oft mentioned comfortable shoes while walking a picket line, the list of what could have been done and that people supported goes on and on. None of which required approval from Congress. ..."
"... And speaking of the ACA, we know that Obama and others did whatever they could to kill single payer and replace it with Romneycare 1.5. The language in the bill and the controversy surrounding it show that no one thought this would give them a short term political advantage. If anything, the run up to the vote finally made enough citizens realize that they didn't hate government insurance, they just hated insurance. And here were the Democrats and Obama, forcing people to buy expensive insurance. ..."
"... He had a mandate for change. He had a majorities in both houses. He had the perfect bully pulpit. He chose not to use any of it. He and others killed the support for local parties. The Democrats needed the JFA with Hillary because Obama had pretty much bankrupted the party in 2012. A commitment to all 50 states would have been huge and would have helped Hillary get on the ground where she needed to shore up support by a few thousand votes. ..."
"... Obama and the Democrats took losses from 2008 on because they promised to do what their constituents voted them in to do and then decided not to do it. ..."
"... People don't have Republican fatigue. They don't have Democrat fatigue. They simply don't see the point in voting for people who won't do what they're voted in to do. ..."
"... The citizens of this country want change. They want higher wages and lower prices. They want less war. They want less government interference. They want their kids to grow up with more opportunities than they did. ..."
Dec 29, 2018 | www.nakedcapitalism.com

Health Care

"Democratic left playing a long game to get 'Medicare for All'" [Bloomberg Law]. "'We don't have the support that we need,' said Rep. Pramila Jayapal of Washington, who will co-chair the Progressive Caucus. She said that she'd favor modest expansions of Medicare or Medicaid eligibility as a step toward Medicare for All. 'I am a big bold thinker; I'm also a good practical strategist,' Jayapal said.

'It's why the Medicare for All Caucus was started, because we want to get information to our members so people feel comfortable talking about the attacks we know are going to come.'" • So many Democrat McClellans; so few Democrat Grants.

"Progressives set to push their agenda in Congress and on the campaign trail. The GOP can't wait." [NBC]. "While the party has moved left on health care, many Democrats seem more comfortable offering an option to buy into Medicare or a similar public plan rather than creating one single-payer plan that replaces private insurance and covers everyone. Progressives, led by Rep. Pramila Jayapal, D-Wash., and her Medicare For All PAC, plan to whip up support for the maximalist version and advance legislation in 2019." • The "maximalist version" is exactly what Jayapal herself, quoted by Bloomberg, says she will not seek. Not sure whether this is Democrat cynicism, sloppy Democrat messaging, or poor reporting. Or all three!


Nick Stokes , December 27, 2018 at 3:45 pm

The problem is unlike 1933 large sections of the electorate just wanted more Republican economics to "deal" with the aftermath. That is the difference between a moderate recession(historically) and a collapse like the early 1930's had when the British Empire and the de Rothschild dynasty finally collapsed.

40% didn't want anything the Obama Administration came up with succeed. 40% wanted more than they could possible politically come up with and that left 20% to actually get something done. You see why the Democrats had to take losses.

Even if Health Care, which was controversial in the party was nixed for more "stimulus", Democrats look weak. Politically, Stimulus wasn't that popular and "fiscal deficit" whiners were going to whine and there are a lot of them.

Naked Capitalism ignores this reality instead, looking for esoteric fantasy. I would argue Democrats in 2009-10 looked for short term political gain by going with Health Care reform instead of slowly explaining the advantage of building public assets via stimulus, because the party was to split on Health Care to create a package that would satisfy enough people.

Similar the Republican party, since Reagan had done the opposite, took short term political gain in 2016, which was a mistake, due to their Clinton hatred.

Which is now backfiring and the business cycle is not in a kind spot going forward, which we knew was likely in 2016.

So not only does "Republican fatigue" hurt in 2018, your on the political defensive for the next cycle. Short-termism in politics is death.

A 50 state strategy, or no 50 state strategy, it really doesn't matter. Democrats were going to take losses. The key is, making sure the party is unified enough to run public policy courses.

Chris , December 27, 2018 at 7:13 pm

Mr. Stokes (or David Brock I presume?),

I truly don't understand your point of view. I also don't understand your claim that NC deals in fantasy.

Your points make little sense in the face of what people wanted in 2016 that Obama could have delivered without interference from the Republicans. Things like anti-trust enforcement, SEC enforcement aka jailing the banksters, not going into Syria, not supporting the war in Yemen (remember he did both of those on his own without Congress), not making the Bush tax cuts permanent, not staying silent on union issues and actually wearing those oft mentioned comfortable shoes while walking a picket line, the list of what could have been done and that people supported goes on and on. None of which required approval from Congress.

There's even the bland procedural tactic of delaying the release of the Obamacare exchange premium price increases until after the election in 2016. He could have delayed that notice several months and saved Hillary a world of hurt at the polls. But he chose not to use the administrative tools at his disposal in that case. He also could have seen the writing on the wall with the multiple shut down threats and gotten ahead of it by asking Congress that if you are deemed an essential employee you will continue to be paid regardless of whether your department is funded during a shutdown. With 80% of Americans living paycheck to paycheck that would have been a huge deal.

And speaking of the ACA, we know that Obama and others did whatever they could to kill single payer and replace it with Romneycare 1.5. The language in the bill and the controversy surrounding it show that no one thought this would give them a short term political advantage. If anything, the run up to the vote finally made enough citizens realize that they didn't hate government insurance, they just hated insurance. And here were the Democrats and Obama, forcing people to buy expensive insurance.

Obama took a huge organization that could have helped him barnstorm the country (OFA) just like what Bernie is doing now and killed it early in his first term. He had a mandate for change. He had a majorities in both houses. He had the perfect bully pulpit. He chose not to use any of it. He and others killed the support for local parties. The Democrats needed the JFA with Hillary because Obama had pretty much bankrupted the party in 2012. A commitment to all 50 states would have been huge and would have helped Hillary get on the ground where she needed to shore up support by a few thousand votes.

Obama and the Democrats took losses from 2008 on because they promised to do what their constituents voted them in to do and then decided not to do it. By the time 2016 rolled around, there were estimates which placed 90% of the counties in the US as not having recovered from the disaster in 2007. Hillary ran on radical incrementalism aka the status quo. Who in their right mind could have supported the status quo in 2016?

The Democrats lost seats at all levels of government because of their own incompetence, because of their cowardice, because of their lazy assumptions that people had nowhere else to go. So when record numbers of people didn't vote they lost by slim margins in states long considered True Blue. There is nothing cyclical about any of that.

People don't have Republican fatigue. They don't have Democrat fatigue. They simply don't see the point in voting for people who won't do what they're voted in to do.

The citizens of this country want change. They want higher wages and lower prices. They want less war. They want less government interference. They want their kids to grow up with more opportunities than they did.

Obama and Hillary and all the rest of the Democrats stalking MSM cameras could have delivered on some of that but chose not to. And here we are. With President Trump. And even his broken clock gets something right twice a day, whereas Team Blue has a 50/50 chance of making the right decision and chooses wrong everytime.

Please provide better examples of your points if you truly want to defend your argument.

Carey , December 27, 2018 at 8:45 pm

What an outstandingly comprehensive recent history of
Our dismal-by-design Democrats.

My hat is off to you, Sir.

Expat2uruguay , December 28, 2018 at 7:44 am

And, that often mentioned reason for voting for Democrats, the Supreme Court. Neither Obama nor the Democrats fought for their opportunity to put their person on the Supreme Court. Because of norms I guess. Which actually makes some sense because it broke norms. Because they simply don't care

WJ , December 28, 2018 at 11:37 am

+100000

Chris , December 27, 2018 at 7:21 pm

I truly don't understand why you think any of that. Most mystifying is your claim that anyone thought ACA would provide short term political benefit?

You know how Obamacare could have given Hillary a short term political gain? If Obama had directed HHS to delay releasing any premium increase notices until after the election.

Otherwise, you'd have to support your argument a lot better. NC has the least fantastical commentary base of any website I've seen.

Yves Smith , December 27, 2018 at 8:09 pm

This is complete and utter nonsense. Your calling depicting NC as "fantasy" is a textbook example of projection on your part.

The country was terrified and demoralized when Obama took office. Go read the press in December 2008 and January 2009, since your memory is poor. He not only had window of opportunity to do an updated 100 days, the country would have welcomed. But he ignored it and the moment passed.

Obama pushed heath care because that was what he had campaigned on and had a personal interest in it. He had no interest in banking and finance and was happy to let Geither run that show.

As for stimulus, bullshit. Trump increased deficit spending with his tax cuts and no one cares much if at all. The concern re deficit spending was due to the fact that the Obama economic team was the Clinton (as in Bob Rubin) economics team, which fetishized balanced budgets or even worse, surpluses. We have explained long form that that stance was directly responsible for the rapid increase in unproductive household debt, most of all mortgage debt, which produced the crisis.

We discussed it long form in 2010:

https://www.nakedcapitalism.com/2010/03/the-empire-continues-to-strike-back-team-obama-propaganda-campaign-reaches-fever-pitch.html

Better trolls, please.

[Dec 24, 2018] Chuck Schumer, feckless hack

Notable quotes:
"... Senate Democrats have once again selected Sen. Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.) as their minority leader without so much as a whisper of a debate or contest. This is galling. The man is incompetent, has abysmal politics, and as we were reminded in a huge New York Times investigation into Facebook, is extremely corrupt. ..."
"... Schumer definitely succeeded in the latter objective. In keeping with his long career as a Wall Street stooge (and in sharp contrast with his predecessor Harry Reid ), he quietly shepherded financial deregulation through. And because he has an almost neoconservative foreign policy, he largely stood aside as Trump pulled the U.S. out of the Iran nuclear deal for no reason. He also attacked Trump from the right for not being belligerent enough towards North Korea. ..."
"... Where does Schumer come in? Well, in 2017, Sen. Mark Warner (D-Va.) opened an investigation into Facebook over Russiagate and misinformation generally. (Far from being some fire-breathing populist, Warner is among the most milquetoast, business-friendly Democrats who has ever held high office.) But Schumer has raised more money from Facebook than any other member of Congress, his daughter works there , and he helped get his former staffer appointed to the Federal Trade Commission (which oversees Facebook). In concert with Facebook brass, he told Warner to lay off the company, reported the Times : "Mr. Warner should be looking for ways to work with Facebook, Mr. Schumer advised, not harm it." ..."
"... So when it comes to sellout Democrats voting to make another financial crisis more likely, Schumer wrings his hands and hectors progressives not to criticize them too much (after which most of the sellouts lose anyway). But when those same sellouts start criticizing one of his favored sources of campaign cash, suddenly he discovers a knack for backroom arm-twisting and hardball tactics. ..."
Dec 24, 2018 | theweek.com
Senate Democrats have once again selected Sen. Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.) as their minority leader without so much as a whisper of a debate or contest. This is galling. The man is incompetent, has abysmal politics, and as we were reminded in a huge New York Times investigation into Facebook, is extremely corrupt.

In his first two years as Senate minority leader, Schumer had two main priorities. First, preserve his vulnerable moderates running in deeply Trumpy states, like Claire McCaskill in Missouri, Heidi Heitkamp in North Dakota, and Joe Donnelly in Indiana. Second, use the Trump presidency to sneak through some odious stuff that most liberals hate.

Schumer definitely succeeded in the latter objective. In keeping with his long career as a Wall Street stooge (and in sharp contrast with his predecessor Harry Reid ), he quietly shepherded financial deregulation through. And because he has an almost neoconservative foreign policy, he largely stood aside as Trump pulled the U.S. out of the Iran nuclear deal for no reason. He also attacked Trump from the right for not being belligerent enough towards North Korea.

And how about that first goal? Schumer failed spectacularly in preserving most of these seats. Nearly all of his moderates -- to whom he had granted significant leeway to vote for President Trump's judicial nominees and bills -- lost. Only Joe Manchin in West Virginia managed to hang on. The Democratic Senate margin is being somewhat bolstered only by other candidates knocking off Republican senators in Arizona and Nevada, which Schumer had little to do with. (Indeed, Harry Reid, who is still helping run a well-oiled labor turnout machine in Nevada, was the key figure behind the Nevada win.)

This brings me to Facebook. Sheera Frenkel, Nicholas Confessore, Cecilia Kang, Matthew Rosenberg, and Jack Nicas wrote a jaw-dropping piece of reporting for the Times about Facebook's lobbying operation. They focused on how the company has defended itself from evidence that Russian intelligence used the platform to help Trump win in 2016, and that political extremists have been using the platform to organize atrocities , including genocide .

Basically, the strategy conducted by Facebook's top executives, including CEO Mark Zuckerberg and COO Sheryl Sandberg, was the filthiest sludge out of the bottom of the lobbying barrel. (Facebook has defended itself and calls the report "grossly unfair.") The story is very long, but probably the most explosive revelation was that Facebook hired a soulless Republican propaganda shop to attack its critics -- notably the Open Markets Institute , which Anne-Marie Slaughter shoved out of the New America Foundation on instructions from her Google paymasters -- with anti-Semitic smears, casting it as the tool of wealthy Jewish philanthropist George Soros. Remarkably, at the very same time they convinced the Anti-Defamation League to cast criticism of Facebook as anti-Semitic, as both Zuckerberg and Sandberg are Jewish.

It's worth stopping for a moment to take this in. Just a couple weeks ago a right-wing terrorist hopped up on anti-Soros propaganda massacred 11 Jews at a synagogue in Pittsburgh. Another sent a mail bomb to Soros' home. A third person in D.C. was recently arrested on suspicion of plotting another synagogue shooting.

Where does Schumer come in? Well, in 2017, Sen. Mark Warner (D-Va.) opened an investigation into Facebook over Russiagate and misinformation generally. (Far from being some fire-breathing populist, Warner is among the most milquetoast, business-friendly Democrats who has ever held high office.) But Schumer has raised more money from Facebook than any other member of Congress, his daughter works there , and he helped get his former staffer appointed to the Federal Trade Commission (which oversees Facebook). In concert with Facebook brass, he told Warner to lay off the company, reported the Times : "Mr. Warner should be looking for ways to work with Facebook, Mr. Schumer advised, not harm it."

So when it comes to sellout Democrats voting to make another financial crisis more likely, Schumer wrings his hands and hectors progressives not to criticize them too much (after which most of the sellouts lose anyway). But when those same sellouts start criticizing one of his favored sources of campaign cash, suddenly he discovers a knack for backroom arm-twisting and hardball tactics.

[Dec 22, 2018] A closer look at American "democracy" by Barry Grey

December 20, 2018
Notable quotes:
"... According to the narrative fabricated by the intelligence agencies and promoted by the Democratic Party and the corporate media over the past year and a half, Putin and his minions hacked the Democrats and stirred up social divisions and popular grievances to secure the election for Donald Trump, and they have been working ever since to destroy "our institutions." ..."
"... The State and Revolution ..."
Dec 22, 2018 | www.wsws.org

A central theme of the hysteria over alleged "Russian meddling" in US politics is the sinister effort supposedly being mounted by Vladimir Putin "to undermine and manipulate our democracy" (in the words of Democratic Senator Mark Warner).

According to the narrative fabricated by the intelligence agencies and promoted by the Democratic Party and the corporate media over the past year and a half, Putin and his minions hacked the Democrats and stirred up social divisions and popular grievances to secure the election for Donald Trump, and they have been working ever since to destroy "our institutions."

Their chosen field of battle is the internet, with Russian trolls and bots infecting the body politic by taking advantage of lax policing of social media by the giant tech companies such as Google, Facebook and Twitter.

To defend democracy, the argument goes, these companies, working with the state, must silence oppositional viewpoints -- above all left-wing, anti-war and socialist viewpoints -- which are labeled "fake news," and banish them from the internet. Nothing is said of the fact that this supposed defense of democracy is a violation of the basic canons of genuine democracy, guaranteed in the First Amendment to the US Constitution: freedom of speech and freedom of the press.

But what is this much vaunted "American democracy?" Let's take a closer look.

The two-party monopoly

In a vast and complex country with a population of 328 million people, consisting of many different nationalities, native tongues, religions and other demographics, spanning six time zones and thousands of miles, two political parties totally dominate the political system.

The ruling corporate-financial oligarchy controls both parties and maintains its rule by alternating control of the political institutions -- the White House, Congress, state houses, etc. -- between them. The general population, consisting overwhelmingly of working people, is given the opportunity every two or four years to go to the polls and vote for one or the other of these capitalist parties. This is what is called "democracy."

The monopoly of the two big business parties is further entrenched by the absence of proportional representation, which it makes it impossible for third parties or independent candidates to obtain significant representation in Congress.

The role of corporate money

The entire political process -- the selection of candidates, elections, the formulation of domestic and foreign policies -- is dominated by corporate money. No one can seriously bid for high office unless he or she has the backing of sponsors from the ranks of the richest 1 percent -- or 0.01 percent -- of the population. The buying of elections and politicians is brazen and shameless.

Last month's midterm elections set a record for campaign spending in a non-presidential year -- $5.2 billion -- a 35 percent increase over 2014 and triple the amount spent 20 years ago, in 1998. The bulk of this flood of cash came from corporations and multi-millionaire donors.

In the vast majority of contests, the winner was determined by the size of his or her campaign war chest. Eighty-nine percent of House races and 84 percent of Senate races were won by the biggest spender.

Democratic candidates had a huge spending advantage over their Republican opponents, exposing the fraud of their attempt to posture as a party of the people. The securities and investment industry -- Wall Street -- favored Democrats over Republicans by a margin of 52 percent to 46 percent.

Elections are anything but a forum to openly and honestly discuss and debate the great issues facing the voters. The real issues -- the preparation for new wars, deeper austerity and further attacks on democratic rights -- are concealed behind a miasma of attack ads and mudslinging. The research firm PQ Media estimates that total political ad spending will reach $6.75 billion this year. In last month's elections, the number of congressional and gubernatorial ads rose 59 percent over the previous, 2014, midterm.

The setting of policy and passage of legislation is helped along by corporate bribes, euphemistically termed lobbying. In 2017 alone, corporations spent $3 billion to lobby the government.

Ballot access restrictions

A welter of arcane, arbitrary and anti-democratic requirements for gaining ballot status, which vary from state to state, block third parties from challenging the domination of the Democrats and Republicans. These include filing fees and nominating petition signature requirements in the tens of thousands in many states. Democratic officials routinely challenge the petitions of socialist and left-wing candidates who are likely to find support among young people and workers.

Media blackout of third party candidates

The corporate media systematically blacks out the campaigns of third party and independent candidates, especially left-wing and socialist candidates. The exception is candidates who are either themselves rich or who have the backing of wealthy patrons.

Third party candidates are generally excluded from nationally televised candidates' debates.

In last month's election, the Socialist Equality Party candidate for Congress in Michigan's 12th Congressional District, Niles Niemuth, won broad support among workers, young people and students for his socialist program, but received virtually no press coverage.

Voting restrictions

Since the stolen election of 2000, when the Supreme Court shut down the counting of votes in Florida in order to hand the White House to the loser of the popular vote, George W. Bush, with virtually no opposition from the Democrats or the media, attacks on the right of workers and poor people to vote have mounted.

Thirty-three states have implemented voter identification laws, which, studies show, bar up to 6 percent of the population from voting. States have cut back early voting and absentee voting and shut down voting precincts in working class neighborhoods. A number of states impose a lifetime ban on voting by felons, even after they have done their time. In 2013, the Supreme Court gutted the enforcement mechanism of the 1965 Voting Rights Act, with no real opposition from the Democrats. The United States is one of the few countries that hold elections on a work day, making it more difficult for workers to cast a ballot.

Government of, by and for the rich

The two corporate parties have overseen a social counterrevolution, resulting in a staggering growth of social inequality. In tandem with this process, the oligarchic structure of society has increasingly found open expression in the political forms of rule. Alongside the erection of the infrastructure of a police state -- mass surveillance, indefinite detention, the militarization of the police, Gestapo raids on workplaces and attacks on immigrants, the ascendancy of the military in political affairs, internet censorship -- the personnel of government have increasingly been recruited from the rich and the super-rich.

More than half of the members of Congress are millionaires, as compared to just 1 percent of the American population. All the presidents for the past three decades -- George H. W, Bush, Bill Clinton, George W. Bush, Barack Obama -- have either been multi-millionaires going in or have cashed in on their presidencies to become multi-millionaires afterward. In the person of the multi-billionaire real estate speculator and con man Donald Trump, the financial oligarchy has directly taken occupancy of the White House.

In The State and Revolution , Vladimir Lenin wrote: "Bourgeois democracy, although a great historical advance in comparison with medievalism, always remains, and under capitalism is bound to remain, restricted, truncated, false and hypocritical, a paradise for the rich and a snare and deception for the exploited, for the poor."

... ... ...

Barry Grey

[Nov 28, 2018] Greenwald Goes Ballistic On Politico Theory Guardian's Assange-Manafort Story Was Planted By Russians

Nov 28, 2018 | www.zerohedge.com

Greenwald Goes Ballistic On Politico "Theory" Guardian's Assange-Manafort Story Was Planted By Russians

by Tyler Durden Wed, 11/28/2018 - 20:25 105 SHARES

After The Guardian attempted to shovel what appears to be a wholly fabricated story down our throats that Trump campaign manager met with Julian Assange at the London Embassy - Politico allowed an ex-CIA agent to use their platform to come up with a ham-handed cover story ever; Russia tricked The Guardian into publishing the Manafort-Assange propaganda.

To that end, The Intercept 's Glenn Greenwald (formerly of The Guardian ) ripped Politico an entirely new oriface in a six-part Twitter dress down.

Greenwald also penned a harsh rebuke to the Guardian 's "problematic" reporting in a Tuesday article titled: "It Is Possible Paul Manafort Visited Julian Assange. If True, There Should Be Ample Video and Other Evidence Showing This."

In sum, the Guardian published a story today that it knew would explode into all sorts of viral benefits for the paper and its reporters even though there are gaping holes and highly sketchy aspects to the story.

It is certainly possible that Paul Manafort, Roger Stone, and even Donald Trump himself "secretly" visited Julian Assange in the Embassy. It's possible that Vladimir Putin and Kim Jong Un joined them.

And if any of that happened, then there will be mountains of documentary proof in the form of videos, photographs, and other evidence proving it . Thus far, no such evidence has been published by the Guardian. Why would anyone choose to believe that this is true rather than doing what any rational person, by definition, would do: wait to see the dispositive evidence before forming a judgment?

The only reason to assume this is true without seeing such evidence is because enough people want it to be true. The Guardian knows this. They knew that publishing this story would cause partisan warriors to excitedly spread the story, and that cable news outlets would hyperventilate over it , and that they'd reap the rewards regardless of whether the story turned out to be true or false. It may be true. But only the evidence, which has yet to be seen, will demonstrate that one way or the other. - Glenn Greenwald, The Intercept

In short, The Guardian tried to proffer a load of easily disprovable claims - which if not true, are pure propaganda. Once it began to blow up in their face, Politico let an ex-CIA operative try to save face by suggesting Russia did it . Insanity at its finest.


zerofucks , 20 minutes ago link

loving the lies being drug into the light

anyone who believes the MSM about anything is a fool

and i am shocked an ex-CIA guy was behind the fake news

CatInTheHat , 20 minutes ago link

GG neatly tied in the nefarious connection between the CIA and the media together

This CIA a criminal organization that has lied us into every single war. Yet the Resistance upholds the CIA as beyond reproach.

TODAY THEY LOOK AS FOOLS.

nidaar , 25 minutes ago link

They jumped the shark. This show has its days numbered.

Chuckster , 30 minutes ago link

We don't need the Russians re-chewing our cabbage. We have enough natural born idiots to screw the facts up.

Hippocleides , 34 minutes ago link

Someone ate my sandwich out of the work fridge, God damn Russians!

The Terrible Sweal , 38 minutes ago link

It looks like Greenwald is just about at the point of capitulation and accepting that the entire MSM is utterly fraudulent.

Alternative , 42 minutes ago link

Up next: Guardian journos suffer from Novichik poisoning but survive this lethal nerve gas.

Badsamm , 45 minutes ago link

That still doesn't clear the Guardian from lawsuits.

xrxs , 39 minutes ago link

Maybe discovery will reveal their 'sources.'

Jung , 46 minutes ago link

Ever since Alan Rusbridger. left the Guardian as Chief Editor and made room for Assange and Snowden etc., it seems that they have been infiltrated by the CIA and Luke H. gets attention for his stories and Russia-hatred. The ENglish have been conditioned to hate Russia and the Guardian will do anything to discredit Russia with whatever silly stories. Now they are begging for money to survive: well, NO, because you went along with fake news to get some money: corrupt, unlike Alan Rusbridger, Assange, Manning and Snowden.

Captain Nemo de Erehwon , 49 minutes ago link

Up next: The Russians put up the Guardian to launch a slimy and obviously stupid defence to discredit them.

Later: The Russians are making my hands move on the keys and making me type this nonsense.

BankSurfyMan , 48 minutes ago link

when you masturbate on the HEDGE...

5onIt , 50 minutes ago link

Doesnt matter, 1/2 of our population is convinced, that our governmemt would never do to the USA. what they do to other countries for the past 60 years.

BankSurfyMan , 50 minutes ago link

Assange took another dump today, he is full of **** just like the rest of us ??? Doom 2019! Your *** is on FIRE! neXT!

bluebird100 , 54 minutes ago link

Wow Glenn is discovering that the Fake News is real after all! He's such a hack

JimmyJones , 34 minutes ago link

Yep, the Russian Collusion / interference is so weak. Look at this story, it's breaking and will be huge. Epstine's dirty details released, Muller looks pretty bad.

https://www.thegatewaypundit.com/2018/11/robert-muellers-fbi-gave-orgy-island-billionaire-epstein-light-sentence-today-details-were-released-on-his-widespread-child-sex-abuse/

[Nov 27, 2018] The political fraud of Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez's "Green New Deal"

Highly recommended!
After Democratic party was co-opted by neoliberals there is no way back. And since Obama the trend of Democratic Party is toward strengthening the wing of CIA-democratic notthe wing of the party friendly to workers. Bought by Wall Street leadership is uncable of intruting any change that undermine thier current neoliberal platform. that's why they criminally derailed Sanders.
Notable quotes:
"... When you think about the issue of how exactly a clean-energy jobs program would address the elephant in the room of private accumulation and how such a program, under capitalism, would be able to pay living wages to the people put to work under it, it exposes how non threatening these Green New Deals actually are to capitalism. ..."
"... To quote Trotsky, "These people are capable of and ready for anything!" ..."
"... "Any serious measures to stop global warming, let alone assure a job and livable wage to everyone, would require a massive redistribution of wealth and the reallocation of trillions currently spent on US imperialism's neo-colonial wars abroad." ..."
"... "It includes various left-sounding rhetoric, but is entirely directed to and dependent upon the Democratic Party." ..."
"... "And again and again, in the name of "practicality," the most unrealistic and impractical policy is promoted -- supporting a party that represents the class that is oppressing and exploiting you! The result is precisely the disastrous situation working people and youth face today -- falling wages, no job security, growing repression and the mounting threat of world war." - New York Times tries to shame "disillusioned young voters" into supporting the Democrats ..."
"... It is an illusion that technical innovation within the capitalist system will magically fundamentally resolve the material problems produced by capitalism. But the inconvenient facts are entirely ignored by the corporate shills in the DSA and the whole lot of establishment politicians, who prefer to indulge their addiction to wealth and power with delusions of grandeur, technological utopianism, and other figments that serve the needs of their class. ..."
"... First it was Obama with his phoney "hope and change" that lured young voters to the Dumbicrats and now it's Ocacia Cortez promising a "green deal" in order to herd them back into the Democratic party--a total fraud of course--totally obvious! ..."
"... from Greenwald: The Democratic Party's deceitful game https://www.salon.com/2010/... ..."
Nov 27, 2018 | www.wsws.org

Raymond Colison4 days ago

they literally ripped this out of the 2016 Green Party platform. Jill Stein spoke repeatedly about the same exact kind of Green New Deal, a full-employment, transition-to-100%-renewables program that would supposedly solve all the world's problems.

When you think about the issue of how exactly a clean-energy jobs program would address the elephant in the room of private accumulation and how such a program, under capitalism, would be able to pay living wages to the people put to work under it, it exposes how non threatening these Green New Deals actually are to capitalism.

In 2016, when the Greens made this their central economic policy proposal, the Democrats responded by calling that platform irresponsible and dangerous ("even if it's a good idea, you can't actually vote for a non-two-party candidate!"). Why would they suddenly find a green new deal appealing now except for its true purpose: left cover for the very system destroying the planet.

To quote Trotsky, "These people are capable of and ready for anything!"

Greg4 days ago
"Any serious measures to stop global warming, let alone assure a job and livable wage to everyone, would require a massive redistribution of wealth and the reallocation of trillions currently spent on US imperialism's neo-colonial wars abroad."

Their political position not only lacks seriousness, unserious is their political position.

"It includes various left-sounding rhetoric, but is entirely directed to and dependent upon the Democratic Party."

For subjective-idealists, what you want to believe, think and feel is just so much more convincing than objective reality. Especially when it covers over single-minded class interests at play.

"And again and again, in the name of "practicality," the most unrealistic and impractical policy is promoted -- supporting a party that represents the class that is oppressing and exploiting you! The result is precisely the disastrous situation working people and youth face today -- falling wages, no job security, growing repression and the mounting threat of world war." - New York Times tries to shame "disillusioned young voters" into supporting the Democrats

Penny Smith4 days ago
It is an illusion that technical innovation within the capitalist system will magically fundamentally resolve the material problems produced by capitalism. But the inconvenient facts are entirely ignored by the corporate shills in the DSA and the whole lot of establishment politicians, who prefer to indulge their addiction to wealth and power with delusions of grandeur, technological utopianism, and other figments that serve the needs of their class.
Jim Bergren4 days ago
First it was Obama with his phoney "hope and change" that lured young voters to the Dumbicrats and now it's Ocacia Cortez promising a "green deal" in order to herd them back into the Democratic party--a total fraud of course--totally obvious!

Only an International Socialist program led by Workers can truly lead a "green revolution" by expropriating the billionaire oil barons of their capital and redirecting that wealth into the socialist reconstruction of the entire economy.

Master Oroko4 days ago
Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez's "Green New Deal" is a nice laugh. Really, it sure is funny hearing these lies given any credence at all. This showmanship belongs in a fantasy book, not in real life. The Democratic Party as a force for good social change Now that's a laugh!
Vivek Jain4 days ago
from Greenwald: The Democratic Party's deceitful game https://www.salon.com/2010/...
лидия5 days ago
"Greenwashing" of capitalism (and also of Zionist apartheid colony in Palestine) is but one of dirty tricks by Dems and their "left" backers.
Kalen5 days ago
Lies, empty promises, meaningless tautologies and morality plays, qualified and conditional declarations to be backpedalled pending appropriate political expediencies, devoid any practical content that is what AOC, card carrying member of DSA, and in fact young energetic political apparatchik of calcified political body of Dems establishment, duty engulfs. And working for socialist revolution is no one of them.

What kind of socialist would reject socialist revolution, class struggle and class emancipation and choose, as a suppose socialist path, accommodation with oligarchic ruling elite via political, not revolutionary process that would have necessarily overthrown ruling elite.

What socialist would acquiesce to legalized exploitation of people for profit, legalized greed and inequality and would negotiate away fundamental principle of egalitarianism and working people self rule?

Only National Socialist would; and that is exactly what AOC campaign turned out to be all about.

National Socialism with imperial flavor is her affiliation and what her praises for Pelosi, wife of a billionaire and dead warmonger McCain proved.

Now she is peddling magical thinking about global change and plunge herself into falacy of entrepreneurship, Market solution to the very problem that the market solutions were designed to create and aggravate namely horrific inequality that is robbing people from their own opportunities to mitigate devastating effects of global change.

The insidiousness of phony socialists expresses itself in the fact that they lie that any social problem can be fixed by current of future technical means, namely via so called technological revolution instead by socialist revolution they deem unnecessary or detrimental.

Me at home Kalen4 days ago
The technical means for achieving socialism has existed since the late 19th century, with the telegraph, the coal-powered factory, and modern fertilizer. The improvements since then have only made socialism even more streamlined and efficient, if such technologies could only be liberated from capital! The idea that "we need a new technological revolution just to achieve socialism" reflects the indoctrination in capitalism by many "socialist" theorists because it is only in capitalism where "technological growth" is essential simply to maintain the system. It is only in capitalism (especially America, the most advanced capitalist nation, and thus, the one where capitalism is actually closest towards total crisis) where the dogma of a technological savior is most entrenched because America cannot offer any other kind of palliative to the more literate and productive sections of its population. Religion will not convince most and any attempt at a sociological or economic understanding would inevitably prove the truth of socialism.

[Nov 27, 2018] American Politics Is Now Just Civil War by Other Means by James George JATRAS

Nov 03, 2018 | www.strategic-culture.org

In the wake of the sending of bomb-like devices of uncertain capability to prominent critics of US President Donald Trump and of a mass shooting at a Pittsburgh synagogue ( both Trump's fault , of course) – plus a migrant invasion approaching the US through Mexico – there have been widespread calls for toning down harsh and "divisive" political rhetoric. Of course given the nature of the American media and other establishment voices, these demands predictably have been aimed almost entirely against Trump and his Deplorable supporters , almost never against the same establishment that unceasingly vilifies Trump and Middle American radicals as literally Hitler , all backed up by the evil White-Nationalist-in-Chief, Russian President Vladimir Putin .

Those appealing for more civility and a return to polite discourse can save their breath. It's much, much too late for that .

When Trump calls the establishment media the enemies of the people, that's because they – together with their passive NPC drones and active Antifa enforcers – are enemies, if by "the people" we mean the historic American nation. Trump's sin is that he calls them out for what they are.

Trump didn't cause today's polarization, he only exacerbates it because he punches back. Good, may he continue to do so. Pining for a more well-mannered time in a country that belongs to another, long-gone era is futile.

American politics is no longer about a narrow range of governing styles or competing economic interests. It is tribal. Today's "tribes" are defined in terms of affinity for or hostility to the founding American ethnos characterized by European, overwhelming British origin (a/k/a, "white"); Christian, mainly Protestant; and English-speaking, as augmented by members of other groups who have totally or partially assimilated to that ethnos or who at least identify with it (think of Mr. Hamadura in The Camp of the Saints ).

(Unfortunately we don't have a specific word for this core American ethnic identity to distinguish it from general references to the United States in a civic or geographic sense. (Russian, by contrast, makes a distinction between ethnic русский (russkiy) and civic/geographical российский (rossiiskiy).) Maybe we could adapt Frank Lloyd Wright's " Usonian "? "Or Americaner," comparable to Afrikaner? "Or Anglo-American "?)

Since the Left gave up on its original focus on industrial workers as the revolutionary class, the old bourgeois/proletarian dichotomy is out. Tribes now line up according to categories in a plural Cultural Marxist schematic of oppressor and victim pairings , with the latter claiming unlimited redress from the former. As the late Joe Sobran said, it takes a lot of clout to be a victim in America these days. The following is a helpful guide to who's who under the new dispensation:

Category

Oppressor

Victim

Sex

Male

Female

Race

White

"Person of Color" (POC)

Language

English

Non-English

Religion

Christian

Non-Christian

Sexual Orientation

"Cis"/" Straight "

LGBTQQIAPP+

Sovereign allegiance

US citizen

Non-US citizen

Legal status

Citizen/legal resident

Illegal/"Undocumented"

Criminality

Law-abiding

Offender

Origin

Native

( Im)migrant

Physical condition

Able

Disabled

Economic

Self-supporting

Dependent

In most of the above categories there are variations that can increase the intensity of oppressor or victim status. For example, certified victimhood in a recognized category confers extra points, like Black Lives Matter for race (it is racist to suggest that " all lives matter ") or a defined religious group marginalized by "hate" (mainly anti-Jewish or anti-Muslim , but not something like anti-Buddhist, anti-Rastafarian, or even anti-atheist or anti-Satanist because no one bothers about them; anti-Christian victimhood is an oxymoron because "Christian" is inherently an oppressive category). In addition, meeting the criteria for more than one category confers enhanced victimhood under a principle called " intersectionality ."

In the same way, there are aggravating factors in oppressor categories, such as being a policeman (an enforcer of the structure of oppression regardless of the officer's personal victim attributes, but worse if straight, white, Christian, etc.) or a member of a "hate" subculture (a Southerner who's not vocally self-loathing is a presumed Klan sympathizer ; thus, a diabetic, unemployed, opioid-addicted Georgia cracker is an oppressor as the beneficiary of his "white privilege" and "toxic masculinity," notwithstanding his socio-economic and health status). Like being Southern, living while genetically Russian is also an aggravating factor.

Creatively shuffling these descriptors suggests an entertaining game like Mad Libs , or perhaps an endless series of jokes for which you could be fired if you told them at work:

Two people walk into a bar.

One is a Baptist, straight, male Virginia state trooper whose ancestors arrived at Jamestown .

The other is a one-legged, genderqueer , Somali Dervish WIC recipient illegally in the US on an expired student visa.

So the bartender says [insert your own punch line here] .

While Patrick Buchanan is right that the level of domestic violence today is not up to what the US experienced in 1968, the depth of the existential divide is much greater. This is why it's perfectly acceptable for a homosexual, black MSM news anchor to describe " white men" collectively as a "terror threat ," but when a straight white, female counterpart makes a clumsy but mild observation about ethnic role-playing it's a firing offense. (Note that while "female" is an assigned victim category, white females can be " gender traitors" if they are seen as putting their "racial privilege ahead of their second-class gender status "; to remain victims in good standing and an "allies" of higher-caste victim groups they need to learn to just " shut the f**k up " when POC sisters with superior oppressed status are holding forth.)

The victim side accuses its opponents of a litany of sins such as racism, sexism, homophobia, Islamophobia, etc., for which the solution is demographic and ideological replacement – even while denying that the replacement is going on or intended. This is no longer ordinary political competition but (in an inversion of von Clausewitz attributed to Michel Foucault) politics " as the continuation of war by other means ." In its immediate application this war is a second American civil war, but it can have immense consequences for war on the international stage as well.

To attain victory the forces of victimhood championed by the Democratic Party need to reclaim part of the apparatus of power they lost in Trump's unexpected 2016 win. (Actually, much of the apparatus in the Executive Branch remains in Democratic hands but is only of limited utility as a "resistance" under the superficial Trumpian occupation.) As this commentary appears it is expected that on November 6 the GOP will retain control of the US Senate but the House of Representatives will flip to the Democrats.

That's what's "supposed" to happen, just as Hillary Clinton was "supposed" to win the White House two years ago. How things will actually play out though is anybody's guess .

But for the sake of discussion, if the expected scenario comes to pass the last chance Trump's election afforded to save what is left of the American nation is likely to come to an end . We can anticipate three results:

Tags: Civil War

[Nov 26, 2018] Orwell's story is an allegory of modern Western politics and social commentary, where so many essential but inconvenient facts are "silently dropped" from analysis.

Notable quotes:
"... Homage to Catalonia ..."
"... Homage to Catalonia ..."
"... typhlophthalmism ..."
Nov 26, 2018 | www.unz.com

In Homage to Catalonia (1938), his memoir of the Spanish Civil War, George Orwell describes how his wife was rudely woken by a police-raid on the hotel room she was occupying in Barcelona:

In the small hours of the morning there was a pounding on the door, and six men marched in, switched on the light, and immediately took up various positions about the room, obviously agreed upon beforehand. They then searched both rooms (there was a bathroom attached) with inconceivable thoroughness. They sounded the walls, took up the mats, examined the floor, felt the curtains, probed under the bath and the radiator, emptied every drawer and suitcase and felt every garment and held it up to the light. ( Homage to Catalonia , ch. 14)

The police conducted this search "in the recognized OGPU [then the Russian communist secret-police] or Gestapo style for nearly two hours," Orwell says. He then notes that in "all this time they never searched the bed." His wife was still in it, you see, and although the police "were probably Communist Party members they were also Spaniards, and to turn a woman out of bed was a little too much for them. This part of the job was silently dropped, making the whole search meaningless."

Orwell's story suggests a new word to me: typhlophthalmism , meaning "the practice of turning a blind eye to essential but inconvenient facts" (from Greek typhlos , "blind," + ophthalmos , "eye"). But it's a long word, so let's call it typhlism for short. Shorter is better, because the term could be used so often today. Orwell's story is an allegory of modern Western politics and social commentary, where so many essential but inconvenient facts are "silently dropped" from analysis.

[Nov 25, 2018] Neoliberal plutocrats preparing ground to wipe out progressives and directly take over the Democratic party in US

The problem with the title is that neoliberals plutocrats took Dem Party during Bill Clinton years. so this goal was accomplished long ago.
Nov 25, 2018 | failedevolution.blogspot.com
October 23, 2018 globinfo freexchange
Through his own humorous style, comedian Lee Camp pointed out something quite serious. As he explained, Facebook's founder and CEO, Mark Zuckerberg, fulfilled all the conditions necessary to run for president of the United States.
One key condition is certain and obvious: tons of money.
Another one, is to pretend to be religious. And this condition is, of course, particularly important in the America of Donald Trump. Indeed, as Camp says, the former Atheist Mark Zuckerberg has suddenly found religion.
And the most recent fulfilled condition by Facebook's boss, was to secure the alliance with the US deep state.
Indeed , on October 11, Facebook announced the removal of 559 pages and 251 accounts from its service, accusing the account holders of " spam and coordinated inauthentic behavior. " The primary thread connecting victims of the purge seems to be that they are critics and/or opponents of the American political "mainstream" or "establishment."
Also, as Ben Norton of the Real News points out, Facebook has done this multiple times now. We've seen numerous pages that have been removed. We've also seen the scare of so-called fake news. And what's troubling about this is that some of the partners Facebook has in its crackdown on so-called fake news, vetting pages like these that have been removed, one of the partners is the Atlantic Council . The Atlantic Council is essentially a kind of unofficial NATO, funded by the United States government and the European Union along with NATO. Among the other fact-checkers that have partnered with Facebook to screen so-called fake news is the Weekly Standard . The Weekly Standard is a neo-conservative website that itself published false information in the lead-up to the Iraq war, which it strongly supported.

https://www.youtube.com/embed/UiBKj1RTS30


https://www.youtube.com/embed/-nIxZXxeVQY


And what about Jeff Bezos? He invested on the mainstream media propaganda power by buying " one of the leading daily American newspapers, along with The New York Times, the Los Angeles Times, and The Wall Street Journal. The Post has distinguished itself through its political reporting on the workings of the White House, Congress, and other aspects of the U.S. government. " Quite influential on the US political developments.
Right after this key move, Alternet immediately identified the conflicts of interest since the Washington Post would never reveal the fact that Bezos signed a $600 million contract with the CIA.
It seems that another multi-billionaire rushed to proceed in the necessary actions that could build a bridge towards the US presidency.
And recently, Jeff Bezos attempted to fix his image by raising minimum wage to $15 an hour for Amazon workers. The move came out from the pressure exercised by Bernie Sanders and the progressive movement. Yet, it seems to be another neoliberal-style trick .
All these indications point to the fact that the liberal plutocracy is determined to 'fire' its faithful political puppets in the Democratic party, who are rapidly losing popularity and have become 'inefficient' to serve its interests.
Besides, the progressive movement has already marked some significant victories in the ideological battlefield. For example, big money and wealthy donors become more and more repulsive in the eyes of progressive voters and younger generations. And this has become clear in practice, with the unprecedented victory of Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and other progressives who beat establishment Democrats without the help of the big money.
As the liberal plutocrats understand that it is now pointless to spend money for buying politicians, they will attempt to take over the Democratic party by themselves. Otherwise, the party will fall in the hands of the progressives and they will be left without political power. The liberal plutocrats will use the power of the corporate media to sell themselves as the sole antidote to Donald Trump.
It is highly unlikely to see this in the 2020 presidential election. The liberal plutocrats probably prepare the ground to take over the Democratic party in 2024. We may see Mark Zuckerberg and Jeff Bezos fighting in the Democratic primaries and then, fighting for the presidency against someone from the Trump 'school', like Nikki Haley .
The anti-globalist part of the big capital that supported Trump will prefer this development instead of an uncontrollable progressive movement that will hold political power. Then, plutocrats of all sides will do what the big capital always does. They will clear up things between them. In one thing they are unquestionably united: crushing the resistance of the ordinary people from below.

[Nov 23, 2018] Millionaires Running Democratic Party Meet In Secret

Nov 23, 2018 | youtu.be

A big club is meeting to discuss "progressive" causes. Reporters aren't allowed. Here are the details Jimmy Dore gets it.

Posted by: Uncle $cam | Nov 23, 2018 11:03:50 AM | 81

[Nov 12, 2018] The Democratic Party long ago earned the designation graveyard of social protest movements, and for good reason

Highly recommended!
The Democrats are politically responsible for the rise of Trump.
Notable quotes:
"... As Obama said following Trump's election, the Democrats and Republicans are "on the same team" and their differences amount to an "intramural scrimmage." They are on the team of, and owned lock stock and barrel by, the American corporate-financial oligarchy, personified by Trump. ..."
"... The Democrats are, moreover, politically responsible for the rise of Trump. The Obama administration paved the way for Trump by implementing the pro-corporate (Wall Street bailout), pro-war (Iraq, Afghanistan, Libya, Syria, drone killings) and anti-democratic (mass surveillance, persecution of Snowden, Assange, Manning) policies that Trump is continuing and intensifying. And by breaking all his election promises and carrying out austerity policies against the working class, Obama enabled the billionaire gangster Trump to make an appeal to sections of workers devastated by deindustrialization, presenting himself as the anti-establishment spokesman for the "forgotten man." ..."
"... This was compounded by the right-wing Clinton candidacy, which exuded contempt for the working class and appealed for support to the military and CIA and wealthy middle-class layers obsessed with identity politics. Sanders' endorsement of Clinton gave Trump an open field to exploit discontent among impoverished social layers. ..."
Nov 02, 2018 | www.wsws.org

Pelosi's deputy in the House, Steny Hoyer, sums up the right-wing policies of the Democrats, declaring: "His [Trump's] objectives are objectives that we share. If he really means that, then there is an opening for us to work together."

So much for the moral imperative of voting for the Democrats to stop Trump! As Obama said following Trump's election, the Democrats and Republicans are "on the same team" and their differences amount to an "intramural scrimmage." They are on the team of, and owned lock stock and barrel by, the American corporate-financial oligarchy, personified by Trump.

The Democrats are, moreover, politically responsible for the rise of Trump. The Obama administration paved the way for Trump by implementing the pro-corporate (Wall Street bailout), pro-war (Iraq, Afghanistan, Libya, Syria, drone killings) and anti-democratic (mass surveillance, persecution of Snowden, Assange, Manning) policies that Trump is continuing and intensifying. And by breaking all his election promises and carrying out austerity policies against the working class, Obama enabled the billionaire gangster Trump to make an appeal to sections of workers devastated by deindustrialization, presenting himself as the anti-establishment spokesman for the "forgotten man."

This was compounded by the right-wing Clinton candidacy, which exuded contempt for the working class and appealed for support to the military and CIA and wealthy middle-class layers obsessed with identity politics. Sanders' endorsement of Clinton gave Trump an open field to exploit discontent among impoverished social layers.

The same process is taking place internationally. While strikes and other expressions of working class opposition are growing and broad masses are moving to the left, the right-wing policies of supposedly "left" establishment parties are enabling far-right and neo-fascist forces to gain influence and power in countries ranging from Germany, Italy, Hungary and Poland to Brazil.

As for Gay's injunction to vote "pragmatically," this is a crude promotion of the bankrupt politics that are brought forward in every election to keep workers tied to the capitalist two-party system. "You have only two choices. That is the reality, whether you like it or not." And again and again, in the name of "practicality," the most unrealistic and impractical policy is promoted -- supporting a party that represents the class that is oppressing and exploiting you! The result is precisely the disastrous situation working people and youth face today -- falling wages, no job security, growing repression and the mounting threat of world war.

The Democratic Party long ago earned the designation "graveyard of social protest movements," and for good reason. From the Populist movement of the late 19th century, to the semi-insurrectional industrial union movement of the 1930s, to the civil rights movement of the 1950s and 1960s, to the mass anti-war protest movements of the 1960s and the eruption of international protests against the Iraq War in the early 2000s -- every movement against the depredations of American capitalism has been aborted and strangled by being channeled behind the Democratic Party.

[Nov 12, 2018] Why Democrats Are So Okay With Losing by Louis Proyect

Notable quotes:
"... Donald Trump has been transforming American society not by legislation but by using his executive powers to put people in charge of government agencies who are inimical to their stated goals. It is like putting the fox in charge of the henhouse ..."
"... By contrast, Trump is imposing a regime that was incubated long ago by people such as Grover "Starve the Beast" Norquist and every other libertarian think-tank funded by the Koch Brothers et al. The big bourgeoisie might not like the bad taste, racism and thuggish behavior of the Trump administration but they couldn't be happier with the results. This is an elected government that has fulfilled its deepest policy aspirations and that shows a willingness to push the Democrats back on their heels, so much so that someone like Mikie Sherrill lacks the courage to defend policies that might win elections down the road. After all, if she is unseated, she can always go back to a job as a federal prosecutor in New Jersey. What happens to someone working in Walmart's is not her business, after all. ..."
Nov 09, 2018 | www.counterpunch.org

Ever since the Democratic Party abandoned its New Deal legacy and adopted the neoliberal centrism associated with the Carter presidency and then cast in stone by the Democratic Leadership Council in 1985, each election loss has generated a chorus of remonstrations in the left-liberal press about the need to run "progressive" candidates if the party wants to win. The latest instance of this was a post to the Jacobin FB page that stated: "By running to the right, Democrats insist on losing twice: at the polls and in constructing an inspiring agenda. Bold left-wing politics are our only hope for long-term, substantive victory."

The question of why Democrats are so okay with losing has to be examined closely. In some countries, elections have huge consequences, especially in Latin America where a job as an elected official might be not only a source of income for a socialist parliamentarian but a trigger for a civil war or coup as occurred in Costa Rica in 1948 and in Chile in 1973 respectively.

In the 2010 midterm elections, there was a massive loss of seats in the House of Representatives for the Democrats. In this month's midterm elections, the Democrats hoped that a "Blue Wave" would do for them what the 2010 midterms did for the Republicans -- put them in the driver's seat. It turned out to be more of a "Blue Spray", not to speak of the toothless response of House leader Nancy Pelosi who spoke immediately about how the Democrats can reach across the aisle to the knuckle-dragging racists of the Republican Party.

Out of curiosity, I went to Wikipedia to follow up on what happened to the "losers" in 2010. Did they have to go on unemployment? Like Republicans who got voted out this go-round, Democrats had no trouble lining up jobs as lobbyists. Allen Boyd from Florida sent a letter to Obama after the BP oil spill in 2010 asking him to back up BP's claim that seafood in the Gulf of Mexico was okay to eat. After being voted out of office, he joined the Twenty-First Century Group, a lobbying firm founded by a former Republican Congressman from Texas named Jack Fields. A 1980 article on Fields describes him as a protégé of ultraright leader Paul Weyrich.

Glenn Nye, who lost his job as a Virginia congressman, his considerable CV that included working for the Agency for International Development (AID) and serving in various capacities during the occupation of Iraq to land a nice gig as Senior Political Advisor for the Hanover Investment Group.

John Spratt from South Carolina was described by Dow Jones News as "one of the staunchest fiscal conservatives among House Democrats." That was enough for him to land a job with Barack Obama's National Commission on Fiscal Responsibility and Reform that was supposed to come up with a strategy to reduce the deficit. Just the sort of thing that was calculated to lift the American economy out of the worst slump since the 1930s. Not.

Pennsylvania's Chris Carney was a helluva Democrat. From 2002 to 2004, he was a counterterrorism analyst for the Bush administration. He not only reported to Douglas Feith in the Office of Special Plans and at the Defense Intelligence Agency, researching links between al Qaeda and Saddam Hussein, but served as an interrogator in Guantanamo. These qualifications landed him a job as director of homeland security and policy strategy for BAE Systems when the House of Representatives gig ended. A British security and munitions powerhouse, BAE won a contract worth £4.4bn to supply the Saudis with 72 fighter jets – some of which were used to bomb Red Cross and Physician Without Borders hospitals in Yemen.

With such crumb-bums losing in 2010, you'd think that the Democrats would be convinced that their best bet for winning elections would be to disavow candidates that had ties to the national security apparatus and anything that smacked of the DLC's assault on the welfare state. Not exactly. When the candidates are female, that might work in the party's favor like sugar-coating a bitter pill.

In Virginia, former CIA officer Abigail Spanberger and retired Navy Commander Elaine Luria defeated Republican incumbents. Air Force veteran Chrissy Houlahan of Pennsylvania, former CIA analyst Elissa Slotkin of Michigan, and former Navy pilot Mikie Sherrill of New Jersey also helped the Democrats regain the House. Sherill calculated that moving to the center would serve her own and the party's interests. She told MSNBC: "As a Navy helicopter pilot I never flew Republican missions or Democratic missions, I would have had a very short career. This is something I do think vets bring to the table, this willingness to work with everyone."

An article titled "' Montclair Mikie' Sherrill recast as 'Moderate Mikie' as Webber attacks in NJ House race " described her Road to Damascus conversion to DLC principles:

For Sherrill, a newcomer to politics, the 11th has proved to be a tricky terrain. She is seen as a progressive, but appears wary of carrying the "Trump resistance" banner into the fray. At Wednesday's debate, Sherrill was determined to show she is more Morris Plains than Montclair.

There were no heated vows to fight Trump, even though being "appalled" by the president was what motivated her to run in the first place. The Nov. 6 midterms loom as a referendum on Trump's presidency, but you would never have guessed that watching Wednesday's contest.

Sherrill repeatedly promised to be bipartisan -- a far cry from the combative, confrontational tone that many in the party's grass roots are demanding.

On tax policy she sounded more centrist Republican than mainstream liberal Democrat, and she refused to endorse issues like free community college tuition, which has become a popular talking point for Democrats and was launched by Gov. Phil Murphy this summer.

"Without understanding how that would be paid for, I haven't supported it because it sounds like it would raise taxes on our families,'" she said.

The moderate tone puzzled some of her ardent "resistance" activists who mobilized around her candidacy.

For Eric Fritsch, 32, a Teamster for the film and television industry from West Orange, it was jarring to hear Sherrill oppose Democratic Party wish-list items like free community college tuition or "Medicare-for-all" coverage out of fear that it may raise taxes. She used the same excuse to sidestep supporting a "carbon tax" to reduce global warming.

"By going on the defensive about taxes she is accepting a Republican framing that we don't want to be responsible with taxes in the first place,'" said Fritsch, who insisted that he remains a "very enthusiastic" Sherrill supporter.

It should be abundantly clear by now that the Democratic Party leadership will be selecting a candidate in 2020 in all ways identical to Hillary Clinton but perhaps with a less tawdry past and less of an appetite for Goldman-Sachs speaking fees. Nancy Pelosi, Chuck Schumer, Joe Biden, Andrew Cuomo, et al have no intention of allowing upstarts like Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez to spoil their plans, even if it means a second term for Donald Trump.

No matter. Jacobin editor Bhaskar Sunkara urges his readers and DSA comrades to plunge ahead trying to consolidate a "socialist" caucus in the Democratic Party. From his perspective, working in the Democratic Party seems to be the "most promising place for advancing left politics, at least in the short term." Keep in mind that Sherrill raised $1.9 million for her campaign and my old boss from Salomon Brothers Michael Bloomberg ponied up another $1.8 million just for her TV ads. Does anybody really think that "socialist" backed candidates will be able to compete with people like Sherrill in the primaries? Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez was able to defeat the hack Joe Crowley on a shoestring but that was something of a fluke. Until there is a massive shake-up in American society that finally reveals the Democratic Party to be the capitalist tool it has been since Andrew Jackson's presidency, it is likely that a combination of big money and political inertia will keep the Democratic Party an agent of reaction.

Furthermore, the takeover of the House might turn out to be a hollow victory in the light of how Trump rules. His strategy hasn't been to push through legislation except for the tax cut. Remember the blather about investing in infrastructure? His minions in Congress have no intention of proposing a trillion or so dollars in highway or bridge repair, etc. With Nancy Pelosi fecklessly talking about how the two parties can collaborate on infrastructure, you can only wonder whether she has been asleep for the past two years.

Donald Trump has been transforming American society not by legislation but by using his executive powers to put people in charge of government agencies who are inimical to their stated goals. It is like putting the fox in charge of the henhouse as Malcolm X once put it. Two days ago, the NY Times wrote about how the "Trump Administration Spares Corporate Wrongdoers Billions in Penalties". It did not need legislation to help big banks rip off the public. All it took was naming former head of BankOne Joseph Otting comptroller of the currency. Senator Sherrod Brown, one of the few Democrats with a spine, called Trump out: "The president's choice for watchdog of America's largest banks is someone who signed a consent order -- over shady foreclosure practices -- with the very agency he's been selected to run."

For all of the dozens of articles about how Trump is creating a fascist regime, hardly any deal with the difference between Trump and Adolf Hitler. Hitler created a massive bureaucracy that ran a quasi-planned economy with generous social benefits that put considerable restraints on the bourgeoisie. Like FDR, he was taking measures to save capitalism. Perhaps if the USA had a social and economic crisis as deep as Germany's and left parties as massive as those in Germany, FDR might have embarked on a much more ambitious concentration camp program, one that would have interred trade unionists as well as Japanese-Americans. Maybe even Jews if they complained too much.

By contrast, Trump is imposing a regime that was incubated long ago by people such as Grover "Starve the Beast" Norquist and every other libertarian think-tank funded by the Koch Brothers et al. The big bourgeoisie might not like the bad taste, racism and thuggish behavior of the Trump administration but they couldn't be happier with the results. This is an elected government that has fulfilled its deepest policy aspirations and that shows a willingness to push the Democrats back on their heels, so much so that someone like Mikie Sherrill lacks the courage to defend policies that might win elections down the road. After all, if she is unseated, she can always go back to a job as a federal prosecutor in New Jersey. What happens to someone working in Walmart's is not her business, after all.

[Nov 08, 2018] Trump, Gorbachev, And The Fall Of The American Empire

Gold age of the USA (say 40 years from 1946 to approximately 1986 ) were an in some way an aberration caused by WWII. As soon as Germany and Japan rebuilt themselves this era was over. And the collapse of the USSR in 1991 (or more correct Soviet nomenklatura switching sides and adopting neoliberalism) only make the decline more gradual but did not reversed it. After 200 it was clear that neoliberalism is in trouble and in 2008 it was clear that ideology of neoliberalism is dead, much like Bolshevism after 1945.
As the US ruling neoliberal elite adopted this ideology ad its flag, the USA faces the situation somewhat similar the USSR faced in 70th. It needs its "Perestroika" but with weak leader at the helm like Gorbachov it can lead to the dissolution of the state. Dismantling neoliberalism is not less dangerous then dismantling of Bolshevism. The level of brainwashing of both population and the elite (and it looks like the USA elite is brainwashed to an amazing level, probably far exceed the level of brainwashing of Soviet nomenklatura) prevents any constructive moves.
In a way, Neoliberalism probably acts as a mousetrap for the country, similar to the role of Bolshevism in the USSR. Ideology of neoliberalism is dead, so what' next. Another war to patch the internal divisions ? That's probably why Trump is so adamant about attacking Iran. Iran does not have nuclear weapons so this is in a way an ideal target. Unlike, say, Russia. And such a war can serve the same political purpose. That's why many emigrants from the USSR view the current level of divisions with the USA is a direct analog of divisions within the USSR in late 70th and 80th. Similarities are clearly visible with naked eye.
Notable quotes:
"... t is well known that legendary American gangster Al Capone once said that 'Capitalism is the legitimate racket of the ruling class', - and I have commented on the links between organised crime and capitalist accumulation before on this blog, but I recently came across the following story from Claud Cockburn's autobiography, and decided to put it up on Histomat for you all. ..."
"... "Listen," he said, "don't get the idea I'm one of those goddam radicals. Don't get the idea I'm knocking the American system. The American system..." As though an invisible chairman had called upon him for a few words, he broke into an oration upon the theme. He praised freedom, enterprise and the pioneers. He spoke of "our heritage". He referred with contempuous disgust to Socialism and Anarchism. "My rackets," he repeated several times, "are run on strictly American lines and they're going to stay that way"...his vision of the American system began to excite him profoundly and now he was on his feet again, leaning across the desk like the chairman of a board meeting, his fingers plunged in the rose bowls. ..."
"... A month later in New York I was telling this story to Mr John Walter, minority owner of The Times . He asked me why I had not written the Capone interview for the paper. I explained that when I had come to put my notes together I saw that most of what Capone had said was in essence identical with what was being said in the leading articles of The Times itself, and I doubted whether the paper would be best pleased to find itself seeing eye to eye with the most notorious gangster in Chicago. Mr Walter, after a moment's wry reflection, admitted that probably my idea had been correct.' ..."
"... The biggest lie ever told is that American hegemony relies on American imperialism and warmongering. The opposite is true. America is weak precisely because it is trying so hard to project strength, because anyone with half a brain knows that it is projecting strength to enrich oligarhcs, not to protect or favor the American people. ..."
"... please mr. author don't give us more globalist dribble. We want our wealth back ..."
"... America the empire is just another oligarchic regime that other countries' populations rightly see as an example of what doesn't work ..."
"... It's the ruling capitalist Predator Class that has been demanding empire since McKinley was assassinated. That's the problem. ..."
"... And who do you suppose are the forces which are funding US politicians and thus getting to call their shots in foreign policy? Can you bring yourself to name them? ..."
"... The US physical plant and equipment as well as infrastructure is in advanced stages of decay. Ditto for the labor force which has been pauperized and abused for decades by the Predator Class... ..."
Nov 08, 2018 | www.zerohedge.com

Trump, Gorbachev, And The Fall Of The American Empire

by Tyler Durden Wed, 11/07/2018 - 23:25 13 SHARES Authored by Raja Murthy via The Asia Times,

"The only wealth you keep is wealth you have given away," said Marcus Aurelius (121-180 AD), last of the great Roman emperors. US President Donald Trump might know of another Italian, Mario Puzo's Don Vito Corleone, and his memorable mumble : "I'm going to make him an offer he can't refuse."

Forgetting such Aurelian and godfather codes is propelling the decline and fall of the American empire.

Trump is making offers the world can refuse – by reshaping trade deals, dispensing with American sops and forcing powerful corporations to return home, the US is regaining economic wealth but relinquishing global power.

As the last leader of the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics (USSR), Mikhail Gorbachev's perestroika (restructuring) led to the breakup of its vast territory(22 million square kilometers). Gorbachev's failed policies led to the dissolution of the USSR into Russia and independent countries, and the end of a superpower.

Ironically, the success of Trump's policies will hasten the demise of the American empire: the US regaining economic health but losing its insidious hold over the world.

This diminishing influence was highlighted when India and seven other countries geared up to defy Washington's re-imposition of its unilateral, illegal sanctions against Iran, starting Monday.

The US State Department granting "permission" on the weekend to the eight countries to buy Iranian oil was akin to waving the green flag at a train that has already left the station

The US State Department granting "permission" on the weekend to the eight countries to buy Iranian oil was akin to waving the green flag at a train that has already left the station.

The law of cause and effect unavoidably delivers. The Roman Empire fell after wars of greed and orgies of consumption. A similar nemesis, the genie of Gorbachev, stalks Pennsylvania Avenue, with Trump unwittingly writing the last chapter of World War II: the epilogue of the two rival superpowers that emerged from humanity's most terrible conflict.

The maverick 45th president of the United States may succeed at being an economic messiah to his country, which has racked up a $21.6 trillion debt, but the fallout is the death of American hegemony. These are the declining days of the last empire standing.

Emperors and mafia godfathers knew that wielding great influence means making payoffs. Trump, however, is doing away with the sops, the glue that holds the American empire together, and is making offers that he considers "fair" but instead is alienating the international community– from badgering NATO and other countries to pay more for hosting the US legions (800 military bases in 80 countries) to reducing US aid.

US aid to countries fell from $50 billion in fiscal year 2016, $37 billion in 2017 to $7.7 billion so far in 2018. A world less tied to American largesse and generous trade tarrifs can more easily reject the "you are with us or against us" bullying doctrine of US presidents. In the carrot and stick approach that largely passes as American foreign policy, the stick loses power as the carrot vanishes.

Don Vito Corleone (Marlon Brando) in The Godfather. Big payoffs needed for big influence. A presidential lesson for Don Trump

More self-respecting leaders will have less tolerance for American hypocrisy, such as sanctioning other countries for nuclear weapons while having the biggest nuclear arsenal on the planet.

They will sneer more openly at the hysteria surrounding alleged interference in the 2016 US presidential elections, pointing to Washington's violent record of global meddling. They will cite examples of American hypocrisy such as its sponsorship of coups against elected leaders in Latin America, the US Army's Project Camelot in 1964 targeting 22 countries for intervention (including Iran, Turkey, Thailand, Malaysia), its support for bloodthirsty dictators, and its destabilization of the Middle East with the destruction of Iraq and Libya.

Immigrant cannon fodder

Trump's focus on the economy reduces the likelihood of him starting wars. By ending the flood of illegal immigrants to save jobs for US citizens, he is also inadvertently reducing the manpower for illegal wars. Non-citizen immigrants comprise about 5% of the US Army. For its Iraq and Afghanistan wars, US army recruiters offered citizenship to lure illegal immigrants, mostly Latinos.

Among the first US soldiers to die in the Iraq War was 22-year old illegal immigrant Corporal Jose Antonio Gutierrez, an orphan from the streets of Guatemala City. He sneaked across the Mexican border into the US six years before enlisting in exchange for American citizenship.

On March 21, 2003, Gutierrez was killed by friendly fire near Umm Qasr, southern Iraq. The coffin of this illegal immigrant was draped in the US flag, and he received American citizenship – posthumously.

Trump policies targeting illegal immigration simultaneously reduces the availability of cannon fodder for the illegal wars needed to maintain American hegemony.

Everything comes to an end, and so too will the last empire of our era.

The imperial American eagle flying into the sunset will see the dawn of an economically healthier US that minds its own business, and increase hopes for a more equal, happier world – thanks to the unintentional Gorbachev-2 in the White House.


PeaceForWorld , 3 minutes ago link

I am sure that many of us are OK with ending American Empire. Both US citizens and other countries don't want to fight un-necessary and un-ending wars. If Trump can do that, then he is blessed.

Condor_0000 , 23 minutes ago link

Imperialism and the State: Why McDonald's Needs McDonnell Douglas

By Paul D'Amato

http://www.isreview.org/issues/17/state_and_imperialism.shtml

Excerpt:

The modern nation-state was necessary as a means of creating a single, unified market that could facilitate commerce. But the state was also crucial in providing necessary infrastructure, and sometimes the pooling of capital resources, necessary for national capitalists to operate and compete effectively.

But the state as a bureaucratic institution had another, more fundamental function. Lenin, citing Engels, defined the essence of the state as "bodies of armed men, prisons, etc.," in short, an instrument for the maintenance of the rule of the exploiting minority over the exploited majority.

As capitalism burst the bounds of the nation-state, the coercive military function of the state took on a new dimension--that of protecting (and projecting) the interests of the capitalists of one country over those of another. As capitalism developed, the role of the state increased, the size of the state bureaucracy increased, and the size of its coercive apparatus increased.

Lenin was soon to refine this conception in light of the world's descent into the mass slaughter of the First World War. He argued that capitalism had reached a new stage--imperialism--the struggle between the world's "great powers" for world dominance. The central feature of imperialism was the rivarly between the great powers--whose economic competition gave way to military conflict.

Another Russian revolutionary, Leon Trotsky, put it this way:

The forces of production which capitalism has evolved have outgrown the limits of nation and state. The national state, the present political form, is too narrow for the exploitation of these productive forces. The natural tendency of our economic system, therefore, is to seek to break through the state boundaries. The whole globe, the land and the sea, the surface as well as the interior, has become one economic workshop, the different parts of which are inseparably connected with each other. This work was accomplished by capitalism. But in accomplishing it the capitalist states were led to struggle for the subjection of the world-embracing economic system to the profit interests of the bourgeoisie of each country...

But the way the governments propose to solve this problem of imperialism is not through the intelligent, organized cooperation of all of humanity's producers, but through the exploitation of the world's economic system by the capitalist class of the victorious country; which country is by this War to be transformed from a great power into a world power.5

Golden Showers , 32 minutes ago link

See a pattern here? Raja Murthy, you sound like a pro-American Empire shill. 1964 Project Camelot has nothing to do with the current administration. Raja, you forgot to wear your satirical pants.

The idea and catchy hook of 2016 was Make America Great Again, not wasting lives and resources on the American Empire. You point out the good things. Who might have a problem with the end of the American Empire are Globalists. What is wrong with relinquishing global power and not wasting lives and money?

"The only lives you keep is lives you've given away" That does not ring true. The only lies you keep are the lies you've given away. What? You're not making any sense, dude. How much American Empire are you vested in? Does it bother you if the Empire shrinks its death grip on Asia or the rest of the world? Why don't you just say it: This is good! Hopefully Trump's policies will prevent you from getting writers' cramp and being confusing--along with the canon fodder. Or maybe you're worried about job security.

America is a super power, just like Russia. Just like England. However, whom the US carries water for might change. Hope that's ok.

Captain Nemo de Erehwon , 33 minutes ago link

Trump is saving the US by destroying the empire. Both the US and the world will be happier for that.

Condor_0000 , 29 minutes ago link

No he's not.

Trump is an empirial president, just like every other US president. In fact, that's what the article is describing. MAGA depends upon imperialist domination. Trump and all of US capitalism know that even if the brain-dead MAGA chumps don't.

Capitalism can't help but seek to rule the world. It is the result of pursuing capitalism's all-important growth. If it's not US capitalism, it will be Chinese capitalism, or Russian capitalism, or European capitalism that will rule the world.

The battle over global markets doesn't stop just because the US might decide not to play anymore. Capitalism means that you're either the global power who is ******* the royal **** out of everyone else, or you're the victim of being fucked up the *** by an imperialist power.

FBaggins , 25 minutes ago link

The only thing which makes the US different from the rest of the world is its super concentration of power, which in effect is a super concentration of corruption.

ebworthen , 33 minutes ago link

Quite entertaining to be living in the modern Rome.

Condor_0000 , 28 minutes ago link

It's a cross between ancient Rome and Nazi Germany. And you're right. It's fascinating.

Condor_0000 , 34 minutes ago link

Another day and another ZeroHedge indictment of American capitalism.

And how refreshing that the article compares US capitalism to gangsterism. It's a most appropriate comparison.

--------------------

Al Capone on Capitalism

It is well known that legendary American gangster Al Capone once said that 'Capitalism is the legitimate racket of the ruling class', - and I have commented on the links between organised crime and capitalist accumulation before on this blog, but I recently came across the following story from Claud Cockburn's autobiography, and decided to put it up on Histomat for you all.

In 1930, Cockburn, then a correspondent in America for the Times newspaper, interviewed Al Capone at the Lexington Hotel in Chicago, when Capone was at the height of his power. He recalls that except for 'the sub-machine gun...poking through the transom of a door behind the desk, Capone's own room was nearly indistinguishable from that of, say, a "newly arrived" Texan oil millionaire. Apart from the jowly young murderer on the far side of the desk, what took the eye were a number of large, flattish, solid silver bowls upon the desk, each filled with roses. They were nice to look at, and they had another purpose too, for Capone when agitated stood up and dipped the tips of his fingers in the water in which floated the roses.

I had been a little embarrassed as to how the interview was to be launched. Naturally the nub of all such interviews is somehow to get round to the question "What makes you tick?" but in the case of this millionaire killer the approach to this central question seemed mined with dangerous impediments. However, on the way down to the Lexington Hotel I had had the good fortune to see, I think in the Chicago Daily News , some statistics offered by an insurance company which dealt with the average expectation of life of gangsters in Chicago. I forget exactly what the average was, and also what the exact age of Capone at that time - I think he was in his early thirties. The point was, however, that in any case he was four years older than the upper limit considered by the insurance company to be the proper average expectation of life for a Chicago gangster. This seemed to offer a more or less neutral and academic line of approach, and after the ordinary greetings I asked Capone whether he had read this piece of statistics in the paper. He said that he had. I asked him whether he considered the estimate reasonably accurate. He said that he thought that the insurance companies and the newspaper boys probably knew their stuff. "In that case", I asked him, "how does it feel to be, say, four years over the age?"

He took the question quite seriously and spoke of the matter with neither more nor less excitement or agitation than a man would who, let us say, had been asked whether he, as the rear machine-gunner of a bomber, was aware of the average incidence of casualties in that occupation. He apparently assumed that sooner or later he would be shot despite the elaborate precautions which he regularly took. The idea that - as afterwards turned out to be the case - he would be arrested by the Federal authorities for income-tax evasion had not, I think, at that time so much as crossed his mind. And, after all, he said with a little bit of corn-and-ham somewhere at the back of his throat, supposing he had not gone into this racket? What would be have been doing? He would, he said, "have been selling newspapers barefoot on the street in Brooklyn".

He stood as he spoke, cooling his finger-tips in the rose bowl in front of him. He sat down again, brooding and sighing. Despite the ham-and-corn, what he said was probably true and I said so, sympathetically. A little bit too sympathetically, as immediately emerged, for as I spoke I saw him looking at me suspiciously, not to say censoriously. My remarks about the harsh way the world treats barefoot boys in Brooklyn were interrupted by an urgent angry waggle of his podgy hand.

"Listen," he said, "don't get the idea I'm one of those goddam radicals. Don't get the idea I'm knocking the American system. The American system..." As though an invisible chairman had called upon him for a few words, he broke into an oration upon the theme. He praised freedom, enterprise and the pioneers. He spoke of "our heritage". He referred with contempuous disgust to Socialism and Anarchism. "My rackets," he repeated several times, "are run on strictly American lines and they're going to stay that way"...his vision of the American system began to excite him profoundly and now he was on his feet again, leaning across the desk like the chairman of a board meeting, his fingers plunged in the rose bowls.

"This American system of ours," he shouted, "call it Americanism, call it Capitalism, call it what you like, gives to each and every one of us a great opportunity if we only seize it with both hands and make the most of it." He held out his hand towards me, the fingers dripping a little, and stared at me sternly for a few seconds before reseating himself.

A month later in New York I was telling this story to Mr John Walter, minority owner of The Times . He asked me why I had not written the Capone interview for the paper. I explained that when I had come to put my notes together I saw that most of what Capone had said was in essence identical with what was being said in the leading articles of The Times itself, and I doubted whether the paper would be best pleased to find itself seeing eye to eye with the most notorious gangster in Chicago. Mr Walter, after a moment's wry reflection, admitted that probably my idea had been correct.'

LetThemEatRand , 52 minutes ago link

This article was obviously written by someone who wants to maintain the status quo.

America would be much stronger if it were not trying to be an empire. The biggest lie ever told is that American hegemony relies on American imperialism and warmongering. The opposite is true. America is weak precisely because it is trying so hard to project strength, because anyone with half a brain knows that it is projecting strength to enrich oligarhcs, not to protect or favor the American people.

hardmedicine , 41 minutes ago link

exactly, please mr. author don't give us more globalist dribble. We want our wealth back and screw the rest of the world, America First

LetThemEatRand , 39 minutes ago link

I truly believe that "America First" is not selfish. America before it went full ****** was the beacon of freedom and success that other countries tried to emulate and that changed the world for the better.

America the empire is just another oligarchic regime that other countries' populations rightly see as an example of what doesn't work.

HopefulCynical , 26 minutes ago link

Empire is a contrivance, a vehicle for psychopathic powerlust. America was founded by people who stood adamantly opposed to this. Here's hoping Trump holds their true spirit in his heart.

If he doesn't, there's hundreds of millions of us who still do. We don't all live in America...

Posa , 15 minutes ago link

It's the ruling capitalist Predator Class that has been demanding empire since McKinley was assassinated. That's the problem.

CTacitus , 15 minutes ago link

LetThemEatRand:

America is weak precisely because it is trying so hard to project strength, because anyone with half a brain knows that it is projecting strength to enrich oligarhcs [sic], not to protect or favor the American people.

And who do you suppose are the forces which are funding US politicians and thus getting to call their shots in foreign policy? Can you bring yourself to name them? Oligarchs...you're FULL of ****. Who exactly pools all (((their))) money, makes sure the [s]elected officials know (((who))) to not question and, instead, just bow down to them, who makes sure these (((officials))) sign pledges for absolute commitment towards Israel--or in no uncertain terms-- and know who will either sponsor them/or opposes them next time around?

JSBach1 called you a 'coward', for being EXACTLY LIKE THESE TRAITOROUS SPINELESS VERMIN who simply just step outside just 'enough' the comfort zone to APPEAR 'real'. IMHO, I concur with JSBach1 ...your're a coward indeed, when you should know better ..... shame you you indeed!

pitz , 55 minutes ago link

There is little evidence, Trump's propaganda aside (that he previously called Obama dishonest for) that the US economy is improving. If anything, the exploding budget and trade deficits indicate that the economy continues to weaken.

Posa , 12 minutes ago link

Correct. The US physical plant and equipment as well as infrastructure is in advanced stages of decay. Ditto for the labor force which has been pauperized and abused for decades by the Predator Class...

the US can't even raise an army... even if enough young (men) were dumb enough to volunteer there just aren't enough fit, healthy and mentally acute recruits out there.

[Nov 07, 2018] There is only the Deep Purple Mil.Gov UniParty. The Titanic is dead in the water, lights out, bow down hard.

Highly recommended!
Notable quotes:
"... There is only the Deep Purple Mil.Gov UniParty. The Titanic is dead in the water, lights out, bow down hard. The Rich, the Corporate Profiteers and the Military-Political Establishment have pulled away in their fur and jewel-encrusted life boats. It's one minute after midnight on the Doomsday Clock, the hands have fallen off the Debt Clock, the skies are burning and seas are rising (they say), and we are in WW3 in 8 nations. Or is it 9? ..."
"... So the Democrat faction of the Corporate One-Party took back control of the House from the Republican faction. (It's one hard-right party, of course; only liars and those ignorant of history call the Dems "centrist". By any objective or historical standard they're a right-wing party.) ..."
"... I made no prediction on what would happen in this election, but I've long predicted that if/when the Democrats win control of either house they'll do nothing with that control. Jack squat. Status quo all the way, embellished with more retarded Russia-Derangement stuff and similar nonsense. ..."
"... If there really were a difference between these corporate factions, here's the chance for the House to obstruct all Senate-passed legislation. ..."
"... They claim there's a difference between the two parties? ..."
"... But I predict this House won't lift a finger vs. the Senate, and that it'll strive to work with the Senate on legislation, and that it'll fully concur with the Senate on war budgets, police state measures, anything and everything demanded by Wall Street, Big Ag, the fossil fuel extractors, and of course the corporate welfare state in general. ..."
"... Nothing I've talked about here is anything but what is possible, what is always implicitly or explicitly promised by Dembots, and what it would seem is the minimum necessary given what Dembots claim is the scope of the crisis and what is at stake. ..."
Nov 07, 2018 | www.moonofalabama.org

Debsisdead | Nov 7, 2018 6:19:36 AM | 9

It's not even decent theatre. Drama is much lacking, character development zilch. The outcome that dems take congress,& rethugs improve in senate is exactly as was predicted months ago.

The dems reveal once again exactly how mendacious and uncaring of the population they are. Nothing matters other than screwing more cash outta anyone who wants anything done so that the DC trough stays full with the usual crew of 4th & 5th generation wannabe dem pols guzzling hard at the corporate funded 'dem aligned' think tanks which generate much hot air yet never deliver. Hardly suprising given that actually doing something to show they give a sh1t about the citizenry would annoy the donor who would give em all the boot, making all these no-hopers have to take up a gig actually practising law.

These are people whose presence at the best law schools in the country prevented many who wanted to be y'know lawyers from entering Harvard, Cornell etc law school. "one doesn't go to law school to become a lawyer It too hard to even pull down a mil a year as a brief, nah, I studied the law to learn how to make laws that actually do the opposite of what they seem to. That is where the real dough is."

Those who think that is being too hard on the dem slugs, should remember that the rethugs they have been indoctrinated to detest act pretty much as printed on the side of the can. They advertise a service of licking rich arseholes and that is exactly what they do. As venal and sociopathic as they are, at least they don't pretend to be something else; so while there is no way one could vote for anyone spouting republican nonsense at least they don't hide their greed & corruption under a veneer of pseudo-humanist nonsense. Dems cry for the plight of the poverty stricken then they slash welfare.

Or dems sob about the hard row african americans must hoe, then go off to the house of reps to pass laws to keep impoverished african americans slotted up in an over crowded prison for the rest of his/her life.

Not only deceitful and vicious, 100% pointless since any Joe/Jo that votes on the basis of wanting to see more blackfellas incarcerated is always gonna tick the rethug box anyhow.

Yeah- yeah we know all this so what?

This is what - the dems broke their arses getting tens of millions of young first time voters out to "exercise their democratic prerogative" for the first time. Dems did this knowing full well that there would be no effective opposition to rethug demands for more domestic oppression, that in fact it is practically guaranteed that should the trump and the rethug senate require it, in order to ensure something particularly nasty gets passed, that sufficient dem congress people will 'cross the floor' to make certain the bill does get up.

Of course the dems in question will allude to 'folks back home demanding' that the dem slug does vote with the nasties, but that is the excuse, the reality is far too many dem pols are as bigoted greedy and elitist as the worst rethugs.

Anyway the upshot of persuading so many kids to get out and vote, so the kids do but the dems are content to just do more of the same, will be another entire generation lost to elections forever.

If the DNC had been less greedy and more strategic they would have kept their powder dry and hung off press-ganging the kids until getting such a turnout could have resulted in genuine change, prez 2020' or whenever, would be actual success for pols and voters.

But they didn't and wouldn't ever, since for a dem pol, hundreds of thousands of fellow citizens living on the street isn't nearly as problematic for them, as the dem wannabe pol paying off the mortgage on his/her DC townhouse by 2020, something that would have been impossible if they hadn't taken congress as all the 'patrons' would have jerked back their cash figuring there is no gain giving dosh to losers who couldn't win a bar raffle.

As for that Sharice Davids - a total miss she needed to be either a midget or missing an arm or leg to qualify as the classic ID dem pol. Being a native american lezzo just doesn't tick enough boxes. I predict a not in the least illustrious career since she cannot even qualify as the punchline in a circa 1980's joke.

Anton Worter , Nov 7, 2018 11:13:25 AM | link

@9

As you said, nothing will get out of the House, Pelosi can't lead. They can easily swing 3 Democrats, then Mike Pence puts the hammer down. If anything manages to crawl through, it won't even be brought to a vote in the Republican Senate. Trump can still us his bully pulpit to circle the White wagons, fly in even more than his current 1,125,000 H-visa aliens, and No Taxes for the Rich is now engraved in stone for the Pharoahs.

The imminent $1,500B Omnibus Deficit Bill Three will be lauded as a 'bipartisan solution' by both houses, and 2020 looks to be a $27,000B illegal, onerous, odious National Debt open Civil War.

There is only the Deep Purple Mil.Gov UniParty. The Titanic is dead in the water, lights out, bow down hard. The Rich, the Corporate Profiteers and the Military-Political Establishment have pulled away in their fur and jewel-encrusted life boats. It's one minute after midnight on the Doomsday Clock, the hands have fallen off the Debt Clock, the skies are burning and seas are rising (they say), and we are in WW3 in 8 nations. Or is it 9?

Smart money is moving toward the exits. This shyte is gonna blow. Let's move to Australia, before it becomes part of Xi's PRC String of Girls.

ken | Nov 7, 2018 12:44:13 PM | 69

Reading most of the comments explaining how the D's won/lost,,, the R's won/lost,,, Trump and company won/lost,,, but couldn't find one post about how America is losing due to the two suffocating party's and a greedy, disunited, selfish, electorate that wants it all free.

A democracy cannot exist as a permanent form of government. It can only exist until the Majority discovers it can vote itself largess out of the public treasury,,,,,,, After that the Majority always votes for the candidate 'promising the most' ,,,,,,,
Alex Fraser.

The US, and West in general, is proof positive.

Russ | Nov 7, 2018 7:48:10 AM | 17

So the Democrat faction of the Corporate One-Party took back control of the House from the Republican faction. (It's one hard-right party, of course; only liars and those ignorant of history call the Dems "centrist". By any objective or historical standard they're a right-wing party.)

It's no big surprise. Last two years it's been the normally self-assured Republicans who, because of their ambivalence about Trump, have uncharacteristically taken on the usual Democrat role of existential confusion and doubt. Meanwhile the Democrats, in a berserk batsh$t-insane way, have been more motivated and focused.

So what are these Democrats going to do with this control now that they have it?

I made no prediction on what would happen in this election, but I've long predicted that if/when the Democrats win control of either house they'll do nothing with that control. Jack squat. Status quo all the way, embellished with more retarded Russia-Derangement stuff and similar nonsense.

If there really were a difference between these corporate factions, here's the chance for the House to obstruct all Senate-passed legislation. And as for things which are technically only in the power of the Senate such as confirming appointments, here's the chance for the House to put public moral pressure on Democrats in the Senate. And there's plenty of back-door ways an activist House can influence Senate business. Only morbid pedantry, so typical of liberal Dembots, babbles about what the technical powers of this or that body are. The real world doesn't work that way. To the extent I pay attention at all to Senate affairs it'll be to see what the House is doing about it.

They claim there's a difference between the two parties? And they claim Trump is an incipient fascist dictator? In that case there's a lot at stake, and extreme action is called for. Let's see what kind of action we get from their "different" party in control of the House.

But I predict this House won't lift a finger vs. the Senate, and that it'll strive to work with the Senate on legislation, and that it'll fully concur with the Senate on war budgets, police state measures, anything and everything demanded by Wall Street, Big Ag, the fossil fuel extractors, and of course the corporate welfare state in general.

Nor will any of these new-fangled fake "socialist" types take any action to change things one iota. Within the House Democrats, they could take action, form any and every kind of coalition, to obstruct the corporate-Pelosi leadership faction. They will not do so. This "new" progressive bloc will be just as fake as the old one.

Nothing I've talked about here is anything but what is possible, what is always implicitly or explicitly promised by Dembots, and what it would seem is the minimum necessary given what Dembots claim is the scope of the crisis and what is at stake.

[Nov 07, 2018] Republicans can easily swing 3 Democrats, then Mike Pence puts the hammer down

Notable quotes:
"... There is only the Deep Purple Mil.Gov UniParty. The Titanic is dead in the water, lights out, bow down hard. The Rich, the Corporate Profiteers and the Military-Political Establishment have pulled away in their fur and jewel-encrusted life boats. It's one minute after midnight on the Doomsday Clock, the hands have fallen off the Debt Clock, the skies are burning and seas are rising (they say), and we are in WW3 in 8 nations. Or is it 9? ..."
Nov 07, 2018 | www.moonofalabama.org

Anton Worter , Nov 7, 2018 11:13:25 AM | 57 ">link

@9

As you said, nothing will get out of the House, Pelosi can't lead. They can easily swing 3 Democrats, then Mike Pence puts the hammer down. If anything manages to crawl through, it won't even be brought to a vote in the Republican Senate. Trump can still us his bully pulpit to circle the White wagons, fly in even more than his current 1,125,000 H-visa aliens, and No Taxes for the Rich is now engraved in stone for the Pharoahs.

The imminent $1,500B Omnibus Deficit Bill Three will be lauded as a 'bipartisan solution' by both houses, and 2020 looks to be a $27,000B illegal, onerous, odious National Debt open Civil War.

There is only the Deep Purple Mil.Gov UniParty. The Titanic is dead in the water, lights out, bow down hard. The Rich, the Corporate Profiteers and the Military-Political Establishment have pulled away in their fur and jewel-encrusted life boats. It's one minute after midnight on the Doomsday Clock, the hands have fallen off the Debt Clock, the skies are burning and seas are rising (they say), and we are in WW3 in 8 nations. Or is it 9?

Smart money is moving toward the exits. This shyte is gonna blow. Let's move to Australia, before it becomes part of Xi's PRC String of Girls.

[Nov 07, 2018] The biggest losses of the night were center-right Democrats.

Nov 07, 2018 | caucus99percent.com

It's true that progressives lost a bunch of very close races in deep-red districts, but many of the biggest losses of the night were center-right Democrats. Senator Joe Donnelly of Indiana, Senator Claire McCaskill of Missouri and Senator Heidi Heitkamp of North Dakota were just some of those so-called "moderate" losers.
I say good riddance.

[Nov 07, 2018] The corporate Dems have no policies that represent the people who elected them. However, they are no longer supported by working class and lower middle class

Notable quotes:
"... @WindDancer13 ..."
"... @WindDancer13 ..."
"... Investigating Trump for the rest of his tenure will keep them from having to do their jobs for Americans. ..."
"... They're going to spend millions of dollars and better yet, millions of hours babbling on and on about Taxes and Trump. ..."
"... With Sessions now out they're already screaming again about Rosenstein and Mueller for Gods sake. And they'll keep that up right until Nov 2020. ..."
"... In many cases, the people have won. The fresh blood going into the House in particular and some new governorships are more important than people realize yet. ..."
"... There are now over 100 women in the House -- a first. ..."
"... I hope the dems stand firm on protecting both programs plus not raising the retirement age. But with Pelosi who knows. ..."
"... Nancy Pelosi: Democrats Don't Want a New Direction ..."
Nov 07, 2018 | caucus99percent.com

Losing strategy. @WindDancer13

They need to spend their time going after Trump's policies period.

They have no policies of their own. Will they just continue saying that they're not as bad as trump?

#3

should not spend their time "investigating" Trump. Leave that to real journalists (there are still some around).

If they play it right, the Dems could triple Trump's anxiety and paranoia levels by keeping relative silence over his corruption, rather than starting a war of words with him. He wins if they let him weasel his way out of things. Besides that, the Dems will do a lousy job of trying to go after Trump. They need to spend their time going after Trump's policies period.

up 13 users have voted. --

Regardless of the path in life I chose, I realize it's always forward, never straight.


WindDancer13 on Wed, 11/07/2018 - 2:51pm

Yes and no

@Pricknick

The corporate Dems have no policies that represent the people who elected them. However, they are no longer completely surrounded by like thinkers. While the number of progressives may still be smaller than the numbers of establishment Dems, those progressives DO have an agenda and the people who want progress MUST support them and let the old guard know that they will not support obstruction of progressive policies.

Start by telling your congress critter to vote no on Pelosi.

#3.2

They need to spend their time going after Trump's policies period.

They have no policies of their own. Will they just continue saying that they're not as bad as trump?

gulfgal98 on Wed, 11/07/2018 - 3:43pm
It's fool's folly

@WindDancer13 The Democrats should be doing everything they can to build up themselves by aggressively pursuing policies that benefit the people. The Democrats need to stand FOR something. Otherwise they are just like the old guy shaking his fist at the sky. They can investigate Trump all they want, but it is waste of time, money, and there will be no impeachment hearing in the Senate. Besides many of them have so big skeletons in their closets too.

#3

should not spend their time "investigating" Trump. Leave that to real journalists (there are still some around).

If they play it right, the Dems could triple Trump's anxiety and paranoia levels by keeping relative silence over his corruption, rather than starting a war of words with him. He wins if they let him weasel his way out of things. Besides that, the Dems will do a lousy job of trying to go after Trump. They need to spend their time going after Trump's policies period.

snoopydawg on Wed, 11/07/2018 - 4:35pm
And that's why they are doing it

@gulfgal98

Investigating Trump for the rest of his tenure will keep them from having to do their jobs for Americans. The republicans came out with their balls on fire and rescinded and passed legislation right and left and now that the democrats have the house they're going to look at Trump's tax returns. For gawd's sake why? Okay.. they find that he did something wrong on them. Then what? Do they think that if they show he cheated on them then he'll be kicked out of office? Nope

Look at how many people who Obama tried to appoint were guilty of not paying theirs. Daschle who came from a medical lobbying firm was supposed to be his secretary of health, but he hadn't paid his taxes for a decade. Did he go to prison over it? Why no he didn't. Why? Two Americas. Only little people go to prison for doing .... fill in the blank.

Pelosi is also spouting bipartisanship. Gack! WTF again Nancy? Don't forget pay as you go.

#3.2 The Democrats should be doing everything they can to build up themselves by aggressively pursuing policies that benefit the people. The Democrats need to stand FOR something. Otherwise they are just like the old guy shaking his fist at the sky. They can investigate Trump all they want, but it is waste of time, money, and there will be no impeachment hearing in the Senate. Besides many of them have so big skeletons in their closets too.

lizzyh7 on Wed, 11/07/2018 - 5:53pm
Same reaction from me here.

@snoopydawg Like really? They're going to spend millions of dollars and better yet, millions of hours babbling on and on about Taxes and Trump. But they'll only go so far as that mess effects all of them and they good and well know it. But it keeps the divide going and the utter fallacy of someday sticking it to Trump. They'll come up with nothing and stone wall anything that threatens their status quo. With Sessions now out they're already screaming again about Rosenstein and Mueller for Gods sake. And they'll keep that up right until Nov 2020.

destroying the departments they're in charge of. If squeezed, will they sing like canaries? Cry like babies? Youth wants to know.

The Voice In th... on Wed, 11/07/2018 - 5:39pm
Neither does Clinton, Pekosi, DWS, Schumer ...

@gjohnsit

If the Democrats think they are going to waste Taxpayer Money investigating us at the House level, then we will likewise be forced to consider investigating them for all of the leaks of Classified Information, and much else, at the Senate level. Two can play that game!

-- Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) November 7, 2018

WindDancer13 on Wed, 11/07/2018 - 2:31pm
Trump's victory dance is off beat.

He did not "win," not by a long shot. Neither did the corporate Dems. It was never really expected (except maybe by some totally unrealistic people) that the Dems would take the Senate. The seats that were up for grabs were too limited and in some very, very red areas. However, we need to pay attention to just how close many of those races were. Some major dents were put into Rep armor and have left some wounds.

I too was very happy to see McCaskill and Heitcamp defeated. They were both totally worthless. This could be viewed as the start to cleaning out the "bad" Dems, even if we have to put up with a few Republicans to do so.

Suppression played a huge role in the results (especially governorships), and that must not be forgotten. In fact needs to be a focal point for the next two years along with getting corporate money out of the election system.

Another issue that needs to be dealt with is stopping Trump from dominating the news cycle. Anyone else notice just how many non-news stories popped up regarding Kavanaugh in the last week? The public does not need to see Dems foaming at the mouth in response to or in imitation of Trump. If they do, let the culprit from your voting district know how displeased you are with their actions (get a few friends to also comment).

In many cases, the people have won. The fresh blood going into the House in particular and some new governorships are more important than people realize yet. For diversity alone, there were huge strides made yesterday. Seeing so many progressives take a seat in the House will encourage others for 2020 who will have a lot better chance now to remove some of the riffraff.

There are now over 100 women in the House -- a first. This means that we are still less than half way to parity. This needs to be worked on for 2020 along with more progressives. (No, not all women are equal--I remember Phyllis Shaffly only too well, and there is still HRC to silence, but overall, women and certainly progressive women have different priorities most of which align with what people really want and need.) Message to all...less time writing and contemplating and more time taking action.

In short, I see this as a victory--albeit not as large as we would like--for progressives.

MrWebster on Wed, 11/07/2018 - 3:59pm
Hopefully winner is social security and medicare survival

I hope the dems stand firm on protecting both programs plus not raising the retirement age. But with Pelosi who knows. I would like to think that she would get major push back if she tries an Obama grand bargain bullshit. But she lives in a such a bubble though.

snoopydawg on Wed, 11/07/2018 - 4:45pm
Speaking of Nancy and her agenda

@MrWebster

Listen to her about legislating and stuff. I wanted to reach into the video and wipe that silly grin off her face. Gah. Her eyes.

Learn to Swim: This is Why People Don't Vote for the Democratic Party

This is why people don't vote for the Democratic Party and why the big blue wave of cash won't win the 2018 midterm elections for them:

In December of 2016 – right after Hillary Clinton and the rest of the Democratic candidates lost big to Trump, the worst presidential candidate of all time – what happened? Their leader, Nancy Pelosi was asked directly what the Democratic Party was going to do to change this heinous defeat.

Know what she said? Do you remember? I do.

She said the Democratic Party wasn't going to change anything. Keep the same policies they lost the 2016 elections on. Know what they were going to change?

Their marketing. Change the marketing so people "get the message."

Same shit. Different wrapper.

Nancy Pelosi: Democrats Don't Want a New Direction

//www.youtube.com/embed/NP4-2bItxY8?modestbranding=0&html5=1&rel=0&autoplay=0&wmode=opaque&loop=0&controls=1&autohide=0&showinfo=0&theme=dark&color=red&enablejsapi=0

WindDancer13 on Wed, 11/07/2018 - 5:33pm
Social security and medicare will hopefully be protected, but even Obama put it on the table. So who knows?

@MrWebster

Pelosi is not yet a done deal. People need to write, email, call their reps and tell them NO!

[Nov 06, 2018] What Causes a Normal Election to Spiral into Tribal Warfare Zero Hedge

Nov 06, 2018 | www.zerohedge.com

What Causes a Normal Election to Spiral into Tribal Warfare?

by TDB Mon, 11/05/2018 - 12:13 23 SHARES by Joe Jarvis via The Daily Bell

In 1966, Gao Jianhua (who later changed his name to Gao Yuan) was 14 years old.

At the Yizhen Middle School near Beijing, China, he witnessed and participated in the birth of China's "Cultural Revolution." He later recorded his personal account in a book called Born Red: A Chronicle of the Cultural Revolution .

The leader of Communist China, Chairman Mao, warned the country that revisionists were threatening to erase all the progress made since the Communist Revolution which brought Mao to power.

It had been almost 20 years since the bloody revolution, and Mao wanted to reinvigorate the rebel spirit in the youth. He instructed students to root out any teachers who wove subtle anti-communist sentiments in their lessons.

Mao encouraged students to rebel against any mindless respect for entrenched authority, remnants, he said, of centuries of capitalist influence.

Students at Yizhen Middle School, like many others, quickly took up the task. They "exposed" capitalist intellectual teachers and paraded them around in dunce caps with insulting signs hung around their necks.

Teachers were beaten and harassed until they confessed to their crimes most of which were, of course, false confessions to avoid further torture.

It only escalated from there.

What ensued puts Lord of the Flies to shame.

One teacher killed himself after being taken captive by students. Most teachers fled.

Soon the students were left entirely in charge of their school. Two factions quickly emerged, one calling themselves the East is Red Corps, and the other the Red Rebels.

One student was kidnapped by the East is Red Corps, and suffocated to death on a sock stuffed in his mouth.

A girl was found to be an East is Red spy among the Red Rebels. She was later cornered with other East is Red students in a building. She shouted from a window that she would rather die than surrender. Praising Chairman Mao, she jumped to her death.

Some Red Rebels died from an accidental explosion while making bombs.

Many were tortured, and another student died from his injuries at the hands of the East is Red Corps.

A female teacher refused to sign an affidavit lying about the cause of death. She was beaten and gang-raped by a group of students.

Robert Greene explains these events, in his new book, The Laws of Human Nature . (Emphasis added.)

Although it might be tempting to see what happened at YMS as mostly relevant to group adolescent behavior what happened at the school occurred throughout China in government offices, factories, within the army, and among Chinese of all ages in an eerily similar way

The students' repressed resentment at having to be so obedient now boiled over into anger and the desire to be the ones doing the punishing and oppressing

In the power vacuum that Mao had now created, another timeless group dynamic emerged. Those who were naturally more assertive, aggressive, and even sadistic pushed their way forward and assumed power , while those who were more passive quietly receded into the background becoming followers

Once all forms of authority were removed and the students ran the school, there was nothing to stop the next and most dangerous development in group dynamics. The split into tribal factions

People may think they are joining because of the different ideas or goals of this tribe or the other, but what they want more than anything is a sense of belonging and a clear tribal identity.

Look at the actual differences between the East is Red Corps and the Red Rebels. As the battle between them intensified it was hard to say what they were fighting for, except to assume power over the other group.

One strong or vicious act of one side called for a reprisal from the other, and any type of violence seemed totally justified. There could be no middle ground, nor any questioning of the rightness of their cause.

The tribe is always right. And to say otherwise is to betray it.

I write this on the eve of the 2018 midterm elections.

And like Mao handing down his orders to dispose of capitalist sympathizers, such have the leaders of each major US political party rallied their supporters.

This is the most important election of our lifetime, they say.

No middle ground. Violence is justified to get our way. Betray the tribe, and be considered an enemy.

Just like Mao, they have manufactured a crisis that did not previously exist.

The students had no violent factions before Mao's encouragement. They had no serious problems with their teachers.

Is there any natural crisis occurring right now? Or has the political establishment whipped us into an artificial frenzy?

This isn't just another boring election, they say. This is a battle for our future.

The students battled over who were the purest revolutionaries.

The voters now battle over who has the purest intentions for America.

Do the factions even know what they are fighting for anymore?

They are simply fighting for their tribe's control over the government.

The battle of the factions at schools across China were "resolved" when Mao came to support one side or the other. In that sense, it very much did matter which side the students were on

The government came down hard against the losing faction.

They had chosen wrong and found themselves aligned against the powerful Communist Party.

It won't be a dictator that hands control to one faction or another in this election. It will be a simple majority. And those in the minority will suffer.

The winners will feel that it is their time to wield power, just as the students were happy to finally have the upper hand on their teachers.

If Mao didn't have so much power, he could have never initiated such a violent crisis.

And if our government didn't have so much power, it would hardly matter who wins the election.

Yet here we are, fighting for control of the government because each faction threatens to violently repress the other if they gain power.

It is a manufactured crisis. A crisis that only exists because political elites in the government and media have said so.

They decided that this election will spark the USA's "Cultural Revolution."

And anyone with sympathies from a bygone era will be punished.


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Totally_Disillusioned , 8 hours ago link

Tribal warfare? You clearly don't understand what's happening here. The Globalist cartel has created division between two parties to incite chaos and violence. The "warfare" you reference will be nothing but protesting ->rioting ->anarchy ->police restraint of the Democrat incited sheeple.

There's no tribalism associated with upholding and preserving the Constitution.

Semi-employed White Guy , 6 hours ago link

I think the globalists will try to cool it off before things spin out of (((their))) control. Either that or move to the next phase...world war... so they can just slaughter us and not have to bother trying to herd the increasingly "woke" goyim live stock.

MoralsAreEssential , 11 hours ago link

I have NOT heard about a SINGLE CREDIBLE violent incident where people got hurt FROM THE RIGHT. All the incidents of "White Fascist Violence" look like FALSE FLAGS and contrived incidents. The foregoing CAN NOT be said of the Leftist Antifa types including racist La Raza supporters, racist Blacks who want something for nothing, immigrants from any country who want to be fully supported because they BREATHE and the Top Group (pun intended) Whites who do not believe in boundaries, standards or quality of life UNLESS it's their lives. NOT all Blacks, Hispanics and Immigrants are in the Left; but most Blacks, Hispanics and Immigrants are on the Left and havn't a clue they are responsible for their own prisons because they cannot REASON and virtue signaling is more important so they are part of the GROUP. Misplaced EMPHASIS on what is important in creating a CIVILIZED and SAFE society.

[Nov 06, 2018] One wonders why the NYT is willingly playing into Trump hands with the cartoon like this

Notable quotes:
"... Dems are fucking bonkers with the caravans. It's as if these fools didn't know Europe does exist and had the same thing happen, on a far bigger magnitude, or didn't learn the lesson - as if Brexit, Le Pen, Lega, Orban and others didn't really exist in their strictly America-centered world. ..."
Nov 06, 2018 | www.moonofalabama.org

frances , Nov 5, 2018 9:07:22 AM | link

IMO b is right. The image works for Trump, not against, on two issues; the border and the ME.

Border

The ME

I am not aware of anyone who thinks the US belongs in the ME. Yes, Israel is all for it, but in the US no one wants troops there. We have lost country after country after country and some military head just said that after 17 years we are not "winning" in Afghanistan. These wars are a financial scam in the eyes of many and are for Israel's benefit in the eyes of many others. I doubt if any troops in recent years have signed up to fight in the ME so that statement itself is one the NYT will choke on.

But it is the Times, and they play to their now somewhat limited audience who must be told that the lies they believe are true.
If Trump paid for this cartoon, he could probably not be more pleased.

William Gruff , Nov 5, 2018 9:08:09 AM | link

"It's not really possible to excuse the pretense that a band of beggars who plan to ask for asylum constitute an invasion."

I suppose that is what Assad and the Syrian government thought when the CIA death squads started trickling into their country under the pretense that they were refugees from the violence in Libya.

The CIA built lots of death squads in Latin America.

While most of the the "band of beggars" are harmless useful idiots recruited for the optics, there is a very real possibility that the CIA's death squads from Honduras and possibly Mexico (have to get out now that AMLO is cracking down) are mingling amongst them. Why? Page borrowed from the textbook CIA/State Department manual on regime change:

1) Bring protesters into conflict with authorities.
2) Death squads embedded among the protesters kill both protesters and law enforcement officers.
3) Riots ensue.
5) Complicit corporate mass media winds up the echo chamber forcing the meme that the violence was the authorities' fault.
6) Profit!

Anywho, it is tough to take serious any accusations of slander against a population that has been heavily brainwashed since birth. As with a pair of bluejeans that have been washed several times per day since they were manufactured, over-laundered minds get limp, floppy and full of holes. Americans' minds are so frayed from daily reprogramming that they cannot remember what they believed yesterday, much less why they would have believed it.

A. Person , Nov 5, 2018 9:16:48 AM | link
@J. 3, 4.

The possee commitatus law which prohibited federal troops from engaging in domestic law enforcement has been repealed.

Also, you are aware that Israel is a rogue state in that it does not have a constitution, it has never defined its borders, it has repeatedly attacked its neighbors, it is an apartheid state, it has 200-400 illegal nuclear warheads, it engages in mass punishment of 6 million Arabs the are the dominant peoples of Palestine, and it has pulled strings to lure the US into wars with Iraq, Syria, Lybia, and Iran.

For these reasons it is perfectly reasonable and accurate and truthful to label such a rogue state a 'Zionist regime.'

(Now you are informed. Now you should apologize to b.)

Russ , Nov 5, 2018 9:30:28 AM | link
One wonders why the NYT is willingly playing into his hands with this.

Because the NYT (and mainstream media in general) have been such psychopathic warmongers for so long that by now they're really incapable of understanding that there could be any alternative idea or action. In many states they'd meet the legal definition of insanity.

Of course Trump is just as insane. He merely wants to do both/and rather than either/or, as the NYT would have it.

Hoarsewhisperer , Nov 5, 2018 9:32:17 AM | link
Given that the only characters with speaking parts in the cartoon are hi-profile non-combatant pro-"Israel" warmongers masquerading as brain-washed grunts, the message it sends is so mixed that it means whatever the consumer wants it to mean.
An attempt at reverse psychology?
Debsisdead , Nov 5, 2018 9:37:24 AM | link
Posted by: morongobill | Nov 5, 2018 8:48:58 AM | 5
"I'm a deplorable and proud of it and I believe that this nation needs to make it crystal clear that the borders mean something."

I don't reckon native americans would agree, particularly since most of those arriving are indigenous to america. amerika the abortion, has never considered the property rights, cultures or ethos of other humans anywhere on this old rock. Not in the ME, Asia or more recently Africa, much less those concerns as they relate to native americans be they those indigenous to the area that comprises amerika or those who are indigenous to other portions of the american continents, so I reckon that using this nonsense now to justify racism is just hypocritical, That it is about as low as it is possible to go. That is compounded to the n th degree when one considers that the failed states which most of the caravan peoples originate from suffered failure because amerika the abortion of a place, deliberately engineered the failures to make amerika's theft of all resources in latin america, easier and less expensive.
Run along and study exactly how amerika has deliberately destroyed Guatemala and Honduras then come back here and try to justify the attacks on a few hundred thousand of those people fleeing lawlessness and corruption that the amerikan government has caused in your name.

Not that it matters - trump or any of his ilk have no chance of preventing the Latin American influx.
Once again if you study history you will discover that over the millennia numerous other populations have attempted to prevent needs driven migration into what they have arbitrarily decided are 'their' lands and have used exactly the same techniques the trump scumbags propose. They inevitably fail. Mass migrations are relentless they cannot be 'blocked' the only viable strategy has been to remove the attraction by ensuring economic improvement in the areas that migrants come from.

If amerikans actually want to stop the migration, which is debatable since the rich who control amerika believe increasing the population to be an excellent way to go since they profit from more humans and increased population density, but let's pretend that ordinary citizens actually have a say in what happens in amerika, then amerikans need to fix that which they f**ked. Central amerikans have endured decades of corrupt amerikan installed 'governments' which regarded their primary mission (after trousering all funds in their purview) to be confiscating all land from the people who have lived on it going back at least a few thousand years, then selling that stolen land to amerikan corporations, hedge funds, retirement schemes, AKA any & all of Wall St's scams.

None of the migr
Everybody in amerika has been aware of this even tho they pretend they are ignorant of their culture's rapacious thefts it is impossible for anyone with half a brain not to see 2 + 2 = 4.
So quit whining and either assist the new arrivals or, get yer arse into gear & ensure your mendacious leadership sets about making amends for the damage done in your name.

andy mcnub , Nov 5, 2018 9:44:25 AM | link

nobody remembers anglo persian oil that was ares those iranian gypsy stole it the gas fields 2.
it was not fare fair they kicked are shar out 2
trumped is doing molechs work here hare here.
it is vital that latest push on these yemeni ports is a success with a strong tail wind victory is at hand.
a redrawing of the maps is needed and an exodus of musslamics and arab and children of christ into scotland wales,detroit noray denmark and lovely sweden germany france
a big idea may need a new marshall plan trillions of dollars in bonds must be made like lend lease in great britain it may take 50 years to pay off the debts for this final solution maybe 100 years or more.
never again the man said we must protect the innocent khazar ashkanazi from brutal goyim.
lets do this
as paul greengrass said lets roll


who set up israelia and saudi barbaria


https://themillenniumreport.com/2015/12/the-house-of-saud-its-jewish-origin-and-installation-by-the-british-crown/

Josh , Nov 5, 2018 9:48:51 AM | link
Should several thousand knuckle heads attempt to force entry into the United States,...
The news story should read as such,...
'Today, a couple thousand knuckleheads attacked our border. We shot them.'
Tom Welsh , Nov 5, 2018 9:52:37 AM | link
"Morally flawed"????? Morally flawed like Attila, Temuchin, Pol Pot...

I think this cartoon represents my feelings about HRC in the Oval Office.

https://www.moonofalabama.org/2018/11/this-nyt-cartoon-helps-trump-to-win.html

VK , Nov 5, 2018 10:02:39 AM | link
I don't think the NYT readership is that big and that diverse to the point one cartoon can tip any midterm elections.

@Posted by: morongobill | Nov 5, 2018 8:48:58 AM | 5

The hole is much deeper than that.

First things first: since 2008, the USA depends on vegetative growth to show high GDP growths . That's why Japan is considering, slowly but surely, opening up its borders .

Second: this mass immigration from Latin America is fruit of inumerous American backed regime changes, aimed at stifling industrialization of the region, thus empoverishing its peoples. This is true even for the Monroe Doctrine poster boy, Mexico .

Clueless Joe , Nov 5, 2018 10:13:32 AM | link
Dems are fucking bonkers with the caravans. It's as if these fools didn't know Europe does exist and had the same thing happen, on a far bigger magnitude, or didn't learn the lesson - as if Brexit, Le Pen, Lega, Orban and others didn't really exist in their strictly America-centered world.

As a matter of fact, any deliberately illegal entry of anyone into a foreign country represents per se an invasion. it's just that it's minimal when it's a couple of people, and not all invasions are armed gangs of conquistadores ready to loot the gold from the temples, or Mongols on rampage. Not all invasions require military will kill on sight orders, though. Some measure is required.

Now, where Dems are bloody idiots is that only a part of the progressive wing will see the caravans as nice people to be welcome. Part of the uber-capitalist wing will see them as a great opportunity as well, but for very different reasons. The thing is, the inner subconscious of a majority of Westerners will basically have 2 very different interpretations of a vast column of people walking towards their border.

One, which is quite recent, occurs if it's a large group of unarmed civilians and families from a neighbouring country, fleeing it under direct threat of closeby invading and advancing enemy armies; in this case, the obvious reference in Western psyche, specially European one, will be WW II and the hosts of panicked civilians fleeing before the enemy onslaught.

The other reference from the collective psyche, which obviously is the one that lurks in the mind of most Westerners who saw the vids and pictures of the huge crowds of migrants back in 2015/16 - and which will likely occur for some Americans as well, with the caravans -, is obviously the far older picture of the Barbarian Invasions. The ones ironically called nowadays as "Migration period" by revisionist history in German and Anglo-Saxon areas, for obvious reasons (they didn't want to tarnish their ancestors by reflecting they were bloody savages that nearly wiped out civilization, by fear that it would reflect badly on them); karmic justice puts them now in a bad spot since they're quite forced to consider the current wave as mere "migration" and no big deal at all, just like in 406.

Of course, there's also karmic justice in having the US tear itself apart and being slowly invaded by those whose countries it has wrecked beyond recognition for the last century. But we must be absolutely honest about it. Allowing masses of migrants into the US isn't about Central Americans deserving a better life in the US, it's about punishing the US by wrecking it and by pushing it's ever-polarizing political sides towards civil war.

A. Person , Nov 5, 2018 11:22:48 AM | link
Schooling Jay:

Section 1076 of the 2006 John Warner National Defense Authorization titled "Use of the Armed Forces in major public emergencies," provides that "The President may employ the armed forces... to... restore public order and enforce the laws of the United States when, as a result of a natural disaster, epidemic, or other serious public health emergency, terrorist attack or incident, or other condition... the President determines that... domestic violence has occurred to such an extent that the constituted authorities of the State or possession are incapable of maintaining public order... or [to] suppress, in a State, any insurrection, domestic violence, unlawful combination, or conspiracy if such... a condition... so hinders the execution of the laws... that any part or class of its people is deprived of a right, privilege, immunity, or protection named in the Constitution and secured by law... or opposes or obstructs the execution of the laws of the United States or impedes the course of justice under those laws."

So then the Possee Comitatus Act is repealed by the John Warner Act. The federal government may send troops to the border to kill any American (Central) that throws a rock. Killing rock-throwers = MAGA.

AriusArmenian , Nov 5, 2018 12:03:51 PM | link
Who came up with the idea of an immigrant march to the US southern border just before the mid-term elections and who is funding it?

If they are anti-Trump then they must be the stupidest morons in history.

Michael , Nov 5, 2018 12:09:44 PM | link
B.

In answer to your question, IMHO we are witnessing a very choreographed effort at political theater on the part of both establishment R's and D's to generate interest in the election. The ultimate point is to divide the country, which from my perspective, as a lefty who lives and thrives among R's is not that divided as evidenced by the 2016 election. The game is divide and rule.

The elites of the US are very perturbed that Senator Sanders had such a following in the last go around with 75% popularity while both running establishment candidates had negatives ratings greater than their positive ones.

Looking at polling in the US it has been reported that a great majority of people in the country want Single Payer Health Care, including ~50% R's. Additionally, some 80% of the population agree that climate change is a major issue and want the government to do something about it. This cuts across both parties. Meanwhile, neither party is actively pushing Single Payer, while some Democrats show support, while the establishment is campaigning to save the insurance and pharmaceutical industies' bonanza of ObamaCare.

IMO we have the makings of a united insurrection on our hands and it is a requirement to keep Americans at war with each other, rather than them realizing they have been fooled by the media and sociopathic politicians.

Also interestingly, the biggest fear people have in the US, according to the following poll is corrupt politicians. How do you campaign against that when you have your fingers in the till?

Additionally, according to this poll the biggest fears other than crooked politicians, are primarily related to the environment. Neither party is attempting to address this issue.


https://blogs.chapman.edu/wilkinson/2018/10/16/americas-top-fears-2018/

[Nov 05, 2018] Scum vs. Scum by Chris Hedge

Hell is empty and all the devils are here. ~William Shakespeare
Notable quotes:
"... Scum versus scum. That sums up this election season. Is it any wonder that 100 million Americans don't bother to vote? When all you are offered is Bob One or Bob Two, why bother? ..."
"... One-fourth of Democratic challengers in competitive House districts in this week's elections have backgrounds in the CIA, the military, the National Security Council or the State Department. Nearly all candidates on the ballots in House races are corporate-sponsored, with a few lonely exceptions such as Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and Rashida Tlaib, members of the Democratic Socialists of America who are running as Democrats. ..."
"... "In interviews with two dozen Wall Street executives, fund-raisers, donors and those who raise money from them, Democrats described an extraordinary level of investment and excitement from the finance sector ," The New York Times reported about current campaign contributions to the Democrats from the corporate oligarchs. ..."
Nov 05, 2018 | www.truthdig.com

There is perhaps no better illustration of the deep decay of the American political system than the Senate race in New Jersey. Sen. Bob Menendez, running for re-election, was censured by the Senate Ethics Committee for accepting bribes from the Florida businessman Salomon Melgen, who was convicted in 2017 of defrauding Medicare of $73 million. The senator had flown to the Dominican Republic with Melgen on the physician's private jet and stayed in his private villa, where the men cavorted with young Dominican women who allegedly were prostitutes. Menendez performed numerous political favors for Melgen, including helping some of the Dominican women acquire visas to the United States. Menendez was indicted in a federal corruption trial but escaped sentencing because of a hung jury.

Menendez has a voting record as sordid as most Democrats'. He supported the $716 billion military spending bill, along with 85 percent of his fellow Senate Democrats. He signed a letter , along with other Democratic leaders, calling for steps to extradite Julian Assange to stand trial in the United States. The senator, the ranking member of the Foreign Relations Committee, is owned by the lobby for Israel -- a country that routinely and massively interferes in our elections -- and supported moving the U.S. Embassy to Jerusalem. He helped cause the 2008 global financial crisis by voting to revoke Glass-Steagall , the Depression-era law enacted to create a firewall between commercial and investment banks.

His Republican rival in the Senate race that will be decided Tuesday is Bob Hugin , whose reported net worth is at least $84 million. With Hugin as its CEO, the pharmaceutical firm Celgene made $200 million by conspiring to keep generic cancer drugs off the market, according to its critics. Celgene, a model of everything that is wrong with our for-profit health care system, paid $280 million to settle a lawsuit filed by a whistleblower who accused the firm of improperly marketing two drugs to treat several forms of cancer without getting Federal Drug Administration approval, thereby defrauding Medicare. Celgene, over seven years, also doubled the price of the cancer drug Revlimid to some $20,000 for a supply of 28 pills.

The Senate campaign in New Jersey has seen no discussion of substantive issues. It is dominated by both candidates' nonstop personal attacks and negative ads, part of the typical burlesque of American politics.

Scum versus scum. That sums up this election season. Is it any wonder that 100 million Americans don't bother to vote? When all you are offered is Bob One or Bob Two, why bother?

One-fourth of Democratic challengers in competitive House districts in this week's elections have backgrounds in the CIA, the military, the National Security Council or the State Department. Nearly all candidates on the ballots in House races are corporate-sponsored, with a few lonely exceptions such as Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and Rashida Tlaib, members of the Democratic Socialists of America who are running as Democrats.

The securities and finance industry has backed Democratic congressional candidates 63 percent to 37 percent over Republicans, according to data collected by the Center for Responsive Politics . Democratic candidates and political action committees have received $56.8 million, compared with Republicans' $33.4 million, the center reported. The broader sector of finance, insurance and real estate, it found, has given $174 million to Democratic candidates, against $157 million to Republicans. And Michael Bloomberg , weighing his own presidential run, has pledged $100 million to elect a Democratic Congress.

"In interviews with two dozen Wall Street executives, fund-raisers, donors and those who raise money from them, Democrats described an extraordinary level of investment and excitement from the finance sector ," The New York Times reported about current campaign contributions to the Democrats from the corporate oligarchs.

Our system of legalized bribery is an equal-opportunity employer.

Of course, we are all supposed to vote Democratic to halt the tide of Trump fascism. But should the Democrats take control of the House of Representatives, hate speech and violence as a tool for intimidation and control will increase, with much of it directed, as we saw with the pipe bombs intended to decapitate the Democratic Party leadership, toward prominent Democratic politicians and critics of Donald Trump. Should the white man's party of the president retain control of the House and the Senate, violence will still be the favored instrument of political control as the last of democratic protections are stripped from us. Either way we are in for it.

Trump is a clownish and embarrassing tool of the kleptocrats. His faux populism is a sham. Only the rich like his tax cuts, his refusal to raise the minimum wage and his effort to destroy Obamacare. All he has left is hate. And he will use it. Which is not to say that, if only to throw up some obstacle to Trump, you shouldn't vote for the Democratic scum, tools of the war industry and the pharmaceutical and insurance industry, Wall Street and the fossil fuel industry, as opposed to the Republican scum. But Democratic control of the House will do very little to halt our descent into corporate tyranny, especially with another economic crisis brewing on Wall Street. The rot inside the American political system is deep and terminal.

The Democrats, who refuse to address the social inequality they helped orchestrate and that has given rise to Trump, are the party of racial and ethnic inclusivity, identity politics, Wall Street and the military. Their core battle cry is: We are not Trump! This is ultimately a losing formula. It was adopted by Hillary Clinton, who is apparently weighing another run for the presidency after we thought we had thrust a stake through her political heart. It is the agenda of the well-heeled East Coast and West Coast elites who want to instill corporate fascism with a friendly face.

... ... ...

[Nov 05, 2018] Vote if you want, but it's a charade in which the Duopoly will remain beholden to the same money interests who paid for both the Red and Blue campaigns

Nov 05, 2018 | caucus99percent.com

Mark from Queens

Elections USA, Inc: "Scum Vs. Scum." When I went looking for Hedges's weekly column today I rather expected him to be onto the next Bigger Picture item that he is always adroit at tackling.

So it was a little surprising that he chose instead to lead with an example of the midterm races in his state of NJ, the one between disgraced Democratic Senator Robert Menendez and Republican Bob Hugin.

He never disappoints.

There is perhaps no better illustration of the deep decay of the American political system than the Senate race in New Jersey. Sen. Bob Menendez, running for re-election, was censured by the Senate Ethics Committee for accepting bribes from the Florida businessman Salomon Melgen, who was convicted in 2017 of defrauding Medicare of $73 million. The senator had flown to the Dominican Republic with Melgen on the physician's private jet and stayed in his private villa, where the men cavorted with young Dominican women who allegedly were prostitutes. Menendez performed numerous political favors for Melgen, including helping some of the Dominican women acquire visas to the United States. Menendez was indicted in a federal corruption trial but escaped sentencing because of a hung jury.

Menendez has a voting record as sordid as most Democrats'. He supported the $716 billion military spending bill, along with 85 percent of his fellow Senate Democrats. He signed a letter, along with other Democratic leaders, calling for steps to extradite Julian Assange to stand trial in the United States. The senator, the ranking member of the Foreign Relations Committee, is owned by the lobby for Israel -- a country that routinely and massively interferes in our elections -- and supported moving the U.S. Embassy to Jerusalem. He helped cause the 2008 global financial crisis by voting to revoke Glass-Steagall, the Depression-era law enacted to create a firewall between commercial and investment banks.

In what is so emblematic of how pathetic and corrupt the opposition party, their presidential candidate came out to throw her support behind such an odious criminal and corporate whore and to campaign with him. While at the same time the Dems have made no secret about their intention to crush any candidate who espouses socialist values.

Vote if you want, but it's a charade in which the Duopoly will remain beholden to the same money interests who paid for both the Red and Blue campaigns.

Scum versus scum. That sums up this election season. Is it any wonder that 100 million Americans don't bother to vote? When all you are offered is Bob One or Bob Two, why bother? One-fourth of Democratic challengers in competitive House districts in this week's elections have backgrounds in the CIA, the military, the National Security Council or the State Department. Nearly all candidates on the ballots in House races are corporate-sponsored, with a few lonely exceptions such as Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and Rashida Tlaib, members of the Democratic Socialists of America who are running as Democrats. The securities and finance industry has backed Democratic congressional candidates 63 percent to 37 percent over Republicans, according to data collected by the Center for Responsive Politics. Democratic candidates and political action committees have received $56.8 million, compared with Republicans' $33.4 million, the center reported. The broader sector of finance, insurance and real estate, it found, has given $174 million to Democratic candidates, against $157 million to Republicans. And Michael Bloomberg, weighing his own presidential run, has pledged $100 million to elect a Democratic Congress.

"In interviews with two dozen Wall Street executives, fund-raisers, donors and those who raise money from them, Democrats described an extraordinary level of investment and excitement from the finance sector ," The New York Times reported about current campaign contributions to the Democrats from the corporate oligarchs.

Our system of legalized bribery is an equal-opportunity employer.

Of course, we are all supposed to vote Democratic to halt the tide of Trump fascism. But should the Democrats take control of the House of Representatives, hate speech and violence as a tool for intimidation and control will increase, with much of it directed, as we saw with the pipe bombs intended to decapitate the Democratic Party leadership, toward prominent Democratic politicians and critics of Donald Trump. Should the white man's party of the president retain control of the House and the Senate, violence will still be the favored instrument of political control as the last of democratic protections are stripped from us. Either way we are in for it.

Trump is a clownish and embarrassing tool of the kleptocrats. His faux populism is a sham. Only the rich like his tax cuts, his refusal to raise the minimum wage and his effort to destroy Obamacare. All he has left is hate. And he will use it. Which is not to say that, if only to throw up some obstacle to Trump, you shouldn't vote for the Democratic scum, tools of the war industry and the pharmaceutical and insurance industry, Wall Street and the fossil fuel industry, as opposed to the Republican scum. But Democratic control of the House will do very little to halt our descent into corporate tyranny, especially with another economic crisis brewing on Wall Street. The rot inside the American political system is deep and terminal.

"Plus ça change, Plus c'est la même chose."

But it is always necessary to remind folks that the Greatest Democracy In The World is not. It is An Auction House To The Highest Bidder.

He goes on to talk about fascism, its characteristics, its incarnation today, and the elements that pave the way for, which are economic instability, concentrated wealth, monopoly, a police state, imperialism, etc. It is Neoliberalism which has ushered in fascism across the globe, plain and simple.

No totalitarian state has mastered propaganda better than the corporate state. Our press has replaced journalism with trivia, feel-good stories, jingoism and celebrity gossip. The banal and the absurd, delivered by cheery corporate courtiers, saturate the airwaves. Our emotions are skillfully manipulated around manufactured personalities and manufactured events. We are, at the same time, offered elaborate diversionary spectacles including sporting events, reality television and absurdist political campaigns. Trump is a master of this form of entertainment. Our emotional and intellectual energy is swallowed up by the modern equivalent of the Roman arena. Choreographed political vaudeville, which costs corporations billions of dollars, is called free elections. Cliché-ridden slogans, which assure us that the freedoms we cherish remain sacrosanct, dominate our national discourse as these freedoms are stripped from us by judicial and legislative fiat. It is a vast con game.

You cannot use the word "liberty" when your government, as ours does, watches you 24 hours a day and stores all of your personal information in government computers in perpetuity. You cannot use the word "liberty" when you are the most photographed and monitored population in human history. You cannot use the word "liberty" when it is impossible to vote against the interests of Goldman Sachs or General Dynamics. You cannot use the word "liberty" when the state empowers militarized police to use indiscriminate lethal force against unarmed citizens in the streets of American cities. You cannot use the word "liberty" when 2.3 million citizens, mostly poor people of color, are held in the largest prison system on earth. This is the relationship between a master and a slave. The choice is between whom we want to clamp on our chains -- a jailer who mouths politically correct bromides or a racist, Christian fascist. Either way we are shackled.

American Exceptionalism reigns supreme to the Nationalist. He refuses to acknowledge that the real idea of "freedom" is not owning a munitions factory full of weaponry and putting a flag on the back of a pickup. It is instead the freedom to not have to live in the shadow of being foreclosed upon for a medical emergency, to not have to spend almost all of one's income on rent or mortgage debt, to have more time to spend with loved ones or doing what you love instead of working a dead end job just to pay the bills. In other words, a socialist economy heavily regulating the banks and corporations, in which debt peonage would largely become a thing of the past.

And then there it is. "We are being shackled incrementally," by unseen, unelected and unacknowledged vipers who use their wealth and power to also make sure we're ignorant and impotent to the real story.

Gross understood that unchecked corporate power would inevitably lead to corporate fascism. It is the natural consequence of the ruling ideology of neoliberalism that consolidates power and wealth into the hands of a tiny group of oligarchs. The political philosopher Sheldon Wolin, refining Gross' thesis, would later characterize this corporate tyranny or friendly fascism as "inverted totalitarianism." It was, as Gross and Wolin pointed out, characterized by anonymity. It purported to pay fealty to electoral politics, the Constitution and the iconography and symbols of American patriotism but internally had seized all of the levers of power to render the citizen impotent. Gross warned that we were being shackled incrementally. Most would not notice until they were in total bondage. He wrote that "a friendly fascist power structure in the United States, Canada, Western Europe, or today's Japan would be far more sophisticated than the 'caesarism' of fascist Germany, Italy, and Japan. It would need no charismatic dictator nor even a titular head it would require no one-party rule, no mass fascist party, no glorification of the State, no dissolution of legislatures, no denial of reason. Rather, it would come slowly as an outgrowth of present trends in the Establishment."

As far as I'm concerned America has been fascist for a long time, at least since 9/11 but probably longer. We've been captured by Inverted Totalitarianism. Trump just puts the ugly villainous face to that Fascism which has been rampant for a long time. Lewis Lapham had a great piece called, "Due Process: Lamenting the death of the rule of law in a country where it might have always been missing" that lays out the case for a how concentrated wealth has pretty much ruled with impunity since the beginning. (h/t to wendy davis)

How long will we continue to participate in this elaborate Lesser of Two Evil voting sham?

And these days those who do will surely let you know too. All the Good Zombies will be smiling for their selfies with their, "I Voted" stickers (now an added bonus to your "voting experience," as if it were a child's toy inside of a cereal box or something). How long will it be until we're handed little candies as a reward for voting? In step with the continuation of the infantilization of interaction in America. Civics? Nah. Stickers? Yeah.

Seems we're fucking doomed. But not unless people turn off the tv's and social media to begin talking to one another in public as fellow human beings, who as the 99% pretty much have so many of the same concerns in common.

Partisan ideology, blasted night and day on the propaganda networks, keeping us divided and conquered, with fear, manufactured distraction and celebrity gossip thrown in, to keep the lemmings hypnotized from what's really going on.

It's a damn shame.

Mark from Queens on Mon, 11/05/2018 - 7:36pm
Leave it to Hedges to exquisitley describe the darkness.

But he also pulled back from saying one shouldn't vote for the Dems to stem Trump's insanity, although he quickly added that it wouldn't stop the onslaught of corporate tyranny.

The only thing giving me hope lately is taking the longview, and the emergence of whistleblowers/journalists exposing the inner workings of the corporate coup. To what degree it matters will depend on how many people they reach.

The former,

https://www.youtube.com/embed/nXL7kO5t5NQ

and the latter (of which I've been putting together an essay on)

https://www.youtube.com/embed/Q6RXRKlGsV8

Bollox Ref on Mon, 11/05/2018 - 7:46pm
Americans love to quote Alexis de Tocqueville

but they rarely acknowledge Charles Dickens' impressions of the country.

[Nov 05, 2018] On the eve of the US midterm elections

Notable quotes:
"... Opposition to the unending and expanding wars of American imperialism has been completely excluded from the election campaigns of both the Democrats and Republicans. ..."
"... The Democrats represent a political alliance of Wall Street and privileged sections of the middle class. Over the past two years, their central focus, in addition to the anti-Russia campaign, has been the promotion of the politics of race and gender, particularly through the #MeToo campaign. ..."
"... The aim has been to divide the working class while advancing the interests of factions within the top 10 percent that are competing over positions of power, money and privilege. ..."
"... Trump is himself the product of a protracted decay of democratic forms of rule. Nodal points in this process were the Clinton impeachment in 1998, the theft of the 2000 election, the launching of the "war on terror" after the 9/11 attacks, accompanied by the erection of a massive apparatus of domestic spying, and the Obama administration's policy of drone assassination, including of US citizens. ..."
Nov 05, 2018 | www.wsws.org

Whatever the rhetoric, and however the seats of the Senate and House of Representatives are allocated, the basic factors that drive American politics will persist. These are:

1. The determination of the ruling class to maintain the global position of American capitalism through military force, including world war:

This central strategy has dominated American policy for decades. Seventeen years of the "war on terror," including wars in Afghanistan, Iraq, Libya, Syria and Yemen, have devastated entire countries and left more than one million people dead. The Trump administration has officially announced the end of the "war on terror" and ordered the military to begin preparing for "great power conflict" with Russia or China.

In the weeks leading up to the elections, the administration withdrew from a key Cold War-era nuclear arms agreement (the INF Treaty) and threatened to launch preemptive strikes against Russia. At the same time, it effectively declared a new "cold war" against China. With no public discussion and on a bipartisan basis, the administration has initiated the largest military buildup since the end of the Cold War.

Opposition to the unending and expanding wars of American imperialism has been completely excluded from the election campaigns of both the Democrats and Republicans.

The Democrats fully support the strategic aim of the American ruling class to maintain its global supremacy through military force. From the beginning of the Trump administration, the Democrats, channeling powerful sections of the military and intelligence apparatus, have centered their opposition to Trump on the concern that he was pulling back from war in the Middle East and confrontation with Russia.

2. The staggering levels of social inequality, which cannot be changed by any election, and which infect every institution of the capitalist state:

Ten years after the 2008 financial crisis, social inequality is at historic highs. Three individuals now possess more wealth than the bottom half of the population, and just three families have a combined fortune of $348.7 billion, four million times the median family wealth. The vast majority of the population confronts the many manifestations of social crisis -- declining wages, soaring health care costs, a drug overdose epidemic and decaying social infrastructure.

These conditions are the product of the policies of the Obama administration, which supported and oversaw the bailout of the banks following the financial meltdown in 2008. Since Trump's election, the Democrats have collaborated in the implementation of massive tax cuts for the rich, which they have no intention of rolling back whatever the outcome of the elections.

The Democrats represent a political alliance of Wall Street and privileged sections of the middle class. Over the past two years, their central focus, in addition to the anti-Russia campaign, has been the promotion of the politics of race and gender, particularly through the #MeToo campaign.

The aim has been to divide the working class while advancing the interests of factions within the top 10 percent that are competing over positions of power, money and privilege.

3. The crisis of democratic forms of rule and the turn to authoritarianism:

The crisis of American democracy, of which the Trump administration is an extreme expression, expresses the alignment of political forms with the oligarchical character of American society.

While Trump pursues his strategy of developing an authoritarian movement, the Democrats likewise support the destruction of democratic rights, but in a different way. They have focused on demands that social media companies censor the internet, under the guise of combating "fake news" and blocking organizations that "sow discontent." In the course of their conflict with Trump, they have hailed such enemies of democratic rights as former CIA Director John Brennan, responsible for torture and domestic spying.

Trump is himself the product of a protracted decay of democratic forms of rule. Nodal points in this process were the Clinton impeachment in 1998, the theft of the 2000 election, the launching of the "war on terror" after the 9/11 attacks, accompanied by the erection of a massive apparatus of domestic spying, and the Obama administration's policy of drone assassination, including of US citizens.

[Nov 05, 2018] What if the Democrats don't win caucus99percent

Notable quotes:
"... if the Democrats win ..."
"... @Not Henry Kissinger ..."
Nov 05, 2018 | caucus99percent.com

What if the Democrats don't win?


span y gjohnsit on Mon, 11/05/2018 - 1:47pm By "win" I mean "Democrats take over the house".

Here's my humble opinion:

1) For the Democratic establishment it won't mean much. If the drubbings in 2010, 2014, and 2016 can't cause a leadership change, or even an autopsy, then nothing will.
If anything they will blame progressives and embrace a neoliberal center-right agenda even more.

2) For the Democratic base, OTOH, it'll be devastating. Democratic activists will lose heart and it will begin the real start of America being a one-party state. The reason I think this is after you call the other guy a traitor and fascist, and that still isn't enough to defeat him, what else can you do to motivate your voters?

Expect progressive voter activism to plummet in 2020. The Green Party will probably grow, but not as fast as the Democrats shrink.

... ... ...

IMO, we are already a one party country

The party is the neoliberal/neoconservative party.

The Democrats do not deserve to win. As a party, they have no policy positions and have based their entire campaign on the we're not as bad. That does not put food on the table, create health care security, or create living income jobs. The Democrats showed their true colors when they voted along with the Republicans to increase the DoD budget beyond what Trump requested and expanded the powers of surveillance under the President that they loathe.

Most people do not want to see a phony impeachment hearing which does nothing but drain all resources away from helping the people. If the Democrats truly wanted to win, they would be proposing an ambitious platform aimed at helping the American people.

One more thing, would this country be better off with President Pence instead of Trump? As bad as Trump is, I think Pence would be espousing similar hatred and therefore, would far worse with his theocratic ideas.

span y WindDancer13 on Mon, 11/05/2018 - 2:34pm
This is already true:

Their voting base will believe the lies over the evidence before their own eyes.

I agree with most points, but disagree with this:

Expect progressive voter activism to plummet in 2020.

Given the option to just let the country turn into a full-fledged Fascist state, the logical thing to do would be for the progressives to fight even harder. Bernie Sanders is an example of turning a loss into more action on behalf of the people. (For those who constantly disparage Sanders because he is not perfect, get over it...no one is and no one will ever be. Amazon screwed their workers, not Sanders.).

Getting more and more progressives in down ballot positions will be extremely important, no matter their label.

span y doh1304 on Mon, 11/05/2018 - 3:30pm
I firmly believe that your scenario will happen

if the Democrats win . There are other possibilities if the corruptocrats lose - more likely is that the true left could finally be forced to admit that the theory that the corporatist fifth column can be reformed was always a pollyannish delusion and (for example) Bernie will run as a Green. Without a fascist Democratic Party sabotaging him he will win easily. (Ironically a fascist Dem, in a 3 way race, would only win NY and CA, but draw off enough votes from Bernie so that he could lose the popular vote but would win the Electoral College. Trump would only win AZ, TX, MS, ID, AL and SC. the final: Bernie 379, Hillscum 84, Trump 77) On the other hand, what If 60 million people turn out and vote Democratic, and then the corruptocrats stab them in the back again? You worry about disillusionment?
Actually it might depend on how the Democrats win or lose. I would rather see 100 Dems but 75 of them Berniecrats rather than 225 "Democrats".
Or maybe you're afraid of a racist/theocratic right coup? That is a very legitimate fear. We have backed them up against a wall, but we don't know if they're a rat or a tiger. But they have had 50 years to show us which, and the tiger is still hasn't eaten us. Identity politics however, (unless you count anti-porn feminism) is less than a decade old and has already achieved more than racism could hope for. I fear the PC SMERSH more than the racist Gestapo.

span y MrWebster on Mon, 11/05/2018 - 4:27pm
Things will get worse for sure.

Just random stuff.

span y HenryAWallace on Mon, 11/05/2018 - 4:56pm
What this someone else thinks.

1. For current Democratic incumbents who lose, it will mean a job change with a higher salary.

For a while, we wondered how Democrats could be so stupid as to engage in behaviors that might cause their constituents to primary them or vote against them in the general. Eventually, it became clear: to ensure obedience from officeholders, their owners had been giving officeholders unemployment insurance in the form of cushy, prestigious, well-paying jobs to be awarded to officeholders who lost their elected slots. This insulated officeholders very nicely from the need to cater to pain-in-the-neck constituents.

Take for example, the post-Senate career move of Senator Dodd:

Motion Picture Association of America

In February 2011, despite "repeatedly and categorically insisting that he would not work as a lobbyist,"[23][24] Dodd replaced Dan Glickman as chairman of and chief lobbyist for the Motion Picture Association of America.[25][26]

On January 17, 2012, Dodd released a statement criticizing "the so-called 'Blackout Day' protesting anti-piracy legislation."[27] Referring to the websites participating in the blackout, Dodd said, "It is an irresponsible response and a disservice to people who rely on them for information and use their services. It is also an abuse of power... when the platforms that serve as gateways to information intentionally skew the facts to incite their users in order to further their corporate interests."[27] In further comments, Dodd threatened to cut off campaign contributions to politicians who did not support the Preventing Real Online Threats to Economic Creativity and Theft of Intellectual Property Act and the Stop Online Piracy Act, legislation supported by the Motion Picture Association of America.[28]

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chris_Dodd

Whatever do you suppose qualified Dodd to head the Motion Picture Association?

As an aside, I wonder how Dodd views censorship and/or skewing by the likes of google, which long since started doing evil, its motto to the contrary; facebook; and twitter

For all other Democratic pols, all over the country, it will mean another two years in which they make a public show of attacking Trump while just enough of them in D.C. vote for his budgets, judges, etc. to give him and their corporate sponsors what they want.

2. For the Democratic base, those who eagerly vote blue, no matter who, it will mean--Oh, screw it. Let's be candid. No one, including the Democratic Party, cares.

3. For Republicans, it would mean a minimum of two more years to be in control of the Oval Office, both houses of Congress and the Supreme Court, which is better than a demotion to a mere trifecta. Continued control typically means larger donations to the controlling party and its incumbents.

While some may vacillate publicly as to whether or not Trump is good for the Party (*gives Senator Graham and his ilk the side eye fish eye*), they will, in private, be giddy with glee about both the money and power, thereby having it both ways, the wet dream scenario of US politicians.

span y Not Henry Kissinger on Mon, 11/05/2018 - 5:05pm
If the Dems don't win.

Hillary drops out of the 2020 race and spends the next two years lawyering up.

Meanwhile the Democratic party implodes in an angry round of fingerprinting that eventually leads to all out street fight between Bernie supporting Progressives and Establishment Liberals in the run up to the 2020 primary.

Obama tries to play mediator and runs his own slate of phony change agents, but Berniecrats and lost Hillbots are both hip to the con and aren't having it.

Bernie decides on another run from within, fighting a green tide of corporate payola and corrupt machine Dems that ends up in a brokered convention.

And that's where the crystal ball goes cloudy.

span y WindDancer13 on Mon, 11/05/2018 - 7:41pm
Fingerprinting?

@Not Henry Kissinger

Have the Dems gone full Fascists?

I hate it when someone only picks out one point of my argument to respond to. Don't you?

Meanwhile, I suddenly had a picture in my head of HRC running around with a bottle of ink, a pad to pour it onto, a roller to saturate it with and some unwilling soul grasped by the wrist and forced to spread their fingers for said fingerprinting.

Crystal ball haze suddenly lifts, and we see the Emerald City in the distance. (Monkeys? What monkeys?)

Hillary drops out of the 2020 race and spends the next two years lawyering up.

Meanwhile the Democratic party implodes in an angry round of fingerprinting that eventually leads to all out street fight between Bernie supporting Progressives and Establishment Liberals in the run up to the 2020 primary.

Obama tries to play mediator and runs his own slate of phony change agents, but Berniecrats and lost Hillbots are both hip to the con and aren't having it.

Bernie decides on another run from within, fighting a green tide of corporate payola and corrupt machine Dems that ends up in a brokered convention.

And that's where the crystal ball goes cloudy.

span y Big Al on Mon, 11/05/2018 - 5:12pm
Same things that will happen if they win,

the rich will continue to get richer, the poor more poor, the middle class will continue to shrink, the war and U.S. imperialism will continue, the deficit and debt will keep going up, we won't get a nationalized health care system, climate change will continue unabated, and we still won't live in a democracy. Then the ruling class and it's corporate media will prepare the sheeple for another election in less than two years.

[Nov 05, 2018] Bertram Gross (1912-1997) in "Friendly Fascism: The New Face of American Power" warned us that fascism always has two looks. One is paternal, benevolent, entertaining and kind. The other is embodied in the executioner's sadistic leer

Highly recommended!
Nov 05, 2018 | www.truthdig.com

Extracted from Scum vs. Scum by Chris Hedge

Of course, we are all supposed to vote Democratic to halt the tide of Trump fascism. But should the Democrats take control of the House of Representatives, hate speech and violence as a tool for intimidation and control will increase, with much of it directed, as we saw with the pipe bombs intended to decapitate the Democratic Party leadership, toward prominent Democratic politicians and critics of Donald Trump. Should the white man's party of the president retain control of the House and the Senate, violence will still be the favored instrument of political control as the last of democratic protections are stripped from us. Either way we are in for it.

Trump is a clownish and embarrassing tool of the kleptocrats. His faux populism is a sham. Only the rich like his tax cuts, his refusal to raise the minimum wage and his effort to destroy Obamacare. All he has left is hate. And he will use it. Which is not to say that, if only to throw up some obstacle to Trump, you shouldn't vote for the Democratic scum, tools of the war industry and the pharmaceutical and insurance industry, Wall Street and the fossil fuel industry, as opposed to the Republican scum. But Democratic control of the House will do very little to halt our descent into corporate tyranny, especially with another economic crisis brewing on Wall Street. The rot inside the American political system is deep and terminal.

The Democrats, who refuse to address the social inequality they helped orchestrate and that has given rise to Trump, are the party of racial and ethnic inclusivity, identity politics, Wall Street and the military. Their core battle cry is: We are not Trump! This is ultimately a losing formula. It was adopted by Hillary Clinton, who is apparently weighing another run for the presidency after we thought we had thrust a stake through her political heart. It is the agenda of the well-heeled East Coast and West Coast elites who want to instill corporate fascism with a friendly face.

Bertram Gross (1912-1997) in "Friendly Fascism: The New Face of American Power" warned us that fascism always has two looks. One is paternal, benevolent, entertaining and kind. The other is embodied in the executioner's sadistic leer. Janus-like, fascism seeks to present itself to a captive public as a force for good and moral renewal. It promises protection against enemies real and invented. But denounce its ideology, challenge its power, demand freedom from fascism's iron grip, and you are mercilessly crushed. Gross knew that if the United States' form of fascism, expressed through corporate tyranny, was able to effectively mask its true intentions behind its "friendly" face we would be stripped of power, shorn of our most cherished rights and impoverished. He has been proved correct.

"Looking at the present, I see a more probable future: a new despotism creeping slowly across America," Gross wrote. "Faceless oligarchs sit at command posts of a corporate-government complex that has been slowly evolving over many decades. In efforts to enlarge their own powers and privileges, they are willing to have others suffer the intended or unintended consequences of their institutional or personal greed. For Americans, these consequences include chronic inflation, recurring recession, open and hidden unemployment, the poisoning of air, water, soil and bodies, and more important, the subversion of our constitution. More broadly, consequences include widespread intervention in international politics through economic manipulation, covert action, or military invasion."

No totalitarian state has mastered propaganda better than the corporate state. Our press has replaced journalism with trivia, feel-good stories, jingoism and celebrity gossip. The banal and the absurd, delivered by cheery corporate courtiers, saturate the airwaves. Our emotions are skillfully manipulated around manufactured personalities and manufactured events. We are, at the same time, offered elaborate diversionary spectacles including sporting events, reality television and absurdist political campaigns. Trump is a master of this form of entertainment. Our emotional and intellectual energy is swallowed up by the modern equivalent of the Roman arena. Choreographed political vaudeville, which costs corporations billions of dollars, is called free elections. Cliché-ridden slogans, which assure us that the freedoms we cherish remain sacrosanct, dominate our national discourse as these freedoms are stripped from us by judicial and legislative fiat. It is a vast con game.

You cannot use the word "liberty" when your government, as ours does, watches you 24 hours a day and stores all of your personal information in government computers in perpetuity. You cannot use the word "liberty" when you are the most photographed and monitored population in human history. You cannot use the word "liberty" when it is impossible to vote against the interests of Goldman Sachs or General Dynamics. You cannot use the word "liberty" when the state empowers militarized police to use indiscriminate lethal force against unarmed citizens in the streets of American cities. You cannot use the word "liberty" when 2.3 million citizens, mostly poor people of color, are held in the largest prison system on earth. This is the relationship between a master and a slave. The choice is between whom we want to clamp on our chains -- a jailer who mouths politically correct bromides or a racist, Christian fascist. Either way we are shackled.

Gross understood that unchecked corporate power would inevitably lead to corporate fascism. It is the natural consequence of the ruling ideology of neoliberalism that consolidates power and wealth into the hands of a tiny group of oligarchs. The political philosopher Sheldon Wolin , refining Gross' thesis, would later characterize this corporate tyranny or friendly fascism as "inverted totalitarianism." It was, as Gross and Wolin pointed out, characterized by anonymity. It purported to pay fealty to electoral politics, the Constitution and the iconography and symbols of American patriotism but internally had seized all of the levers of power to render the citizen impotent. Gross warned that we were being shackled incrementally. Most would not notice until they were in total bondage. He wrote that "a friendly fascist power structure in the United States, Canada, Western Europe, or today's Japan would be far more sophisticated than the 'caesarism' of fascist Germany, Italy, and Japan. It would need no charismatic dictator nor even a titular head it would require no one-party rule, no mass fascist party, no glorification of the State, no dissolution of legislatures, no denial of reason. Rather, it would come slowly as an outgrowth of present trends in the Establishment."

Gross foresaw that technological advances in the hands of corporations would be used to trap the public in what he called "cultural ghettoization" so that "almost every individual would get a personalized sequence of information injections at any time of the day -- or night." This is what, of course, television, our electronic devices and the internet have done. He warned that we would be mesmerized by the entertaining shadows on the wall of the Platonic cave as we were enslaved.

Gross knew that the most destructive force against the body politic would be the war profiteers and the militarists. He saw how they would siphon off the resources of the state to wage endless war, a sum that now accounts for half of all discretionary spending. And he grasped that warfare is the natural extension of corporatism. He wrote:

Under the militarism of German, Italian, and Japanese fascism violence was openly glorified. It was applied regionally -- by the Germans in Europe and England, the Italians in the Mediterranean, the Japanese in Asia. In battle, it was administered by professional militarists who, despite many conflicts with politicians, were guided by old-fashioned standards of duty, honor, country, and willingness to risk their own lives.

The emerging militarism of friendly fascism is somewhat different. It is global in scope. It involves weapons of doomsday proportions, something that Hitler could dream of but never achieve. It is based on an integration between industry, science, and the military that the old-fashioned fascists could never even barely approximate. It points toward equally close integration among military, paramilitary, and civilian elements. Many of the civilian leaders -- such as Zbigniew Brzezinski or Paul Nitze -- tend to be much more bloodthirsty than any top brass. In turn, the new-style military professionals tend to become corporate-style entrepreneurs who tend to operate -- as Major Richard A. Gabriel and Lieutenant Colonel Paul L. Savage have disclosed -- in accordance with the ethics of the marketplace. The old buzzwords of duty, honor, and patriotism are mainly used to justify officer subservience to the interests of transnational corporations and the continuing presentation of threats to some corporate investments as threats to the interest of the American people as a whole. Above all, in sharp contrast with classic fascism's glorification of violence, the friendly fascist orientation is to sanitize, even hide, the greater violence of modern warfare behind such "value-free" terms as "nuclear exchange," "counterforce" and "flexible response," behind the huge geographical distances between the senders and receivers of destruction through missiles or even on the "automated battlefield," and the even greater psychological distances between the First World elites and the ordinary people who might be consigned to quick or slow death.

We no longer live in a functioning democracy. Self-styled liberals and progressives, as they do in every election cycle, are urging us to vote for the Democrats, although the Democratic Party in Europe would be classified as a right-wing party, and tell us to begin to build progressive movements the day after the election. Only no one ever builds these movements. The Democratic Party knows there is no price to pay for selling us out and its abject service to corporations. It knows the left and liberals become supplicants in every election cycle. And this is why the Democratic Party drifts further and further to the right and we become more and more irrelevant. If you stand for something, you have to be willing to fight for it. But there is no fight in us.

The elites, Republican and Democrat, belong to the same club. We are not in it. Take a look at the flight roster of the billionaire Jeffrey Epstein , who was accused of prostituting dozens of underage girls and ended up spending 13 months in prison on a single count. He flew political insiders from both parties and the business world to his secluded Caribbean island, known as "Orgy Island," on his jet, which the press nicknamed "the Lolita Express." Some of the names on his flight roster, which usually included unidentified women, were Bill Clinton, who took dozens of trips, Alan Dershowitz , former Treasury Secretary and former Harvard President Larry Summers, the Candide -like Steven Pinker , whose fairy dust ensures we are getting better and better, and Britain's Prince Andrew. Epstein was also a friend of Trump, whom he visited at Mar-a-Lago.

We live on the precipice, the eve of the deluge. Past civilizations have crumbled in the same way, although as Hegel understood, the only thing we learn from history is "that people and governments never have learned anything from history." We will not arrest the decline if the Democrats regain control of the House. At best we will briefly slow it. The corporate engines of pillage, oppression, ecocide and endless war are untouchable. Corporate power will do its dirty work regardless of which face -- the friendly fascist face of the Democrats or the demented visage of the Trump Republicans -- is pushed out front. If you want real change, change that means something, then mobilize, mobilize, mobilize, not for one of the two political parties but to rise up and destroy the corporate structures that ensure our doom.

[Oct 29, 2018] We Were Made for Civil War

Notable quotes:
"... Today's Blue elite represents the greatest concentration of wealth and power in the United States. Moreover, such wealth is scattered across a mosaic of pristine, manicured, gated communities physically and socially divorced from the realities of normal American life -- glittering bubbles of sovereign privilege . This is the very oligarchy Founders like John Adams so feared . While both Red and Blue elites represent themselves as the people's champion, Blue's protests ring the most false . ..."
Oct 29, 2018 | www.theamericanconservative.com

Today, two righteous paths are gridlocked in opposition. Both perceive themselves as champions of national renewal, of cleansing corrupted ideals, and of truly fulfilling America's promise. Both fervently believe that they alone own virtue. Yet the banners of each course are absolutist mirrors of one another, pro and contra, all or nothing. Moreover, lightning rod issues, as in the 1770s and 1850s, make the space between battle lines a no man's land, forcing majority moderates and compromising fence-sitters to choose or be called out as willing collaborators with the other.

Today's lightning rods -- a feminist reordering of jurisprudence , a state-promoted LGBT agenda, closed or open borders, full gun rights guarantees -- should not be seen as mere hot-button issues that can be manipulated at will by political party elites. These are way-of-life banners for two warring coalitions. Iconic issues that now represent the future of two tribal alliances are taking the place of a former, single nation. The time for compromise is over.

Othering. Here, the barren and inhospitable new civic space is dominated along looming, fortified lines. Warring identities have concluded that the only solution is the complete submission of the enemy party, and both sides are beginning to prepare for an ultimate showdown . Othering is a transforming process, through which former kin are reimagined as evil, an American inner-enemy, who once defeated must be punished. The most familiar metaphor of American othering was the 1770s practice of tarring and feathering . This less-than-lethal mob punishment corresponds -- in shaming power and severity -- to mob vengeance pervasive today on social media outlets such as Twitter.

Hence, to work fully as othering, the process must be public, result in the shame of the transgressor, and show that true virtue is in command. More than anything, othering is a ceremonial act designed to bring shame not just on the single person being tarred and feathered, but the entire community to which he belongs. The political object of #MeToo is not the numerically bounded set of guilty men, but rather the entire population set of all men . The political object of Black Lives Matter is not racists, but rather all white people . The political object of the LGBT movement is not homophobes, but rather the whole of straight cisgender society whose reality compass they seek to transform.

The targeted other, equally seized by virtue, operates today from an angry defensive crouch. Thus do corporate elites support marquee Blue "social justice" agendas on Twitter, Facebook, and YouTube while censoring counterarguments and comment by Red. This is exactly the goal in this struggle: namely, to condition moderates to widespread acquiescence of a loud and insistent Blue agenda, while subtly coercing them to choose sides. They do this by arraigning Red as social losers, the future minority tribe, on their eventual way to the dustbin of history.

Red and Blue already represent an irreparable religious schism, deeper in doctrinal terms even than the 16th-century Catholic-Protestant schism. The war here is over which faction successfully captures the (social media) flag as true inheritor of American virtue.

The Decision. Othering's most decisive effect is to condition the whole of society to believe that an existential clash is coming, that all must choose, and that there are no realistic alternatives to a final test of wills. Remember, in past times, Jacobins on both sides were small minorities. Yet for either one of these two angry visions to win, there must be a showdown. This demands, perversely, that they work together to bring on open conflict, successfully coercing the majority of Americans to buy into its inevitability. At that point, only a trigger pull is needed.

This was what the Boston Massacre did to push colonials against Britain in 1770, and this is what John Brown's Pottawatomie Massacre and Congressman Preston Brooks's caning of Charles Sumner on the Senate floor did to push people toward civil war in 1856. This is what the confirmation hearings of Brett Kavanaugh and the nearly two-year effort to delegitimize and overthrow President Donald Trump may doing today: getting the two halves of the former nation to pull that trigger.

The Fight. If the political balance shifts dramatically, then conflict checks -- held in place by lingering political norms and a longstanding electoral standoff -- disintegrate. Suddenly, both newly advantaged and disadvantaged parties rush to a test of wills sooner rather than later. A triggering incident becomes a spark -- yet the spark itself does not ignite. Rather, it is the readiness for combat in this emerging "community of violence" that makes a fight the natural way forward. In 1774, the Sons of Liberty were spoiling for a fight. In the 1850s, Jayhawkers and Border Ruffians were equally primed to hit back. That pushed the nation to civil war.

Evidence from history and our own eyes tells us that we are deep into phase four. Three takeaways show us how close we are to real battle.

Both sides rush to tear down the constitutional order. Just since the 2016 election, we have witnessed a rolling thunder of Blue and Red elite rhetoric -- packing the Supreme Court, abolishing the Electoral College , repealing the Second Amendment , wholesale state nullification of federal law, shackling of voter rights, and Deep State invocation of the 25th Amendment. These are all potential extremities of action that would not only dismantle our constitutional order, but also skew it to one side's juridical construct of virtue, thus dissolving any semblance of adherence to law by the other. Over time each party becomes emotionally invested in the lust to dismantle the old and make something new.

Hence, constitutional norms exist only conditionally, until such time as they finally be dismantled, and only as long as a precariously balanced electoral divide holds firm. A big historical tilt in favor of one party over the other would very quickly push the nation into crisis because the party with the new mandate would rush to enact its program. The very threat of such constitutional dismantling would be sure casus belli . Such tilts in the early 1770s against Britain, and later in the 1850s against the slaveholding party, were the real tipping points. Not only was Dred Scott v. Sandford just such a tipping point in 1857, but subconsciously its legacy weighs heavily on Americans today, as they contemplate -- often with hysterical passion -- the dread consequences of a Kavanaugh appointment.

The dead hand of the last civil war grabs us from the grave. It is eerie how today's angst pulls us back to the 1860s -- and shows us what is likely to happen in our third civil war. If the poisonous hatreds of the 1860s again inform our civil anger today -- i.e. battles between the alt-right and antifa -- then this should tell us that we are literally on the cusp of another time of rage, where the continuity of strife is stronger than any hopes for reconciliation. What is clear is that two warring parties will accept nothing less from the other than submission, even though the loser will never submit. Moreover, each factional ethos is incapable of empathizing with the other.

Yet we should remember that "unconditional surrender" is like an Old Testament doctrine -- meaning that its invocation hearkens unmistakably to God's judgment. It became the Federal rallying cry throughout the Civil War, a substrate trope in the Versailles Treaty, the president's official position for the end of World War II, and even our complacent conviction during the decomposition of the Soviet Union. It is an apocalyptic vision deeply embedded in both Blue and Red. Such visions presage existential crisis that puts what is left of the nation at real risk. If, at war's end, the sacred scrolls, artifacts, and symbols -- the archaeology of a once-cherished identity -- cannot be restored or repurposed, then our entire history must be destroyed, and the "we" that once was wiped clean. Civil war -- the battle over how, or whether, we belong to one another -- thus demands nothing less than transformation.

Disbelieving war makes it inevitable. People will always disbelieve that we could come to blows, until we do. Delegates at the "Democracy" party convention in Charleston, in the summer of 1860, were still in denial of the coming fury . No one dares imagine another civil war playing out like the last, when two grimly determined American armies fought each other to the death in bloody pitched battles. It is unlikely that a third American civil war will embrace 18th and 19th century military dynamics. Antique Anglo-American society -- organized around community " mustering " -- was culturally equipped to fight civil wars. Today's screen-absorbed Millennials are not. So what?

But the historical consequences of a non-military American civil war would be just as severe as any struggle settled by battle and blood. For example, the map of a divided America today suggests that division into functioning state and local sovereignties -- with autonomy over kinship, identity, and way of life issues -- might be the result of this non-bloody war. This could even represent de facto national partition -- without de jure secession, achieved through a gradual process of accretive state and local nullification .

So what would a non-military civil war look like? Could it be non-violent? Americans are certainly not lovers, but they do not seem really to be fighters either. A possible path to kinship disengagement -- a separation without de jure divorce -- would here likely follow a crisis, a confrontation, and some shocking, spasmodic violence, horrifyingly amplified on social media. Passions at this point would pull back, but investment in separation would not. What might eventuate would be a national sorting out, a de facto kinship separation in which Blue and Red regions would go -- and govern -- their own ways, while still maintaining the surface fiction of a titular "United States." This was, after all, the arrangement America came to after 20 years of civil war (1857-1877). This time, however, there will be no succeeding conciliation (as was achieved in the 1890s). Culturally, this United States will be, from the moment of agreement, two entirely separate sensibilities, peoples, and politics.

♦♦♦

The winding path to civil war has yet another wrinkle: the people-elite divide. In the 1770s and the 1850s, American fissuring was championed by opposing elites. In the 1770s, two elites had emerged: one was the colonial, homegrown elite -- such as Washington, Hamilton, and Adams -- and the other was the metropole, trans-Atlantic British elite , celebrated by royally endowed landowners such as Lord Fairfax , whose holdings were in the thousands of square miles. Yet the British aristocracy was less intimately engaged in the colonies, and the loyalist elite a more sotto voce voice in colonial politics.

Not so the proto-Confederacy, the celebrated "Slave Power." In the looming struggle between North and South, the Southern elite was the dominant economic force in the nation, thanks to its overwhelming capital stored in human flesh. In fact, planter aristocracy capital formation in 1860 equaled all capital invested in manufacturing, railroads, banks, and all currency in circulation -- combined. This was the power of chattel slavery as the wealth ecology of the antebellum South. In defiant opposition to them were the Northern anti-slavery elites , nowhere as privileged and rich as their Southern counterparts. The new Republicans were further thwarted by the indissoluble alliance of planter aristocracy and the nation's financial hub: New York City. There was an unholy bond between a dominant slaveholder elite and an equally dominant New York slave-enabling elite. To make the point, in 1859, New York shipbuilders outfitted 85 slave ships for the hungry needs of the Southern planter class.

The dominant cultural position occupied by the overlords of chattel slavery has its analogy today in the overlords of America's Blue elite. While there is a vocal Red elite, the Blue elite dominates public life through its hold on the Internet, Hollywood, publishing, social media, academia, the Washington bureaucracy, and the global grip of corporate giants. Blue elite's power, in its hold on the cultural pulse and economic lifeblood of American life, compares granularly to the planter aristocracy of the 1850s.

Ruling elites famously overthrown by history -- like the Ancien Régime in France, Czarist Russia, and even the Antebellum South -- were fated by their insatiable selfishness, their impenetrable arrogance, and their sneering aloofness from the despised people -- "the deplorables" -- upon whom their own economic status feasted .

Today's Blue elite represents the greatest concentration of wealth and power in the United States. Moreover, such wealth is scattered across a mosaic of pristine, manicured, gated communities physically and socially divorced from the realities of normal American life -- glittering bubbles of sovereign privilege . This is the very oligarchy Founders like John Adams so feared . While both Red and Blue elites represent themselves as the people's champion, Blue's protests ring the most false .

America is divided today not by customary tussles in party politics, but rather by passionate, existential, and irreconcilable opposition. Furthermore, the onset of battle is driven yet more urgently by the "intersection" of a culturally embedded kinship divide moving -- however haphazardly -- to join up with an elite-people divide.

Tragically, our divide may no longer be an outcome that people of goodwill work to overcome. Schism -- with our nation in an ideological Iron Maiden -- will soon force us all to submit, and choose.

Michael Vlahos teaches strategy and war at Johns Hopkins Advanced Academic Programs and formerly, at the Naval War College. He is the author of the book Fighting Identity: Sacred War and World Change .

Likbez

I think that the key for understating the political crisis in the USA is to understand its connection with the crisis on neoliberalism as an ideology which was encompassed as the USA national ideology after WWII.

The US neoliberal elite lost the support of the population, and the is what the current crisis is about. Also, the level of degeneration of the current elite demonstrated by Haley appointed to the UN and several other disastrous appointments also signify the Us approaching the situation of " let them eat cakes."

The same time the power of surveillance state is such that outside of random acts of violence like we observed recently, insurrection is impossible and political ways to change the situation are blocked.

Neoliberals came to power with Carter, so more than 40 years ago (although formally Reagan is considered to be the first neoliberal president.) Now they are are losing political power and popular support.

Trump attempt to reform "classic neoliberalism" into what can be called "national neoliberalism" or neoliberalism without globalization is probably doomed to be a failure and not only due to Trump weaknesses as a political leader. He trying increase the level of neoliberaliztion with the USA failing to understand that the current problems stem from excessive levels of deregulation (and associated level of corruption), the excessive power of military industrial complex (supported by Wall Street) which led to waiting for trillion of arms race and destruction of New Deal Social protection mechanisms.

With the collapse of neoliberalism of global ideology, international standing of the USA greatly deteriorated, and now in some areas (especially with unilateral Iran sanctions and behavior in Korea crisis), Trump administration approaches the status of a pariah nation.

My impression is the neoliberalism just can't be reformed the way Trump is trying it to reform into what can be called "national neoliberalism."

That's probably why intelligence agencies and Clinton wing of the Democratic party, closely connected to Wall Street launched a color revolution ("Russiagate) against him in late 2016, trying to depose him and install a more "compliant" leader, who would support kicking the can down the road.

So the two warring camps now represent "classic neoliberalism" with its idea of the global neoliberal empire (and related "Full Spectrum Dominance" doctrine) and "revisionists" of various flavors (including Trump and Sanders supporters)

BTW neocons, who dominate the USA foreign policy, are also neoliberals, just moonlighting as lobbyists of the military industrial complex.

I think that globalization as an immanent feature and trump policies this will fail.

As the same, the opposition to neoliberalism on the ground level of the US society demand reforms and retreat form the globalization, which they connect with outsourcing and offshoring.

That's why Trump's idea of "national neoliberalism" -- an attempt to retreat from "globalization" and at the same time to obtain some economic advantages by brute force and bilateral treaties instead of multilateral organizations like WTO got some initial support. Along with his fake promises to improve the economic position of the middle class, squeezed by globalization.

the truth is that the "classic neoliberals" (which are represented by Clinton wing of Dems and Paul Ryan wing in Republicans ) lost popular support.

Dems, for example, now rely as their major constituency fringe groups and elements of national security state (that's why so many of their candidates for midterm are associated with intelligence agencies and military). So they are trying to mobilize elements of national security state to help them to return to power. That gambit, like Russiagate before it, probably will fail.

Republicans are also in limbo with Trump clearly betraying his electorate, but still enjoy some level of ground support.

IMHO his betrayals which is very similar to Obama betrayal(in no way he wants to improve the condition of the lower middle class and workers, it just hot air) might cost him two important group of voters who will vote for independent candidates if they vote at all:

1. Anti-war republicans
2. People who want the return of the New Deal.

Factions which are against imperial wars and for more fair redistribution of income in the society, a distribution which were screwed by 40 years of neoliberalism dominance in the USA.

So the US electorate have a classic political choice between disastrous and unpalatable policies once again ;-)

whether that will eventually lead to a military coup in best LA style, we can only guess.

[Oct 27, 2018] Most Americans See A Sharply Divided Nation; The Fourth Turning Is Here

Looks like most Americans do not understand that we are dealing with the crisis of neoliberalism as a social system.
Oct 27, 2018 | www.zerohedge.com
AP-NORC Poll national survey with 1,152 adults found 8 in 10 Americans believe the country is divided regarding essential values, and some expect the division to deepen into 2020.

Only 20% of Americans said they think the country will become less divided over the next several years, and 39% believe conditions will continue to deteriorate. A substantial majority of Americans, 77%, said they are dissatisfied with the state of politics in the country , said AP-NORC.

... ... ...

The nationwide survey was conducted on October 11-14, using the AmeriSpeak Panel, the probability-based panel of NORC at the University of Chicago. Overall, 59% of Americans disapprove of how Trump is handling his job as president, while 40% of Americans approve.

More specifically, the poll said 83% of Republicans approve of how Trump is handling the job, while 92% of Democrats and 61% of Independents strongly disagree.

More than half of Americans said they are not hearing nor seeing topics from midterm campaigns that are important to them. About 54% of Democrats and 44% of Republicans said vital issues, such as health care, education, and economic activity, Social Security and crime, were topics they wanted to hear more.

Looking at their communities, most American (Republicans and Democrats) are satisfied with their state or local community. However, on a national level, 58% of Americans are dissatisfied with the direction of the country, compared to 25%, a small majority who are satisfied.

Most Americans are dissatisfied with the massive gap between rich and poor, race relations and environmental conditions. The poll noticed there are partisan splits, 84% of Democrats are disappointed with the amount of wealth inequality, compared with 43% of Republicans. On the environment, 77% of Democrats and 32% Republicans are dissatisfied. Moreover, while 77% Democrats said they are unhappy with race relations, about 50% of Republicans said the same.

The poll also showed how Democrats and Republicans view certain issues. About 80% of Democrats but less than 33% of Republicans call income inequality, environmental issues or racism very important.

"Healthcare, education and economic growth are the top issues considered especially important by the public. While there are many issues that Republicans and Democrats give similar levels of importance to (trade foreign policy and immigration), there are several concerns where they are far apart. For example, 80% of Democrats say the environment and climate change is extremely or very important, and only 28% of Republicans agree. And while 68% consider the national debt to be extremely or very important, only 55% of Democrats regard it with the same level of significance," said AP-NORC.

Although Democrats and Republicans are divided on most values, many Americans consider the country's diverse population a benefit.

Half said America's melting pot makes the country stronger, while less than 20% said it hurts the country. About 30% said diversity does not affect their outlook.

"However, differences emerge by party identification, gender, location, education, and race . Democrats are more likely to say having a population with various backgrounds makes the country stronger compared to Republicans or Independents. Urbanities and college-educated adults are more likely to say having a mix of ethnicities makes the country stronger, while people living in rural areas and less educated people tend to say diversity has no effect or makes the country weaker," said AP-NORC.

Overall, 60% of Americans said accusations of sexual harassment with some high-profile men forced to resign or be fired was essential to them. However, 73% of women said the issue was critical, compared with 51% of men. The data showed that Democrats were much more likely than Republicans to call sexual misconduct significant.

More than 40% of Americans somewhat or strongly disapprove of Supreme Court Justice Brett Kavanaugh's confirmation to the Supreme Court after allegations of sexual harassment in his college years. 35% of Americans said they heartily approved of Kavanaugh's confirmation.

The evidence above sheds light on the internal struggles of America. The country is divided, and this could be a significant problem just ahead.

Why is that? Well, America's future was outlined in a book called "The Fourth Turning: What Cycles of History Tell Us About America's Next Rendezvous With Destiny."

In the book, which was written in the late 1990s, authors William Strauss and Niel Howe theorize that the history of civilization moves in 80-to-100 year cycles called "saecula."

The idea behind this theory dates back to the Greeks, who believed that at given saeculum's end, there would come "ekpyrosis," or a cataclysmic event.

This era of change is known as the Fourth Turning, and it appears we are in the midst of one right now.

The last few Fourth Turnings that America experienced ushered in the Civil War and the Reconstruction era, and then the Great Depression and World War II. Before all of that, it was the Revolutionary War.

Each Fourth Turning had similar warning signs: periods of political chaos, division, social and economic decay in which the American people reverted from extreme division and were forced to reunite in the rebuild of a new future, but that only came after massive conflict.

Today's divide among many Americans is strong. We are headed for a collision that will rip this country apart at the seams. The timing of the next Fourth Turning is now, and it could take at least another decade to complete the cycle.

After the Fourth Turning, America will not be the America you are accustomed to today. So, let us stop calling today the "greatest economy ever" and start preparing for turbulence.

MusicIsYou , 36 seconds ago link

Yep, Americans are divided, because they're all miserable, but competing to see who's the biggest miserable victim. Very funny.

[Oct 25, 2018] CIA Democrats might not help: The Blue Wave seems to be receding. The reason; Democrats rule for the Elite 10%. They are globalists rich from transnational world trade. They expect to cycle back into power.

Oct 25, 2018 | www.nakedcapitalism.com

VietnamVet , October 23, 2018 at 9:12 pm

The Blue Wave seems to be receding. The reason; Democrats rule for the Elite 10%. They are globalists rich from transnational world trade. They expect to cycle back into power. However, there is no bull pen. They work against policies that would mitigate the neoliberal winner takes all society and preserve the middle class. The Cold War restarted. Republican Corporatists, nationalists or not, are no alternative.

The Western political-economic system, with no feedback corrections from democracy, is tearing itself into pieces. Even though, corporate media continues to say how great things are.

[Oct 25, 2018] Dems in 2018 are sold out Republicans light

Notable quotes:
"... Third party candidates appear to have popped up in important KS races where far-right candidates might not get enough R votes, but where a 3rd party candidate could draw off moderate R votes that might otherwise to go the D candidate. ..."
"... Since getting the nomination, it seems that they caved to the establishment and diluted their platforms to tripe - Eastman did it within days of winning her primary. Same is true in solid Democrat districts that were never part of this series - I can't even view the change in MA-07 as much of a win, since on policy at least, Presley appears to have defeated Capuano from the right, not the left. I'm not at all surprised that this process leaves only 2 genuine leftists remaining, plus AOC. ..."
Oct 25, 2018 | www.nakedcapitalism.com

Llewelyn Moss , October 25, 2018 at 10:01 am

I sure hope the Dems take over the House. After McConnel said out loud on teevee that he plans to Gut Social Security and Medicare to fix the deficit (created by the Trump taxcuts for the Rich), Repubs have become a frightening breed. And what else will they attack? The Trump presidency has turned from awful to Nightmarish. I'm not even a fan of the corporate Dems but Congressional gridlock is our only hope.

Other JL , October 25, 2018 at 12:04 pm

If I'm completely honest with myself, I think it would be better for Rs to keep the house. The D/R charade just gives hope to leftists while preventing meaningful institutional reform. IMO things need to get worse before they can get better, and having a split Congress will delay that. I think it'll take 3-4 terms of solid R rule before the left has a chance to make meaningful change.

Here's a thought experiment: suppose the Dems had solid control of both houses: what would they do? If you aren't excited about that outcome, why vote for it?

Prairie Bear , October 25, 2018 at 1:00 pm

I have had similar thoughts in wondering what would be best. Maybe a complete humiliation for the Ds in the House, like the GOP gaining 10 seats, but then a flip of the Senate, which doesn't seem likely. It would have to be by several seats to counter Manchin, etc. I voted straight D. It's all just speculation on my part; damned if I even know anymore what would be best.

ape , October 25, 2018 at 1:41 pm

Historically, "the worse the better" hasn't worked out, unless you're hoping for revolutionary conditions.

Otherwise, most people are pretty unprincipled at the end of the show -- they'll run to join the crowd.

And the "revolutionary solution" is really, really bad historically. Really bad.

What you really want is the Dems to kick-ass, even if they're total sell-outs, to create space on the left. But if they lose? You get a whole lot of people becoming radical right wingers to be on the side of the winners.

flora, October 25, 2018 at 12:19 pm

KS-02 Paul Davis (D) vs Steve Watkins (R) (Jenkins is retiring, not running again.) with a libertarian candidate thrown in as a 3rd party.

Trump was in town to rally with Watkins a short while ago. Lot of moderate Rs won't vote for far-right* Watkins, even though this is an R district. Should be an interesting election.

Third party candidates appear to have popped up in important KS races where far-right candidates might not get enough R votes, but where a 3rd party candidate could draw off moderate R votes that might otherwise to go the D candidate. Who is funding these 3rd party candidates remains a mystery.

*on the same spectrum as Kris Kobach, imo.

Big River Bandido, October 25, 2018 at 12:20 pm

I think your approach of filtering out who the real candidates are from the left is correct. Dana Balter and Kara Eastman have been particularly disheartening as general-election candidates; Eastman, especially, talked a great game on health care back in the primary. Since getting the nomination, it seems that they caved to the establishment and diluted their platforms to tripe - Eastman did it within days of winning her primary. Same is true in solid Democrat districts that were never part of this series - I can't even view the change in MA-07 as much of a win, since on policy at least, Presley appears to have defeated Capuano from the right, not the left. I'm not at all surprised that this process leaves only 2 genuine leftists remaining, plus AOC.

... ... ...

[Oct 13, 2018] To paraphrase Stalin: They are both worse.

Highly recommended!
Notable quotes:
"... literally putting thousands upon thousands of children in concentration camps ..."
Oct 13, 2018 | crookedtimber.org

nikbez 10.07.18 at 3:22 am ( 10 )

ph 10.07.18 at 1:20 am (5)

Changing the rules, talks of changing the constitution, and the status of the SC because Dems can't find a positive message, or a positive candidate, or persuade the candidate to recognize and reach out to voters the Democratic party abandoned, reeks of defeatism and worse.

Exactly.

Clinton neoliberals (aka soft neoliberals) still control the Democratic Party but no longer can attract working-class voters. That's why they try "identity wedge" strategy trying to compensate their loss with the rag tag minority groups.

Their imperial jingoism only makes the situation worse. Large swaths of the USA population, including lower middle class are tired of foreign wars and sliding standard of living. They see exorbitant military expenses as one of the causes of their troubles.

That's why Hillary got a middle finger from several social groups which previously supported Democrats. And that's why midterm might be interesting to watch as there is no political party that represents working class and lower middle class in the USA.

"Lesser evil" mantra stops working when people are really angry at the ruling neoliberal elite.

As Slavoj Žižek aptly said " To paraphrase Stalin: They are both worse." ( http://inthesetimes.com/features/zizek_clinton_trump_lesser_evil.html _


bob mcmanus 10.07.18 at 2:27 pm ( 25 ) ( 25 )

control of the Senate, a relentlessly undemocratic institution
likbez 10.08.18 at 6:24 am (no link)
I think the US society is entering a deep, sustained political crisis and it is unclear what can bring us back from it other then the collapse, USSR-style. The USA slide into corporate socialism (which might be viewed as a flavor of neofascism) can't be disputed.

Looks like all democracies are unstable and prone to self-destruction. In modern America, the elite do not care about lower 80% of the population, and is over-engaged in cynical identity politics, race and gender-mongering. Anything to win votes.

MSM is still cheering on military misadventures that kill thousands of Americans, impoverish millions, and cost trillions. Congress looks even worse. Republican House leader Paul Ryan looks like 100% pure bought-and-paid-for tool of multinational corporations

The scary thing for me is that the USA national problems are somewhat similar to the ones that the USSR experienced before the collapse. At least the level of degeneration of political elite of both parties (which in reality is a single party) is.

The only positive things is that there is viable alternative to neoliberalism on the horizon. But that does not mean that we can't experience 1930th on a new level again. Now several European countries such as Poland and Ukraine are already ruled by far right nationalist parties. Brazil is probably the next. So this or military rule in the USA is not out of question.

Ship of Fools is what the US empire and the US society looks like now. And that's not funny. Look at "Ship of Fools: How a Selfish Ruling Class Is Bringing America to the Brink of Revolution" by Tucker Carlson hits the mark when he says that the career politicians and other elites in this country have put the USA on a path of self-destruction.

Some other factors are also in play: one is that a country with 320 million population can't be governed by the same methods as a country of 76 million (1900). End of cheap oil is near and probably will occur within the next 50 years or so. Which means the end of neoliberalism as we know it.

Tucker states that the USA's neoliberal elite acquired control of a massive chunk of the country's wealth. And then successfully insulated themselves from the hoi polloi. They send their children to the Ivy League universities, live in enclosed compounds with security guards, travel in helicopters, etc. Kind of like French aristocracy on a new level ("Let them eat cakes"). "There's nothing more infuriating to a ruling class than contrary opinions. They're inconvenient and annoying. They're evidence of an ungrateful population Above all, they constitute a threat to your authority." (insert sarcasm)

Donald Trump was in many ways an unappealing figure. He never hid that. Voters knew it. They just concluded that the options were worse -- and not just Hillary Clinton and the Democratic Party, but the Bush family and their donors and the entire Republican leadership, along with the hedge fund managers and media luminaries and corporate executives and Hollywood tastemakers and think tank geniuses and everyone else who created the world as it was in the fall of 2016: the people in charge. Trump might be vulgar and ignorant, but he wasn't responsible for the many disasters America's leaders created .

There was also the possibility that Trump might listen. At times he seemed interested in what voters thought. The people in charge demonstrably weren't. Virtually none of their core beliefs had majority support from the population they governed .Beginning on election night, they explained away their loss with theories as pat and implausible as a summer action movie: Trump won because fake news tricked simple minded voters. Trump won because Russian agents "hacked" the election. Trump won because mouth-breathers in the provinces were mesmerized by his gold jet and shiny cuff links.

From a reader review:

The New Elite speaks: "The Middle Class are losers and they have made bad choices, they haven't worked as hard as the New Elite have, they haven't gone to SAT Prep or LSAT prep so they lose, we win. We are the Elite and we know better than you because we got high SAT scores.

Do we have experience? Uh .well no, few of us have been in the military, pulled KP, shot an M-16 . because we are better than that. Like they say only the losers go in the military. We in the New Elite have little empirical knowledge but we can recognize patterns very quickly."

Just look at Haley behavior in the UN and Trump trade wars and many things became more clear. the bet is on destruction of existing international institutions in order to save the USA elite. A the same time Trump trade wars threaten the neoliberal order so this might well be a path to the USA self-destruction.

On Capital hill rancor, a lack of civility and derisive descriptions are everywhere. Respect has gone out the window. Left and right wings of a single neoliberal party (much like CPSU was in the USSR) behave like drunk schoolchildren. Level of pettiness is simply amazing.

Adam Roberts 10.08.18 at 8:14 am ( 39 )
The fundamental rule of democratic electoral politics is this: tribes don't win elections, coalitions do. Trump's appeal is strongly tribal, and he has spent two years consolidating his appeal to that tribe rather than reaching out. But he won in 2016 (or 'won') not on the strength of that tribal appeal, but because of a coalition between core Trumpists and more respectable conservatives and evangelicals, including a lot of people who find Trump himself vulgar and repellent, but who are prepared to hold their noses. The cause célèbre (or cause de l'infâme) that Kavanaugh's appointment became ended-up uniting these two groups; the Trumpists on the one hand ('so the Libs are saying we can't even enjoy a beer now, are they?') and the old-school religious Conservatives, for whom abortion is a matter of conscience.

Given the weird topographies of US democratic process, the Democrats need to build a bigger counter-coalition than the coalition they are opposing. Metropolitan liberals are in the bag, so that means reconnecting with the working class, and galvanising the black and youth votes, which have a poor record of converting social media anger into actual ballot-box votes. But it also means reaching out to moderate religious conservatives, and the Dems don't seem to me to have a strategy for this last approach at all. Which is odd, because it would surely, at least in some ways, be easier than persuading young people to vote at the levels old people vote. At the moment abortion (the elephant in the Kavanaugh-confirmation room) is handled by the Left as a simple matter of structural misogyny, the desire to oppress and control female bodies. I see why it is treated that way; there are good reasons for that critique. But it's electorally dumb. Come at it another way instead, accept that many religious people oppose abortion because they see it as killing children; then lead the campaign on the fact that the GOP is literally putting thousands upon thousands of children in concentration camps . Shout about that fact. Determine how many kids literally die each year because their parents can't access free healthcare and put that stat front and centre. Confront enough voters with the false consciousness of only caring about abortion and not these other monstrosities and some will reconsider their position.

And one more thing that I have never understood about the Dems (speaking as an outsider), given how large a political force Christianity is in your country: make more of Jimmy Carter. He's a man of extraordinary conscience as well as a man of faith; the contrast with how he has lived his post-Presidential life and the present occupier of the White House could hardly, from a Christian perspective, be greater. If the Dems can make a love-thy-neighbour social justice Christianity part of their brand, leaving Mammon to the GOP, then they'd be in power for a generation.

[Oct 12, 2018] CIA Democrats on the upswing

Oct 12, 2018 | thenewkremlinstooge.wordpress.com

Northern Star October 5, 2018 at 12:41 pm

http://www.wsws.org/en/articles/2018/10/03/ciad-o03.html

Murican leaders:

"Jessica Morse, a former State Department and AID official in Iraq, running in the Fourth District of California, blasts the Trump administration for "giving away global leadership to powers like China and Russia. Our security and our economy will both suffer if those countries are left to re-write the international rules."

Former FBI agent Christopher Hunter, running in the 12th District of Florida, declares, "Russia is a clear and present danger to the United States. We emerged victorious over the Soviet Union in the Cold War. We must resolve anew to secure an uncompromising victory over Russia and its tyrannical regime."

Elissa Slotkin, the former CIA agent and Pentagon official running in Michigan's Eighth Congressional District, cites her 14 years of experience "working on some of our country's most critical national security matters, including U.S.-Russia relations, the counter-ISIS campaign, and the U.S. relationship with NATO." She argues that "the United States must make investments in its military, intelligence, and diplomatic power" in order to maintain "a unique and vital role in the world."

Max Rose, a combat commander in Afghanistan now running in New York's 11th Congressional District (Staten Island and Brooklyn), calls for "recognizing Russia as a hostile foreign power and holding the Kremlin accountable for its attempts to undermine the sovereignty and democratic values of other nations." Rose is still in the military reserves, and took two weeks off from his campaign in August to participate in small-unit drills.

Joseph Kopser, running in the 21st District of Texas, is another anti-Russian firebrand, writing on his website, "As a retired Army Ranger, I know first hand the importance of standing strong with your allies. Given Russia's march toward a totalitarian state showing aggression around the region, as well as their extensive cyber and information warfare campaign directed at the U.S., England, and others, our Article 5 [NATO] commitment to our European allies and partners is more important than ever." He concludes, "Since the mid-twentieth century, the United States has been a principal world leader -- a standard that should never be changed."

Four national-security candidates add North Korea and Iran to China and Russia as specific targets of American military and diplomatic attack.

Josh Welle, a former naval officer who was deployed to Afghanistan, now running in the Fourth Congressional District of New Jersey, writes, "We have to stand together in the face of threats from countries like North Korea and Iran. The human rights violations and nuclear capabilities of these countries pose a direct threat to the stability of this world and therefore need to be met with strong military presence and a robust defense program to protect ourselves."

Tom Malinowski, former assistant secretary of state for human rights, running in New Jersey's Seventh District, calls for maintaining economic sanctions on Russia "until it stops its aggression in Ukraine and interference in our democracy," effusively endorses the state of Israel (whose government actually interferes in US elections more than any other), and calls for stepped up sanctions against North Korea.

Mikie Sherill, a former Navy pilot and Russian policy officer, running in New Jersey's 11th District, writes, "I have sat across the table from the Russians, and know that we need our government to take the threat they pose seriously." She adds to this a warning about "threats posed by North Korea and Iran," the two most immediate targets of military-diplomatic blackmail by the Trump administration. She concludes, referring to North Korea's nuclear program, "For that reason I support a robust military presence in the region and a comprehensive missile defense program to defend America, our allies, and our troops abroad."

Dan McCready, an Iraq war unit commander who claims to have been born again when he was baptized in water from the Euphrates River, calls for war to be waged only "with overwhelming firepower," not "sporadically, with no strategy or end in sight, while our enemies like Iran, North Korea, Russia, and the terrorists outsmart and outlast us." He is running in North Carolina's Ninth Congressional District, adjacent to the huge military complex at Fort Bragg.

One military-intelligence candidate cites immigration as a national-security issue, echoing the position of the Trump administration, which constantly peddles scare stories that terrorists are infiltrating the United States disguised as immigrants and refugees. That is Richard Ojeda, running in the Third Congressional District of West Virginia, who publicly boasts of having voted for Trump in 2016, in the same election in which he won a seat in the West Virginia state senate running as a Democrat.

Ojeda writes on his web site, "We must also ensure that terrorists do not reach American soil by abusing our immigration process. We must keep an up to date terror watch list but provide better vetting for those that go onto the watch list."

A career Army Airborne officer, Ojeda voices the full-blown militarism of this social layer. "If there is one thing I am confident in, it is the ability of our nation's military," he declares. "The best way to keep Americans safe is to let our military do their job without muddying up their responsibilities with our political agendas."

He openly rejects control of the military by civilian policy-makers. "War is not a social experiment and I refuse to let politics play a role in my decision making when it comes to keeping you and your family safe," he continues. "I will not take my marching orders from anyone else concerning national security."

Only one of the 30 candidates, Ken Harbaugh, a retired Air Force pilot running in the Seventh Congressional District of Ohio, centered on the industrial city of Canton, acknowledges being part of this larger group. He notes, "In 2018, more vets are running for office than at any moment in my lifetime. Because of the growing inability of Washington to deal responsibly with the threats facing our nation, veterans from both sides of the aisle are stepping into the breach."

Referring to the mounting prospect of war, he writes, "Today, we face our gravest geopolitical challenge since 9/11. Our country remains at war in Afghanistan, we have troops engaged in North Africa, Iraq and Syria, and Russia continues to bully our allies. Meanwhile, North Korea has the ability to directly threaten the American mainland with nuclear missiles." He concludes, "we need leaders with the moral authority to speak on these issues, leaders who have themselves been on the front lines of these challenges."

These statements, taken cumulatively, present a picture of unbridled militarism and aggression as the program of the supposed "opposition" to the Trump administration's own saber-rattling and threats of "fire and fury like the world has never seen."

Perhaps even more remarkable is that the remaining 17 national-security candidates say nothing at all about foreign policy (in 11 cases) or limit themselves to anodyne observations about the necessity to provide adequate health care and other benefits to veterans (two cases), or vague generalities about the need to combine a strong military with diplomatic efforts (four cases). They give no specifics whatsoever.

In other words, while these candidates tout their own records as part of the national-security apparatus as their principal credential for election to Congress, they decline to tell the voters what they would do if they were in charge of American foreign policy.

Given that these 17 include intelligence agents (Abigail Spanberger and Gina Ortiz Jones), a National Security Council Iraq war planner (Andy Kim), and numerous other high-level State Department and military commanders, the silence can have only the most ominous interpretation.

These CIA Democrats don't want to tell voters about their plans for foreign policy and military intervention because they know these measures are deeply unpopular. They aim to gain office as stealth candidates, unveiling their program of militarism and war only after they take their seats, when they may very well exercise decisive influence in the next Congress."

[Oct 12, 2018] I don't see the republicans being the Nazis. Republican base has values closer in line with paleocons and not the neocons. The values of the Democraps are pure imperialist, exceptionalist and totalitarian in the name of PC

Oct 12, 2018 | thenewkremlinstooge.wordpress.com

kirill October 5, 2018 at 10:54 am

I don't see the republicans being the Nazis. The US war party is composed of both Democraps and Rethuglicans. The Republican base has values closer in line with paleocons and not the neocons.

The values of the Democraps are pure imperialist, exceptionalist and totalitarian in the name of PC. Obummer was neocon tool like W. Bush.

Thus it is the Democraps that are the proper heirs of the Nazis and their 4th Reich global domination project. Paleocons are isolationist nationalists that actually believe in the constitutional values that the USA claims to espouse. The Democraps are all about lust for power and dirty tricks to enable the seizing of power.

Obummer weaponized the FBI and CIA into partisan instruments giving us the Russia meddling inquisition. Truman was a foaming at the mouth racist cold warrior.

Eisenhower at least warned about the creeping influence of the MIC. Clinton was a slimeball that continued the Reich agenda in the Balkans. And so on.

[Oct 10, 2018] Casualty Lists From the Kavanaugh Battle by Pat Buchanan

Notable quotes:
"... Why should a robed, unelected politician be redefining marriage? ..."
"... Many people here still don't get it. This fake left vs right paradigm is just a show and is no different than either professional football or wrestling. The public cheer on their teams and engage in meaningless battle while the controllers pilfer everything of value. ..."
"... Peter Hitchens has remarked that demonstrations are actually indicators of weakness rather than power or authority (something that seems to have eluded Flake and Murkowski), however shrill and enraged that they may be. ..."
"... I'm an aging New Deal Democrat. I have not changed but my former party changed with the tenure of the immoral and ethically challenged rapist, Bill Clinton and his enabler wife. In their previous lives, both were Goldwater Republicans. They switched to the Democrat Party to win elections but they never strayed too far from teats of the the Bushes and their destructive political roots. I"m willing to bet thousands of dollars that if given a fair chance at a quiz about the Clintons, most of the young SJW's, rabid homo's and the poor suckers who follow them know very little about the real Clintons. ..."
"... The Democrat party today is less a party than it is a mob of homosexuals and rabid social justice warriors duped into believing they are oppressed by the extremist college courses in Social Justice. Yet, what they have offer the world is not justice. They offer chaos and anarchy as we saw with the mob of racists black and stupid white kids attacking a man who looked lost and confused, and as it turns out, rightfully frightened by the crowd of social justice terrorists from the Alt-Left. ..."
"... The Democrat Party is gonzo, the same as Hillary and Bill Clinton's speaking tour is destined to be. ..."
Oct 10, 2018 | www.unz.com

Ludwig Watzal , says: Website October 9, 2018 at 7:27 am GMT

Mr. Buchanan, you forgot the "treacherous" work of porn lawyer Michael Avenatti who offered the straw that broke the camel's back by presenting such an abysmal "witness" such as Julie Swetnick. Ms. Ramirez' alleged allegations also came down to nothing. Even the so-called Me too movement suffered a big blow. They turned a fundamental democratic principle upside down: The accused is innocent until proven guilty. They insisted instead that the accuser is right because she is a woman!

I watched the whole confirmation circus on CNN. When Dr. Ford started talking my first thought was; this entire testimony is a charade initiated by the Dems. As a journalist, I was appalled by the CNN "colleagues." During the recesses, they held tribunals that were 95 percent staffed by anti-Trumpets. Fairness looks different.

For me, the Democratic Party and the Me too movement lost much of its credibility. To regain it, they have to get rid of the demons of the Clinton's and their ilk. Anyone who is acquainted with the history of the Clinton's knows that they belong to the most politically corrupt politicians in the US.

Realist , says: October 9, 2018 at 10:21 am GMT

So where are we going now?

This country is on a shit slide to hell. No turning back ..to many god damn idiots in this country.

What people in this country better understand is Trump is part of the Deep State and he means harm to all non elites.

anonymous [340] Disclaimer , says: October 9, 2018 at 11:19 am GMT
@utu You're thinking of Justice Kennedy, another Republican choice for whom young Mr. Kavanaugh clerked before helping President Cheney with the Patriot Act to earn his first robe on the Swampville Circuit. Chief Justice Roberts was the one who nailed down Big Sickness for the pharmaceutical and insurance industries.

Like the "federal" elections held every November in even-numbered years and the 5-4 decrees of the Court, these nailbiting confirmation hearings are another part of the show that keeps people gulled into accepting that so many things in life are to be run by people in Washington. Mr. Buchanan for years has been proclaiming each The Most Important Ever.

I'm still inclined to the notion that the Constitution was intended, at least by some of its authors and supporters, to create a limited national government. But even by the time of Marbury, those entrusted with the powers have arrogated the authority to redefine them. In my lifetime, the Court exists to deal with hot potato social issues in lieu of the invertebrate Congress, to forebear (along with the invertebrate Congress) the warmongering and other "foreign policy" waged under auspices of the President, and to dignify the Establishment's shepherding and fleecing of the people.

Why should a robed, unelected politician be redefining marriage? Entrusted to enforce the Constitutional limitations on the others? Sure, questions like these are posed from time to time in a dissenting Justice's opinion, but that ends the discussion other than in the context of replacing old Justice X with middle-aged Justice Y, as exemplified in this cliche' column from Mr. Buchanan. Those of us outside the Beltway are told to tune in and root Red. And there are pom pom shakers and color commentators just like him for Team Blue.

Puppet show.

Jon Baptist , says: October 9, 2018 at 12:38 pm GMT
Many people here still don't get it. This fake left vs right paradigm is just a show and is no different than either professional football or wrestling. The public cheer on their teams and engage in meaningless battle while the controllers pilfer everything of value. Buchanan knows this but is too afraid to tell "the other half of the story."
36 ulster , says: October 9, 2018 at 12:57 pm GMT
@verylongaccountname

It was a costly victory, but not a Pyrrhic one. The Left will no doubt raise the decibel and octave levels, but if they incur a richly-deserved defeat a month from now, they won't even make it to the peanut gallery for at least the next two years.

Peter Hitchens has remarked that demonstrations are actually indicators of weakness rather than power or authority (something that seems to have eluded Flake and Murkowski), however shrill and enraged that they may be. Should the Left choose to up the ante, to REALLY take it to the streets well as the English ditty goes: We have the Maxim Gun/And they have not.

prefer anon , says: October 9, 2018 at 1:13 pm GMT
Pat, you are one of the few thinkers with real common sense.

I'm an aging New Deal Democrat. I have not changed but my former party changed with the tenure of the immoral and ethically challenged rapist, Bill Clinton and his enabler wife. In their previous lives, both were Goldwater Republicans. They switched to the Democrat Party to win elections but they never strayed too far from teats of the the Bushes and their destructive political roots. I"m willing to bet thousands of dollars that if given a fair chance at a quiz about the Clintons, most of the young SJW's, rabid homo's and the poor suckers who follow them know very little about the real Clintons.

The Democrat party today is less a party than it is a mob of homosexuals and rabid social justice warriors duped into believing they are oppressed by the extremist college courses in Social Justice. Yet, what they have offer the world is not justice. They offer chaos and anarchy as we saw with the mob of racists black and stupid white kids attacking a man who looked lost and confused, and as it turns out, rightfully frightened by the crowd of social justice terrorists from the Alt-Left.

They all slept through the Obama disaster thinking the globalist open borders would make the world Shang Ri La instead of crime ridden, diseased, and under attack from Muslims and their twisted ides about God and Sharia Law. Look at the Imam who proclaimed yesterday they Sharia is the law of Britain and that Muslims are at war with the British government. Yet, Tommy Robinson gets jailed for pointing out their sated intentions. Messed up. We cannot let this happen in America.

They ignore the fact that the emasculated Obama failed to fight to pick a Supreme Court Justice. Even though he was going to choose Neil Gorsuch, not a leftist, the Alt-Left no doubt would have remained silent if he had. Why? Because Obama was black. But the Alt-Left is shallow and they could not see that the oreo president was black on the outside but rich and creamy white on the inside. No doubt, Obama was more like a 1980′s Republican than he was a Democrat as I understood them to be for decades.

The Democrat Party is gonzo, the same as Hillary and Bill Clinton's speaking tour is destined to be.


Si1ver1ock , says: October 9, 2018 at 2:17 pm GMT

@prefer anon I agree. These parties get hijacked by the worst sort. The Neocons are still riding high in the Republican party.
SolontoCroesus , says: October 9, 2018 at 2:44 pm GMT
@Tiny Duck

You wanted a fight? You are going to get one and just like the Nazis and confederates we will thrash you

Hold up a sec, pal.

Your lot has painted a target on Russia, claiming Russians collusioned with Trump. Right?

But it was Russians who "thrashed" the Nazis.

Goes without saying you hate the Nazis and extend that epithet to include Germans. Right?

But German mercenaries provided a great deal of the fighting force that "thrashed" the confederates.

Looks like you've made enemies of most of the fighting force you are counting on to thrash the GOP, pal.

Ooops.

Svigor , says: October 9, 2018 at 3:22 pm GMT
@Ludwig Watzal Vis-a-vis #PayAttentionToMeToo, it really was a win-win. Rightists successfully defended the firewall and kept it contained to the left. Perfect. As far as leftists are concerned, it's still perfectly legitimate – the leftist circular firing squads will continue.
Realist , says: October 9, 2018 at 7:09 pm GMT
@Jon Baptist

Many people here still don't get it. This fake left vs right paradigm is just a show and is no different than either professional football or wrestling.

Well I get it and have been saying so. Trump knows damn well that the people he has surrounded himself with are Deep Staters Trump is a part of the Deep State. Trump has done nothing of significance for the 99%. Trump hasn't prosecuted anyone for criminal activity 'against' his campaign or administration. Trump hasn't built a wall (he won't either). Instead of reducing conflict and war Trump has been belligerent in his actions toward Russia, China, Syria and Iran .risking all out war. All these things are being done to increase the wealth and power of the Deep State. For the past ten years Republican House members have been promising investigations and prosecutions of Democrats for criminal activities .not one god damn thing changed. Kabuki theater is the name of the game. With such inane bullshit as Dancing With The Stars on TV and the fake Republicans v Democrats game, it is all meant to keep the proles from knowing how they are being screwed .a rather easy task at that.

prefer anon , says: October 9, 2018 at 9:10 pm GMT
@Si1ver1ock @S1ver1ock

They are in the Democrat party too. In fact, their only allegiance is to Israel. The

Neocons are anti-USA – same as the communists in antifa and the mobs of idiots in the Damnedcrat party.

Richard Wicks , says: October 9, 2018 at 9:21 pm GMT
@utu Same sex marriage is basically irrelevant. Less than 10% of homosexuals co-habitate with a partner. Perhaps 10% of the general population is openly homosexual (and that's definitely an over-estimation.).

This means that if all homosexuals that cohabitate with a partner are married, it's less than 1% of the population we're talking about.

This is a "who really cares?" situation. There's more important things to worry about when the nation has been at war for 16 years straight, started over a bunch of lies starting with George W. Bush and continuing with Barak Obama. We have lost the moral high ground because of those two, identical in any important way, scumbags.

Richard Wicks , says: October 9, 2018 at 9:31 pm GMT
@Tiny Duck

Democrats are enraged and have seen the GOP for the white supremacist evil institution that it is

This from a group of people that have been endlessly complaining that the Butcher of Libya, who voted for the Authorization to Use Force in Iraq (what you know as the 2nd Iraq War) wasn't elected president just because she was running a fraudulent charity, was storing classified information on an unsecured and compromised server illegally, and is telling you absolutely morally bankrupt and unprincipled individuals that you have the moral high ground because she's a woman after all, not just another war criminal like George W. Bush is, and Obama is.

Caligula's horse would have beaten Hillary Clinton, if the voter base had any sense. Clinton was the worst possible candidate ever. Anybody, and I mean anybody, that voted for the Iraq War should be in prison, not in government. They are all traitors.

Hyperion , says: October 9, 2018 at 9:45 pm GMT
@Realist Agree Big money interets have broguht us Trump not only for the tax cuts but to destroy America's hemegomony. to start the final leg of the shift from west to east. A traitor of the highest order Pat Buchanan has led the grievence brigade of angry white men for decades distracted and deluded over the social issues meanwhile the Everyman/woman has lost ground economically or stayed static no improvement.
SamAdams , says: October 10, 2018 at 2:20 am GMT
@Jon Baptist You can just about guarantee that the losers in the false 'Right' versus 'Left' circus will be We The People.

Big Government/Big Insider Corporations/Big Banks feed parasitically off the population. The role of the lawyers wearing black dresses on the SC, is to help hide the theft. They use legal mumbo jumbo. The economists at the Fed use economics & mathematical mumbo jumbo.

Much of current Western society is made up of bullsh*t.

[Oct 09, 2018] US Russia Sanctions Are 'A Colossal Strategic Mistake', Putin Warns

Oct 09, 2018 | russia-insider.com

Russian President Vladimir Putin accused Washington of making a "colossal" but "typical" mistake by exploiting the dominance of the dollar by levying economic sanctions against regimes that don't bow to its whims.

"It seems to me that our American partners make a colossal strategic mistake," Putin said.

"This is a typical mistake of any empire," Putin said, explaining that the US is ignoring the consequences of its actions because its economy is strong and the dollar's hegemonic grasp on global markets remains intact. However "the consequences come sooner or later."

These remarks echoed a sentiment expressed by Putin back in May, when he said that Russia can no longer trust the US dollar because of America's decisions to impose unilateral sanctions and violate WTO rules.

... ... ...

With the possibility of being cut off from the dollar system looming, a plan prepared by Andrei Kostin, the head of Russian bank VTB, is being embraced by much of the Russian establishment. Kostin's plan would facilitate the conversion of dollar settlements into other currencies which would help wean Russian industries off the dollar. And it already has the backing of Russia's finance ministry, central bank and Putin.

Meanwhile, the Kremlin is also working on deals with major trading partners to accept the Russian ruble for imports and exports.

In a sign that a united front is forming to help undermine the dollar, Russia's efforts have been readily embraced by China and Turkey, which is unsurprising, given their increasingly fraught relationships with the US. During joint military exercises in Vladivostok last month, Putin and Chinese President Xi Jinping declared that their countries would work together to counter US tariffs and sanctions.

"More and more countries, not only in the east but also in Europe, are beginning to think about how to minimise dependence on the US dollar," said Dmitry Peskov, Mr Putin's spokesperson. "And they suddenly realise that a) it is possible, b) it needs to be done and c) you can save yourself if you do it sooner."

[Oct 08, 2018] CIA Democrats call for aggression against Russia, run pro-war campaigns in 2018 congressional races by Patrick Martin

In other words CIA Democrats actually are running on classic Republican foreign policy platform with some neo-McCarthyism flavor added for appetite. . Such a convergence of two parities.
Notable quotes:
"... World Socialist Web Site ..."
Oct 03, 2018 | southfront.org

The Democratic Party is widely favored to win control of the House of Representatives in the US midterm elections November 6, with projections that it will gain 30 to 50 seats, or even more, well above the net gain of 23 required for a majority.

The last time the Democratic Party won control of the House from the Republicans was in 2006, when it captured 30 Republican seats on the basis of a limited appeal to the massive antiwar sentiment among working people after three years of disastrous and bloody warfare in Iraq, and five years after the US invasion and occupation of Afghanistan.

In stark contrast, there is not a hint of an antiwar campaign by the Democratic challengers seeking Republican seats in the 2018 elections. On the contrary, the pronouncements of leading Democrats on foreign policy issues have been strongly pro-war, attacking the Trump administration from the right for its alleged softness on Russia and its hostility to traditional US-led alliances like NATO.

This is particularly true of the 30 Democratic congressional nominees in competitive races who come from a national-security background. These challengers, previously identified by the World Socialist Web Site as the CIA Democrats , constitute the largest single grouping among Democratic nominees in competitive seats, more than state and local officials, lawyers or those wealthy enough to finance their own campaigns.

The 30 national-security candidates include six actual CIA, FBI or military intelligence agents, six State Department or other civilian national security officials, 11 combat veterans from Iraq and Afghanistan, all but one an officer, and seven other military veterans, including pilots, naval officers and military prosecutors (JAGs).

The range of views expressed by these 30 candidates is quite limited. With only one exception, Jared Golden , running in the First District of Maine, the military-intelligence Democrats do not draw any negative conclusions from their experience in leading, planning or fighting in the wars of the past 25 years, including two wars against Iraq, the invasion of Afghanistan, and other military engagements in the Persian Gulf and North and East Africa.

Golden, who is also the only rank-and-file combat veteran -- as opposed to an officer -- and the only one who admits to having suffered from Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder, criticizes congressional rubber-stamping of the wars of the past 20 years. "Over the past decade and a half, America has spent trillions on the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, and on other conflicts across the globe," his campaign website declares. "War should be a last resort, and only undertaken when the security interests of America are clearly present, and the risks and costs can be appropriately justified to the American people."

These sentiments hardly qualify as antiwar, but they sound positively radical compared to the materials posted on the websites of many of the other military-intelligence candidates. In some ways, Golden is the exception that proves the rule. What used to be the standard rhetoric of Democratic Party candidates when running against the administration of George W. Bush has been entirely scrapped in the course of the Obama administration, the first in American history to have been engaged in a major military conflict for every day of its eight years.

All the other national-security candidates accept as a basic premise that the United States must maintain its dominant world position. The most detailed foreign policy doctrine appears on the website of Amy McGrath , who is now favored to win her contest against incumbent Republican incumbent Andy Barr in the Sixth Congressional District of Kentucky.

McGrath follows closely the line of the Obama administration and the Hillary Clinton presidential campaign, supporting the Iran nuclear deal that Trump tore up, embracing Israel, warning of North Korea's development of nuclear weapons, and declaring it "critical that the US work with our allies and partners in the region to counter China's advances" in the South China Sea and elsewhere in Asia.

But Russia is clearly the main target of US national-security efforts, in her view. She writes, "Our Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff has testified that Russia is the greatest threat to American security. Russia poses an existential threat to the United States due to its nuclear weapons and its behavior in the past several years has been disturbing. Russia's aggression in Georgia, Crimea, Ukraine, and Syria has been alarming. It's becoming more assertive in the Arctic, likely the most important geostrategic zone of competition in the coming decades. The US should consider providing defensive arms to Ukraine and exerting more pressure on Moscow using economic sanctions."

She concludes by calling for an investigation modeled on the 9/11 Commission into alleged Russian interference in the 2016 elections.

Five other national-security candidates focus on specific warnings about the danger of Russia and China, thus aligning themselves with the new national security orientation set in the most recent Pentagon strategy document, which declares that the principal US national security challenge is no longer the "war on terror," but the prospect of great power conflicts, above all with Russia and China.

Jessica Morse , a former State Department and AID official in Iraq, running in the Fourth District of California, blasts the Trump administration for "giving away global leadership to powers like China and Russia. Our security and our economy will both suffer if those countries are left to re-write the international rules."

Former FBI agent Christopher Hunter , running in the 12th District of Florida, declares, "Russia is a clear and present danger to the United States. We emerged victorious over the Soviet Union in the Cold War. We must resolve anew to secure an uncompromising victory over Russia and its tyrannical regime."

Elissa Slotkin , the former CIA agent and Pentagon official running in Michigan's Eighth Congressional District, cites her 14 years of experience "working on some of our country's most critical national security matters, including U.S.-Russia relations, the counter-ISIS campaign, and the U.S. relationship with NATO." She argues that "the United States must make investments in its military, intelligence, and diplomatic power" in order to maintain "a unique and vital role in the world."

Max Rose , a combat commander in Afghanistan now running in New York's 11th Congressional District (Staten Island and Brooklyn), calls for "recognizing Russia as a hostile foreign power and holding the Kremlin accountable for its attempts to undermine the sovereignty and democratic values of other nations." Rose is still in the military reserves, and took two weeks off from his campaign in August to participate in small-unit drills.

Joseph Kopser , running in the 21st District of Texas, is another anti-Russian firebrand, writing on his website, "As a retired Army Ranger, I know first hand the importance of standing strong with your allies. Given Russia's march toward a totalitarian state showing aggression around the region, as well as their extensive cyber and information warfare campaign directed at the U.S., England, and others, our Article 5 [NATO] commitment to our European allies and partners is more important than ever." He concludes, "Since the mid-twentieth century, the United States has been a principal world leader -- a standard that should never be changed."

Four national-security candidates add North Korea and Iran to China and Russia as specific targets of American military and diplomatic attack.

Josh Welle , a former naval officer who was deployed to Afghanistan, now running in the Fourth Congressional District of New Jersey, writes, "We have to stand together in the face of threats from countries like North Korea and Iran. The human rights violations and nuclear capabilities of these countries pose a direct threat to the stability of this world and therefore need to be met with strong military presence and a robust defense program to protect ourselves."

Tom Malinowski , former assistant secretary of state for human rights, running in New Jersey's Seventh District, calls for maintaining economic sanctions on Russia "until it stops its aggression in Ukraine and interference in our democracy ," effusively endorses the state of Israel (whose government actually interferes in US elections more than any other), and calls for stepped up sanctions against North Korea.

Mikie Sherill , a former Navy pilot and Russian policy officer, running in New Jersey's 11th District, writes, "I have sat across the table from the Russians, and know that we need our government to take the threat they pose seriously." She adds to this a warning about "threats posed by North Korea and Iran," the two most immediate targets of military-diplomatic blackmail by the Trump administration. She concludes, referring to North Korea's nuclear program, "For that reason I support a robust military presence in the region and a comprehensive missile defense program to defend America, our allies, and our troops abroad."

Dan McCready , an Iraq war unit commander who claims to have been born again when he was baptized in water from the Euphrates River, calls for war to be waged only "with overwhelming firepower," not "sporadically, with no strategy or end in sight, while our enemies like Iran, North Korea, Russia, and the terrorists outsmart and outlast us." He is running in North Carolina's Ninth Congressional District, adjacent to the huge military complex at Fort Bragg.

One military-intelligence candidate cites immigration as a national-security issue, echoing the position of the Trump administration, which constantly peddles scare stories that terrorists are infiltrating the United States disguised as immigrants and refugees. That is Richard Ojeda , running in the Third Congressional District of West Virginia, who publicly boasts of having voted for Trump in 2016, in the same election in which he won a seat in the West Virginia state senate running as a Democrat.

Ojeda writes on his web site, "We must also ensure that terrorists do not reach American soil by abusing our immigration process. We must keep an up to date terror watch list but provide better vetting for those that go onto the watch list."

A career Army Airborne officer, Ojeda voices the full-blown militarism of this social layer. "If there is one thing I am confident in, it is the ability of our nation's military," he declares. "The best way to keep Americans safe is to let our military do their job without muddying up their responsibilities with our political agendas."

He openly rejects control of the military by civilian policy-makers. "War is not a social experiment and I refuse to let politics play a role in my decision making when it comes to keeping you and your family safe," he continues. "I will not take my marching orders from anyone else concerning national security."

Only one of the 30 candidates, Ken Harbaugh , a retired Air Force pilot running in the Seventh Congressional District of Ohio, centered on the industrial city of Canton, acknowledges being part of this larger group. He notes, "In 2018, more vets are running for office than at any moment in my lifetime. Because of the growing inability of Washington to deal responsibly with the threats facing our nation, veterans from both sides of the aisle are stepping into the breach."

Referring to the mounting prospect of war, he writes, "Today, we face our gravest geopolitical challenge since 9/11. Our country remains at war in Afghanistan, we have troops engaged in North Africa, Iraq and Syria, and Russia continues to bully our allies. Meanwhile, North Korea has the ability to directly threaten the American mainland with nuclear missiles." He concludes, "we need leaders with the moral authority to speak on these issues, leaders who have themselves been on the front lines of these challenges."

These statements, taken cumulatively, present a picture of unbridled militarism and aggression as the program of the supposed "opposition" to the Trump administration's own saber-rattling and threats of "fire and fury like the world has never seen."

Perhaps even more remarkable is that the remaining 17 national-security candidates say nothing at all about foreign policy (in 11 cases) or limit themselves to anodyne observations about the necessity to provide adequate health care and other benefits to veterans (two cases), or vague generalities about the need to combine a strong military with diplomatic efforts (four cases). They give no specifics whatsoever.

In other words, while these candidates tout their own records as part of the national-security apparatus as their principal credential for election to Congress, they decline to tell the voters what they would do if they were in charge of American foreign policy.

Given that these 17 include intelligence agents ( Abigail Spanberger and Gina Ortiz Jones ), a National Security Council Iraq war planner ( Andy Kim ), and numerous other high-level State Department and military commanders, the silence can have only the most ominous interpretation.

These CIA Democrats don't want to tell voters about their plans for foreign policy and military intervention because they know these measures are deeply unpopular. They aim to gain office as stealth candidates, unveiling their program of militarism and war only after they take their seats, when they may very well exercise decisive influence in the next Congress.

[Oct 08, 2018] Democrats main constituancy is Wall Street bankers and that creates some problems

Notable quotes:
"... the last two Democratic presidents were centrists in favor of a big tent Democratic Party (the Clintons were co-founders of the Democratic Leadership Council, and Obama considered Joe Lieberman his mentor in the Senate) and they oversaw the collapse of their party in the states and Congress. Centrists are mainly concerned with keeping Wall Street and Silicon Valley happy, and have been purging "old-fashioned" New Deal liberals from the party for the better part of 30 years. ..."
"... It is not the Sandernistas OR the Democratic Socialists of America who are pushing identity politics or demonizing white or religious people (it's the Hillary bots at Daily Kos who go nuts when anyone on the left wing of the party expresses any interest in winning over working class Trump voters, or dares to view said Trump voters as anything but racist deadenders). ..."
Oct 08, 2018 | www.theamericanconservative.com

cka2nd October 6, 2018 at 5:56 pm

Werd "I can't understand their (progressives) tactics. Why push Transgenderism literally 5 seconds after gay marriage got passed?"

Because it keeps the Democratic base from focusing on economic issues inimical to the interests of the Democratic funding elite.

Werd "Why push poor minorities into becoming socialist identitarians instead of being the calm centrist big tent party?"

First, Pelosi and Clinton have made it very clear that they are capitalists, and it's their supporters "identitarian" wave (Daily Kos had an "In defense of Nancy Pelosi" article not that lone ago), not the "socialist" or Sandernista wing of the party. Second, the last two Democratic presidents were centrists in favor of a big tent Democratic Party (the Clintons were co-founders of the Democratic Leadership Council, and Obama considered Joe Lieberman his mentor in the Senate) and they oversaw the collapse of their party in the states and Congress. Centrists are mainly concerned with keeping Wall Street and Silicon Valley happy, and have been purging "old-fashioned" New Deal liberals from the party for the better part of 30 years.

Werd "Why fire up the Republican base literally right before the midterm? Why turn the dude who would've been the next Anthony Kennedy into a far-right gang rapist? The Dems and their media apparatus just keep snatching defeat from the jaws of victory."

Stupidity? Arrogance? To keep their base within the Democratic Party, which is more concerned about cultural issues than economic ones (like a certain part of the GOP coalition), fired up, while demobilizing voters with mainly economic concerns?

Werd "When Susan Collins and Lindsey Graham are calling you insane, you've become insane."

Collins and Graham are hacks, and when it comes to foreign affairs, Graham IS insane (I exaggerate, but only a little). This may be Collins' statesmanship moment (kind of like Democratic hack John Murtha's in 2004 over the Iraq War), but I have my doubts. As one other commentator here said, she was always likely to vote for Kavanaugh after putting on a show of hemming-and-hawing.

Werd "I've never voted for a Republican presidential candidate, had things stayed the same I probably never would. Why not just wait 20 years to admit you want socialism, hate white people and hate religious people?"

It is not the Sandernistas OR the Democratic Socialists of America who are pushing identity politics or demonizing white or religious people (it's the Hillary bots at Daily Kos who go nuts when anyone on the left wing of the party expresses any interest in winning over working class Trump voters, or dares to view said Trump voters as anything but racist deadenders).

Werd "The Blue Dogs really need to make a come back. At the very least, they might do some trust busting and wouldn't make Donald Trump look like the sane one."

Since Fritz Hollings backed protectionism and some of the John Murtha-types voted against NAFTA, when have any Blue Dog Democrats backed trust busting, investigating the banks and brokerage houses that brought us the Great Recession, or backed any economic policy to the left of (or less popular than) raising the minimum wage?

Werd, I think you should investigate the Democrats who actually call themselves socialists. I may not vote for them – too wishy-washy reformist for me – but I think you may actually find them to be surprisingly on your wavelength. It's the "Hillary is TOO just as progressive as Bernie is!" types that you want to avoid.

Siarlys Jenkins , says: October 6, 2018 at 11:48 pm
given the years of pointless investigations of the Clintons and all the nonsense about Obama, aren't we due an investigation or two of our own?

Harve, like all good liberals, wants to grow up to be just like the Republicans. That's how we get progressive presidents leading us into full participation in the Great Imperialist War.

Werd "I can't understand their (progressives) tactics. Why push Transgenderism literally 5 seconds after gay marriage got passed?"

Because it keeps the Democratic base from focusing on economic issues inimical to the interests of the Democratic funding elite.

There it is folks. The plain truth. I keep telling you, only socialism can save America from the liberals.

It might not go away, but a lot of Democrats probably will. We may have to build new prisons to hold them.

Nah. We send Scott Walker to a tropical island for an episode of "Survivor," with that Democratic state senator who was literally in bed with a PayDay Loan lobbyist. (The lobbyist was female, or at least identified as such in public.)

Werd , says: October 6, 2018 at 9:27 am
I can't understand their (progressives) tactics. Why push Transgenderism literally 5 seconds after gay marriage got passed? Why push poor minorities into becoming socialist identitarians instead of being the calm centrist big tent party? Why fire up the Republican base literally right before the midterm? Why turn the dude who would've been the next Anthony Kennedy into a far-right gang rapist? The Dems and their media apparatus just keep snatching defeat from the jaws of victory. When Susan Collins and Lindsey Graham are calling you insane, you've become insane. I've never voted for a Republican presidential candidate, had things stayed the same I probably never would. Why not just wait 20 years to admit you want socialism, hate white people and hate religious people? The Blue Dogs really need to make a come back. At the very least, they might do some trust busting and wouldn't make Donald Trump look like the sane one.
Kurt Gayle , says: October 6, 2018 at 11:18 am
Werd (October 6, 9:27 am) "I can't understand their (progressives) tactics. Why push Transgenderism literally 5 seconds after gay marriage got passed?"

It's important to remember that gay marriage didn't get "passed." Gay marriage arrived nationwide as the result of a 2015 5-4 US Supreme Court decision authored by Justice Anthony Kennedy, who retired from the Court in July.

[Oct 08, 2018] Next month, and probably in 2020, I'll be voting for the Republicans. For all their horrible flaws, they don't claim "illegitimacy" every time they lose, they don't harass people in restaurants or on their front porches as I see on the news the "women's march" activists are doing to Senator Collins this afternoon. If Republicans did this crap, the same people would be weeping about incipient fascism.

Oct 08, 2018 | www.theamericanconservative.com

Jonah R. October 6, 2018 at 3:29 pm

I write this as a very moderate conservative who didn't vote for Trump and who has never been fond of the GOP: Next month, and probably in 2020, I'll be voting for the Republicans. For all their horrible flaws, they don't claim "illegitimacy" every time they lose, they don't harass people in restaurants or on their front porches–as I see on the news the "women's march" activists are doing to Senator Collins this afternoon. If Republicans did this crap, the same people would be weeping about incipient fascism.

The GOP is dreadful. Trump is a buffoon. But I'm tired of 1960s-style activist anarchy, which I consider worse for our national life than Republican directionlessness. I'm voting against the "hey hey, ho ho " Democrats. Enough of this crap.

[Oct 02, 2018] America's two mainstream political parties agree furiously with one another on war, neoliberalism, Orwellian surveillance, and every other agenda which increases the power and profit of the plutocratic class which owns them both by Caitlin Johnstone

Oct 02, 2018 | www.zerohedge.com

America's two mainstream political parties agree furiously with one another on war, neoliberalism, Orwellian surveillance, and every other agenda which increases the power and profit of the plutocratic class which owns them both. The plutocrat-owned mass media plays up the differences between Democrats and Republicans to hysterical proportions, when in reality the debate over which one is worse is like arguing over whether a serial killer's arms or legs are more evil.

[Sep 29, 2018] I am concerned about dysfunction and incivility in American culture and politics

Those are signs of political crisis, not the other way around
Notable quotes:
"... The historical parallel is American social and political polarization in the decades prior to the American Civil War. It is conceivable martial law and military power will resolve the conflict and contradictions not reconciled by rule of law and politics. ..."
Sep 29, 2018 | www.unz.com

bj says: September 29, 2018 at 6:19 pm GMT

I am concerned about dysfunction and incivility in American culture and politics.

The historical parallel is American social and political polarization in the decades prior to the American Civil War. It is conceivable martial law and military power will resolve the conflict and contradictions not reconciled by rule of law and politics.

This topic was raised when Senator Lindsey Graham questioned Judge Brett Kavanaugh in the confirmation hearings.

See YouTube video: Senator Lindsey Graham Questions Brett Kavanaugh Military Law vs Criminal Law.


[Sep 25, 2018] The Black leadership role has now been essentially reduced to making the odd noise after the shooting of an unarmed Black by a White cop

Sep 25, 2018 | www.unz.com

Fiendly Neighbourhood Terrorist , says: Website September 25, 2018 at 11:38 am GMT

@Justsaying Trump's infamous campaign slogan of MAGA quickly mutated into MIGA which is the originally intended version anyways. Obedience to Israel has become a norm in presidential election campaigns. Even the disenfranchised minority caucuses, including and especially the Black one is firmly in Israel's pockets now. The Black leadership role has now been essentially reduced to making the odd noise after the shooting of an unarmed Black by a White cop.

"The Black leadership role has now been essentially reduced to making the odd noise after the shooting of an unarmed Black by a White cop."

As a brown person in Asia I grew up inculcated with the idea that I must always be in solidarity with black people in America and they would be with me (it was the 1970s, Malcolm X was still a fresh memory, Muhammad Ali still strode the scene like a colossus, and Martin Luther King Jr was still thought of as a hero in most circles).

Today, black Americans are people so wallowing in self abnegation that they mass voted for the racist war criminal Killary Clinton, owing to whose actions black people in America were incarcerated in hitherto unknown numbers; due to whose crimes black people in Haiti were looted to destitution; because of whom black people in Libya are literally being sold as slaves. Black Americans parade around saying "black lives matter", but are more than happy voting for war criminals who loot Haitian blacks, enslave Libyan blacks, massacre Somali blacks, deprive Sudanese blacks of life saving drugs, and plot to imperialistically occupy Africa, a continent of black people. Forget about us brown people, to American blacks in 2018, black lives do *not* matter.

Only virtue signalling and tribal identity matters. Nothing else.

Malcolm X would spit on them.

[Sep 18, 2018] Biden proves that corporate Dems are incapable of learning

Notable quotes:
"... A 75-year old insider that dropped out of the race in 2008, after capturing less than 1% of the vote in the Iowa caucus, and who "occupies the sensible center of the Democratic Party." That just screams excitement, does it not? ..."
"... @Timmethy2.0 ..."
Sep 18, 2018 | caucus99percent.com

span y gjohnsit on Mon, 09/17/2018 - 11:17pm

Even an inbred domesticated pet can learn simple tricks, but corporate Democrats...Let's just say that they are further down the evolutionary ladder.
Joe Biden proved that today.

"Despite losing in the courts, and in the court of opinion, these forces of intolerance remain determined to undermine and roll back the progress you all have made," he said. "This time they - not you - have an ally in the White House. This time they have an ally. They're a small percentage of the American people - virulent people, some of them the dregs of society."

At least he didn't say "deplorables." Why do establishment Dems think that insulting a third of the electorate is a good idea? And why are establishment Dems incapable of learning from 2016? Why do they think Biden is the "solution"?

Amid discussion of resistance to Trump, he surprised me with talk of 2020, when he'll turn 78. "I'll run," the vice president deadpanned, "if I can walk." Three days later, he informed the Washington press corps that he wasn't joking.

Biden isn't likely to run, but keeping the door ajar gives him a bigger voice in Democratic Party debates. The one that worries him most is over repositioning to win back Trump voters. He has little patience with Democrats who want to move either left or right. " 'We gotta move to the center,' 'We gotta move to those white guys,' 'We gotta move to those working-class people' or 'We gotta double down on the social agenda.' " It's a false choice, he said: "They are totally compatible. I have never said anything to the A.C.L.U. that I wouldn't say to the Chamber of Commerce."

A 75-year old insider that dropped out of the race in 2008, after capturing less than 1% of the vote in the Iowa caucus, and who "occupies the sensible center of the Democratic Party." That just screams excitement, does it not? /s And yet the establishment continues to try to force Joe Biden down our throats, but their recent effort is more laughable than most.

Former Vice President Joe Biden leads President Donald Trump by 7 percentage points in a head-to-head match-up, according to a new POLITICO/Morning Consult poll.

A plurality of registered voters, 44 percent, said they'd choose Biden in the 2020 presidential election, while 37 percent of voters said they would vote for Trump.

The percentage of Democrats who would choose Biden - 80 percent - was slightly higher than the 78 percent of Republicans who would vote for the president's reelection. The former vice president, who ran for the White House in 1988 and 2008, has been floated as a 2020 contender, and Biden himself has said he's not ruling out a third try.

OK. You following this so far? Creepy Joe is the overwhelming favorite, especially amoung Democrats, right?

span y The Voice In th... on Tue, 09/18/2018 - 10:19am
We should be glad, gjohnsit!

I hope they do run Biden and he falls flat on his face. This will hasten the demise of the Democratic Party and make room in the political spectrum for a truly progressive Party.

Regarding retreads, I see that Bill Daley has thrown his hat into the ring for Boss of All Bosses Mayor of Chicago. Another retread but possibly a baby step up from the odious Rahm Emanuel.

span y gjohnsit on Tue, 09/18/2018 - 11:16am
I couldn't vote for Biden

@Timmethy2.0
He's a good example of everything that is wrong with the Dems. I'd vote 3rd party in a heartbeat.

span y dystopian on Tue, 09/18/2018 - 11:31am
Biden for bidet!

Good post gj. Biden is Mr. Establishement, the epitome of what is wrong with the Dem party. Like Clinton, Bush, Trump, Obama, a master at pretending he is there for you. But not really. He's there for corporate America. You are right they haven't learned a thing. Look at the Hillary Atlantic piece (have barf bag handy).

They are self-righteous at a level the precludes objective reflection or introspection. They are a psychopathic mix of ego, greed, power and war monger. They are meeting Einstein's definition of insanity very well, doing the same thing and expecting a different result. I guess a thousand seat loss is no cause for concern.

Its those low-info dregs, and Russia, and Jill Stein, and promises of ponies. Same people running the ship into the same ground. The same 30% of blind followers will always follow their leaders, no matter what, be it Trumpsters or DemBots.

The independents can decide the election...

[Sep 16, 2018] Polling the Left Agenda -- Finally

Notable quotes:
"... there is strong support for egalitarian populist redistributive public policy. ..."
"... His positions against illegal immigration and free trade also beat Hillary Clinton. Hillary Clinton was a very experienced and savvy politician but she was tied to NAFTA thru her husband. And the Democratic party's defense of allowing ANY foreigner to walk across our borders without ANY sort of background check whatsoever, and remain in the country, was a losing proposition. ..."
"... Labor unions can claw back the "missing 10%" of overall income that a unionless labor market has squeezed out of the bottom 40% of earners; raising the bottom 40% back to 20% income share -- through higher consumer prices at Target, Walgreen's, etc. ..."
"... if fast food can pay $15/hr with 33% (!) labor costs, Target('s consumers) can easily pay $20/hr with 12% labor costs and Walmart('s consumers) can easily pay $25/hr with 7% labor costs. ..."
"... Your description of Republicans is spot on. However, other than their maniacal obsession with divisive identity politics, Democrats are hardly much better given the that they ALSO kowtow to the Wall Street and the wealthy. Neither major party represents working people–it just too bad that working people allow themselves to be forever divided by two corrupt political parties who view them with little but contempt. ..."
"... In other words Dems lost their legitimacy, identify politics did not work this time as well as in the past. I would say that the whole neoliberal elite lost its legitimacy. That's why Russiagate was launched, and Neo-McCarthyism hysteria was launched by Podesta and friends to cement those cracks that divide the USA. ..."
"... The Dem Party became a grab bag of identity groups. But this election the dominant was anti-globalization discourse, and Dems suffered a humiliating defeat. With Republican Party grabbing the the tool they created. The collies of small town America led to collapse of Dems. ..."
"... People do vote against their economic interest ("What the matter with Kansas" situation). But the level of alienation of working and lower middle class is really extreme. The opioid epidemic is just one sign of this. So Trump election was just a middle finger to the neoliberal elite. ..."
"... We actually do not have left in the USA. Because there is no real discussion about neoliberalism and alternatives. Bernie called himself "democratic socialist'. Which was at least in sense transformational. But that's it. Bernie is not anti-war and anti-American empire. ..."
Aug 04, 2018 | angrybearblog.com

As should already be clear from existing polls ( click and search for "fair" ), there is strong support for egalitarian populist redistributive public policy.

At Data For Progress, they chose to emphasize the positive -- four proposals with overwhelming support, but I think it is just as striking that opinion is almost equally split on a top marginal income tax rate of 90% (2% more oppose than support) and universal basic income (2% more oppose than support).

In particular, a (very narrow) plurality of whites without a bachelors degree support a universal basic income. One way to summarize the results is that pundits' guesses about public opinion match the opinions of college educated whites (surprise surprise). That is the group least enthusiastic about universal basic income (by far) (OK I admit I am white and have university degrees so I should say "we are" but like hell i'm going to be classed with my fellow White American College educated opponents of UBI).


JimH , August 2, 2018 9:59 am

"The key question for Democrats (and the USA) is why did most of a group of people more of whom support than oppose UBI vote for Trump ? How can there be such a huge gap between bread and butter big dollar issue polling (where the median US adult is to the left of the mainstream of the Democratic Party) and voting ?"

During the Republican primaries, candidate Trump lost in the polls and won on the ballots. In the run up to the Republican convention, mainstream Republicans were searching for any way to deny the nomination to candidate Trump. (Without ruining the party.)

So candidate Trump was not a traditional mainstream Republican presidential candidate. Candidate Trump espoused most of the mainstream Republican party position. But what separated him from the pack were his positions on illegal immigration and free trade treaties. And Republican voters chose him.

His positions against illegal immigration and free trade also beat Hillary Clinton. Hillary Clinton was a very experienced and savvy politician but she was tied to NAFTA thru her husband. And the Democratic party's defense of allowing ANY foreigner to walk across our borders without ANY sort of background check whatsoever, and remain in the country, was a losing proposition.

Candidate Clinton could have beaten any of the other Republican candidates.

Unbridled immigration into European countries has caused enough problems for the native born citizens that it has become a huge political issue. Angela Merkel successfully oversaw the uniting of east and west Germany. (A triumph!) But on immigration, her reach exceeded her grasp, she completely misunderstood the magnitude of the problem. And she is splitting the European Union.

Politicians in Europe and the United States speak of populism as if it was some sort of new influence. That voters have never been seen to vote their own interests! European and American voters have allowed their politicians almost a free rein for decades. They seemed to assume that the political class knew best. But that period is coming to an end.

Democrats can beat Republican candidates, but first they have to accept that politics is the art of the possible.

Denis Drew , August 2, 2018 10:22 am

There is a practical, doable way to re-institute American labor unions (to German density level) tomorrow.

Labor unions can claw back the "missing 10%" of overall income that a unionless labor market has squeezed out of the bottom 40% of earners; raising the bottom 40% back to 20% income share -- through higher consumer prices at Target, Walgreen's, etc.

No doubt about this: if fast food can pay $15/hr with 33% (!) labor costs, Target('s consumers) can easily pay $20/hr with 12% labor costs and Walmart('s consumers) can easily pay $25/hr with 7% labor costs.

Easy practical way to do this: amend the NLRA to mandate regularly scheduled cert elections at every private workplace (I would suggest one, three or five year cycles; local plurality rules).

Practical because no other way to rebuild American unions. Illegal (effective-penalty free) union busting disease has so permeated our labor market that there is no normal organizing going back. Even if we made union busting a felony, millions of businesspersons across the country could just say: "What are you going to do, put us all in jail?"

Tear a page from the Rebublican's union busting playbook -- skip over organizing -- skip right to elections on a regular basis:

Why Not Hold Union Representation Elections on a Regular Schedule?

Andrew Strom -- November 1st, 2017

"Republicans in Congress have already proposed a bill [Repub amend] that would require a new election in each unionized bargaining unit whenever, through turnover, expansion, or merger, a unit experiences at least 50 percent turnover. While no union would be happy about expending limited resources on regular retention elections, I think it would be hard to turn down a trade that would allow the 93% of workers who are unrepresented to have a chance to opt for unionization on a regular schedule."

https://onlabor.org/why-not-hold-union-representation-elections-on-a-regular-schedule

Wheels within wheels of poetic justice: a Democratic proposed labor market-make-over would corral a lot of blue collar voters (Obama voters, remember?) back into the Democratic win column – so we could pass said amendment in the first place.

Robert Kuttner recently pointed out that Dems can lean left economically as far as they please -- they will only pick up blue collar workers when they lean left economically.
http://prospect.org/article/yes-democrats-need-run-left-on-economics

All said, all you have to realize is that there is no other way back -- do this or do nothing forever.
Stealing a page from Scott Walker's playbook is "the" win-win-win issue.

Karl Kolchak , August 2, 2018 10:35 am

Your description of Republicans is spot on. However, other than their maniacal obsession with divisive identity politics, Democrats are hardly much better given the that they ALSO kowtow to the Wall Street and the wealthy. Neither major party represents working people–it just too bad that working people allow themselves to be forever divided by two corrupt political parties who view them with little but contempt.

EMichael, August 2, 2018 11:11 am

KK,

"To hold President Trump accountable, the Center for American Progress Action Fund's American Worker Project is tracking every action the president takes to weaken job protections for Americans.

Our list includes legislation and orders signed by the president; procedural changes and regulations enacted or proposed by his administration; and official statements of policy, such as the president's proposed budget. The list does not include political nominations and appointments of individuals with records of enacting anti-worker policies, since these actions happened outside their role in the administration."

https://www.americanprogressaction.org/issues/economy/reports/2018/01/26/168366/president-trumps-policies-hurting-american-workers/

There are 36 so far.

urban legend , August 3, 2018 3:47 pm

"Neither major party represents working people–it just too bad that working people allow themselves to be forever divided by two corrupt political parties who view them with little but contempt."

That's the kind of bullshit that allowed Trump to sneak into office. The Democrats may not be your idea of pro-worker or anti-Wall Street, but the difference in voting on bread-and-butter issues between Republicans and Democrats is dramatic. On just one issue, with a Democratic President and a Democratic Congress, there is no doubt we already would have seen a minimum wage to at least $10 per hour. That's not sufficient, but it's almost 40% better than what the Republicans are happy with. Tell a family with two minimum wage workers that an extra $11,000 in their pockets is worthless!

We also would not have seen a Janus decision, because Gorsuch would not be on the Court.

We probably would have already had a public option added to ACA -- at least for people aged 50-64 without employer-provided insurance having the right to buy into Medicare. Consideration of a broader public option for everyone in the exchanges would be on the table, too, with very strong public support (and, therefore, likely passage).

That's just three issues. This pox-on-both-your houses is truly toxic. It's uninformed. Yes, it's deplorable.

likbez , August 4, 2018 12:30 am

"Neither major party represents working people–it just too bad that working people allow themselves to be forever divided by two corrupt political parties who view them with little but contempt."

That's the kind of bullshit that allowed Trump to sneak into office. The Democrats may not be your idea of pro-worker or anti-Wall Street, but the difference in voting on bread-and-butter issues between Republicans and Democrats is dramatic

This line of thinking is well known as "What the matter with Kansas" line. It is true that "That's allowed Trump to sneak into office."

But you ignored the fact that Democratic Party entered a profound crisis (aka "demexit" similar to Brexit) from which they still are unable to escape. Clinton ideas that workers do not have alternative and will vote for peanuts Dems are willing to give them stop working.

In other words Dems lost their legitimacy, identify politics did not work this time as well as in the past. I would say that the whole neoliberal elite lost its legitimacy. That's why Russiagate was launched, and Neo-McCarthyism hysteria was launched by Podesta and friends to cement those cracks that divide the USA.

The Dem Party became a grab bag of identity groups. But this election the dominant was anti-globalization discourse, and Dems suffered a humiliating defeat. With Republican Party grabbing the the tool they created. The collies of small town America led to collapse of Dems.

People do vote against their economic interest ("What the matter with Kansas" situation). But the level of alienation of working and lower middle class is really extreme. The opioid epidemic is just one sign of this. So Trump election was just a middle finger to the neoliberal elite.

We actually do not have left in the USA. Because there is no real discussion about neoliberalism and alternatives. Bernie called himself "democratic socialist'. Which was at least in sense transformational. But that's it. Bernie is not anti-war and anti-American empire.

Hillary was a traditional neocon warmonger, defender of the empire in foreign policy and corrupt to the core, greedy politician in domestic policy (in the pocket of Wall Street and special interests).

As somebody noted here:

The term Progressive is now so mutilated that it's no longer effective as an identifier of political affiliation. To be a real Progressive: one must be Anti-War, except in the most dire of circumstances, which includes being Anti-Imperialist/Anti-Empire; 2nd, one must be Pro-Justice as in promoting Rule of Law over all else; 3rd, one must be tolerant and willing to listen to others; and 4th, work for Win-Win outcomes and denounce Zero-sum as the smoke screen for increasing inequality.

[Sep 12, 2018] If You Read This Book, It'll Make You a Radical A Conversation with Thomas Frank by John Siman

Notable quotes:
"... "Let us linger over the perversity," he writes in "Why Millions of Ordinary Americans Support Donald Trump," one of the seventeen component essays in Rendezvous with Oblivion : "Let us linger over the perversity. Left parties the world over were founded to advance the fortunes of working people. But our left party in America -- one of our two monopoly parties -- chose long ago to turn its back on these people's concerns, making itself instead into the tribune of the enlightened professional class, a 'creative class' that makes innovative things like derivative securities and smartphone apps ..."
"... And the real bad news is not that this Creative Class, this Expert Class, this Meritocratic Class, this Professional Class -- this Liberal Class, with all its techno-ecstasy and virtue-questing and unleashing of innovation -- is so deeply narcissistic and hypocritical, but rather that it is so self-interestedly parasitical and predatory. ..."
Sep 11, 2018 | www.nakedcapitalism.com

Thomas Frank's new collection of essays: Rendezvous with Oblivion: Reports from a Sinking Society (Metropolitan Books 2018) and Listen, Liberal; or,Whatever Happened to the Party of the People? (ibid. 2016)

To hang out with Thomas Frank for a couple of hours is to be reminded that, going back to 1607, say, or to 1620, for a period of about three hundred and fifty years, the most archetypal of American characters was, arguably, the hard-working, earnest, self-controlled, dependable white Protestant guy, last presented without irony a generation or two -- or three -- ago in the television personas of men like Ward Cleaver and Mister Rogers.

Thomas Frank, who grew up in Kansas and earned his Ph.D. at the University of Chicago, who at age 53 has the vibe of a happy eager college nerd, not only glows with authentic Midwestern Nice (and sometimes his face turns red when he laughs, which is often), he actually lives in suburbia, just outside of D.C., in Bethesda, where, he told me, he takes pleasure in mowing the lawn and doing some auto repair and fixing dinner for his wife and two children. (Until I met him, I had always assumed it was impossible for a serious intellectual to live in suburbia and stay sane, but Thomas Frank has proven me quite wrong on this.)

Frank is sincerely worried about the possibility of offending friends and acquaintances by the topics he chooses to write about. He told me that he was a B oy Scout back in Kansas, but didn't make Eagle. He told me that he was perhaps a little too harsh on Hillary Clinton in his brilliantly perspicacious "Liberal Gilt [ sic ]" chapter at the end of Listen, Liberal . His piercing insight into and fascination with the moral rot and the hypocrisy that lies in the American soul brings, well, Nathaniel Hawthorne to mind, yet he refuses to say anything (and I tried so hard to bait him!) mean about anyone, no matter how culpable he or she is in the ongoing dissolving and crumbling and sinking -- all his metaphors -- of our society. And with such metaphors Frank describes the "one essential story" he is telling in Rendezvous with Oblivion : "This is what a society looks like when the glue that holds it together starts to dissolve. This is the way ordinary citizens react when they learn that the structure beneath them is crumbling. And this is the thrill that pulses through the veins of the well-to-do when they discover that there is no longer any limit on their power to accumulate" ( Thomas Frank in NYC on book tour https://youtu.be/DBNthCKtc1Y ).

And I believe that Frank's self-restraint, his refusal to indulge in bitter satire even as he parses our every national lie, makes him unique as social critic. "You will notice," he writes in the introduction to Rendezvous with Oblivion, "that I describe [these disasters] with a certain amount of levity. I do that because that's the only way to confront the issues of our time without sinking into debilitating gloom" (p. 8). And so rather than succumbing to an existential nausea, Frank descends into the abyss with a dependable flashlight and a ca. 1956 sitcom-dad chuckle.

"Let us linger over the perversity," he writes in "Why Millions of Ordinary Americans Support Donald Trump," one of the seventeen component essays in Rendezvous with Oblivion : "Let us linger over the perversity. Left parties the world over were founded to advance the fortunes of working people. But our left party in America -- one of our two monopoly parties -- chose long ago to turn its back on these people's concerns, making itself instead into the tribune of the enlightened professional class, a 'creative class' that makes innovative things like derivative securities and smartphone apps " (p. 178).

And it is his analysis of this "Creative Class" -- he usually refers to it as the "Liberal Class" and sometimes as the "Meritocratic Class" in Listen, Liberal (while Barbara Ehrenreich uses the term " Professional Managerial Class ,"and Matthew Stewart recently published an article entitled "The 9.9 Percent Is the New American Aristocracy" in the Atlantic ) -- that makes it clear that Frank's work is a continuation of the profound sociological critique that goes back to Thorstein Veblen's Theory of the Leisure Class (1899) and, more recently, to Christopher Lasch's The Revolt of the Elites (1994).

Unlike Veblen and Lasch, however, Frank is able to deliver the harshest news without any hauteur or irascibility, but rather with a deftness and tranquillity of mind, for he is both in and of the Creative Class; he abides among those afflicted by the epidemic which he diagnoses: "Today we live in a world of predatory bankers, predatory educators, even predatory health care providers, all of them out for themselves . Liberalism itself has changed to accommodate its new constituents' technocratic views. Today, liberalism is the philosophy not of the sons of toil but of the 'knowledge economy' and, specifically, of the knowledge economy's winners: the Silicon Valley chieftains, the big university systems, and the Wall Street titans who gave so much to Barack Obama's 2008 campaign . They are a 'learning class' that truly gets the power of education. They are a 'creative class' that naturally rebels against fakeness and conformity. They are an ' innovation class ' that just can't stop coming up with awesome new stuff" ( Listen, Liberal , pp. 27-29).

And the real bad news is not that this Creative Class, this Expert Class, this Meritocratic Class, this Professional Class -- this Liberal Class, with all its techno-ecstasy and virtue-questing and unleashing of innovation -- is so deeply narcissistic and hypocritical, but rather that it is so self-interestedly parasitical and predatory.

The class that now runs the so-called Party of the People is impoverishing the people; the genius value-creators at Amazon and Google and Uber are Robber Barons, although, one must grant, hipper, cooler, and oh so much more innovative than their historical predecessors. "In reality," Frank writes in Listen, Liberal ,

.there is little new about this stuff except the software, the convenience, and the spying. Each of the innovations I have mentioned merely updates or digitizes some business strategy that Americans learned long ago to be wary of. Amazon updates the practices of Wal-Mart, for example, while Google has dusted off corporate behavior from the days of the Robber Barons. What Uber does has been compared to the every-man-for-himself hiring procedures of the pre-union shipping docks . Together, as Robert Reich has written, all these developments are 'the logical culmination of a process that began thirty years ago when corporations began turning over full-time jobs to temporary workers, independent contractors, free-lancers, and consultants.' This is atavism, not innovation . And if we keep going in this direction, it will one day reduce all of us to day laborers, standing around like the guys outside the local hardware store, hoping for work. (p. 215).

And who gets this message? The YouTube patriot/comedian Jimmy Dore, Chicago-born, ex-Catholic, son of a cop, does for one. "If you read this b ook, " Dore said while interviewing Frank back in January of 2017, "it'll make y ou a radical" (Frank Interview Part 4 https://youtu.be/JONbGkQaq8Q ).

But to what extent, on the other hand, is Frank being actively excluded from our elite media outlets? He's certainly not on TV or radio or in print as much as he used to be. So is he a prophet without honor in his own country? Frank, of course, is too self-restrained to speculate about the motives of these Creative Class decision-makers and influencers. "But it is ironic and worth mentioning," he told me, "that most of my writing for the last few years has been in a British publication, The Guardian and (in translation) in Le Monde Diplomatique . The way to put it, I think, is to describe me as an ex-pundit."

Frank was, nevertheless, happy to tell me in vivid detail about how his most fundamental observation about America, viz. that the Party of the People has become hostile to the people , was for years effectively discredited in the Creative Class media -- among the bien-pensants , that is -- and about what he learned from their denialism.

JS: Going all the way back to your 2004 book What's the Matter with Kansas? -- I just looked at Larry Bartels's attack on it, "What's the Matter with What's the Matter with Kansas?" -- and I saw that his first objection to your book was, Well, Thomas Frank says the working class is alienated from the Democrats, but I have the math to show that that's false. How out of touch does that sound now?

TCF: [laughs merrily] I know.

JS: I remember at the time that was considered a serious objection to your thesis.

TCF: Yeah. Well, he was a professor at Princeton. And he had numbers. So it looked real. And I actually wrote a response to that in which I pointed out that there were other statistical ways of looking at it, and he had chosen the one that makes his point.

JS: Well, what did Mark Twain say?

TCF: Mark Twain?

JS: There are lies, damned lies --

TCF: [laughs merrily] -- and statistics! Yeah. Well, anyhow, Bartels's take became the common sense of the highly educated -- there needs to be a term for these people by the way, in France they're called the bien-pensants -- the "right-thinking," the people who read The Atlantic, The New York Times op-ed page, The Washington Post op-ed page, and who all agree with each other on everything -- there's this tight little circle of unanimity. And they all agreed that Bartels was right about that, and that was a costly mistake. For example, Paul Krugman, a guy whom I admire in a lot of ways, he referenced this four or five times. He agreed with it . No, the Democrats are not losing the white working class outside the South -- they were not going over to the Republicans. The suggestion was that there is nothing to worry about. Yes. And there were people saying this right up to the 2016 election. But it was a mistake.

JS: I remember being perplexed at the time. I had thought you had written this brilliant book, and you weren't being taken seriously -- because somebody at Princeton had run some software -- as if that had proven you wrong.

TCF: Yeah, that's correct . That was a very widespread take on it. And Bartels was incorrect, and I am right, and [laughs merrily] that's that.

JS: So do you think Russiagate is a way of saying, Oh no no no no, Hillary didn't really lose?

TCF: Well, she did win the popular vote -- but there's a whole set of pathologies out there right now that all stem from Hillary Denialism. And I don't want to say that Russiagate is one of them, because we don't know the answer to that yet.

JS: Um, ok.

TCF: Well, there are all kinds of questionable reactions to 2016 out there, and what they all have in common is the faith that Democrats did nothing wrong. For example, this same circle of the bien-pensants have decided that the only acceptable explanation for Trump's victory is the racism of his supporters. Racism can be the only explanation for the behavior of Trump voters. But that just seems odd to me because, while it's true of course that there's lots of racism in this country, and while Trump is clearly a bigot and clearly won the bigot vote, racism is just one of several factors that went into what happened in 2016. Those who focus on this as the only possible answer are implying that all Trump voters are irredeemable, lost forever.

And it comes back to the same point that was made by all those people who denied what was happening with the white working class, which is: The Democratic Party needs to do nothing differently . All the post-election arguments come back to this same point. So a couple years ago they were saying about the white working class -- we don't have to worry about them -- they're not leaving the Democratic Party, they're totally loyal, especially in the northern states, or whatever the hell it was. And now they say, well, Those people are racists, and therefore they're lost to us forever. What is the common theme of these two arguments? It's always that there's nothing the Democratic Party needs to do differently. First, you haven't lost them; now you have lost them and they're irretrievable: Either way -- you see what I'm getting at? -- you don't have to do anything differently to win them.

JS: Yes, I do.

TCF: The argument in What's the Matter with Kansas? was that this is a long-term process, the movement of the white working class away from the Democratic Party. This has been going on for a long time. It begins in the '60s, and the response of the Democrats by and large has been to mock those people, deride those people, and to move away from organized labor, to move away from class issues -- working class issues -- and so their response has been to make this situation worse, and it gets worse, and it gets worse, and it gets worse, and it gets worse! And there's really no excuse for them not seeing it. But they say, believe, rationalize, you know, come up with anything that gets then off the hook for this, that allows them to ignore this change. Anything. They will say or believe whatever it takes.

JS: Yes.

TCF: By the way, these are the smartest people! These are tenured professors at Ivy League institutions, these are people with Nobel Prizes, people with foundation grants, people with, you know, chairs at prestigious universities, people who work at our most prestigious media outlets -- that's who's wrong about all this stuff.

JS: [quoting the title of David Halberstam's 1972 book, an excerpt from which Frank uses as an epigraph for Listen, Liberal ] The best and the brightest!

TCF: [laughing merrily] Exactly. Isn't it fascinating?

JS: But this gets to the irony of the thing. [locates highlighted passage in book] I'm going to ask you one of the questions you ask in Rendezvous with Oblivion: "Why are worshippers of competence so often incompetent?" (p. 165). That's a huge question.

TCF: That's one of the big mysteries. Look. Take a step back. I had met Barack Obama. He was a professor at the University of Chicago, and I'd been a student there. And he was super smart. Anyhow, I met him and was really impressed by him. All the liberals in Hyde Park -- that's the neighborhood we lived in -- loved him, and I was one of them, and I loved him too. And I was so happy when he got elected.

Anyhow, I knew one thing he would do for sure, and that is he would end the reign of cronyism and incompetence that marked the Bush administration and before them the Reagan administration. These were administrations that actively promoted incompetent people. And I knew Obama wouldn't do that, and I knew Obama would bring in the smartest people, and he'd get the best economists. Remember, when he got elected we were in the pit of the crisis -- we were at this terrible moment -- and here comes exactly the right man to solve the problem. He did exactly what I just described: He brought in [pause] Larry Summers, the former president of Harvard, considered the greatest economist of his generation -- and, you know, go down the list: He had Nobel Prize winners, he had people who'd won genius grants, he had The Best and the Brightest . And they didn't really deal with the problem. They let the Wall Street perpetrators off the hook -- in a catastrophic way, I would argue. They come up with a health care system that was half-baked. Anyhow, the question becomes -- after watching the great disappointments of the Obama years -- the question becomes: Why did government-by-expert fail?

JS: So how did this happen? Why?

TCF: The answer is understanding experts not as individual geniuses but as members of a class . This is the great missing link in all of our talk about expertise. Experts aren't just experts: They are members of a class. And they act like a class. They have loyalty to one another; they have a disdain for others, people who aren't like them, who they perceive as being lower than them, and there's this whole hierarchy of status that they are at the pinnacle of.

And once you understand this, then everything falls into place! So why did they let the Wall Street bankers off the hook? Because these people were them. These people are their peers. Why did they refuse to do what obviously needed to be done with the health care system? Because they didn't want to do that to their friends in Big Pharma. Why didn't Obama get tough with Google and Facebook? They obviously have this kind of scary monopoly power that we haven't seen in a long time. Instead, he brought them into the White House, he identified with them. Again, it's the same thing. Once you understand this, you say: Wait a minute -- so the Democratic Party is a vehicle of this particular social class! It all makes sense. And all of a sudden all of these screw-ups make sense. And, you know, all of their rhetoric makes sense. And the way they treat working class people makes sense. And they way they treat so many other demographic groups makes sense -- all of the old-time elements of the Democratic Party: unions, minorities, et cetera. They all get to ride in back. It's the professionals -- you know, the professional class -- that sits up front and has its hands on the steering wheel.

* * *

It is, given Frank's persona, not surprising that he is able to conclude Listen, Liberal with a certain hopefulness, and so let me end by quoting some of his final words:

What I saw in Kansas eleven years ago is now everywhere . It is time to face the obvious: that the direction the Democrats have chosen to follow for the last few decades has been a failure for both the nation and for their own partisan health . The Democrats posture as the 'party of the people' even as they dedicate themselves ever more resolutely to serving and glorifying the professional class. Worse: they combine self-righteousness and class privilege in a way that Americans find stomach-turning . The Democrats have no interest in reforming themselves in a more egalitarian way . What we can do is strip away the Democrats' precious sense of their own moral probity -- to make liberals live without the comforting knowledge that righteousness is always on their side . Once that smooth, seamless sense of liberal virtue has been cracked, anything becomes possible. (pp. 256-257).

[Sep 07, 2018] Left, Right, and Dead Center by Andrew Levine

Notable quotes:
"... When the center does fail to hold, it is usually in periods of political and perhaps also social upheaval. In those conditions, centrist parties, along with the constituencies they represent, often radicalize – generally merging into the side that wins the day. ..."
"... The jury is still out on how effective Trump's verbal assaults on the institutions that regulate global trade will be. No matter what Trump says, tweets, or thinks, those institutions were fashioned to work to America's advantage, and still generally do. Evidently, though, they do not conform well enough to his or his base's understanding of American "greatness"; thus they have become imperiled. ..."
"... It wasn't always so, but nowadays, almost without exception, Democrats occupy left or center positions on that spectrum; Republicans line up on its right. In a relational sense, the center is replete with Democrats; the left not so much. Centrist Republicans, long a vanishing breed, are, by now, as rare as snowstorms in July. ..."
"... In this respect, the United States is an exceptional case. There are few, if any, liberal democratic regimes in modern capitalist states in which notionally leftwing political forces have played such a negligible role. ..."
"... s was evident in the Clinton campaign's efforts to fight back the Sanders insurgency in 2016, it has forged robust political machines in the process. Their ability to mobilize voters on behalf of mainstream Democratic candidates has been disappointing however; what they have been mainly good at is tamping down radical dissent. ..."
"... Thus conditions are now in place for a revival of Left politics at the electoral level. This frightens the party's leaders. They and the pundits who serve them speak of unity. But is plain as can be that they are determined to quash whatever they cannot turn to their own advantage. Corporate media's role in this endeavor is crucial. They are already hard at work – pushing the all-too-familiar line that the way to win, especially in "red" states and districts, is to occupy the (relational) center. ..."
"... That center in today's Democratic Party is a dead center; it is where progressive impulses go to die. And, like a vampire on a mission, that dead center is gearing up for a fight – against those who would challenge the Democratic Party from the left. Witness the weeklong spectacle that accompanied the departure of John McCain from the land of the living. What a nauseating display of veneration for a man supremely unworthy, and of nostalgia for the good old (actually bad old) pre-Trump days! ..."
Sep 07, 2018 | www.counterpunch.org

When the center does fail to hold, it is usually in periods of political and perhaps also social upheaval. In those conditions, centrist parties, along with the constituencies they represent, often radicalize – generally merging into the side that wins the day.

Thus it is mainly in situations in which the regime itself is undergoing fundamental transformations that the center is depleted of its former occupants. In time, though, a new mainstream is constituted, and its center again becomes the point on the left/right continuum where the majority of positions and policies in play at the time cluster.

***

To everyone living through it, it feels as if the Trump presidency has turned the political scene topsy-turvy. This is what happens when there is an imbecilic president whose governing style is a low-grade imitation of a mob boss's.

The fact is, though, that the Trump presidency, destructive as it has been, has changed a good deal less than meets the eye. The foundations of the regime remain the same as before; fundamental neoliberal economic structures remain intact, and the perpetual war regime that went into overdrive after 9/11 continues to flourish.

The jury is still out on how effective Trump's verbal assaults on the institutions that regulate global trade will be. No matter what Trump says, tweets, or thinks, those institutions were fashioned to work to America's advantage, and still generally do. Evidently, though, they do not conform well enough to his or his base's understanding of American "greatness"; thus they have become imperiled.

What is disturbingly clear is that for all but the filthy rich, and especially for anyone not white as the driven snow, life in Trump's America has taken a turn for the worse.

Trump has been a godsend for "white nationalists," the current euphemism for nativists and racists. He has legitimated them and their views to an extent that no one would have imagined just a few years ago.

Also, to the detriment of the health and well being of the vast majority of Americans, Trump and his minions have done serious harm to America's feeble welfare state institutions.

And even this is not the main reason why there will be hell to pay when the next economic downturn happens, as it inevitably will, more likely sooner than later. By giving Wall Street free rein again, and by cutting taxes for the rich, depleting the treasury of financial resources that could be put to use in a crisis, Trump has all but guaranteed that most Americans will soon find themselves in straits as bad or worse than ten years ago.

Worst of all, by watering down or setting aside the weak but nevertheless indispensible environmental regulations in place before their arrival on the scene, Trump has hastened the day when the world will be hit with, and perhaps be undone by, grave, possibly irreparable, ecological catastrophes.

There are many other lesser harms for which, directly or indirectly, Trump is responsible. This is all serious stuff, but while they make life worse for many people and shift the political spectrum to the right, they do not shake the foundations of the regime in a way that puts the center in jeopardy -- at least not yet.

In short, what we are living through is not a Trumpian "revolution," not even in the "Reagan Revolution" sense, but a degeneration of much of what is worth preserving in the old regime. Trump didn't start the process, but he has come to dominate it, and his mindless and mean spirited antics accelerate it.

***

If "left," "right," and "center" are understood in relational terms, American politics plainly does have a left, right, and center. These designations overlay the deeply entrenched, semi-established duopoly party system that structures the American political scene.

It wasn't always so, but nowadays, almost without exception, Democrats occupy left or center positions on that spectrum; Republicans line up on its right. In a relational sense, the center is replete with Democrats; the left not so much. Centrist Republicans, long a vanishing breed, are, by now, as rare as snowstorms in July.

Understood notionally, where "left," "right," and "center" designate positions on an historically evolving, widely understood, ideal political spectrum, the situation is much the same, but with a major difference: there is hardly any left at all.

There have always been plenty of (notional) leftists in the United States, but there has never been much of an intersection between the left of the political spectrum, understood relationally, and anything resembling a notional Left.

In this respect, the United States is an exceptional case. There are few, if any, liberal democratic regimes in modern capitalist states in which notionally leftwing political forces have played such a negligible role.

This unfortunate state of affairs has become worse in recent decades under the aegis of (notionally) center-right Democrats like the Clintons and their co-thinkers. Thanks to them, the Democratic Party today is a (notionally) centrist party through and through.

They succeeded as well as they did partly because our party system stifles progressive politics more effectively than it is stifled in other ways in other liberal democracies.

The duopoly is still going strong, but, even so, times change. Largely thanks to Trump, there are now inklings of a notional Left in formation that stands a chance of avoiding marginalization.

Thus Democrats all along the (relational) spectrum now consider themselves embattled, challenged from the Left by anti-Trump militants. Many of the challengers come from under-represented, Democratic-leaning constituencies – the young, women, and "persons of color" – with traditionally low levels of political participation. In view of the abundant, well meaning but generally toothless "diversity" blather for which Democrats are notorious, this is delightfully ironic.

The challengers include African Americans, of course, but also people drawn from sectors of the population that Trump has targeted and demeaned with particular malice -- Hispanics and Muslims especially.

The Democratic Party has been actively courting – and colonizing – African American and other subaltern constituencies for a long time. A s was evident in the Clinton campaign's efforts to fight back the Sanders insurgency in 2016, it has forged robust political machines in the process. Their ability to mobilize voters on behalf of mainstream Democratic candidates has been disappointing however; what they have been mainly good at is tamping down radical dissent.

But because race and ethnicity intersect with age and gender – and because, in the final analysis, "it's the politics, stupid" -- many of the African Americans, Hispanics, Muslims and others now being drawn into the electoral fold will likely not be as amenable to being coopted by Democratic Party grandees as persons who "look like them" have been in the past. The danger of cooptation remains formidable, but it is almost certainly surmountable if the will to resist the pressure is strong.

Thus conditions are now in place for a revival of Left politics at the electoral level. This frightens the party's leaders. They and the pundits who serve them speak of unity. But is plain as can be that they are determined to quash whatever they cannot turn to their own advantage. Corporate media's role in this endeavor is crucial. They are already hard at work – pushing the all-too-familiar line that the way to win, especially in "red" states and districts, is to occupy the (relational) center.

In this context, "red," of course, doesn't mean red; it means almost the opposite, Republican. Only in America!

... ... ...

What passes for a "resistance" in liberal or "democratic socialist" circles nowadays is a pale approximation of the genuine article. This is not just because the spirit of rebellion has been bred out of us or because of any failure of imagination; it is because in the circumstances that currently obtain, resistance, like "revolution," even in the anodyne "Our Revolution" sense, just isn't on the agenda.

But there is something now that can and should be resisted by any and all appropriate means – the illusion that the way to defeat Trump and Trumpism and, more generally, to advance progressive causes, is to tack to the relational center.

That center in today's Democratic Party is a dead center; it is where progressive impulses go to die. And, like a vampire on a mission, that dead center is gearing up for a fight – against those who would challenge the Democratic Party from the left. Witness the weeklong spectacle that accompanied the departure of John McCain from the land of the living. What a nauseating display of veneration for a man supremely unworthy, and of nostalgia for the good old (actually bad old) pre-Trump days!

How pathetic! The whole country's, not just the Democratic Party's, left, right, and center – minus Donald Trump, of course -- heaping praise on a Navy pilot who, heeding McCain family traditions and the call of Lyndon Johnson, killed a lot of Vietnamese peasants for no defensible reason, before becoming a "hero" after the Vietnamese shot his plane down, and who, after repatriation, embarked on a legislative career in which, despite a few "maverick" exceptions, he promoted every retrograde Republican cause that arose, war mongered vociferously at every opportunity, and did all he could, even before Hillary Clinton took a notion, to get the Cold War revved up again.

They were all there, every rotten one of them -- from Barack Obama and Joe Biden and, their brother-in-arms, George W. Bush, the man who, but for Trump, could now boast of being the worst president in modern times, all the way to the decrepit Henry Kissinger, the never to be indicted war criminal whom liberals have learned to stop loathing and to call upon for advice instead.

Even that malevolent airhead couple Jarvanka showed up, invited, it seems, by Senator Lindsey Graham, McCain's hapless sidekick. This was no popular front. It was a festival of the dead Center, a blight on the political landscape, and, with Trump sucking up all the air, a harbinger of things to come.

Resist that!

[Sep 07, 2018] You elect Clinton she will go onto be a pig at the trough of the military industrial complex. You elect trump he will go onto be a pig at the trough of the military industrial complex

Sep 07, 2018 | politics.slashdot.org

Anonymous Coward , Friday September 07, 2018 @11:07AM ( #57269142 )

only after clinton stole from Bernie ( Score: 1 )

Either way its THE SYSTEM that's at fault. EITHER ONE WAS DESTINED TO BE THE WORST PRESIDENT OF THE USA.

You elect Clinton she will go onto be a pig at the trough of the military industrial complex. You elect trump he will go onto be a pig at the trough of the military industrial complex.

Russia is unimportant to the outcome of the election. Mountains of collusion with Cambridge Analytics, Israel, Oligarchs in the USA like Robert Mercer. Facebook is subservient to the US military industrial complex now anyway, a few meme's here and there don't swing an election its utter bulls**t.

Then that empirically pales in comparison to a president (Obama) that did nothing for the middle class except destroy it with junk economics after the GFC in 2008. Lethargic voters who voted obama 2 times and got nothing didnt bother to turn up on election day there's the empirical cause effect of trump winning.

DNS-and-BIND ( 461968 ) , Friday September 07, 2018 @11:13AM ( #57269180 ) Homepage
Hillary wanted a no-fly zone over Syria ( Score: 2 )

Remember the debates? Hillary was firm in wanting a no-fly zone in Syria. This would have led to direct conflict between USAF and Russian AF. It could have easily broken out into a big shooting war. Heck, I get the idea that a lot of people in DC (the unelected government, so-called deep state) would have greatly desired that. World War II hero and former U.S. Sen. Daniel Inouye (D-Hawaii) once observed, in a different context: "There exists a shadowy government with ... its own fundraising mechanism." [danielkino...titute.org]

Also remember, just before the inauguration, that US armored brigade landed and the jokes wrote themselves? Obama just sent tanks into Poland, that sort of thing. They then traveled to the Russian border? That was Hillary's big stick. Plant a bunch of troops near them and then start shit in Syria. But she wasn't elected, and they just did some training and then left. Peace broke out instead.

TimMD909 ( 260285 ) , Friday September 07, 2018 @11:13AM ( #57269184 ) Homepage
2 years later... ( Score: 3 , Insightful)

... And there's still a ridiculous amount of derangement. Hilldog was a bad candidate who few outside the neocons liked. She was caught meddling in her own party's process to boot Bernie. She tried pretending that destroying evidence on her personal email server was an innocent mistake. Worst of all, she pretended to be a saint when she is definitely not. That wolf in sheeps clothing never sat well with me. Look up Hitchens thoughts on her for more things to be unsettled about. Now 2 years later, uncountable hours have gone into trying to shift the blame. When will the Dems admit it was a mistake to have her as the candidate?

grasshoppa ( 657393 ) writes: < {skennedy} {at} {tpno-co.org} > on Friday September 07, 2018 @12:38PM ( #57269866 ) Homepage
What weakened Clinton? ( Score: 1 )

Was anything released incorrect? Were the emails false, for instance? Was her insulting a sizable portion of the country Russia's doing? Was Russia behind her corrupting the DNC primary process?

Is Russia's biggest crime, in fact, that it did the job the media might have done in past generations? Today's media was all about helping Clinton to the presidency by almost any means necessary, and let me tell you; ironically that hurt Clinton more than it helped.

Trump just happened to be in the right place at the right time, with the right attitude to get the job ( loud, amoral and full of shit ).

[Sep 01, 2018] ZERO CHOICE OFFERED TO VOTERS DURING US PRESIDENTIAL ELECTIONS

Notable quotes:
"... "The Russia Hoax Theme Got Started As a Dirty Trick by Hillary's 2016 Campaign ..."
"... "The seed was planted and significant parts of the American voting public noticed, particularly those who believed that Hillary Clinton had the God-given right to take control of the Oval Office. One way or another, Team Hillary was going to cram the Russian narrative down our collective throats." ..."
Sep 01, 2018 | chuckmanwordsincomments.wordpress.com

John Chuckman

COMMENT POSTED TO AN ARTICLE IN RUSSIA INSIDER

"The Russia Hoax Theme Got Started As a Dirty Trick by Hillary's 2016 Campaign

"The seed was planted and significant parts of the American voting public noticed, particularly those who believed that Hillary Clinton had the God-given right to take control of the Oval Office. One way or another, Team Hillary was going to cram the Russian narrative down our collective throats."

No question, the woman fits the description "evil," but that sure doesn't make Trump a saint by comparison.

America's tragedy – one shared by the entire world – is that this is the kind of choice American voters get, a Hillary Clinton or a Donald Trump.

No matter who wins or loses each American presidential election, the people in general lose and the establishment wins.

And right now, the American establishment likes and embraces the Clinton nonsense about Russia. It serves its current purposes. Actually, it wasn't truly Clinton's own nonsense. She was definitely feeding off a pre-existing set of attitudes in her Washington set.

So, it is more threatening than just a residual from an election campaign.

[Aug 27, 2018] Superficial differences between Dems and Republicans begs the question -- who is (and has been since the 1940s) setting US policy? If we, the voters, cannot alter or change our national policies, then democratic oversight of the Republic is nothing but a sham

Aug 27, 2018 | www.unz.com

Spanky , says: June 8, 2018 at 6:04 pm GMT

Sorry Mike, what do you mean by saying the goal is to "create a center-right" Democratic Party? The Clinton's accomplished this in the 1990s -- what we have here is a full scale enfoldment of the Dems into the National Security State

Not that it matters much -- both Republicans and Democrats have been on the same page for a few decades now (since the 1940s IMHO). Inter-party politics don't matter much, except insofar as the voting public can be conned into supporting one or the other, because no matter which party holds the Congress or Presidency the same Deep State agenda is their top priority.

Why? It's simple really -- money. Big campaign donors expect "value" in return for their "political contributions". And if value isn't had for their money, the Deep State's intelligence community can usually dig up something "useful" in the offender's background to "persuade" him or her to support the current bipartisan agenda

If it's really true that to find out who has power, just take note of whom is above criticism, perhaps we ought to consider that Rockefeller and JPMorgan money founded the CFR in 1921 and it took root and bloomed in government "service" during and after WWII.

If you doubt the CFR's power as the Deep State personified, I suggest reading historian Quigley's Tragedy and Hope: A History of the World in Our Time and sociologist Tom Dye's Who Is Running America series.

Paraphrasing Quigley, writing when Bill Clinton was his student at Georgetown, the two parties should be as alike as two sides of a coin so that voters can "throw the rascals out" in any election without significantly changing governmental priorities and policies because the policies the US is and ought be pursuing are not subject to significant dispute (or at the least not by the voting public).

Which begs the question -- who is (and has been since the 1940s) setting US policy? If we, the voters, cannot alter or change our national policies, then democratic oversight of the Republic is nothing but a sham. The US is, in this view, just another Banana Republic which Tom Dye ably documents from Watergate to Shrub's administration.

exiled off mainstreet , says: June 9, 2018 at 4:36 am GMT

The two party "uniparty" is alive and well. In fact, while the party's supporters still may include self- described "leftists" the party itself has gone further right than the traditionally rightwing GOP. The dual party structure relies on the "Democrats" to gut "entitlements", that is Social Security or Medicare.

It was the "Democrats" who put in Obamacare, which mandated people to spend an arm and a leg on crappy medical insurance the cost of which was massively inflated which they could only use when they had spent way more than average on medical bills. Meanwhile it was the democrats' harpy candidate who proposed a no-fly zone in Syria on behalf of raghead mercenaries hired by the yankee imperium.

While Trump has largely caved in to the deep state, in part perhaps because of the pressure applied by the phony deep state witch hunt taking over the "justice" department of the yankee regime, we know what the democrats, exponents of the fraudulent "Russia-gate" stories, now espouse: a new cold war far more dangerous than the old one.

Meanwhile, the commercial media in the US and satellite countries, has degenerated into a Goebbels-like propaganda apparat. Trump's clumsiness actually may have the accidental salutary effect of enabling the satellite countries to slip the yankee leash, at least to some extent.

The situation brought about by this unprecedented two faction version of fascism is profoundly depressing, in addition to being seriously dangerous.

Harbinger , says: June 9, 2018 at 12:52 pm GMT

Why is this article entitled: "Dems Put Finishing Touches on One-Party 'Surveillance Superstate'"
This website seems to have articles that show their authors are awake and yet, this article shows quite the opposite. Who today, with the slightest modicum of common sense, who has made the effort in understanding how the system works, still plays the left-right paradigm, Hegelian Dialectic, political game nonsense?
I mean, let's get real here; the Democrats and the Republicans, like their UK counterparts of Labour and Conservative are merely wings on the same bird, ultimately flying to a destination. Both parties are taking the USA towards a one-party, surveillance, super state. You do not enter American politics unless you bow to Zionism and International Jewry. Unless you show 100% support to Israel then forget a career in politics.

Incidentally, to many who may have heard of her; the new luvey of the conservatives is none other than black, Candace Owens, who is better known as Red Pill Black. She has been this new voice who has entered into the 'alternative right', itself nothing more than controlled opposition, speaking out against feminism, white privilege, rape culture, transgender culture etc etc and has gained a large following. Other than being a complete fraud, as information has appeared that she tried to launch a 'doxing' website, targeting youngsters, she has appeared at the opening of the American Embassy in Jerusalem:

https://www.bizpacreview.com/2018/05/14/candace-owens-not-a-single-elected-democrat-is-here-to-celebrate-this-historic-event-in-jerusalem-634472

Why on earth, would some nobody, who has had an incredibly fast rise on YouTube (most certainly her subscriber base and video view has been doctored) and more so a black conservative, be invited to attend the opening of the American embassy in Jerusalem? Bottom line? She's being groomed for a career in politics and I wouldn't be surprised if they wheel her out, some time in the future, as a presidential hopeful to capture the black vote in the USA.
Again, this is controlled opposition.

You never vote in a new party in politics. You vote out the old one. 326 million is the population of the USA and there are only two political parties? Are you serious? It's bad enough, here in the UK with three (liberal party along with Labour and Conservative), with a 66 million population but only two in the USA?

Both parties are heavily controlled.
The Council on Foreign Relations (CFR) has been putting presidents into power now for over a hundred years. The CFR is the sister organization of the Royal Institute for International Affairs, which has been doing the same, here in the UK for the same time. All politicians are groomed from an early age, taught how to avoid answering any question directly, how to lie and of course who their masters are. By implementing their wishes, politicians are then granted a seat on some board, within some multi conglomerate, a six figure salary, a fat pension on top of their political one and of course umpteen houses spread across wherever. Blair and Obama epitomize this.

Both political parties are left wing, hiding under the right wing and classic liberal monikers.

[Aug 27, 2018] Jimmy Dore rightly states they are CIA funded campaigns of Dems candidates

Notable quotes:
"... Democrats are proceeding down a dark path: identity politics brings only conflict, civil war. ..."
"... Anybody who trusts the Democrats to save us from the evil machinations of the Neocons is as hopelessly stupid as anyone who trusts the Neocons to save us from the evil machinations of the Democrats. ..."
"... These new Democrats will never vote for less spending. There previous career was based on having abundant and in some cases unlimited Federal funds at their fingertips. ..."
Aug 27, 2018 | www.unz.com

Carlton Meyer , says: Website June 8, 2018 at 4:15 am GMT

Jimmy Dore covered this topic a few weeks ago. He rightly states they are CIA funded campaigns.

Eagle Eye , says: June 8, 2018 at 5:03 am GMT

Would it have killed you to link to the WSWS.org pieces you quote from at some length?

Patrick Martin's piece is here: http://www.wsws.org/en/articles/2018/06/07/prim-j07.html

Ron Unz has linked to WSWS.org several times in the past as WSWS was targeted by the Deep State/Google etc. cabal to make it disappear into the "memory hole."

Mishra , says: June 8, 2018 at 5:55 am GMT
@SunBakedSuburb

The only activism I've seen from progressives in the past two years has nothing to do with economic concerns; their energy is entirely focused on race, gender, and sexuality. The cultural-Marxist troika.

Just one of many good point you make. The only thing I'd add is in relation to:

Democrats are proceeding down a dark path: identity politics brings only conflict, civil war.

As Reg mentions: conflict among the masses is very much the plan. Divide et impera.

Biff , says: June 8, 2018 at 7:21 am GMT

And my stupid [neo]liberal friends still think the democrats are going to save them, and then on to super – duper – special stupid, they think their vote for a democrat is going to have an impact. On to ludicrous stupid – it's all the republicans fault. Identity politics at its finest.

Unfixable, and circling the drain.

The Alarmist, June 8, 2018 at 11:03 am GMT • 100 Words

"Center-right" and "business oriented?"

Try Oligarch-centric.

There is a story, perhaps apocryphal, from the fall of Constantinople: Sultan Mehmed II rounded up the surviving oligarchs of the Empire and asked them why they had withheld their riches and resources from supporting the Empire's final defense against his conquest, to which the oligarchs replied that they were saving their riches for his most excellent majesty. He had them brutally executed.

Jake, June 8, 2018 at 11:13 am GMT

Anybody who trusts the Democrats to save us from the evil machinations of the Neocons is as hopelessly stupid as anyone who trusts the Neocons to save us from the evil machinations of the Democrats.

DESERT FOX, June 8, 2018 at 1:06 pm GMT

At the upper levels there is no difference between the Demonrats and the Republicons as all are controlled by the Zionists and congress would by more accurately called the lower house of the Knesset..

prusmc, June 8, 2018 at 1:18 pm GMT • 100 Words

@anon

These new Democrats will never vote for less spending. There previous career was based on having abundant and in some cases unlimited Federal funds at their fingertips.

It is a mistake to think they will be any different than Maxine Waters, Sheila Jackson Lee, Jerold Nadler or Luis Guitirez. Senator Joe Manchin of West Virginia is about a unconventional as we can expect the new congressional majority members to be.

jacques sheete, June 8, 2018 at 1:44 pm GMT

@Anon
The ultra rich use the poor to attack the middle so they can distract everyone else from uniting

That, in fact, is the practical aim of government in general. Parties, schmarties it's all one huge extortion racket.

[Aug 25, 2018] Democrats Strip Superdelegates of Voting Power

Aug 25, 2018 | therealnews.com

The Democrats' progressive wing claimed victory on Saturday after 'Superdelegates' lost the ability to vote on the first ballot of the party's nomination process

[Aug 23, 2018] What The Party 'Strategists' Say Is Not What The Voters Want

Degeneration os social democratic parties into soft neoliberals is a world wide tendency. That spell troubles for them as they lost their key constituency. The level of corruption within the party elite is staggering (exemplified by Clintons and Obama). The "Democratic" Party is completely captured by FIRE (Finance, Insurance, Real Estate)
If this assessment has some connection to reality Dems will be unable to improve their position during the US mid-term elections.
At the same time idea that "proletariat" is capable organizing resistance and winning th election enforcing favorable for them changes proved to be wrong. Most positive changes of the New Deal/fair Deal were forced concessions in face of the possibility of open armed revolt. Now with the dissolution of the USSR this possibility is discounted by the ruling neoliberal elite.
Also we face the end of "cheap oil" and that means that standard of living of working class will continue to deteriorate.
The future is really grim...
Notable quotes:
"... Most social-democratic parties in Europe have the same problem the U.S. Democrats have. The party establishments angle for the ever elusive 'liberal' center. ..."
"... This phenomenon is the micro version of a much larger trend. [neo]Liberal globalization, as promoted by the party 'elites', promises but does not deliver what the real people need and want. [neo]Liberal globalization turned out to be a class war in which only the rich can win. A revolt, locally on the level of voters, and globally on the level of nations, is underway to regain a different view. ..."
"... Wages rise when companies have to compete for workers. Immigration increases the available work force. A political program that supports both does not compute. ..."
"... Neither LGBTXYZ identity policies nor other aloof 'liberal values' will increase the income of the poor. To win back the necessary masses the Democrats and social-democrats in Europe will have to shun, or at least de-emphasize such parts of their program. It's a class war. The rich are winning. Fight. ..."
"... your last sentence is right on target. It's been a class war for many decades. Most of the Dems have been playing "good cop, bad cop" for many years now. They talk progressive, but in the end they opt for the rich man's money. ..."
"... At present, the oligarchs own everything in the U$A. Giant corporate interests own the Govt., the Media, & the voting systems. No matter the good intentions of a few, if the people don't hear it or see it, it never happened. ..."
"... "The progressive Democrats...." Uh-oh! No such thing. "Working people understand this and in 2016 many of them voted for Trump." God...German working people also understand this and voted for Hitler or, rather for the Nazis. ..."
"... I think Marx call it "Dictatorship of the bourgeoisie" ..."
"... The western fiat faction requires perpetually increasing inputs of capital, commodities and labor - labor population must increase or the debt ponzi falls. Thus, as long as we have declining birthrates in the West, immigration will continue regardless of what the peasants want... ..."
"... I agree that it is a class war, but it is one we have already lost. We are at the end of the oil era, yet our financial economic system requires perpetual growth, how do you think this will work out? (It won't) ..."
"... The "Democratic" party is completely captured by its FIRE (Finance, Insurance, Real Estate) funders on Wall Street and the corporate class. The DNC crowd will stick to their losing guns election after election while not offering any benefits to working people ..."
"... Were it not for the purposefully restricted structure of the two party systems where voters bounce between two awful parties before giving up altogether, the Democratic party would have fully collapsed long ago. ..."
"... Remember: the donors don't care if the Republicans or Democrats win, as long as their agenda prevails. And most Democrats and most Republican politicians don't care about their party either, as long as they can retire and get put on the boards of big corporations and cash in etc. ..."
"... Big Money and the Political Machines it built within the USA became prominent soon after its Civil War. Those plus the oligarchical controls built into the USA's governmental organization ensured that Commonfolk would have a very difficult time trying to govern themselves and promote their own interests. ..."
"... By WW2's end, the foundation for Keynesian Militarism and its in-built [monies get redistributed upward, not downward, automatically] Class War was laid along with the basis for Big Money's recapture of government. ..."
"... Essentially, tax dollars are spent on weapons and munitions and the manufacturer endowed with excess profits which are then plowed back into the political system through campaign contributions--politico buying--which in turn further corrupts the system. ..."
"... until we get beyond predatory finance, we are all essentially screwed.. ..."
"... US Health care, despised by everyone in the U.S: doctors, nurses, patients and pharmacists, is not the only thing that needs reform. How we select and elect those who allegedly represent us is unacceptable. Private money is more important than humanity and no one can guarantee that those elected actually won. ..."
"... What's happening now in the USA is no longer democracy or capitalism at all. It's military plutocracy. The elections and voting process are a sham and certainly have been since G.W. Bush "won" the election vs Al Gore. Strangely, last year's showdown between Killary and Trump was probably the first live election in a while where the establishment didn't get their (wo)man. Killary seemed to scare a few powerful people - she'd spent too much time in Washington, was too ruthless and had too many of her own people in institutions or available as ANTIFA brownshirts. She failed a few final interviews and some key establishment players switched sides, allowing Trump a last minute real shot at the ring. ..."
"... Only by setting us at each other's throats can the establishment maintain its place for another decade or two. It seems they are prepared to take this risk ..."
"... Marx and then the Soviet Union scared the capitalists at the start of the twentieth century. National Socialism scared them even more. The Western Establishment have built a system and a plan to put off the revolution. How long can they hold us under? This is the fascinating question which The Hunger Games set out to answer. ..."
"... the Democrats, and similar "liberal" movements in Europe, Canada, etc, know exactly what they're doing, which is simply what the donors want. It's not about the strategists, and it's not about winning elections either--at least not in the first place. ..."
"... In case anybody didn't hear it Warren Buffet some time back came out with: "There is a class war and we have won it." ..."
"... Psychohistorian's stress on the importance of private finance is of course correct but it is just part of an imperial equation where finance + military = empire or vice versa. ..."
"... For a century and a half, the primary purpose of the Democratic Party has been to crush leftist/socialist movements. Eugene Debs knew this a century ago. The SDS knew this 1/2 century ago. Bernie Sanders knew this until 2016. ..."
"... Hudson's first magnum opus was SuperImperialism , but please get the updated version as the first is somewhat dated. ..."
"... Clearly, the US military is used by this "loose affiliation of millionaires and billionaires" to enforce their will on those who foolishly believe their governments should serve their own citizens. But it is not the US, or even primarily the 0.01% of the US who are calling the shots. The PTSB have no allegiance to any nation-state (with one glaring exception). But they use nationalism to divide the 99% of the world into bite-sized, easily edible pieces. ..."
"... Yes exactly, a class war. Basically elites vs the rest of us. Maybe 10% of non elites go along for the ride and puck up some crumbs. Another 20% do alright for a time until they get replaced by cheaper and younger and struggle to survive to reach social security without losing their home due to medical bankruptcy. ..."
"... So long as both parties go along with the neoliberal imperialistic agenda there will be rewards, even for the minority party. Best to be a minority party with plenty of funding than one without funding ..."
"... Real median incomes are much lower than the early 70's when adjusted with the pre-1980 CPI. CPI post 1980 has been adjusted to mask the impact of neoliberalism and enhance it by lowering COLA's and keeping money cheap to fuel asset inflation which does not impact the new CPI as much ..."
Aug 23, 2018 | www.moonofalabama.org
What The Party 'Strategists' Say Is Not What The Voters Want

Q: Why did the Democrats lose the Senate, House and presidency as well as more than a thousand state government positions?

A: They listened to their 'strategists', not to their voters.

Here is what the strategists currently say:

Staying out of the single-payer debate, party strategists say, could help Democrats in the general election, when they'll have to appeal to moderates skeptical of government-run health care. Earlier this year, the DCCC warned candidates about embracing single payer, hoping to avoid Republican attacks on "socialized" medicine.

Why is "socialized" medicine supposed to be a bad thing? Why not defend it? It is what the voters want :


Reuters/Ipsos poll - June/July 2018 - bigger

The 'strategists' say the voters can not have the nice stuff they want. Their arguments lost the elections. If the Democrats want to win again their must tell their voters to demand more nice stuff. Some people get that :

Progressive insurgents believe Clinton's defeat, on top of losing control of Congress and most state governments, proved them right. They aspire to overthrow conventional wisdom that Democrats must stay safely in the middle to compete.

" Democrats have been fixated for 20 years on this elusive, independent, mythical middle of the road voter that did not exist ," said Crystal Rhoades, head of the Democratic Party in Nebraska's Douglas County, where a progressive candidate, Kara Eastman, is trying to wrest a competitive congressional district from a Republican.

"We're going to try bold ideas."

Most social-democratic parties in Europe have the same problem the U.S. Democrats have. The party establishments angle for the ever elusive 'liberal' center. They move the parties further to the right and lose their natural constituencies, the working class. This gives rise to (sometimes fascist) 'populists' (see Trump) and to an ever growing share of people who reject the established system and do not vote at all.

This phenomenon is the micro version of a much larger trend. [neo]Liberal globalization, as promoted by the party 'elites', promises but does not deliver what the real people need and want. [neo]Liberal globalization turned out to be a class war in which only the rich can win. A revolt, locally on the level of voters, and globally on the level of nations, is underway to regain a different view.

Alastair Crooke recently outlined the larger trend within a global, 'metaphysical' perspective.

The progressive Democrats who are pushing for single payer healthcare still miss out on other issues. They also support higher wages, but are, at the same time, against restrictions on immigration. Wages rise when companies have to compete for workers. Immigration increases the available work force. A political program that supports both does not compute.

Working people understand this and in 2016 many of them voted for Trump. Neither LGBTXYZ identity policies nor other aloof 'liberal values' will increase the income of the poor. To win back the necessary masses the Democrats and social-democrats in Europe will have to shun, or at least de-emphasize such parts of their program. It's a class war. The rich are winning. Fight.


fastfreddy , Aug 23, 2018 2:54:27 PM | 1

Corporations and their lobbyists pay big money to influence both parties to ignore the will of the proletariat in favor of the one percent. If the candidate does not deliver the goods to his rich benefactors, he will lose his funding.

Therefore, a candidate can talk a populist game, but if he tries to implement anything of value to the proles, he will be ousted as quickly as possible.

In this way, For the money, the Democratic Party that championed the working man (to a degree) helped the Republicans to sabotage Labor Unions.

Now the D party is a champion of LGTBQ.

Could be difficult to win back the blue collar working man.

ben , Aug 23, 2018 3:01:06 PM | 2
Thanks b, your last sentence is right on target. It's been a class war for many decades. Most of the Dems have been playing "good cop, bad cop" for many years now. They talk progressive, but in the end they opt for the rich man's money.

At present, the oligarchs own everything in the U$A. Giant corporate interests own the Govt., the Media, & the voting systems. No matter the good intentions of a few, if the people don't hear it or see it, it never happened.

It'll take torches and pitchforks to make a change, and, I just don't see that happening until we hit rock bottom.

partizan , Aug 23, 2018 3:15:20 PM | 4
"The progressive Democrats...." Uh-oh! No such thing. "Working people understand this and in 2016 many of them voted for Trump." God...German working people also understand this and voted for Hitler or, rather for the Nazis.

Without a true labor party all the narrative that you mentioned is taking place within capitalist's class, i.e. State Ideological Apparatus.

I think Marx call it "Dictatorship of the bourgeoisie"

ben , Aug 23, 2018 3:19:54 PM | 6
P.S.--Even with massive voter turn-out this Nov., we have no way of knowing what the real vote is, since our voting systems have never been vetted. The machines are privately owned by corporations, and they refuse vetting on grounds that their systems are proprietary information. No problem huh? Except for this..

https://www.newscientist.com/article/2142428-hacking-a-us-electronic-voting-booth-takes-less-than-90-minutes/

Paper ballots, counted by hand in full view of the public, might change things. Works for Canada.

partizan , Aug 23, 2018 3:22:43 PM | 7
"Immigration increases the available work force."

It does also increase "race to the bottom" wages, i.e. reserve army of labour force - Precariat.'

rico , Aug 23, 2018 3:27:31 PM | 8

The western fiat faction requires perpetually increasing inputs of capital, commodities and labor - labor population must increase or the debt ponzi falls. Thus, as long as we have declining birthrates in the West, immigration will continue regardless of what the peasants want...

I agree that it is a class war, but it is one we have already lost. We are at the end of the oil era, yet our financial economic system requires perpetual growth, how do you think this will work out? (It won't)

People should be thinking of how they are going to keep their children from starving in a couple of years, the rest is just noise...

worldblee , Aug 23, 2018 4:01:40 PM | 9
The "Democratic" party is completely captured by its FIRE (Finance, Insurance, Real Estate) funders on Wall Street and the corporate class. The DNC crowd will stick to their losing guns election after election while not offering any benefits to working people.

Further, they would rather continue to lose elections than adapting to the will of the people -- hence their ridiculous focus on Russiagate and other phantoms rather than offering real programs of substance that would attract voters.

Were it not for the purposefully restricted structure of the two party systems where voters bounce between two awful parties before giving up altogether, the Democratic party would have fully collapsed long ago.

RayB , Aug 23, 2018 4:14:06 PM | 10
@ rico...

The capitalist migration policy intentions are not just to have.. "Immigration increase the available work force", but rather to saturate the labour market. That way they keep the cost of labour down by having more people compete for the jobs than there are available thus bringing the labour costs down. This leads to the kinds of ethnic ghetto's wherein rampant unemployment for the vast majority is a way of life, which in turn fosters non integration into the country's larger society and hence we get what you are referring to as some."living off of freebies in their own 'no-go' Shari law enclaves"

Solution? STOP bombing other countries back into the stone age, creating millions of destitute refugees and after that, simply regulate immigration according to the available jobs and workforce a country can reasonably accommodate and thereby successfully integrate any newcomers from other lands.

TG , Aug 23, 2018 4:37:55 PM | 11
Well said! A few minor points:

Q: Why did the Democrats lose the Senate, House and presidency as well as more than a thousand state government positions?

A: They listened to their DONORS, not to their voters.

Remember: the donors don't care if the Republicans or Democrats win, as long as their agenda prevails. And most Democrats and most Republican politicians don't care about their party either, as long as they can retire and get put on the boards of big corporations and cash in etc.

"The progressive Democrats who are pushing for single payer healthcare still miss out on other issues. They also support higher wages, but are, at the same time, against restrictions on immigration." Kudos to you for pointing out the obvious. Be careful though, this kind of talk can easily get you labelled as a racist, a fascist, as "literally Hitler" and Vladimir Putin's homosexual lover.

Bottom line: the Democrats give lip service to supporting higher wages, but in reality they support low wages, hence their opposition to moderating the rate of immigration.

karlof1 , Aug 23, 2018 4:41:54 PM | 12
My last reply on the previous thread serves well as a beginning comment here:

"IMO, too many assets that elevate/enhance one's life experiences need to be made into publicly owned utilities, social media communication platforms being one as I explained above. If the Outlaw US Empire's people can finally get universal healthcare for all enacted, then other realms of the for-profit arena can be targeted as a tsunami-sized political wave is building that will make such changes possible provided the insurrection's sustained for decades to forestall the forces of Reaction. It's really the only political direction capable of making America great for the first time in its history--Being a Great Nation contains a moral aspect the USA has never attained and is nowhere near close to attaining anytime soon."

The Class War's been raging for centuries--millennia actually. But as Michael Hudson notes at the end of his autobiographical interview, something deliberate was done to alter the course of political-economy:

"[Marx] showed that capitalism itself is revolutionary, capitalism itself is driving forward, and of course he expected it to lead toward socialism, as indeed it seemed to be doing in the nineteenth century.

But it's not working out that way. Everything changed in World War One."

( I highly suggest reading the rest of that passage .)

Elsewhere Hudson has shown Marx expected the contradictions within Capitalism to spawn its antithesis--Socialism--in a natural, evolutionary manner; but, clearly, the forces of Reaction stepped in to arrest that path as Kolko illustrated in his Triumph of Conservatism .

However, popular ideas within societies forwarding the evolution to socialism needed to be constrained and harnessed -- the populism of the late 19th Century couldn't be allowed to resurface as it was the #1 threat to elite control. And so began The Great Reaction as soon as WW1 ended.

Unfortunately, Capitalism's contradictions arose to temporarily derail the Counter-Revolution as the Great Depression ushered in a return of dynamic Populism within Europe and especially the USA. WW2 provided a golden opportunity to finally crush dynamic Populism once and for all as the forces of Reaction emerged from their closets within FDR's administration and tools were forged to enable societal control, which included the newly emerging forms of mass communication and indoctrination.

Big Money and the Political Machines it built within the USA became prominent soon after its Civil War. Those plus the oligarchical controls built into the USA's governmental organization ensured that Commonfolk would have a very difficult time trying to govern themselves and promote their own interests.

The changes made to the system after the very nearly won success of the Progressive Populists greatly aided the forces of Reaction as did the imposition of Prohibition and the Red Scare--Populist successes were a mixed bag during the 1930s as very reactionary laws were also introduced--The House Un-American Activities Committee in 1938 and The Smith Act in 1940.

By WW2's end, the foundation for Keynesian Militarism and its in-built [monies get redistributed upward, not downward, automatically] Class War was laid along with the basis for Big Money's recapture of government.

Essentially, tax dollars are spent on weapons and munitions and the manufacturer endowed with excess profits which are then plowed back into the political system through campaign contributions--politico buying--which in turn further corrupts the system.

It's been ongoing since 1938--80 years--and must be excised from the body politic if the Outlaw US Empire is ever to go straight and become a law abiding global citizen amongst the community of nations.

mdroy , Aug 23, 2018 4:45:53 PM | 13
Part of a world wide Trend. Populism is too simplistic, there are better analyses.

In Europe Somewhere vs Anywhere is a great way to show what is happening, and I'm pretty sure it is the same in US. Good book too.
http://t2.gstatic.com/images?q=tbn:ANd9GcQCM_Y4H2wEd1tjl3mLg2_xKNrzPiI2eO9c02O11-pzwfpqABUX

There should be plenty of summaries all over the internet but briefly.

Somewhere:

  • Think local, not global
  • Economic liberal (high taxes, generous health views)
  • Socially conservative (not very pro LBGTX, anti immigration)
  • Less likely to be University educated
  • Have done poorly in last 35 years of growth but widening inequality
  • Anti-establishment
  • Are roughly 60% of population - and the biggest voting block

Anywhere:

  • Think global,
  • Economic conservative (low taxes, anti-redistribution)
  • Socially liberal (pro LBGTX, believe "our values" means something)
  • Probably University educated
  • Have done very well in last 35 years of growth and think they deserved it all
  • Pro-establishment
  • Are roughly 25% of population - and completely dominate the media

A lot have worked out that this new segmentation has overtaken traditional politics. But David Goodhart explains it all so well in his book.

Ed in Kanata , Aug 23, 2018 5:01:26 PM | 14
All the countries with single payer health systems have a small military. I live in Canada and when military spending is broached the people always want the money to be spent on health care. I personally doubt that the NATO countries will actually drastically increase there defense budgets against the voters wishes. No western country outside the USA feels threatened so why spend more on defense?

It is up to the American people to make similar choices when they vote.

james , Aug 23, 2018 5:04:35 PM | 15
thanks b.. the whole political system as it presently stands in the west is not working.. it is one step up from the system in places like Saudi Arabia and etc... i go back to psychohistorians main view that until we get beyond predatory finance, we are all essentially screwed..

folks talk immigration but in the forest industry here on the westcoast of canada, machines have replaced workers.. This is just one example.. robots and etc. etc. are working towards the same end.. a corp that can get a robot or machine to do something will go that way based on long term costs. None of the political parties i know of are addressing the impact of technology on job opportunities.. In fact they are all cheer leaders for technology while talking of growing the economy and etc. etc...

So we just keep ''growing the population'' while skipping over addressing the private finances elephant in the room.. at some point the world is going to have to change or not survive.. the political class here in Canada is abysmal.. it seems like it is much the same everywhere in the land of democracy too, where corporations and private interests with money are calling the shots.. plutocracy is what i think they call it..

karlof1 , Aug 23, 2018 5:14:25 PM | 16
I read this article then discovered b had written a similar one based on the same polling results. But is the long-denied desire within the Outlaw US Empire for universal healthcare an actual revolt against what b describes as "liberal globalization"?

What I see is a global revolt against the Outlaw US Empire's gross illegalities and immoral hegemony which also contains an ideological battle with nations embracing Win-Winism while rejecting Zerosumism, which can also be interpreted as rejection of the Millenia-long Class War.

Globalization continues on, actually increasing its velocity through the twin Eurasian projects--BRI & EAEU. IMO, the Eurasian projects have the potential to force Capitalism to finally evolve into Socialism, which is what Winwinism embodies.

CDWaller , Aug 23, 2018 5:26:31 PM | 17
Today's middle is yesterday's right. Party strategists are reflecting the views of their pay masters. Both parties dial for the same dollars. Those dollars come from billionaires who what to protect their wealth and power. Both parties parties parties reflect this sad reality.

US Health care, despised by everyone in the U.S: doctors, nurses, patients and pharmacists, is not the only thing that needs reform. How we select and elect those who allegedly represent us is unacceptable. Private money is more important than humanity and no one can guarantee that those elected actually won.

Spike , Aug 23, 2018 5:30:25 PM | 18
The assertion that immigration (in the U.S., at least) is keeping wages low needs to be questioned. The immigrants from south of the border by and large do the work that no one else wants to do. Unemployment is low, and relatively good paying jobs in less popular geographical areas are not getting filled.

Wages are low because the forces of regulation making them higher have been weakened, and unionization has declined. It has to be questioned whether the individual worker has ever had bargaining power over wages.

It's been the collective power of governmental action and union action that has worked for the benefit of higher wages.

Uncoy , Aug 23, 2018 5:40:26 PM | 20
Thank you for your comment, Karlof. Deep comments like your and those of Paveway and a few others are what make the comment section an occasional joy to read.

What's happening now in the USA is no longer democracy or capitalism at all. It's military plutocracy. The elections and voting process are a sham and certainly have been since G.W. Bush "won" the election vs Al Gore. Strangely, last year's showdown between Killary and Trump was probably the first live election in a while where the establishment didn't get their (wo)man. Killary seemed to scare a few powerful people - she'd spent too much time in Washington, was too ruthless and had too many of her own people in institutions or available as ANTIFA brownshirts. She failed a few final interviews and some key establishment players switched sides, allowing Trump a last minute real shot at the ring.

People all over the Western world have woken up to diminishing incomes, higher bills (education/medicine/utilities - all of which you can't avoid if you have children) and much worse employment opportunities even for the very motivated but only modestly capable (if you have 110 IQ or lower and didn't grow up inside a business household, your chances going into business for yourself are very low and you are likely to just dig yourself or your family a deeper hole). This is not what the people were promised during the last five elections (whether in the USA, UK, Canada, Australia or France). The game is up.

Only by setting us at each other's throats can the establishment maintain its place for another decade or two. It seems they are prepared to take this risk. The Hunger Games were a surprise huge world wide hit (the films are rather boring and not particularly well made, despite a good performance in the lead role).

The close similarity between that dystopia and what we live now with NFL football (literally knocks the brains out of your skull, may cause sane people to commit suicide or murder their wife and children ) or even Premier League Football or Tour de France where the contestants even now are mad roiders, compromising both personal integrity and long term health in pursuit of yellow vest.

Marx and then the Soviet Union scared the capitalists at the start of the twentieth century. National Socialism scared them even more. The Western Establishment have built a system and a plan to put off the revolution. How long can they hold us under? This is the fascinating question which The Hunger Games set out to answer.

... ... ...

peter , Aug 23, 2018 5:58:09 PM | 21
Hey, I worked In Canada For CN on the running trades for 37 years. I'm 65 plus so CCP and Old Age pension both kick in on top of my CN pension which leaves me able to indulge in all my bad habits.

I lease a new car every four years and my Buick Regal turbo goes back this January. I live in an upscale apartment with all the amenities I've been sick lately but have been receiving excellent healthcare. You don't get bills. Nada.

I'm a senior and my meds have been costing $4.11 per prescription. So you'll have to excuse me if up I'm not up for a revolution right now.

How 'bout you james? You ready to take to the streets?

Fidelios Automata , Aug 23, 2018 6:04:26 PM | 22
Even as one who opposes single-payer health care (all monopolies cause problems, be they private or public) I have to agree with b in principle. The rich are doing to us now what they did to Russia in the 1990's. We of the working class don't deserve to have our interests protected because we're "deplorables."
Tannenhouser , Aug 23, 2018 6:04:45 PM | 23
Ben@6. You must not have voted in Canada lately. Last two votes at provincial and federal levels had votes counted by machines. In Ontario any ways.
Ma Laoshi , Aug 23, 2018 6:12:19 PM | 24
Oh please; we've had EIGHT years of earnest-sounding, well-intentioned advice to Obama to do the right, progressive thing. As if he ever needed it; the Democrats, and similar "liberal" movements in Europe, Canada, etc, know exactly what they're doing, which is simply what the donors want. It's not about the strategists, and it's not about winning elections either--at least not in the first place.

Continuing to pay attention to this zombie party only supports it; when it's burned to the ground, that's when you may be having an impact.

james , Aug 23, 2018 6:16:11 PM | 25
@12 karlof1... thanks for the link to the autobiography on Michael Hudson. i really enjoyed reading about him and didn't realize all that he has done over the course of his life. it motivates me to read one of his books.. thanks.

@13 mdroy... that also looks like a good book.. thanks..

@21 peter.. i think the question is this: when's it all going to come crashing down? i think uncoy is right.. it is coming down sometime within mine or the younger generations lifetime.. young folks view things very differently then you... the fall will force many to alter their present day view and drop with the smug attitude that seems so pervasive with those who think they have it all..

Lochearn , Aug 23, 2018 6:47:49 PM | 26
A fascinating topic tonight and so much to ponder on with so many thoughtful comments. In case anybody didn't hear it Warren Buffet some time back came out with: "There is a class war and we have won it."

b. references Crooke's article. The poor folks over at zerohedge were hopelessly lost when the article was put up there; some of them got very angry when concepts such as the enlightenment celestially orbited way beyond their limited spheres. Maybe it stank of culture or gay paintings or something. Who knows. But maybe they had a point.

Rather than the enlightenment I see the creation of empires as the starting point - at which the English excelled. What the English did was to literally sacrifice their pawns (pawns = peons = peasants) for the greater game when they kicked their peasantry off the land in the enclosure movement (they always think up a nice word for a disgusting deed). Scientific methods began to be employed on the new larger farms sufficient to feed a burgeoning industrial proletariat. But it was this one revolutionary act that kickstarted the British-US empire that has ruled us for so long.

Psychohistorian's stress on the importance of private finance is of course correct but it is just part of an imperial equation where finance + military = empire or vice versa.

Jen , Aug 23, 2018 6:55:03 PM | 27
I am inclined to agree with Spike @ 18 that immigration by itself does not keep wages low. In Australia (where I live), unemployment is low in comparison with other countries.

There are sectors where more workers are needed: more nurses are needed and more primary and secondary school teachers are needed. English-speaking countries in particular are short of medical and nursing staff to the extent that they are drawing (poaching?) such people away from Asian and African countries that need these people.

At the same time young people who might consider careers in nursing and medicine are dissuaded by the cost of pursuing degrees as universities increasingly rely more on charging on students for university education as government funding dries up.

Yet registered nurses earn an average annual pay of about A$65,000. Lower level nurses earn less. Average annual income in Australia (as of 2nd quarter of 2018) is about $82,000.

In Australia, wages growth has not kept pace with the cost of living since the 1980s when the unions struck an accord with the then Labor government under Bob Hawke. The result is that households have turned to credit cards to finance spending. Most households as a result carry large amounts of debt and have very little savings. At the same time, we have had steady if not very large levels of immigration.

Daniel , Aug 23, 2018 7:08:20 PM | 29
For a century and a half, the primary purpose of the Democratic Party has been to crush leftist/socialist movements. Eugene Debs knew this a century ago. The SDS knew this 1/2 century ago. Bernie Sanders knew this until 2016.

Faux Newz's "Fox and Friends" did a survey after the Koch Brothers funded "study" of Bernie's Medicare For All plan. Going on the misleading figure, they asked "Is Medicare For All worth the $32 Trillion it will cost?"

73% said YES!

All up and down, policies which we'd label "progressive" or even "socialist" are widely popular with USAmericans. From ending these wars to cutting military spending to increasing taxes on the rich and corporations to tuition free public education through college or trade schools, and on and on.

Right now, Sanders is still the most popular politician in the US by a country mile. Were he, Tulsi Gabbard, Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, Nina Turner, and other well-respected politicians with records of electoral success to join together and create a new party, it would instantly be the most popular party in the country.

Then, all we'd have to do is establish legitimate election systems.

karlof1 , Aug 23, 2018 7:11:22 PM | 30
james @25--

Hudson's first magnum opus was SuperImperialism , but please get the updated version as the first is somewhat dated.

What I think is his crowning achievement--he seems to think so too--is his newest, and forgive them their debts: Lending, Foreclosure and Redemption -- From Bronze Age Finance to the Jubilee Year , the culmination of almost 40 years of research. Funny how its only been reviewed by Brits .

When you read the entire autobiographical interview, you'll see there're several other joint books he's produced prior to debts I'd consider getting via a university library--it's 5 volumes @$150 each new--although he says he's going to rewrite them with debts being the first volume in the series. That I don't have any of those volumes or even knew about them is rather embarrassing given my fields of study. Here's Hudson's introducing the series via a lecture:

"The five colloquia volumes that we've published began in 1994. We decided we have to re-write the history to free it from the modern ideological preconceptions that have distorted much popular understanding."

Earlier in the thread, you mentioned immigration, population growth and automation. Are you aware that China scrapped its family planning policy despite their goal of instituting a high degree of robotics into their manufacturing system? CCP leaders seem to believe their system can provide resilient support for 1.3-1.5 Billion people, whereas we see the USA growing increasingly dysfunctional trying to keep 330 million content.

james , Aug 23, 2018 7:22:53 PM | 31
@28 chas... war movie here - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ma9lGs_-OH0

@30 karlof1.. yes - he talks of those books in the autobio interview, but i don't see them listed on amazon for example.. nor is his latest book - and forgive them their debts' listed either.. i suppose the reason for the last title is it is yet to be released.. release date is in nov 2018.. http://michael-hudson.com/2018/08/and-forgive-them-their-debts/

i was unaware of that change in policy in china.. i wonder how they envision everything - greater population and continued work opportunities, in the face of automation? for me - people need greater resources in order to continue to survive.. as i understand it - eating meat is making a much bigger carbon footprint then not.. the chinese with their new wealth are very much into eating pork and meat... i can't see how it all works out for the planet, while i do think china would have thought this thru... i suppose it will remain a mystery to me how they envision the intersection of these diverse interests and developments.. thanks again for your comments..

Daniel , Aug 23, 2018 7:30:11 PM | 32
Posted by: james | Aug 23, 2018 5:04:35 PM | 15

"it seems like it is much the same everywhere in the land of democracy too, where corporations and private interests with money are calling the shots.. plutocracy is what i think they call it.."

Exactly! And it is the very same supra-national banking cabal, trans-national corporations and Zionist racial supremacists in each of these "democracies" that are calling the shots. They are the loci of power, not the political facades of nation-states.

Clearly, the US military is used by this "loose affiliation of millionaires and billionaires" to enforce their will on those who foolishly believe their governments should serve their own citizens. But it is not the US, or even primarily the 0.01% of the US who are calling the shots. The PTSB have no allegiance to any nation-state (with one glaring exception). But they use nationalism to divide the 99% of the world into bite-sized, easily edible pieces.

karlof1 , Aug 23, 2018 7:44:03 PM | 34
I provided this link in my above comment to james, but I had yet to read the entire lecture. It's very important and quite germane to this discussion as this excerpt shows:

"It's very funny: If you go into Congress – I was the economic advisor to Dennis Kucinich – you go into Congress and there's a big mural with Moses in the center and Hammurabi on his right. Well, you know what Moses did? He gave the law. Leviticus, right in the center of Mosaic law, canceled the debt. What did Hammurabi do? Debt cancellation as well. You're not going to see Congress canceling the debts like that. If you look at the Liberty Bell, it is inscribed with a quotation from Leviticus 25: "Proclaim liberty throughout all the land." Well now we have translation problems again. The word really isn't liberty: The real word means Clean Slate. It means freeing society from debt, letting everybody have their own basic housing and means of self-support. And by striking coincidence, what does the Statue of Liberty do? She's holding aloft a flame. And in the Babylonian historical records, when Hammurabi would cancel the debts they would say: "The ruler raised the sacred torch." So here you have a wonderful parallelism. It's been written out of history today, It's not what you're taught in Bible school, or in ancient studies, or in economic history. So you have this almost revolution that's been occurring in Assyriology, in Biblical studies and Hebrew studies, and it's all kept up among us specialists. It hasn't become popular at all, because almost everything about the Bronze Age and about the origins of Christianity is abhorrent to the vested interests today."

My reaction: Wow! I'm figuratively kicking myself for not diligently reading all of Hudson's essays--this was from January 2017. Just imagine what might occur if the global public decided to demand the genuine Old Time Religion!

Pft , Aug 23, 2018 8:25:15 PM | 35
Yes exactly, a class war. Basically elites vs the rest of us. Maybe 10% of non elites go along for the ride and puck up some crumbs. Another 20% do alright for a time until they get replaced by cheaper and younger and struggle to survive to reach social security without losing their home due to medical bankruptcy.

The rest its basically a struggle to survive from day 1 with these people living from paycheck to paycheck or just checking into one of the Prison Industrial Complex Apartments

Anyways, with the Democratic Party behind even Trump in the latest popularity polls (31% vs 38%) they stay the course and maintain their pro elitist policies. Both parties are puppets of the elites, differing on only on social issues that divide and distract from the major issues of importance to the elite class

So long as both parties go along with the neoliberal imperialistic agenda there will be rewards, even for the minority party. Best to be a minority party with plenty of funding than one without funding

Meanwhile life expectancy has been stagnating and now declining in US since 2010 (actually declined in 2015 and 2016 and most likely 2017) while most developed countries except UK are rising. Health care costs still the source of most individual bankruptcies although bankruptcy laws have been changed to ensure most lose their home in going that route (unlike owners of corporations like Trump)

Real median incomes are much lower than the early 70's when adjusted with the pre-1980 CPI. CPI post 1980 has been adjusted to mask the impact of neoliberalism and enhance it by lowering COLA's and keeping money cheap to fuel asset inflation which does not impact the new CPI as much

Its not just in the US, this is going on globally, some places faster than others

T , Aug 23, 2018 8:32:16 PM | 36
Spike 18

"The assertion that immigration (in the U.S., at least) is keeping wages low needs to be questioned. The immigrants from south of the border by and large do the work that no one else wants to do. "

There are plenty of countries that do not rely on large scale immigration and yet "someone" is doing those jobs there.

Loz , Aug 23, 2018 8:32:48 PM | 37
@worldblee 9

"Were it not for the purposefully restricted structure of the two party systems where voters bounce between two awful parties before giving up altogether, the Democratic party would have fully collapsed long ago."

This is the essence of the problem. Whose problem to solve is it? The average American citizen.

Anyone can use social media and crowdfunding to start a huge popular campaign for a specific objective.

True representative democracy. What's not to love about that?

All the nonsense about 'revolution' blah blah then becomes redundant. Once there are multiple parties representing multiple interests, deals have to be done. Government becomes far more careful and conservative.

Problems don't disappear, but at least there is an intelligent airing of the issues. Fiscal prudence becomes front and centre. Individual welfare is also elevated to a central concern. Everyone then recognises that tax money requires healthy businesses that pay their fair share.

Try it! In spite of the initial barrage of fear, uncertainty, doubt, you will come to a much more engaged and civil society.

Jackrabbit , Aug 23, 2018 8:55:53 PM | 38
The psyops against the American people have been nothing short of astounding.

"Trickle down!"

"Multi-culturalism"

"Globalism"

"Efficient Markets"

"War on Drugs! War on Terror! Russian interference!"

Each of these may have been reasonable in moderation but were pushed to the extreme via the oligarch-fed elite of BOTH political Parties. Starting with Bill Clinton, the Democrats sold out the people they used to represent. They have done MORE than simply block change, they have poisoned the well via divisive identity politics.

Obama is the poster child for the Democrats "Third Way" disaster. He proved to be a tool of neolibs and neocons alike, masking their evil agendas with a big smile, slick slogans ("YES WE CAN!") and clever quips ("If you have nothing to hide, you have nothing to fear") . No bankers went to jail for the 2008 GFC, a trillion dollar fraud estimated to total a YEAR of global GNP , instead his administration "foamed the runway" for Bank home foreclosures (mostly of lower income people that couldn't fight back) .

Obama promised to include a public option as part of his 'signature' healthcare initiative ("Obamacare") but instead produced a boondoogle for insurance companies which has proven to be the epic failure that progressive critics said it would be.

Mis-allocated resources of an oligarch-centered public policy has created a supreme clusterf*ck, the magnitude of which has grown with every new can-kicking initiative.

IMO USA probably loses 30% of GDP to such things as:

- overpriced healthcare;

- a bloated military which is largely useless (who are we going to invade? who is going to invade us?);

- a police state that imprisons more people than any other Western democracy largely due to misguided social policies (why not regulate drugs and prostitution illegal? why not provide good training/jobs and workplace childcare?) ;

- terribly inefficient transportation system where everyone strives for "the American dream" of commuting dozens of miles from their suburban home via a big SUV;

- education costs that have skyrocketed due to failed govt educational policies;

- a pampered executive and "investor class" that siphons billions - inequality is at record levels and CEOs make dozens of times more pay then the average worker;

- while the US govt recognizes that climate change is real, they have decided to address it gradually and accept the cost of 'mitigation' (defensive measures like sea walls, when necessary) .

No one trust the government to fix anything. And fixes that are contemplated or in the works will take decades to effect any meaningful change.

Jackrabbit , Aug 23, 2018 9:13:01 PM | 39
The saddest part may be that most people can't see that they've been played.

Americans used to be free thinkers. Now most of them are in an unhealthy relationship with one of the two parties. Like the jealous, emotionally abusive partner they are, each party plays on the fears of their 'base'.

Societal Stockholm Syndrome. Is that a thing? It is now.

vk , Aug 23, 2018 9:13:21 PM | 40
Immigration, in the grand scheme of things, don't bring wages down mainly for two reasons:

1) it doesn't actually change the total number of human beings in the face of the Earth, it just reallocates them to one or another specific corner of it. Since modern capitalism is already global, even Steven.

2) in capitalism, labor power moves according to a reverse osmosis pattern: it goes from the corner of the Earth with less capital (in money form, therefore money-capital) to the corner of the Earth with more money-capital. So, for example, if 1,000,000 Mexicans immigrate -- legally or illegally, it doesn't matter to capitalism -- to the USA in one year, it is already presupposed the USA already has a wealth differential vis-à-vis Mexico that can accomodate 1,000,000 more people than it in one year. This movement is also known as "job hunt": people go where jobs are.

The only case mass immigration really distorts wages is when movement of labor force is not induced by capitalism, but by a black swan, natural, catastrophic event, e.g. if the hotspot in Yellowstone burst tommorow, and the American population somewhat manages to evacuate to, let's say, Mexico, then Mexico receives, in a matter of months, 400 million people thanks to a process the capitalist society didn't forsee. Then we have a so-called "humanitarian crisis", i.e. a crisis not induced from capitalism's inner metabolism.

As for the German case, it was a miscalculation by Merkel. She had just arrived from a huge victory in Greece (her finance minister, Wolfgang Schäuble, had just put the socialist government of Syriza on its knees), and she was cocky. She decided to move fast and, enjoying the favorable wind from the Aegean, called for 1 million Syrians to come to Germany.

At that time, there was a rumor stating most of the Syrians that were fleeing the war were middle class, affluent Syrians who could afford the trip to Europe -- those were doctors, engineers, businessmen, etc. etc. It is a known fact the German bourgeoisie uses mass immigration from the Middle East as a leverage against the German powerful unions since the Turks offered themselves. So, if Merkel acted impulsively in the execution, the plan was old and had their approval with good antecedence.

Problem was Merkel appeared to be badly advised by the BND (or the CIA?).First, immigrants can only force wages down if they are willing to work. Those "affluent Syrians", if they existed, either were intercepted and coopted by Turkey and Saudi Arabia (where they had to stop first, before going to Europe via Greece or Italy), or were a very tiny minority. Most of the refugees were either already indigents, bandits, housewives with little children or even some terrorists. They were not capable, nor willing, to "assimilate", i.e. to work for German capitalists under German Law. So, it backfired.

Godot , Aug 23, 2018 9:23:06 PM | 41
Is this a joke??
Has anybody read the article from this Crooke that B is referring to in his post? This is really the worst crap. So enlightenments is just a " totalitarian " ideology made to help the Europeans rule the world? And Russia is just an old regime nation promoting blood based brotherhood fighting them ? In a word the eating-babies communists versus the Teutonic aryan Knights??
And then, I find an approving reference to the old stinking theory of " workers vs immigrants " to explain low wages ? Btw, where have you seen democrats elites being " against restrictions on immigrations " ? Didn't know that US under Obama was open door...
I don't recognize this website anymore! Let's hope the CIA is just fooling with me !
quot;Most social-democratic parties in Europe have the same problem the U.S. Democrats have."
It is plain wrong to mention social-democratic parties in connection with the u.s. Dems. They are a Wall street party very much at the right of even the most rightist, neoliberal social democrats in Europa.
And no. Immigration is definitely not the cause for the work place competition. Not in the usa at least. Most of the Latinos coming from the south do jobs u.s. citizen do not want, especially in agriculture. And; the immigrants are not only workers, they are consumers too and as such they raise the GDP and indirectly create additional work places. The capitalist system works best if the population is on a steady, not too pronounced rise. (It is different with inner-EU immigration though.)

Posted by: Pnyx , Aug 23, 2018 9:24:46 PM | 42

"Most social-democratic parties in Europe have the same problem the U.S. Democrats have."
It is plain wrong to mention social-democratic parties in connection with the u.s. Dems. They are a Wall street party very much at the right of even the most rightist, neoliberal social democrats in Europa.
And no. Immigration is definitely not the cause for the work place competition. Not in the usa at least. Most of the Latinos coming from the south do jobs u.s. citizen do not want, especially in agriculture. And; the immigrants are not only workers, they are consumers too and as such they raise the GDP and indirectly create additional work places. The capitalist system works best if the population is on a steady, not too pronounced rise. (It is different with inner-EU immigration though.)

Posted by: Pnyx | Aug 23, 2018 9:24:46 PM | 42 /div

Pft , Aug 23, 2018 9:30:42 PM | 43
On the subject of immigration keeping wages low. This has some truth to it of course, although it does not explain it in its entirety. The main reason of course is the US has extremely high unemployment/unxerempoyment rates
Pft , Aug 23, 2018 9:31:33 PM | 44
Accidentally posted before completion, sorry
Pft , Aug 23, 2018 9:48:32 PM | 45
On the subject of immigration keeping wages low. This has some truth to it of course, although it does not explain it in its entirety.

One reason of course is the US has extremely high unemployment/underemployment rates, far greater than official figures.

Then you have the destruction of unions in the private sector. The few remaining unions are coopted from within by union leadership

A principal cause of the above reasons may be globalization which has led to the outsourcing of jobs to countries with lower wages

And of course you have minimum wages which are much lower in real dollars than they were 40 years go as both parties became corrupted by the neoliberal elite.

As for immigration. Illegal immigrants
tend to work in jobs not very appealing and are low paying but may suppress technical innovation to make up for a low labor supply in this area at the cost of some higher paying jobs

Legal immigration tends bring in professional labor who are willing to work at lower wages in the hope of getting a shot at the American dream (or European Dream).


I feel both forms of immigration are minor impacts. The main purpose for the elite is to create divisions within the society. Divide and rule. Which is why neither party has sought to stamp it out entirely. Its simple really, jail time for anyone hiring an undocumented worker and enforcement. Go after the corporations who hire them and not the worker.

jdmckay , Aug 23, 2018 10:06:29 PM | 46
A: They listened to their 'strategists', not to their voters.

...

Why is "socialized" medicine supposed to be a bad thing? Why not defend it? It is what the voters want:

B: I haven't agreed with a whole lot of your posts lately, but this one I think you nailed. Wish you would say a little more about Green Energy and AGW.

Tannenhouser , Aug 23, 2018 10:11:43 PM | 47
@spudski, who says "No idea why anyone thinks that's a good idea "one things for sure those that do are definitely 'anywhere's' from mdroy's #13.
juliania , Aug 23, 2018 10:24:28 PM | 48
I actually think that Obama's first election was for young people in this country at that time the equivalent of the assassination of President Kennedy in my younger years. A blow from which there shall have to be allowed the loss of an entire generation - in my time, that was accomplished by the Vietnam War. And indeed the generation of so-called millenials in the US has been living through an ongoing psychological nightmare of similar proportions.

All the comments do apply, in spades. Thank you, fellow Americans.

The equivalence of which I speak is the shocking about face Obama presented after his inauguration. He could have been a new Kennedy inspiring the young - he chose not to be. For many, that was an assassination of an ideal - some clung on desperately refusing to believe, but most finally knew they had been betrayed.

All I can hope is that there is some decent, anonymous Putin-like figure out there ready to grab hold of power and throw it back to the people where it belongs. It happened there; maybe it will happen here, sometime.

NemesisCalling , Aug 23, 2018 10:40:24 PM | 49
Other than calling the Trump-phenom quasi or crypto fascist in your post and in the same breath at the end provide justification for the Trump-vote regarding the effect of an illegal work force, you are right, b. There are many things that hurt the left in the global scene.

Do they not notice this or are they willfully biding their time to reemerge in the same putrid swamp so us dumbasses can fawn over her like the Lady of the Lake?

I think the libs in this country, at least, are the real cheerleaders of globalism and a stupifying urbanism that is preaching a false future of free stuff and you don't even have to work for it!

Why would I Joe-taxpayer want to fund a student- loan debt relief program where morons the country over are relieved of any responsibility of their idiotic line of thinking where they believed that an overpriced degree equated to instant playboy lifestyle and on demand oral sex?

NemesisCalling , Aug 23, 2018 11:04:29 PM | 50
Lower forms of employment to be occupied by natural citizens is absolutely vital to a country's economic culture.

People have said that these are jobs that only Mexicans will take. That is BS. The market would natutally adjust to an actual shortage in labor and pay citizens appropriately for their menial labor. Having an abundance of black market labor prohibits this natural function of a healthy economy.

General Lee knew that slavery was anaethma and a tragedy to America. A correlation could be made about alien labor.

[Aug 17, 2018] Jim Kunstler Exposes The Democratic Party s Three-Headed Monster

Notable quotes:
"... The agents actually threatening the health of the state came from the intel community itself: Mr. Brennan, Mr. Clapper, Mr. Comey, Mr. Strzok, Mr. McCabe, Mr. Ohr, Ms. Yates. Ms. Page, et. al. who colluded with pathogens in the DNC, the Hillary campaign, and the British intel service to chew up and spit out Mr. Trump as expeditiously as possible. ..."
"... Meanwhile, the Deep State can't stop running its mouth -- The New York Times , CNN, WashPo , et al -- in an evermore hysterical reaction to the truth of the matter: the Deep State itself colluded with Russia (and perhaps hates itself for it, a sure recipe for mental illness). ..."
"... The second head of this monster is a matrix of sinister interests seeking to incite conflict with Russia in order to support arms manufacturers, black box "security" companies, congressmen-on-the-take, and an army of obscenely-rewarded Washington lobbyists in concert with the military and a rabid neocon intellectual think-tank camp wishing to replay the cold war and perhaps even turn up the temperature with some nuclear fire. ..."
"... This second head functions by way of a displacement-projection dynamic. We hold war games on the Russian border and accuse them of "aggression." ..."
"... The third head of this monster is the one aflame with identity politics. It arises from a crypto-gnostic wish to change human nature to escape the woes and sorrows of the human condition -- for example, the terrible tensions of sexuality. Hence, the multiplication of new sexual categories as a work-around for the fundamental terrors of human reproduction as represented by the differences between men and women. ..."
"... "We engineer and pay for a coup against the elected government of Ukraine, and accuse Russia of aggression. We bust up one nation after another in Middle East and complain indignantly when Russia acts to keep Syria from becoming the latest failed state. We disrupt the Russian economy with sanctions, and the Russian banking system with a cut-off of SWIFT international currency clearing privileges, and accuse them of aggression. This mode of behavior used to be known as "poking the bear," a foolish and hazardous endeavor. " ..."
"... And this shit has been going on since the Soviet Union broke up and the "Harvard Boys" helped turn Russia into a corrupt Oligarchy, something the Left was first to identify. ..."
"... The rising of the Populist parties in the UK, Germany, especially Italy and now Sweden, portends an interesting trend, not just nationally, but world wide... ..."
Aug 17, 2018 | www.zerohedge.com

Jim Kunstler Exposes The Democratic Party's "Three-Headed Monster"

by Tyler Durden Fri, 08/17/2018 - 14:35 132 SHARES Authored by James Howard Kunstler via Kunstler.com,

The faction that used to be the Democratic party can be described with some precision these days as a three-headed monster driving the nation toward danger, darkness, and incoherence.

Anyone interested in defending what remains of the sane center of American politics take heed:

The first head is the one infected with the toxic shock of losing the 2016 election. The illness took hold during the campaign that year when the bureaucracy under President Obama sent its lymphocytes and microphages in the "intel community" -- especially the leadership of the FBI -- to attack the perceived disease that the election of Donald Trump represented. The "doctors" of this Deep State diagnosed the condition as "Russian collusion." An overdue second opinion by doctors outside the Deep State adduced later that the malady was actually an auto-immune disease.

The agents actually threatening the health of the state came from the intel community itself: Mr. Brennan, Mr. Clapper, Mr. Comey, Mr. Strzok, Mr. McCabe, Mr. Ohr, Ms. Yates. Ms. Page, et. al. who colluded with pathogens in the DNC, the Hillary campaign, and the British intel service to chew up and spit out Mr. Trump as expeditiously as possible.

With the disease now revealed by hard evidence, the chief surgeon called into the case, Robert Mueller, is left looking ridiculous -- and perhaps subject to malpractice charges -- for trying to remove an appendix-like organ called the Manifort from the body politic instead of attending to the cancerous mess all around him. Meanwhile, the Deep State can't stop running its mouth -- The New York Times , CNN, WashPo , et al -- in an evermore hysterical reaction to the truth of the matter: the Deep State itself colluded with Russia (and perhaps hates itself for it, a sure recipe for mental illness).

The second head of this monster is a matrix of sinister interests seeking to incite conflict with Russia in order to support arms manufacturers, black box "security" companies, congressmen-on-the-take, and an army of obscenely-rewarded Washington lobbyists in concert with the military and a rabid neocon intellectual think-tank camp wishing to replay the cold war and perhaps even turn up the temperature with some nuclear fire. They are apparently in deep confab with the first head and its Russia collusion storyline. Note all the current talk about Russia already meddling in the 2018 midterm election, a full-fledged pathogenic hallucination.

This second head functions by way of a displacement-projection dynamic. We hold war games on the Russian border and accuse them of "aggression." We engineer and pay for a coup against the elected government of Ukraine, and accuse Russia of aggression. We bust up one nation after another in Middle East and complain indignantly when Russia acts to keep Syria from becoming the latest failed state. We disrupt the Russian economy with sanctions, and the Russian banking system with a cut-off of SWIFT international currency clearing privileges, and accuse them of aggression. This mode of behavior used to be known as "poking the bear," a foolish and hazardous endeavor. The sane center never would have stood for this arrant recklessness. The world community is not fooled, though. More and more, they recognize the USA as a national borderline personality, capable of any monstrous act.

The third head of this monster is the one aflame with identity politics. It arises from a crypto-gnostic wish to change human nature to escape the woes and sorrows of the human condition -- for example, the terrible tensions of sexuality. Hence, the multiplication of new sexual categories as a work-around for the fundamental terrors of human reproduction as represented by the differences between men and women. Those differences must be abolished, and replaced with chimeras that enable a childish game of pretend, men pretending to be women and vice-versa in one way or another: LBGTQetc. Anything BUT the dreaded "cis-hetero" purgatory of men and women acting like men and women. The horror .

Its companion is the race hustle and its multicultural operating system. The objective has become transparent over the past year, with rising calls to punish white people for the supposed "privilege" of being Caucasian and pay "reparations" in one way or another to underprivileged "people of color." This comes partly from the infantile refusal to understand that life is difficult for everybody, and that the woes and sorrows of being in this world require fortitude and intelligence to get through -- with the final reward being absolutely the same for everybody.


Creative_Destruct -> Got The Wrong No Fri, 08/17/2018 - 16:30 Permalink

"We engineer and pay for a coup against the elected government of Ukraine, and accuse Russia of aggression. We bust up one nation after another in Middle East and complain indignantly when Russia acts to keep Syria from becoming the latest failed state. We disrupt the Russian economy with sanctions, and the Russian banking system with a cut-off of SWIFT international currency clearing privileges, and accuse them of aggression. This mode of behavior used to be known as "poking the bear," a foolish and hazardous endeavor. "

And this shit has been going on since the Soviet Union broke up and the "Harvard Boys" helped turn Russia into a corrupt Oligarchy, something the Left was first to identify.

Chad Thunderfist -> venturen Fri, 08/17/2018 - 14:56 Permalink

...[MSM] owners:

https://www.opensecrets.org/pres16/contributors?id=N00000019

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Donald_Sussman
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Penny_Pritzker
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/James_Harris_Simons
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Haim_Saban
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/George_Soros
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dustin_Moskovitz
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Justin_Rosenstein
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/S._Daniel_Abraham

STP -> edotabin Fri, 08/17/2018 - 17:36 Permalink

I was talking to someone, who knows a lot about the 'inner workings' and we were discussing, not only the US, but Europe's situation as well.

The rising of the Populist parties in the UK, Germany, especially Italy and now Sweden, portends an interesting trend, not just nationally, but world wide...

[Aug 14, 2018] Did Trump openly rejected some postulates of neoliberalism, at least during the election compaign ? Was Hillary somehow a bigger crook than Trump?

Some people are still fighting already lost battle.
Notable quotes:
"... That's a good critique of the electoral disaster that the Democrats brought upon themselves by adopting neoliberal economic policies at the dawn of the DLC. But it's delusional to think that Trump's restoration of gilded age economic policies will help working people, white or otherwise. ..."
Aug 14, 2018 | crookedtimber.org

likbez 08.11.18 at 7:52 pm (no link)

Still, to the extent that Trumpism has any economic policy content it's the idea that a package of immigration restrictions and corporate tax cuts[1] will make workers better off by reducing competition from migrants and increasing labor demand from corporations.

The emergence of Trumpism signifies deepening of the ideological crisis for the neoliberalism. Neoclassical economics fell like a house of cards.

IMHO Trumpism can be viewed as a kind of "national neoliberalism" which presuppose rejection of three dogmas of "classic neoliberalism":

1. Rejection of neoliberal globalization including, but not limited to, free movement of labor. Attempt to protect domestic industries via tariff barriers.

2. Rejection of excessive financialization and primacy of financial oligarchy Restoration of the status of manufacturing, and "traditional capitalists" status in comparison with financial oligarchy.

3. Rejection of austerity. An attempt to fight "secular stagnation" via Military Keysianism.

Trumpism sent "Chicago school" line of thinking to the dustbin of history. It exposed neoliberal economists as agents of financial oligarchy and the "Enemy of the American People" (a famous Trump phase about neoliberal MSM).

See, for example, a good summary by Sanjay Reddy ( Associate Professor of Economics, The New School for Social Research) at https://www.nakedcapitalism.com/2016/11/trumpism-has-dealt-a-mortal-blow-to-orthodox-economics-and-social-science.html

It is never clear whether ideas or interests are the prime mover in shaping historical events, but only ideas and interests together can sustain a ruling consensus for a lengthy interval, such as the historic period of financialization and globalization running over the last 35 years. The role of economics in furnishing the now-rebuked narratives that have reigned for decades in mainstream political parties can be seen in three areas.

First, there is globalization as we knew it. Mainstream economics championed corporate-friendly trade and investment agreements to increase prosperity, and provided the intellectual framework for multilateral trade agreements.

Second, there is financialization, which led to increasing disconnection between stock market performance and the real economy, with large rewards going to firms that undertook asset stripping, outsourcing, and offshoring. The combination of globalization and financialization produced a new plutocratic class of owners, managers and those who serviced them in global cities, alongside gentrification of those cities, proleterianization and lumpenization of suburbs, and growing insecurity and casualization of employment for the bulk of the middle and working class.

Financialization also led to the near-abandonment of the 'national' industrial economy in favor of global sourcing and sales, and a handsome financial rentier economy built on top of it. Meanwhile, automation trends led to shedding of jobs everywhere, and threaten far more.

All of this was hardly noticed by the discipline charged with studying the economy. Indeed, it actively provided rationales for financialization, in the form of the efficient-markets hypothesis and related ideas; for concentration of capital through mergers and acquisitions in the form of contestable-markets theory; for the gentrification of the city through attacks on rent control and other urban policies; for remaking of labor markets through the idea that unemployment was primarily a reflection of voluntary leisure preferences, etc. The mainstream political parties, including those historically representing the working and middle classes, in thrall to the 'scientific' sheen of market fetishism, gambled that they could redistribute a share of the promised gains and thus embraced policies the effect of which was ultimately to abandon and to antagonize a large section of their electorate.

Third, there is the push for austerity, a recurrent trope of the 'neoliberal' era which, although not favored by all, has played an important role in creating conditions for the rise of popular movements demanding a more expansionary fiscal stance (though they can paradoxically simultaneously disdain taxation, as with Trumpism). The often faulty intellectual case made by many mainstream economists for central bank independence, inflation targeting, debt sustainability thresholds, the distortive character of taxation and the superiority of private provision of services including for health, education and welfare, have helped to support antagonism to governmental activity. Within this perspective, there is limited room for fiscal or even monetary stimulus, or for any direct governmental role in service provision, even in the form of productivity-enhancing investments. It is only the failure fully to overcome the shipwreck of 2008 that has caused some cracks in the edifice.

The dominant economic ideas taken together created a framework in which deviation from declared orthodoxy would be punished by dynamics unleashed by globalization and financialization. The system depended not merely on actors having the specific interests attributed to them, but in believing in the theory that said that they did. [This is one of the reasons that Trumpism has generated confusion among economic actors, even as his victory produced an early bout of stock-market euphoria. It does not rebuke neoliberalism so much as replace it with its own heretical version, bastard neoliberalism, an orientation without a theory, whose tale has yet to be written.]

Finally, interpretations of politics were too restrictive, conceptualizing citizens' political choices as based on instrumental and usually economic calculations, while indulging in a wishful account of their actual conditions -- for instance, focusing on low measured unemployment, but ignoring measures of distress and insecurity, or the indignity of living in hollowed-out communities.

Mainstream accounts of politics recognized the role of identities in the form of wooden theories of group mobilization or of demands for representation. However, the psychological and charismatic elements, which can give rise to moments of 'phase transition' in politics, were altogether neglected, and the role of social media and other new methods in politics hardly registered. As new political movements (such as the Tea Party and Trumpism in the U.S.) emerged across the world, these were deemed 'populist' -- both an admission of the analysts' lack of explanation, and a token of disdain. The essential feature of such movements -- the obscurantism that allows them to offer many things to many people, inconsistently and unaccountably, while serving some interests more than others -- was little explored. The failures can be piled one upon the other. No amount of quantitative data provided by polling, 'big data', or other techniques comprehended what might be captured through open-eyed experiential narratives. It is evident that there is a need for forms of understanding that can comprehend the currents within the human person, and go beyond shallow empiricism. Mainstream social science has offered few if any resources to understand, let alone challenge, illiberal majoritarianism, now a world-remaking phenomenon.

MisterMr 08.11.18 at 8:21 pm ( 12 )
I'll try to explain my previous comment from another angle:

I'll take the wage share on total income as the main index of worker's bargaining power.
The wage share depends on two factors:
1) there is a cyclical factor, when the economy is booming unemployment falls and the wage share rises, when the economy is depressed the opposite;
2) there are structural factors that depend on how redistributive is taxation, the power of unions etc.; these structural factors depend on law and policy, not on technology.

A big part of the "neoliberal" policy is the concept of trickle down, that can be summarized in (1) hope that the economy will go very well and will be in permanent boom by (2) lowering the wage share structural components, by making workers more flexible etc..
In this kind of policy (that was followed also by center left parties) the fall in the strucural component of the wage share is supposed to be compensated by the increase of the cyclical component, so that, in theory, workers should not be worse off.

But in reality, trickle down doesn't really work (we can argue why), so that the overall wage share fell.
Workers (and voters in general) then expect the economy to be in a situation of permanent boom, a boom so big that it surpasses the fall in the structural component of the wage share; but this never happens, and probably cannot happen for a sustained period.

So voters assume that someone is stealing their lunch, and they blame someone. Immigrants are supposed to lower worker's wage share, but influencing the cyclical component, not the structural one; instead we have an assumption that immigrants are lowering the structural component of the wage share, that is a nonsense, because voters have to blame someone.

Contemporaneously, we have policies that try to create a sort of permanent boom by trickle down, such as lowering the tax rate on high incomes. These policies resemble keynesian policy but in reality are strongly pro-cyclical, so in some sense are the opposite of the traditional keynesian policy.
This happens because these policies appease both workers (with the promise of a boom and thus an increase of the cyclical component of their wage share) and capitalists (because the government is pumping money in their pockets).
But these policies are also very pro-bubble.

From this point of view, Trump's policy (but also for example many policies of the current Italian government) are just a beefed up version of the neoliberal policy.

The hate for immigrants, as other nasty developments of international policy, are the effect of the fact that in reality trickle down cannot really create booms as big as to justify the weakening of the structural component of the wage share, so someone has to be blamed somehow; also trickle down is linked, culturally, to the concept of job creators, and the idea that workers only have an income because of the awesomeness of said job creators, which leads tho the idea that immigrants are also so to speak eating from the same dish, and thus robbing workers from their income.

CDT 08.13.18 at 2:41 am (no link)
@likbez --

That's a good critique of the electoral disaster that the Democrats brought upon themselves by adopting neoliberal economic policies at the dawn of the DLC. But it's delusional to think that Trump's restoration of gilded age economic policies will help working people, white or otherwise.

likbez 08.13.18 at 9:37 pm ( 34 )

It's why likbez is so sure that Clinton is somehow a bigger crook than Trump. That is just crazy.

He was just not the neoliberal establishment supported crook, or pretended to be such;-) That was enough for many people who are fed up with the system to vote for him. Just to show middle finger to neoliberal establishment personalized by Hillary Clinton.

On a more serious note, while I do assume that voting for Trump was a form of social protest against the current version of neoliberalism in the USA, I do not automatically assume that the social system that will eventually replace the current US flavor of neoliberalism will be an improvement for bottom 90% of population.

[Aug 14, 2018] Technocrats Rule Democracy Is 'OK' As Long As The People Rubberstamp Our Leadership

Aug 14, 2018 | www.zerohedge.com

Authored by Charles Hugh Smith via OfTwoMinds blog,

Technocrats rule the world, East and West alike.

We are in a very peculiar ideological and political place in which Democracy (oh sainted Democracy) is a very good thing, unless the voters reject the technocrat class's leadership. Then the velvet gloves come off. From the perspective of the elites and their technocrat apparatchiks, elections have only one purpose: to rubberstamp their leadership.

As a general rule, this is easily managed by spending hundreds of millions of dollars on advertising and bribes to the cartels and insider fiefdoms who pony up most of the cash.

This is why incumbents win the vast majority of elections. Once in power, they issue the bribes and payoffs needed to guarantee funding next election cycle.

The occasional incumbent who is voted out of office made one of two mistakes:

1. He/she showed a very troubling bit of independence from the technocrat status quo, so a more orthodox candidate is selected to eliminate him/her.

2. The incumbent forgot to put on a charade of "listening to my constituency" etc.

If restive voters can't be bamboozled into passively supporting the technocrat status quo with the usual propaganda, divide and conquer is the preferred strategy. Only voting for the technocrat class (of any party, it doesn't really matter) will save us from the evil Other : Deplorables, socialists, commies, fascists, etc.

In extreme cases where the masses confound the status quo by voting against the technocrat class (i.e. against globalization, financialization, Empire), then the elites/technocrats will punish them with austerity or a managed recession. The technocrat's core ideology boils down to this:

1. The masses are dangerously incapable of making wise decisions about anything, so we have to persuade them to do our bidding. Any dissent will be punished, marginalized, censored or shut down under some pretext of "protecting the public" or violation of some open-ended statute.

2. To insure this happy outcome, we must use all the powers of propaganda, up to and including rigged statistics, bogus "facts" (official fake news can't be fake news, etc.), divide and conquer, fear-mongering, misdirection and so on.

3. We must relentlessly centralize all power, wealth and authority so the masses have no escape or independence left to threaten us. We must control everything, for their own good of course.

4. Globalization must be presented not as a gargantuan fraud that has stripmined the planet and its inhabitants, but as the sole wellspring of endless, permanent prosperity.

5. If the masses refuse to rubberstamp our leadership, they will be punished and told the source of their punishment is their rejection of globalization, financialization and Empire.

Technocrats rule the world, East and West alike. My two favorite charts of the outcome of technocrats running things to suit their elite masters are:

The state-cartel-crony-capitalist version: the top .1% skim the vast majority of the gains in income and wealth. Globalization, financialization and Empire sure do rack up impressive gains. Too bad they're concentrated in the top 1.%.

The state-crony-socialist version: the currency is destroyed, impoverishing everyone but the top .1% who transferred their wealth to Miami, London and Zurich long ago. Hmm, do you discern a pattern here in the elite-technocrat regime?

Ideology is just a cover you slip over the machine to mask what's really going on.

* * *

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[Aug 08, 2018] In many ways, the Democratic elite are small "c"onservatives. New ideas and such are frightening to them.

Notable quotes:
"... In many ways, the Democratic elite are small "c"onservatives. New ideas and such are frightening to them. ..."
"... the energy of the political left is not with the Democrats ..."
Aug 08, 2018 | www.nakedcapitalism.com

NotTimothyGeithner , August 7, 2018 at 8:29 pm

The by product of small minds and limited options. The collapse of the Democratic Party also represented a failure to create a bench. AOC is a person who should have been identified and pushed to run for local or even state government by a healthy political party.

In many ways, the Democratic elite are small "c"onservatives. New ideas and such are frightening to them.

Donna Brazille knocked the Clinton Headquarters staff for not having sex, but the pictures of the Clinton staffers looked like a particularly boring group of College Republicans. Wow, the President listens to Jay-Z. He's really popular with kids from the suburbs!

This morning I was reminded that Sam Power apologized for calling Hillary a monster in 2013 probably because it seemed inevitable HRC would be President, but now I see it as a lack of creative thinking where these boring people (they are boring) couldn't envision an alternative.

As far as the options, the energy of the political left is not with the Democrats hence why they have to pimp Biden every few months.

NotTimothyGeithner , August 7, 2018 at 10:27 pm

HRC use to pay DavidHow much went to MSNBC to be in ads for the choir? What good was an HRC ad during a network dedicated to "Her"?

As far as her staff, she use to pay Mark Penn. Its reasonable to expect the Clinton campaign would simply light money on fire, but I was always puzzled by the ads on MSNBC. What good were they beyond preaching Hillary was running for President?

We know from the DNC emails Podesta said he needed to talk to HRC about promising the VP to everyone after she had picked Kaine long before the announcement. I'm wondering what kinds of ad buys she promised. When Obama got to the end, he just randomly ran an infomercial and gave the field staff a fairly decent bonus. With all her money in a slam dunk election, I think the story is more than a campaign of would be Mark Penns.

DonCoyote , August 7, 2018 at 2:22 pm

Joan Didion's Insider Baseball , written 30 years ago, is still probably my favorite political piece of writing.

Thank you, Lambert, for going beyond the facile "horserace" and "blue wave" tropes and assembling enough data for us non-insiders to be able to gain some understanding of the game the insiders are playing.

These are people who speak of the process as an end in itself, connected only nominally, and vestigially, to the electorate and its possible concerns "Anything that brings the process closer to the people is all to the good," George Bush declared in his 1987 autobiography, Looking Forward, accepting as given this relatively recent notion that the people and the process need not automatically be on convergent tracks.

When we talk about the process, then, we are talking, increasingly, not about "the democratic process," or the general mechanism affording the citizens of a state a voice in its affairs, but the reverse: a mechanism seen as so specialized that access to it is correctly limited to its own professionals, to those who manage policy and those who report on it, to those who run the polls and those who quote them, to those who ask and those who answer the questions on the Sunday shows, to the media consultants, to the columnists, to the issues advisers, to those who give the off-the-record breakfasts and to those who attend them; to that handful of insiders who invent, year in and year out, the narrative of public life.

Tony of CA , August 7, 2018 at 7:08 pm

I have a simple question: Why vote? Both parties are largely control by the same donors. It strikes me as a waste of energy. When someone such a Sanders comes around who actually slightly challenges the status quo, the powers to be actively collude to disenfranchise the movement.

flora , August 7, 2018 at 7:39 pm

"I have a simple question: Why vote?"

Simple answer: It's the only thing we have that scares them. Why else would they spend so much effort trying to suppress the vote, or not fighting voter suppression? And who knows, some candidates you vote for might win.

Tony of CA , August 7, 2018 at 11:20 pm

I don't think it actually scares them. It's more important for them to keep the showing going. By voting, we are actively buying into the political theatre. It's a sham. Really democracy simply can't coexist in a Capitalistic system.

Altandmain , August 7, 2018 at 8:46 pm

Hard question, but how much is an Obama or Clinton endorsement really worth?

They are not going to be very appealing to swing voters, independents, etc. They have limited to appeal to getting young people and supporters of Bernie Sanders to vote.

Seems like they are most useful for just motivating Establishment Democratic voters.

Second, the Democrat Party really is split. As you can see, Obama, Clinton, and the DCCC's endorsements overlap in only a single case (again, CA-50) with "insurgent" backers like Justice Democrats (JD) and Our Revolution (OR). Negative confirmation: Obama did not endorse Ocasio-Cortez ("Party Unity is for Rubes"). Her district is a safe Democrat seat (unless Crowley, running as a straw on the Working Families line, somehow takes it away from her), so perhaps that doesn't matter: Positive confirmation: Obama and Clinton didn't endorse Bryce in WI-01, although -- because? -- Sanders did, even though the DCCC did, and the seat used to be Paul Ryan's![1]

It has been split between those who got rich by neoliberalism (the 10%er base) and the rest of us.

That's the really brutal reality.

NotTimothyGeithner , August 7, 2018 at 9:47 pm

Probably none.

My sense is the importance of the Oprah endorsement of Obama wasn't the endorsement as much as the spectacle and crowds. 10,000 people at a campaign event in New Hampshire is huge. At that point, Obama didn't have to face the usual primary audience much like HRC where candidates do get fairly difficult questions in comparison to the msm garbage questions cookie recipes.

Yellow dog types who might vote for AOC over say Crowley on their own might be swayed, but I suspect "DNC" letter head would have the same effect.

Lambert Strether Post author , August 7, 2018 at 11:34 pm

> how much is an Obama or Clinton endorsement really worth?

It's a signal about where to send money.

[Aug 07, 2018] Once the Democratic Party has burned the people who fall under the marketing term "Millennials" enough times, they'll move on to the new "hope" of Gen Z who won't have multiple memories of lie after lie

Aug 07, 2018 | www.nakedcapitalism.com

Summer , August 3, 2018 at 4:09 pm

Once the Democratic Party has burned the people who fall under the marketing term "Millennials" enough times, they'll move on to the new "hope" of Gen Z who won't have multiple memories of lie after lie.

Wash.Rinse.Repeat.

MyLessThanPrimeBeef , August 3, 2018 at 5:12 pm

Something about being young and having never been fooled too many times (yet).

And Sanders' wait, he's an exception. Though I'd still like free organic foods for all all ages before, or at the same time as free college.

(One can't march one's neuron soldiers on an empty stomach).

MyLessThanPrimeBeef , August 3, 2018 at 5:20 pm

Some people have told me they could think better when hungry.

Still, let's not let that be an excuse to starve anyone of any age.

JBird , August 6, 2018 at 2:14 pm

Some people have told me they could think better when hungry.

After the initial pangs go away, and one can think clearly, one is incentivized to really find solutions, but thinking as in learning? They have different brains then me, let's just say.

Summer , August 3, 2018 at 5:29 pm

Marketing and advertising thrive on the same concept.
Exalting youth to exploit it.
When that doesn't work, use fear (of not being wealthy enough, attractive enough, etc,). That base emotion gets played on throughout people's lives.

That is why those marketing terms found a comfy fit with political narratives and polling (which is done to fit a narrative).

[Aug 06, 2018] LeBron Shows Trump What Winning Really Looks Like

Notable quotes:
"... If, on average, just seven Republicans are moderates, and Democrats need 15 additional votes, Democrats will obviously fall short. Where else then could and should Democrats look? The more promising pools of people are actually Democratic voters -- many of whom face greater economic obstacles in finding the time and transportation to get to the polls. ..."
"... In the quest for those necessary 15 votes, the number-one place Democrats should look is among the 19 percent of Democrats who voted in 2016, but are unlikely to cast ballots this year. ..."
"... In fact, the largest pool of people Democrats should be trying to tap is actually nonvoters -- the 200,000 people per district who were eligible but didn't cast ballots in 2016. It is in these sectors of society where Democrats will find the source of success and the path to winning back the House and taking back our country and winning elections for years to come. ..."
Aug 06, 2018 | www.thenation.com

Democratic leaders have gone to great lengths, for example, to encourage military veterans to run for Congress this year. Veterans can be great progressive leaders (my father and uncle served in the military, and I was born on a military base), but if the strategic objective is to appeal to swing voters drawn to Trump's posture and positions, the math doesn't add up. The painful truth is that there just aren't that many swing voters.

Doing a deep data dive on the districts reveals that the number of swing voters is far smaller than many people realize, especially when you factor in the drop-off in voter turnout in midterm elections. In the most competitive Republican-held congressional districts, Clinton won by an average of 17,000 votes, but the incumbent GOP congressperson beat his or her Democratic foe by an average of 34,000 votes.

This reality is particularly problematic when you factor in the smaller electorate during midterms, when fewer turn out to vote than in a presidential year. This diagram shows the total voter pool in an average competitive district, how many people voted, and how many voted for Clinton, Trump, and the Republican member of the House. For illustration purposes, if 100 people voted in one of these Clinton-Republican representative-won districts in 2016, the incumbent House Republican received 54 votes, and his or her Democratic opponent received 43 votes. Of those 54 people who voted for the incumbent Republican, seven (out of 100 votes) voted for Clinton. That's seven moderate Republicans out of 100 voters. Historically, in midterm elections, Republicans are more likely to come back out and vote than are Democrats, and as a result, that 54-43 Republican advantage from the higher-turnout presidential year will be about 39-25 this midterm year (based on historical turnout data). This means Democrats need to find 15 votes in every 100 in order to flip those 23 seats. Looking at the possible sources of an additional 15 percent highlights how few moderate Republicans there are.

If, on average, just seven Republicans are moderates, and Democrats need 15 additional votes, Democrats will obviously fall short. Where else then could and should Democrats look? The more promising pools of people are actually Democratic voters -- many of whom face greater economic obstacles in finding the time and transportation to get to the polls.

In the quest for those necessary 15 votes, the number-one place Democrats should look is among the 19 percent of Democrats who voted in 2016, but are unlikely to cast ballots this year.

In races that may well be decided by a few thousand votes (for example, Pennsylvania Democrat Conor Lamb won his special US House election earlier this year by a mere 627 votes ), it makes sense to also target the 20,000 young people in each congressional district who were not old enough to vote in 2016, but are now eligible.

In fact, the largest pool of people Democrats should be trying to tap is actually nonvoters -- the 200,000 people per district who were eligible but didn't cast ballots in 2016. It is in these sectors of society where Democrats will find the source of success and the path to winning back the House and taking back our country and winning elections for years to come.

It is hard work to get all of these voters out, but that is the work that will determine success or failure this fall.

[Aug 03, 2018] Donald Trump might be a symptom that neoliberal system is about to collapse

Amazing interview.
We are in the point when capitalist system (which presented itself as asocial system that created a large middle class) converted into it opposite: it is social system that could not deliver that it promised and now want to distract people from this sad fact.
The Trump adopted tax code is a huge excess: we have 40 year when corporation paid less taxes. This is last moment when they need another gift. To give them tax is crazy excess that reminding Louis XV of France. Those gains are going in buying of socks. And real growth is happening elsewhere in the world.
After WW2 there were a couple of decades of "golden age" of US capitalism when in the USA middle class increased considerably. That was result of pressure of working class devastated by Great Depression. Roosevelt decided that risk is too great and he introduced social security net. But capitalist class was so enraged that they started fighting it almost immediately after the New Deal was introduced. Business class was enrages with the level of taxes and counterattacked. Tarp act and McCarthyism were two successful counterattacks. McCarthyism converting communists and socialists into agents of foreign power.
The quality of jobs are going down. That's why Trump was elected... Which is sad. Giving your finger to the neoliberal elite does not solve their problem
Notable quotes:
"... Finally, if everybody tries to save themselves (protection), we have a historical example: after the Great Depression that happened in Europe. And most people believe that it was a large part of what led to WWII after WWI, rather than a much saner collective effort. But capitalism doesn't go for collective efforts, it tends to destroy itself by its own mechanisms. There has to be a movement from below. Otherwise, there is no counter force that can take us in another direction. ..."
"... When Trump announced his big tariffs on China, we saw the stock market dropped 700 points in a day. That's a sign of the anxiety, the danger, even in the minds of capitalists, about where this is going. ..."
"... Everything is done to avoid asking the question to what degree the system we have in place - capitalism is its name - is the problem. It's the Russians, it's the immigrants, it's the tariffs, it's anything else, even the pornstar, to distract us from the debate we need to have had that we haven't had for a half a century, which puts us in a very bad place. We've given a free pass to a capitalist system because we've been afraid to debate it. And when you give a free pass to any institution you create the conditions for it to rot, right behind the facade. ..."
"... The Trump presidency is the last gasp, it's letting it all hang out. A [neoliberal] system that's gonna do whatever it can, take advantage of this moment, grab it all before it disappears. ..."
Jul 10, 2018 | failedevolution.blogspot.com

In another interesting interview with Chris Hedges, Richard Wolff explains why the Trump presidency is the last resort of a system that is about to collapse:

Finally, if everybody tries to save themselves (protection), we have a historical example: after the Great Depression that happened in Europe. And most people believe that it was a large part of what led to WWII after WWI, rather than a much saner collective effort. But capitalism doesn't go for collective efforts, it tends to destroy itself by its own mechanisms. There has to be a movement from below. Otherwise, there is no counter force that can take us in another direction.

So, absent that counter force we are going to see this system spinning out of control and destroying itself in the very way its critics have for so long foreseen it well might.

When Trump announced his big tariffs on China, we saw the stock market dropped 700 points in a day. That's a sign of the anxiety, the danger, even in the minds of capitalists, about where this is going. If we hadn't been a country with two or three decades of a middle class - working class paid really well - maybe we could have gotten away with this. But in a society that has celebrated its capacity to do what it now fails to do, you have an explosive situation.

Everything is done to avoid asking the question to what degree the system we have in place - capitalism is its name - is the problem. It's the Russians, it's the immigrants, it's the tariffs, it's anything else, even the pornstar, to distract us from the debate we need to have had that we haven't had for a half a century, which puts us in a very bad place. We've given a free pass to a capitalist system because we've been afraid to debate it. And when you give a free pass to any institution you create the conditions for it to rot, right behind the facade.

The Trump presidency is the last gasp, it's letting it all hang out. A [neoliberal] system that's gonna do whatever it can, take advantage of this moment, grab it all before it disappears.

In France, it was said 'Après moi, le déluge' (after me the catastrophe). The storm will break.

https://www.youtube.com/embed/60FrsWm9OAc

[Aug 03, 2018] Trumpism and the Politics of Distrust

Aug 03, 2018 | www.theamericanconservative.com

We have lost some of our democratic habits -- indeed, in many ways we are losing our very cohesion as a society. But I frame the question very differently.

I know a bunch of Trump supporters. Some of them are intellectuals who write for places like TAC . But most are not. Neither are any of them raving bigots or knuckle-dragging neanderthals, and all of them read the news, though with vastly less obsessiveness than people who work in the business.

None of them "like" things like "unremitting chaos, lies, ignorance, trash-talking vulgarity, legislative failure" or collusion with foreign governments. Some of them minimize some of these things at least some of the time -- and I myself have been known to derive a kind of pleasure from the absurdity of a figure like Mooch. But this isn't what the people who I know who voted Trump voted for , nor is it why they continue to be happy with their vote -- which, however unhappy they are with how the administration is conducting itself, most of them still are.

Rather, the commonality among those who voted for Trump is their conviction that the Democratic party's leadership is utterly bankrupt, and, to one degree or another, so is the Republican leadership. And that assessment hasn't changed one iota since the election.


SDS August 1, 2017 at 12:29 pm

"They are, however, people who have lost trust in the individuals and institutions who are most alarmed about Trump: the political establishment, the press, etc. And so, on a relative basis, they'd rather continue to put their trust in Trump."

That last line does not follow .We have lost trust in all of the others; so would rather see what Trump does; not that we have any trust in him to do the right thing

THAT would be ridiculous; especially after the last six months.

Will Harrington , says: August 1, 2017 at 12:37 pm
Hmmm. Populism can not govern or build institutions by its very nature? I can't help but read that as saying the plebeians are so incompetent and stupid that only the elites are capable of governing. As for the American people taking a turn to authoritarianism. This is possible, after all, our Federal government has spent most of the last century increasing their control over many of the aspects of our lives and stretching the limits of the Constitution beyond any recognition. We have been prepared to accept authoritarianism. Increasingly we have had an authoritarian presidency that surveils its own people and has usurped regulatory and warmaking authority from the Congress. The Federal government has created, out of whole cloth, a role for itself in public education. Do not blame the populace for being what the elite has spent a century shaping them to be.
I am convinced that the saber rattling and fear-mongering concerning Korea, Iran, and Russia are not happening because we have any reason to be particularly concerned about these countries or because they threaten our interests. No, this is the way a corrupt and ineffective regime distracts its citizens from its own failings. Lets be clear, this would be happening even if She-who-shall-not-be-named had one the Presidency.
JonF , says: August 1, 2017 at 1:20 pm
Whatever happened to "trust but verify"?
OK, a bunch of people did the political equivalent of a Hail Mary play in voting for Trump. But now that the ball has not only fallen short but gone way out of bounds and beaned some spectators in the stands shouldn't they be revoking that trust and casting around for someone else to represent them? Why stick with a sinking ship?
JessicaR , says: August 1, 2017 at 1:25 pm
https://www.aol.com/article/news/2016/11/11/why-veterans-voted-donald-trump-swing-states/21603486/

There is strong evidence to suggest that one factor in Trump's victory was distrust of US foreign policy. The link above is to an article about exit polls showing Trump won the veteran's vote 2:1 over Hillary Clinton.

Not long ago, a study by two academicians found that Trump carried counties with high casualties in the Iraq war: https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=2989040

People don't regret their votes for Trump because if they had voted for Clinton, they or their loved ones would be coming home in body bags–or minus body parts.

As bad as Trump is, his foreign policy instincts are less hawkish than Clinton's–witness his decision to end the CIA funding of Syrian insurgents.

Trump's behavior is certainly "unpresidential" and chaotic. It is also less horrible than war by many orders of magnitude.

Kevin , says: August 1, 2017 at 1:29 pm
"The politically relevant, and profoundly disturbing, fact is precisely the opposite of the conventional wisdom: After six months of unremitting chaos, lies, ignorance, trash-talking vulgarity, legislative failure, and credible evidence of a desire to collude with a hostile foreign government to subvert an American election, President Trump's approval rating is astonishingly high -- with something between one-third and two-fifths of the American people apparently liking what they see and hear from the White House"

But George W Bush at his nadir averaged 26% approval, and that's seven years in, during an epic economic collapse, a catastrophic war, and a host of other disasters. Trump is not THAT far away from that average.

There is simply a line beyond which a president can't decline unless he murders and eats a puppy in public, and I see no reason to presume that we can judge that Trump hit his bottom six months in, when the economy is decent and no non-self inflicted crisis looming.

I'd also add that while all your friends have different reasons to stay aboard the Trump train, all of them sound like high information, fairly ideological voters. This is probably not the profile of Trump voters set to vote for The Rock in 2020

c matt , says: August 1, 2017 at 2:23 pm
Well, when a building is rotten to the core, the only thing you can do is raze it to the ground to start rebuilding. Our government has long passed its sell-by date. Really, expecting a political solution to arise from a government controlled system such as ours does not border on insanity – it completely crosses that border in leaves it miles in the dust. Witness our insane Congress voting by a 98% margin to inflict sanctions based upon absolute crock. But then the US has never let reality get in the way of statesmenshowmanship. We get what we deserve, good and hard.
polistra , says: August 1, 2017 at 2:57 pm
You're OK until the last line. "And populism by its very nature cannot build institutions, cannot govern "

You're still using the Deepstate definition of populism. In fact populists want only one thing: We think the government of THIS country should serve the interests of the people of THIS country.

It's perfectly possible to govern by this rule. FDR did it magnificently.

Why did it work for FDR? Because he was determined to BREAK the monopolies and forces that acted contrary to the interests of the people, and because governments BELOW the Federal level were still strong. When he closed the banks for several months, cities and Chambers of Commerce jumped in immediately to develop scrip systems.

Thanks to an unbroken series of evil judges and presidents after WW2, local governments and institutions are dead or dying. Even if a competent and determined populist tried to close down banks or Amazon or the "health" insurance system, there would be no organized way to replace them.

Jones , says: August 1, 2017 at 2:59 pm
What exactly did these people think a Clinton administration would do? What nightmarish dystopia did they see coming around the bend? And what do you think -- were their perceptions of America's future under a Clinton administration accurate, or at least close to the mark? And if so, why?
Jones , says: August 1, 2017 at 3:01 pm
Also, I get that people have lost trust in mainstream institutions. What makes them think that Trump is trustworthy in comparison? Why do they have more trust in Trump than in the institutions? And does that seem reasonable?
Heyseed , says: August 1, 2017 at 3:06 pm
I didn't vote for Trump: His rhetorical style turns me cold; I don't like his position on many issues, or his general governing philosophy, to the extent he can be said to have one. But, BUT, I sure as Hell did not vote for Hilary Clinton(I voted for Johnson and Weld, who were obvious non-starters from the word Go. I might possibly have voted for Trump if it had looked like the election might be close in Illinois, but since the Chicago Machine had already stolen it for HRC, I could salve my conscience and vote for Johnson.

Clinton was the status quo candidate, and since I did not desire "more of the same", governmentally, Trump and his circus are preferable to Clinton and whatever cabal she would have assembled to run the country.

You claim that the elite "inevitably" run the machinery of government, but it's worth noting that once upon a time in America, most of the people in government were political appointees who could be sent packing(along with their bosses) by the voters. Nowadays, the 'elite' which runs government is dug in pretty much permanently, and the same people will be, in practice, running the government no matter who wins the next election, or the one after that

Hilary Clinton was forthrightly the candidate of the permanent, un-elected bureaucracy, and Trump, well, didn't seem to be. The choice was between Trump, whose actual position on the size of government was not clear, and Hilary Clinton who was actually promising to make government bigger, more centralized, more expensive and less responsive. I'm not sorry Trump won however distasteful he and his henchmen are to me.

Michael R Honohan , says: August 1, 2017 at 3:57 pm
I too had a friend who was a huge Ron Paul supporter who not only backed Trump, but became a major apologist for him ever since. The man ran two back to back campaigns in Georgia for US Senate, the Ron Paul mold. Now, no on his original team will give him the time of day. Those who tried to get some sense into him, have been closed off.

As a libertarian, I am no more afraid of the left or the right. In fact, listening to the right rant about the left yields a lot of ignorance, disinformation and paranoia: stock in trade for right wing propaganda. But I am disturbed when people spend years fighting for liberty suddenly joined Cult 45 that has no sense of liberty Ron Paul or his followers would recognize.

But Trump fit the bankrupt GOP. Lest we forget, those 49 GOP Senators who voted for "skinny repeal" (even the name is joke!) never gave a moment's consideration to the bill written by Rand Paul that covers the conservative attributes of free markets and self-determination. Lest we also forget that Rand is not only one of the few legit conservatives, but a doctor and the son of doctor or former Congressman. Those credentials alone would have been enough if GOP was actually interested being conservative. Apparently, Trumpism is what the GOP is about and 49 of them proved it.

ojc , says: August 1, 2017 at 4:43 pm
I think that you have identified a problem that transcends Trump and his opponents. Vitriolic partisanship is one thing. At various points in our history, we have had some nasty spells of polarization. The deeper problem that the institutions of public life are now losing their very legitimacy.

Legitimacy is something deeper than mere approval. It relies upon the unspoken acceptance of political and institutional norms.

We are clearly in the process of publicly reevaluating and even rejecting these norms. The birthers questioning Obama's background and "not my president" folks do not view their oppponents as legitimate, if mistaken. In the case of Trump and the radical left, they contest the legitimacy of the other side even participating in the process, a process by the way to which they owe no fealty.

Whine Merchant , says: August 1, 2017 at 5:42 pm
"We had to destroy the village to save it."

Where have we heard that line before??

Cash , says: August 1, 2017 at 5:58 pm
Nothing wrong with America that couldn't be fixed, one, by making voting mandatory, and two, by having top two vote getters in primary face each other in the general.

We'd have a moderate politics with elected officials clustering slightly right and left of the center.

cka2nd , says: August 1, 2017 at 6:32 pm
Speaking as a Commie Pinko Red, I still prefer Trump as President over Clinton, precisely because he is doing so much to undermine America's "leadership" in world affairs. He's still a murderous imperialist, maybe even just as much as she would have been, but there's just so much more damage that she could have done making bi-partisan deals with the GOP for the benefit of Wall Street and the insurance industry.

The movement against GOPcare – Trumpcare wasn't really a fair name for the wet dreams of Paul Ryan and Conservative, Inc. – probably couldn't have been so effective or flew under the radar of the establishment tools running the Democratic Party and its media mouthpieces if a Democrat was in the White House and the various beltway "movement" honchos had had their precious seat at the table where they could have rolled over for the Democratic president of the moment.

bt , says: August 1, 2017 at 6:41 pm
The biggest problem is what comes after Trump for the GOP?

He's kicked off a process for the GOP that will be very difficult to manage going forward. He showed that outright racism, sexism, continuous lying, even treasonous collusion with Russia to subvert our election is just fine with the Republican Party. How does the GOP sell family values to their 'base' after they all lined up with Donald j Trump, serial wife-cheater and money-launderer?

It will be hard for anyone to forget that any of this happened.

Consider this: 8 years of W Bush yielded the first black President – It really could not have happened if W hadn't burned the house down. What comes after Trump?

FiveString , says: August 1, 2017 at 7:52 pm
I'm a very middle-class worker in the IT sector where most of my coworkers have been sensible, but my weekend hobby of playing music has put me in contact (largely via Facebook) with many Trump supporters who do happen to be knuckle-dragging neanderthals. They generally don't read; their "news" comes from partisan demagogues on the radio or TV. If I give one the benefit of the doubt and share an article from, say, The American Conservative -- "The Madness of King Donald" was a favorite -- it's been all too common to receive a childish/hate-filled meme in response. Bigots are legion: I've unfriended the raving variety, and unfollowed the milder dog-whistlers. These deplorables have in fact been emboldened by the current POTUS.

But I get your point. I abhor the current duopoly, but it could be fixed if thinking citizens wanted to put in some effort. So, it's depressing in a different kind of way that so many thoughtful and well-read Americans are so cynical about state of US politics that they are fine with Trump wrecking it.

Barry , says: August 1, 2017 at 8:23 pm
"Rather, the commonality among those who voted for Trump is their conviction that the Democratic party's leadership is utterly bankrupt, and, to one degree or another, so is the Republican leadership. And that assessment hasn't changed one iota since the election."

They are people who were full of it beforehand, and as the evidence rolls in, they just sink deeper into lies.

MarkW , says: August 1, 2017 at 8:38 pm
Linker's quote "a desire to collude" you reference later as "collusion". The first instance is an attempt to broaden the charge from collusion, the second instance is a (sloppy?) change in language.
Mdet , says: August 1, 2017 at 9:31 pm
@Will Harrington, "Populism can not govern or build institutions by its very nature? I can't help but read that as saying the plebeians are so incompetent and stupid that only the elites are capable of governing."

I read that statement as "Once you are governing, once you are the one(s) in a position of power, then by definition you have become 'the elite' and are no longer 'a plebeian'". Populists, by definition, are the people who call for the tearing down of institutions that make up the status-quo, and elites, by definition, are the people who build and maintain status-quo institutions. At least in my eyes, "being a populist" and "governing institutions" are mutually exclusive.

Frank Lettucebee , says: August 2, 2017 at 12:46 am
Since the conservative party of Lincoln, Teddy Roosevelt, Eisenhower was invaded by the right wingers and became the party of Jefferson Davis and John Wilkes Booth, the goal has been to tarnish all concept of a functioning a democracy and a government is built to work for the people, of the people, and by the people. The right wing main tactic is lies and just get people riled up so that they don't realize and oblivious to the fact that America has slipped from capitalism to corporatism; from a capitalist democracy to a caste based plutocracy run for the sole benefit of the oligarchs who bought this country.

Don Trump is the embodiment and distillation of the right winger and their economic and social cultural policies. He is not an alternative or antidote to the Republicans or Democrats.

Cal , says: August 2, 2017 at 2:04 am
" Is he happy with Trump? No -- he's especially unhappy with the number of Goldman bankers Trump appointed to senior economic posts, but more generally he acknowledges that the government is in chaos and that Trump is not bringing the change he hoped for. But he doesn't regret his vote, and he prefers the chaos of Trump to business-as-usual under either the Democrats or the Republicans. And if Trump winds up discrediting the Federal government generally, that's fine with him."

I didn't vote this election because I didn't like either candidate. I had been promoting 'America First' as a rallying cry for a candidate for years but Trump wasnt exactly the kind of leader I had in mind for it.
But I'm with the guy above -- if chaos will bust up the musical chair dual monarchies of the dems and repubs and the corrupt status quo government bring it on.

Pear Conference , says: August 2, 2017 at 6:23 am
I think the Democratic nominee in 2020 should be O.J. Simpson.

The reason is that I have lost trust in the media and the elites that are most alarmed about O.J. Simpson.

Kurt Gayle , says: August 2, 2017 at 8:37 am
A somewhat related question, Noah: If you had been a young man living in China on August 1, 1927, do you think you would have joined the People's Liberation Army?
connecticut farmer , says: August 2, 2017 at 9:50 am
Originally I wanted to sit out this past election but gave in to peer pressure. And I regret this. Trump? Clinton? Johnson? Stein? All were mediocre. Clinton/Trump were the two worst candidates that the "major" parties have ever produced in my lifetime. It was with fear and trepidation that I voted for Trump, notwithstanding that I fundamentally agreed with him on the issues of immigration and the need for a reduced American role in global affairs. In the end, I rationalized this (wasted) vote based upon the notion that not only had his opponent committed a felony (detouring government emails) but also because (as others have pointed out) she was the candidate of the status quo, the "permanent bureaucracy", Big Finance etc. etc. The fact that Trump actually won surprised me, but only moderately, because as terrible a candidate as he was, his opponent was even worse.

What has transpired since his election comes as no surprise. Had Clinton been elected conditions would have only been mirror imaged, such being the state of things in this once-great republic. I continue to maintain that the two-party system is archaic and has to go. Whether a multi-party system would be better, I don't know. Perhaps we have reached a point where the country is simply ungovernable. Perhaps more responsibility should be returned to state and local government (Jefferson would have approved). Again, I don't know.

What I do know is that the current system is dysfunctional.

And that, my friends, is why we have a real estate/TV personality as President.

wallysdaughter , says: August 2, 2017 at 12:40 pm
i am neither an establishment voter, or a member of the media/press. i am deeply worried where the man (trump) is taking this nation. the gop is complicit in this chaos as they see trump as a rubber stamp for their plutocratic agenda. i don't know what it will take to right the ship of state
EliteCommInc. , says: August 3, 2017 at 7:49 am
I don't regret my vote. And I ave had issues with my choice before and after the election. The sky is not even close to falling as predicted. And the democracy you claim is at threat may very well be, but it's from the current executive. And nothing thus far suggests that it will.

I m not going to dismiss the caterwauling liberals have been making since the campaign or the election as major distraction to governance.

And by the way there remain not a twiddle's evidence that the WH prior to the election colluded to undermine the US in any manner. It's time to cease throwing that out as sauce for the goose.

I think I agree with all four of your "freinds". I am very fond of the establishment, they have their place. What they provide in cohesion, stability and continuity is valuable to the state. But they appear to be want for any level of substance, depth thereof or moral consistency (if any at all). The double standards they hold themselves, their donors and connections on issues and accountability is unsustainable in a democracy as I think you understand it.

When I was laid out in the ER, I found myself wrestling with my own position on healthcare. The temptations are great to bend the guide as to my own conditions -- but I don't think I could so with a clear conscience. I am nor sot sure that what we haven't lost is a sense of conscience -- that sense that truth overrides immediate gain. I don't think the US can survive as the US if the leadership is bent on holding themselves to a standard not available to the country's citizens.

"Is he happy with Trump? No -- he's especially unhappy with the number of Goldman bankers Trump appointed to senior economic posts, but more generally he acknowledges that the government . . ."

And the discredited notions that

1. the rich know how to run an economy effectively and

2. that a rise in the market is a sign of economic health.

Brendan Sexton , says: August 3, 2017 at 10:48 am
Pear Conference captures perfectly the 'thinking' i have heard from more than one Trump voter. This is 'reasoning'?
If there is one system in America that needs blowing up to start over it might be our education system. I am generally supportive of public ed, and i am impressed by some of the commitment and inventiveness i see among the proposers of various alternatives to public ed. So, some folks are trying, even sometimes succeeding, but we have managed to arrive at a point in our culture where we have elected a President whose election success depended more than anything else on a public who have lost the ability to think critically. (if they ever had it, of course)
Yes I know the other one got more votes, by a lot. And i know that this other candidate was oddly not at all an attractive alternative. I know all that, but still, a huge fraction of the voting population–a fraction large enough to make themselves now THE base the government is playing to–is a group who could not/would not see this con-job coming? There was every opportunity to use actual logic and facts to reach a voting decision, but these millions of voters chose instead to go with various variations on the theme of 'they all stink, so i'm using my vote to poke a stick in their eyes." Or, as Pear satirized, "I hate/mistrust the elites and they like almost anybody else other than my guy, so I'm gonna turn my country over to the most vulgar non-elite pig the system can come up with."
There is talk now about the damage he can do to American politics and sense of community, but I think he may be more symptom than cause. We don't value the things we thought were a standard part of the American process: truthfulness, kindness, authenticity, devotion to the common good. We value, it turns out, showmanship, machismo, crass shows of wealth and power, and ..I can't go on.
I'm not sure how we got here, but I know the institutions held in high regard on this site, such as church, and some factors we all put our faith in such as increasing levels of education, turn out not to matter so much as we had thought. It is going to take some hard work and more than a little time to recover from this sickness in the country's soul.
Fran Macadam , says: August 3, 2017 at 11:43 am
"Trump supporters are just like people who are outraged by something and show it by rioting and burning down their own neighborhoods." – Greg in PDX

The antifas rioting and destroying in Portland also got very violent when some old folks held a peaceful rally for Trump there.

Oh, sorry. I forgot that when "progressives" disagree with someone, they consider that merely disagreeing with them constitutes "violence" against their "safe space" and they are compelled to go out and punch or shoot people.

Fran Macadam , says: August 3, 2017 at 11:47 am
"Nothing wrong with America that couldn't be fixed, one, by making voting mandatory"

Right, and by making public disclosure of who you voted for mandatory as well!

Just don't be the first to stop clapping.

Fran Macadam , says: August 3, 2017 at 11:50 am
Those calling for a soft coup to reinstate elite status quo leaders against the election results are the ones who are profoundly anti-democratic.
Grumpy Old Man , says: September 5, 2017 at 8:33 pm
No reason why populism couldn't govern. Huey Long was a damn effective governor of Louisiana. Send the whole Acela Corridor élite to Saddam's woodchipper and the country would noodle along just fine. I'm not for state violence, and yet the fantasy gives me a frisson. Forgive me, a sinner.

[Aug 03, 2018] The elites "have no credibility left by David North and Chris Hedges

Notable quotes:
"... War is a Force That Gives Us Meaning, The Death of the Liberal Class ..."
"... Empire of Illusion: the End of Literacy and the Triumph of Spectacle, Days of Destruction, Days of Revolt ..."
"... Wages of Rebellion: the Moral Imperative of Revolt ..."
"... Do not significantly alienate those upon whom we depend for money and access! ..."
"... World Socialist Web Site ..."
"... World Socialist Web Site ..."
Oct 06, 2017 | www.unz.com

On Monday, WSWS International Editorial Board Chairman David North interviewed Chris Hedges, the Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist, author, lecturer and former New York Times correspondent. Among Hedges' best-known books are War is a Force That Gives Us Meaning, The Death of the Liberal Class , Empire of Illusion: the End of Literacy and the Triumph of Spectacle, Days of Destruction, Days of Revolt , which he co-wrote with the cartoonist Joe Sacco, and Wages of Rebellion: the Moral Imperative of Revolt .

In an article published in Truthdig September 17 , titled "The Silencing of Dissent," Hedges referenced the WSWS coverage of Google's censorship of left-wing sites and warned about the growth of "blacklisting, censorship and slandering dissidents as foreign agents for Russia and purveyors of 'fake news.'"

Hedges wrote that "the Department of Justice called on RT America and its 'associates' -- which may mean people like me -- to register under the Foreign Agent Registration Act. No doubt, the corporate state knows that most of us will not register as foreign agents, meaning we will be banished from the airwaves. This, I expect, is the intent."

North's interview with Hedges began with a discussion of the significance of the anti-Russia campaign in the media.

David North: How do you interpret the fixation on Russia and the entire interpretation of the election within the framework of Putin's manipulation?

Chris Hedges: It's as ridiculous as Saddam Hussein's weapons of mass destruction. It is an absolutely unproven allegation that is used to perpetuate a very frightening accusation -- critics of corporate capitalism and imperialism are foreign agents for Russia.

I have no doubt that the Russians invested time, energy and money into attempting to influence events in the United States in ways that would serve their interests, in the same way that we have done and do in Russia and all sorts of other countries throughout the world. So I'm not saying there was no influence, or an attempt to influence events.

But the whole idea that the Russians swung the election to Trump is absurd. It's really premised on the unproven claim that Russia gave the Podesta emails to WikiLeaks, and the release of these emails turned tens, or hundreds of thousands, of Clinton supporters towards Trump. This doesn't make any sense. Either that, or, according to the director of national intelligence, RT America, where I have a show, got everyone to vote for the Green Party.

This obsession with Russia is a tactic used by the ruling elite, and in particular the Democratic Party, to avoid facing a very unpleasant reality: that their unpopularity is the outcome of their policies of deindustrialization and the assault against working men and women and poor people of color. It is the result of disastrous trade agreements like NAFTA that abolished good-paying union jobs and shipped them to places like Mexico, where workers without benefits are paid $3.00 an hour. It is the result of the explosion of a system of mass incarceration, begun by Bill Clinton with the 1994 omnibus crime bill, and the tripling and quadrupling of prison sentences. It is the result of the slashing of basic government services, including, of course, welfare, that Clinton gutted; deregulation, a decaying infrastructure, including public schools, and the de facto tax boycott by corporations. It is the result of the transformation of the country into an oligarchy. The nativist revolt on the right, and the aborted insurgency within the Democratic Party, makes sense when you see what they have done to the country.

Police forces have been turned into quasi-military entities that terrorize marginal communities, where people have been stripped of all of their rights and can be shot with impunity; in fact over three are killed a day. The state shoots and locks up poor people of color as a form of social control. They are quite willing to employ the same form of social control on any other segment of the population that becomes restive.

The Democratic Party, in particular, is driving this whole Russia witch-hunt. It cannot face its complicity in the destruction of our civil liberties -- and remember, Barack Obama's assault on civil liberties was worse than those carried out by George W. Bush -- and the destruction of our economy and our democratic institutions.

Politicians like the Clintons, Pelosi and Schumer are creations of Wall Street. That is why they are so virulent about pushing back against the Sanders wing of the Democratic Party. Without Wall Street money, they would not hold political power. The Democratic Party doesn't actually function as a political party. It's about perpetual mass mobilization and a hyperventilating public relations arm, all paid for by corporate donors. The base of the party has no real say in the leadership or the policies of the party, as Bernie Sanders and his followers found out. They are props in the sterile political theater.

These party elites, consumed by greed, myopia and a deep cynicism, have a death grip on the political process. They're not going to let it go, even if it all implodes.

DN: Chris, you worked for the New York Times . When was that, exactly?

CH: From 1990 to 2005.

DN: Since you have some experience with that institution, what changes do you see? We've stressed that it has cultivated a constituency among the affluent upper-middle class.

CH: The New York Times consciously targets 30 million upper-middle class and affluent Americans. It is a national newspaper; only about 11 percent of its readership is in New York. It is very easy to see who the Times seeks to reach by looking at its special sections on Home, Style, Business or Travel. Here, articles explain the difficulty of maintaining, for example, a second house in the Hamptons. It can do good investigative work, although not often. It covers foreign affairs. But it reflects the thinking of the elites. I read the Times every day, maybe to balance it out with your web site.

DN: Well, I hope more than balance it.

CH: Yes, more than balance it. The Times was always an elitist publication, but it wholly embraced the ideology of neo-conservatism and neoliberalism at a time of financial distress, when Abe Rosenthal was editor. He was the one who instituted the special sections that catered to the elite. And he imposed a de facto censorship to shut out critics of unfettered capitalism and imperialism, such as Noam Chomsky or Howard Zinn. He hounded out reporters like Sydney Schanberg, who challenged the real estate developers in New York, or Raymond Bonner, who reported the El Mozote massacre in El Salvador.

He had lunch every week, along with his publisher, with William F. Buckley. This pivot into the arms of the most retrograde forces of corporate capitalism and proponents of American imperialism, for a time, made the paper very profitable. Eventually, of course, the rise of the internet, the loss of classified ads, which accounted for about 40 percent of all newspaper revenue, crippled the Times as it has crippled all newspapers. Newsprint has lost the monopoly that once connected sellers with buyers. Newspapers are trapped in an old system of information they call "objectivity" and "balance," formulae designed to cater to the powerful and the wealthy and obscure the truth. But like all Byzantine courts, the Times will go down clinging to its holy grail.

The intellectual gravitas of the paper -- in particular the Book Review and the Week in Review -- was obliterated by Bill Keller, himself a neocon, who, as a columnist, had been a cheerleader for the war in Iraq. He brought in figures like Sam Tanenhaus. At that point the paper embraced, without any dissent, the utopian ideology of neoliberalism and the primacy of corporate power as an inevitable form of human progress. The Times , along with business schools, economics departments at universities, and the pundits promoted by the corporate state, propagated the absurd idea that we would all be better off if we prostrated every sector of society before the dictates of the marketplace. It takes a unique kind of stupidity to believe this. You had students at Harvard Business School doing case studies of Enron and its brilliant business model, that is, until Enron collapsed and was exposed as a gigantic scam. This was never, really, in the end, about ideas. It was about unadulterated greed. It was pushed by the supposedly best educated among us, like Larry Summers, which exposes the lie that somehow our decline is due to deficient levels of education. It was due to a bankrupt and amoral elite, and the criminal financial institutions that make them rich.

Critical thinking on the op-ed page, the Week in Review or the Book Review, never very strong to begin with, evaporated under Keller. Globalization was beyond questioning. Since the Times , like all elite institutions, is a hermetically sealed echo chamber, they do not realize how irrelevant they are becoming, or how ridiculous they look. Thomas Friedman and David Brooks might as well write for the Onion .

I worked overseas. I wasn't in the newsroom very much, but the paper is a very anxiety-ridden place. The rules aren't written on the walls, but everyone knows, even if they do not articulate it, the paper's unofficial motto: Do not significantly alienate those upon whom we depend for money and access! You can push against them some of the time. But if you are a serious reporter, like Charlie Leduff, or Sydney Schanberg, who wants to give a voice to people who don't have a voice, to address issues of race, class, capitalist exploitation or the crimes of empire, you very swiftly become a management problem and get pushed out. Those who rise in the organization and hold power are consummate careerists. Their loyalty is to their advancement and the stature and profitability of the institution, which is why the hierarchy of the paper is filled with such mediocrities. Careerism is the paper's biggest Achilles heel. It does not lack for talent. But it does lack for intellectual independence and moral courage. It reminds me of Harvard.

DN: Let's come back to this question of the Russian hacking news story. You raised the ability to generate a story, which has absolutely no factual foundation, nothing but assertions by various intelligence agencies, presented as an assessment that is beyond question. What is your evaluation of this?

CH: The commercial broadcast networks, and that includes CNN and MSNBC, are not in the business of journalism. They hardly do any. Their celebrity correspondents are courtiers to the elite. They speculate about and amplify court gossip, which is all the accusations about Russia, and they repeat what they are told to repeat. They sacrifice journalism and truth for ratings and profit. These cable news shows are one of many revenue streams in a corporate structure. They compete against other revenue streams. The head of CNN, Jeff Zucker, who helped create the fictional persona of Donald Trump on "Celebrity Apprentice," has turned politics on CNN into a 24-hour reality show. All nuance, ambiguity, meaning and depth, along with verifiable fact, are sacrificed for salacious entertainment. Lying, racism, bigotry and conspiracy theories are given platforms and considered newsworthy, often espoused by people whose sole quality is that they are unhinged. It is news as burlesque.

I was on the investigative team at the New York Times during the lead-up to the Iraq War. I was based in Paris and covered Al Qaeda in Europe and the Middle East. Lewis Scooter Libby, Dick Cheney, Richard Perle and maybe somebody in an intelligence agency, would confirm whatever story the administration was attempting to pitch. Journalistic rules at the Times say you can't go with a one-source story. But if you have three or four supposedly independent sources confirming the same narrative, then you can go with it, which is how they did it. The paper did not break any rules taught at Columbia journalism school, but everything they wrote was a lie.

The whole exercise was farcical. The White House would leak some bogus story to Judy Miller or Michael Gordon, and then go on the talk shows to say, 'as the Times reported .' It gave these lies the veneer of independence and reputable journalism. This was a massive institutional failing, and one the paper has never faced.

DN: The CIA pitches the story, and then the Times gets the verification from those who pitch it to them.

CH: It's not always pitched. And not much of this came from the CIA. The CIA wasn't buying the "weapons of mass destruction" hysteria.

DN: It goes the other way too?

CH: Sure. Because if you're trying to have access to a senior official, you'll constantly be putting in requests, and those officials will decide when they want to see you. And when they want to see you, it's usually because they have something to sell you.

DN: The media's anti-Russia narrative has been embraced by large portions of what presents itself as the "left."

CH: Well, don't get me started on the American left. First of all, there is no American left -- not a left that has any kind of seriousness, that understands political or revolutionary theories, that's steeped in economic study, that understands how systems of power work, especially corporate and imperial power. The left is caught up in the same kind of cults of personality that plague the rest of society. It focuses on Trump, as if Trump is the central problem. Trump is a product, a symptom of a failed system and dysfunctional democracy, not the disease.

If you attempt to debate most of those on the supposedly left, they reduce discussion to this cartoonish vision of politics.

The serious left in this country was decimated. It started with the suppression of radical movements under Woodrow Wilson, then the "Red Scares" in the 1920s, when they virtually destroyed our labor movement and our radical press, and then all of the purges in the 1950s. For good measure, they purged the liberal class -- look at what they did to Henry Wallace -- so that Cold War "liberals" equated capitalism with democracy, and imperialism with freedom and liberty. I lived in Switzerland and France. There are still residues of a militant left in Europe, which gives Europeans something to build upon. But here we almost have to begin from scratch.

I've battled continuously with Antifa and the Black Bloc. I think they're kind of poster children for what I would consider phenomenal political immaturity. Resistance is not a form of personal catharsis. We are not fighting the rise of fascism in the 1930s. The corporate elites we have to overthrow already hold power. And unless we build a broad, popular resistance movement, which takes a lot of patient organizing among working men and women, we are going to be steadily ground down.

So Trump's not the problem. But just that sentence alone is going to kill most discussions with people who consider themselves part of the left.

The corporate state has made it very hard to make a living if you hold fast to this radical critique. You will never get tenure. You probably won't get academic appointments. You won't win prizes. You won't get grants. The New York Times , if they review your book, will turn it over to a dutiful mandarin like George Packer to trash it -- as he did with my last book. The elite schools, and I have taught as a visiting professor at a few of them, such as Princeton and Columbia, replicate the structure and goals of corporations. If you want to even get through a doctoral committee, much less a tenure committee, you must play it really, really safe. You must not challenge the corporate-friendly stance that permeates the institution and is imposed through corporate donations and the dictates of wealthy alumni. Half of the members of most of these trustee boards should be in prison!

Speculation in the 17th century in Britain was a crime. Speculators were hanged. And today they run the economy and the country. They have used the capturing of wealth to destroy the intellectual, cultural and artistic life in the country and snuff out our democracy. There is a word for these people: traitors.

DN: What about the impact that you've seen of identity politics in America?

CH: Well, identity politics defines the immaturity of the left. The corporate state embraced identity politics. We saw where identity politics got us with Barack Obama, which is worse than nowhere. He was, as Cornel West said, a black mascot for Wall Street, and now he is going around to collect his fees for selling us out.

My favorite kind of anecdotal story about identity politics: Cornel West and I, along with others, led a march of homeless people on the Democratic National Convention session in Philadelphia. There was an event that night. It was packed with hundreds of people, mostly angry Bernie Sanders supporters. I had been asked to come speak. And in the back room, there was a group of younger activists, one who said, "We're not letting the white guy go first." Then he got up and gave a speech about how everybody now had to vote for Hillary Clinton. That's kind of where identity politics gets you. There is a big difference between shills for corporate capitalism and imperialism, like Corey Booker and Van Jones, and true radicals like Glen Ford and Ajamu Baraka. The corporate state carefully selects and promotes women, or people of color, to be masks for its cruelty and exploitation.

It is extremely important, obviously, that those voices are heard, but not those voices that have sold out to the power elite. The feminist movement is a perfect example of this. The old feminism, which I admire, the Andrea Dworkin kind of feminism, was about empowering oppressed women. This form of feminism did not try to justify prostitution as sex work. It knew that it is just as wrong to abuse a woman in a sweatshop as it is in the sex trade. The new form of feminism is an example of the poison of neoliberalism. It is about having a woman CEO or woman president, who will, like Hillary Clinton, serve the systems of oppression. It posits that prostitution is about choice. What woman, given a stable income and security, would choose to be raped for a living? Identity politics is anti-politics.

DN: I believe you spoke at a Socialist Convergence conference where you criticized Obama and Sanders, and you were shouted down.

CH: Yes, I don't even remember. I've been shouted down criticizing Obama in many places, including Berkeley. I have had to endure this for a long time as a supporter and speech writer for Ralph Nader. People don't want the illusion of their manufactured personalities, their political saviors, shattered; personalities created by public relations industries. They don't want to do the hard work of truly understanding how power works and organizing to bring it down.

DN: You mentioned that you have been reading the World Socialist Web Site for some time. You know we are quite outside of that framework.

CH: I'm not a Marxist. I'm not a Trotskyist. But I like the site. You report on important issues seriously and in a way a lot of other sites don't. You care about things that are important to me -- mass incarceration, the rights and struggles of the working class and the crimes of empire. I have read the site for a long time.

DN: Much of what claims to be left -- that is, the pseudo-left -- reflects the interests of the affluent middle class.

CH: Precisely. When everybody was, you know, pushing for multiculturalism in lead institutions, it really meant filtering a few people of color or women into university departments or newsrooms, while carrying out this savage economic assault against the working poor and, in particular, poor people of color in deindustrialized pockets of the United States. Very few of these multiculturalists even noticed. I am all for diversity, but not when it is devoid of economic justice. Cornel West has been one of the great champions, not only of the black prophetic tradition, the most important intellectual tradition in our history, but the clarion call for justice in all its forms. There is no racial justice without economic justice. And while these elite institutions sprinkled a few token faces into their hierarchy, they savaged the working class and the poor, especially poor people of color.

Much of the left was fooled by the identity politics trick. It was a boutique activism. It kept the corporate system, the one we must destroy, intact. It gave it a friendly face.

DN: The World Socialist Web Site has made the issue of inequality a central focus of its coverage.

CH: That's why I read it and like it.

DN: Returning to the Russia issue, where do you see this going? How seriously do you see this assault on democratic rights? We call this the new McCarthyism. Is that, in your view, a legitimate analogy?

CH: Yes, of course it's the new McCarthyism. But let's acknowledge how almost irrelevant our voices are.

DN: I don't agree with you on that.

CH: Well, irrelevant in the sense that we're not heard within the mainstream. When I go to Canada I am on the CBC on prime time. The same is true in France. That never happens here. PBS and NPR are never going to do that. Nor are they going to do that for any other serious critic of capitalism or imperialism.

If there is a debate about attacking Syria, for example, it comes down to bombing Syria or bombing Syria and sending in troops, as if these are the only two options. Same with health care. Do we have Obamacare, a creation of the Heritage Foundation and the pharmaceutical and insurance industries, or no care? Universal health care for all is not discussed. So we are on the margins. But that does not mean we are not dangerous. Neoliberalism and globalization are zombie ideologies. They have no credibility left. The scam has been found out. The global oligarchs are hated and reviled. The elite has no counterargument to our critique. So they can't afford to have us around. As the power elite becomes more frightened, they're going to use harsher forms of control, including the blunt instrument of censorship and violence.

DN: I think it can be a big mistake to be focused on the sense of isolation or marginalization. I'll make a prediction. You will have, probably sooner than you think, more requests for interviews and television time. We are in a period of colossal political breakdown. We are going to see, more and more, the emergence of the working class as a powerful political force.

CH: That's why we are a target. With the bankruptcy of the ruling ideology, and the bankruptcy of the American liberal class and the American left, those who hold fast to intellectual depth and an examination of systems of power, including economics, culture and politics, have to be silenced. (Republished from World Socialist Web Site by permission of author or representative)


JackOH , October 9, 2017 at 11:08 am GMT

I'm a moderate admirer of Chris Hedges, but he is really cooking in this interview. Too much to praise here, but his thinking that corporations, the mainstream media, and the academy can and do successfully "game" dissent by suppression, divide and conquer, co-optation, and so on, is spot on.
Albertde , October 9, 2017 at 2:56 pm GMT
Good but not great interview with Chris Hodges: he manages to talk about an amorphous elite without identifying any of them and not a word about Israel. So pseudo-good roally
alexander , October 9, 2017 at 4:30 pm GMT
I think this was an excellent discussion, and I would like to thank you both for having it, and sharing it.

Among the crises effecting the United States, the one effecting us most profoundly is the absence of any accountability for the crimes committed by our oligarchic class.

Addressing this issue is ground zero for any meaningful change.

If there is no accountability for their crimes , there will be no change.

Certainly the greatest among these crimes was(is) defrauding the nation into " a war of aggression". which, being the supreme international crime, should be met with harsh prison sentences for all who promoted it.

It is important for everyone to recognize just how much damage these policies have done to the country, not just in terms of our collective morale or our constitutional mandates,not just in terms of our international standing on universal principles of legality and justice, but our long term economic solvency as a nation.

The "exceptionalism" of our "war of aggression" elites has completely devastated our nation's balance sheet.

Since 9-11, our national debt has grown by a mind numbing "fourteen and a half trillion dollars".. nearly quadrupling since 1999.

This unconscionable level of "overspending" is unprecedented in human history.

Not one lawmaker, not one primetime pundit, nor one editorialist (of any major newspaper), has a CLUE how to deal with it.

Aside from the root atrocity in visiting mass murder on millions of innocents who never attacked us (and never intended to) which is a horrible crime in and of itself,

There is the profound crisis , in situ , of potentially demanding that 320 million Americans PAY FOR THE WARS OUR ELITES LIED US INTO .

This is where the rubber meets the road for our "war of aggression-ists ", gentlemen.

This is the "unanimous space" of our entire country's population on the issue of "no taxation without representation".

WHOSE assets should be made forfeit to pay for these wars .The DECEIVERS or the DECEIVED ?

Ask "The People" ..and you will find your answer .very fast.

No wonder our "elites" are terrified to discuss this .

Absolutely terrified.

exiled off mainstreet , October 10, 2017 at 1:27 am GMT
I agree with the general tenor of this article and would further state that in addition to the Iraq thing which was a war crime and eliminated any shreds of legitimacy retained by the yankee regime that the Libya overthrow and destruction, a war crime of historic proportions, and the use of that overthrow to provide major support to the barbaric element in Syria expose the yankee regime as an enemy of civilization with all that entails, including questions of whether, absent any legitimacy, the regime's continued existence itself does not constitute a major threat.
The elements in the article discussing and exposing the New York Times and its role as an integral part of the power structure should be read and remembered by all.
Grandpa Charlie , October 10, 2017 at 6:10 am GMT

How do you interpret the fixation on Russia and the entire interpretation of the election within the framework of Putin's manipulation?

Chris Hedges: It's as ridiculous as Saddam Hussein's weapons of mass destruction. It is an absolutely unproven allegation that is used to perpetuate a very frightening accusation -- critics of corporate capitalism and imperialism are foreign agents for Russia.

With all due respect for Chris Hedges, who is doubtless a courageous journalist and an intelligent commentator, I would suggest that what is also and most ridiculous is the thought that it is only agents of Israel that have suborned the neocon faction within USA's government and 'Deep State' (controllers of MSM). Or is this OT? I don't think so, because if we are to discuss the anti-Russia campaign realistically, as baseless in fact, and as contrived for an effect and to further/protect some particular interests, we can hardly avoid the question: Who or what interest is served by the anti-Russia campaign?

Who or what interest is served by anti-Russia propaganda other than, or in addition to, just the usual MIC suspects, profiteering corporations who want to keep a supposed need for nuclear weapons front and center in the minds of Congress? Cui bono?

To be clear: I suggest that neocon office-holders within USA's government or within the Deep State (controllers of MSM) are foreign agents for at least three nations: the People's Republic of China,the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia and the State of Israel.

(I would compare USA now with Imperial China in its declining years when it was being sold piecemeal to all the great powers of Europe.)

Who benefits from this situation and how do they benefit? All three of these countries are deeply involved in suborning members of Congress and others within the government of the USA, yet none of the three is mentioned in such a connection by the MSM or by officials of the Executive. Thus, it is beneficial to them to have suspicion thrown onto Russia and thus investigative attention deflected from themselves. A few public figures (e.g., Philip Giraldi) have made such allegations respecting Israel, more public figures have made such suggestions respecting Saudi Arabia, but very few have made the allegations in the case of the PRC.

Let's think about this in the context of history, beginning with the Vietnam War. When USA got involved in Vietnam -- which involvement began during the days of Eisenhower/Dulles -- probably the primary interest groups that swayed USA global/foreign policy were the Vatican and the China Lobby. The interests of these two lobbies converged in Vietnam. From the RC side, consider an historical event that is unknown practically to any Americans under the age of 60 or 70, namely, Operation Passage to Freedom, 1954-55.

"The period was marked by a CIA-backed propaganda campaign on behalf of South Vietnam's Roman Catholic Prime Minister Ngo Dinh Diem. The campaign exhorted Catholics to flee impending religious persecution under communism, and around 60% of the north's 1 million Catholics obliged." (Wikipedia: Operation Passage to Freedom )

From the side of the China Lobby – avoiding the matter of JFK's planning to dump USA involvement in Vietnam after the 1964 election – what we saw in the early years of USA's involvement, 1965-1969, was a period in which the China Lobby could push an agenda that included widening the Vietnam campaign into southern China, particularly to include the tungsten mining operations supposedly owned by K.C. Wu. Tungsten at that time was considered as having tremendous strategic value, centering on, but not limited to, its essential use in the filaments of incandescent light-bulbs. It became clear after the Tet Offensive that the entire strategy of reopening the Chinese civil war, capturing the tungsten, etc, could make sense only if Chang Kai Shek's KMT would commit its troops in huge numbers, virtually all of its troops, on the ground in Vietnam (which would have brought in huge numbers of PRC troops on the other side) -- it became, to borrow one of Nixon's favorite phrases, "perfectly clear" that expansion into southern China and capture of the tungsten operations there were not in the cards. When Kissinger talked up his 'realpolitik', what he really meant was the politics of surrendering to Beijing. So, Nixon in July 1969, recognizing that there was nothing to be gained by the loss of life and expenditure of every form of capital, ordered first of many troop withdrawals from Vietnam. It was all a done deal as of Kissinger taking over as National Security Adviser, January 1969 -- everything but the tears.

Now, patience, dear reader, this is all leading up to a certain crucial event that took place in 1971 -- namely, Kissinger's secret trip to Beijing in July (1971) to arrange for everything regarding what amounted to a surrender to the PRC, except the end of the Vietnam War. The documents are still unavailable as classified Top Secret or whatever, but clearly, China had no interest in seeing an end to the Vietnam War, because both parties – Vietnam and USA – were adversaries of China. (Let them knock each other out!) Most likely, Zhou talked Henry into doing what he could to prolong USA's involvement in the Vietnam War, not to shorten it. See, including between the lines, National Security Archives:

http://nsarchive2.gwu.edu/NSAEBB/NSAEBB66/

As noted, this stuff is mostly unavailable to us, the public, but it is clear that USA's 'leaders' (Nixon and Kissinger) wanted to make kissy-kissy with Zhou Enlai, and it was all arranged including George H. W. Bush's appointment as USA's first 'Ambassador' (in all but name) to Beijing, and including giving China's permanent seat on the UNSC to Beijing and otherwise selling out the old China Lobby. I call it the 'old China Lobby' because part of what was arranged was that the old China Lobby would be taken over by the New China lobby, complete with all the payola channels into Congress and the Deep State.

Now, I think, we arrive at today, 2017, and the failure of Trump to act on his campaign promises to oppose China in any way. Maybe he thought about it for a minute, but he was surrounded by neocons, who were already on the payroll of the PRC -- if not taking direct orders from the Standing Committee of the CCP, then at least promised to avoid offending the interests of the PRC -- on pain of losing regular paychecks from Beijing into their secret Grand Cayman accounts.

What I would like to say to Hedges. and others like him, is just this:

THEY say that you are foreign agents for Russia? Time to use a little judo on them: time for YOU to speak truth that THEY are foreign agents for the People's Republic of China.

And don't forget this potent phrase: YET NONE DARE CALL IT TREASON!

AB_Anonymous , October 11, 2017 at 5:24 am GMT

"The elite has no counterargument to our critique. So they can't afford to have us around. As the power elite becomes more frightened, they're going to use harsher forms of control, including the blunt instrument of censorship and violence."

Precisely! What makes it even worse, they will be pushing this new pretexts for control sloppy (as in Vegas) and in a hurry. Which will make them look even more ridiculous and due to the lack of time will force to act even more stupid, resulting in an exponential curve of censorship, oppression and insanity. And that's there the maniacal dreams of certain forces to start a really big war in the Middle East (with or without attacking North Korea first) may come true.

Anonymous Disclaimer , October 11, 2017 at 6:03 am GMT
@Grandpa Charlie

"avoiding the matter of JFK's planning to dump USA involvement in Vietnam after the 1964 election – "

Now that's a lie. This part is a lie. Or it is carefully crafted ex post hoc mythology a la Camelot, the Kennedy Mystique.

FACT: JFK was a Cold War Hawk and during his administration increased nuclear arms higher than Ike and until Reagan.

JFK during his administration increased the number of "advisers" to a higher number than Ike.

William F. Buckley pointedly asked Senator Robert Kennedy in the mid. '60′s "So, was there any thought of the White House pulling out [of Vietnam]?

RFK: No. There never was.

If anything, had he lived to see a second term, most likely US involvement in Vietnam would have escalated as much as under LBJ, perhaps with the same disastrous results, perhaps not. But JFK was no peacenik dove.

Mr. Hedges comes across as a total whackjob, and makes Bill Moyers appear to be a gentle moderate in comparison. That he thinks so highly of race man BLM supporter Cornell West speaks volumes of naivety to the nth degree. A total cuck without even knowing it, nay, totally appreciative of being a cuck and it appears to be his hope that one day his cardinal sin of being white will be purged by peoples of color, who are his true moral and intellectual betters in every step of the way.

OilcanFloyd , October 11, 2017 at 10:45 am GMT
I agree that the Russia fixation is garbage, but explaining the populist revolt without touching on the major issue of forced demographic and cultural change through legal and illegal immigration is dishonest. Almost everyone who isn't an immigrant or the descendant or relative of a post-65 immigrant is pissed off beyond words about this! How did you miss the popular response to Trump's promises to "deport them all," end birthright citizenship and chain migration, build a wall etc.? Without those promises, he wouldn't have made it to the debates.

I'm also not sure how welfare has been stripped. What programs aren't available?

I'm not sure how to lower black incarceration rates. Having taught in inner-city schools and worked in the same environment in other jobs, I know that crime and dysfunction are through the roof. I can only imagine what those communities would be like if the predators and crooks that are incarcerated were allowed to roam free.

Greg Bacon , Website October 11, 2017 at 11:13 am GMT

Chris Hedges: It's as ridiculous as Saddam Hussein's weapons of mass destruction. It is an absolutely unproven allegation that is used to perpetuate a very frightening accusation -- critics of corporate capitalism and imperialism are foreign agents for Russia.

Is this the same Chris Hedges that wrote those articles in November 2001 that Saddam and al Qaeda were in cahoots, which led to the illegal 2003 invasion?

http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/newswar/part1/wmd.html

Tell me Chris, did you know about the CIA pollution then or just find out lately? And correct me if I'm wrong, but didn't you also write NYT articles in the Fall of 2002 saying that Saddam had WMD's?

Again, getting your tips from the CIA? Ever hear of 'Operation Mockingbird?"

jacques sheete , October 11, 2017 at 11:20 am GMT

It is the result of the transformation of the country into an oligarchy.

That's cringe-worthy.

Transformation into an oligarchy? Transformation ??? I like Hedges' work, but such fundamental errors really taint what he sez.

The country was never transformed into an oligarchy; it began as one.

In fact, it was organized and functioned as a pluto-oligarchy right out of the box. In case anyone has the dimness to argue with me about it, all that shows is that you don't know JS about how the cornstitution was foisted on the rest of us by the plutoligarchs.

"An elective despotism was not the government we fought for "

-Thomas Jefferson: Notes on Virginia Q.XIII, 1782 . ME 2:163

The Elites "Have No Credibility Left"

Guess what, boys and girls Why did they have any to begin with?

Where do people get their faith? WakeTF up, already!! (Yes, I'm losing it. Because even a duumbshit goy like myself can see it. Where are all you bright bulb know-it-alls with all the flippin answers???)

jacques sheete , October 11, 2017 at 11:35 am GMT

Newspapers are trapped in an old system of information they call "objectivity" and "balance," formulae designed to cater to the powerful and the wealthy and obscure the truth.

It's amazing that here we are, self-anointed geniuses and dumbos alike, puttering around in the 21st century, and someone feels the necessity to point that out. And he's right; it needs to be pointed out. Drummed into our skulls in fact.

Arrrgggghhhh!!! Jefferson again.:

Nothing can now be believed which is seen in a newspaper. Truth itself becomes suspicious by being put into that polluted vehicle. The real extent of this state of misinformation is known only to those who are in situations to confront facts within their knowledge with the lies of the day.

Thomas Jefferson to John Norvell, 14 June 1807

http://press-pubs.uchicago.edu/founders/documents/amendI_speechs29.html

More deja vu all over again and again. Note the date.:

"This is a story of a powerful and wealthy newspaper having enormous influence And never a day out of more than ten thousand days that this newspaper has not subtly and cunningly distort the news of the world in the interest of special privilege. "

Upton Sinclair, "The crimes of the "Times" : a test of newspaper decency," pamphlet, 1921

https://archive.org/stream/crimesofthetimes00sincrich/crimesofthetimes00sincrich_djvu.txt

Stephen Paul Foster , Website October 11, 2017 at 12:01 pm GMT
"The serious left in this country was decimated. It started with the suppression of radical movements under Woodrow Wilson, then the "Red Scares" in the 1920s, when they virtually destroyed our labor movement and our radical press, and then all of the purges in the 1950s. For good measure, they purged the liberal class -- look at what they did to Henry Wallace."

Look what they did to Henry Wallace -- Are you kidding me? Wallace was a Stalinist stooge, too treasonous even for his boss, FDR, although the bird brain Eleanor loved him. The guy was so out of touch with reality that after the Potemkin tour of the Gulag that Stalin gave him during WWII he came back raving about how swell it was for the lunch-bucket gang in Siberia. He also encouraged FDR to sell out the Poles to Stalin

jacques sheete , October 11, 2017 at 12:08 pm GMT
I find it most fascinating that none of what Hedges says is news, but even UR readers probably think it is. Here's an antidote to that idea.

The following quote is from Eugene Kelly who's excoriating government press releases but the criticism applies as well to the resulting press reports. I found the whole article striking.:

Any boob can deduce, a priori, what type of "news" is contained in this rubbish.

-Eugene A. Kelly, Distorting the News, The American Mercury, March 1935 , pp. 307-318

http://www.unz.org/Pub/AmMercury/

I'd like good evidence that the situation has improved since then. Good luck.

polistra , Website October 11, 2017 at 1:29 pm GMT
Hedges doesn't seem to understand that the "Resistance" is openly and obviously working FOR Deepstate. They do not resist wars and globalism and monopolistic corporations. They resist everyone who questions the war. They resist nationalism and localism.

Nothing mysterious or hidden about this, no ulterior motive or bankshot. It's explicitly stated in every poster and shout and beating.

[Jul 31, 2018] GOP and Corporate Dems Gain When Democrats Run Against Putin by Norman Solomon

Notable quotes:
"... This week, under the headline " It's Been Over a Year Since MSNBC Has Mentioned U.S. War in Yemen ," journalist Adam Johnson reported for the media watchdog group FAIR about the collapse of journalistic decency at MSNBC, under the weight of the network's Russia Russia Russia obsession. Johnson's article asks a big-type question: "Why is the No. 1 outlet of alleged anti-Trump #resistance completely ignoring his most devastating war?" ..."
"... It would be easy for news watchers to see that the Democratic Party is much more committed to a hard line against Russia than a hard line against the corporate forces imposing extreme economic inequality here at home. ..."
"... Washington Post ..."
"... "Amplifying the anti-Russia din helps to drown out the left's core messages for economic fairness, equal rights, environmental protection, diplomacy and so much more." That, of course, is the purpose and intent. Just like hobbling the 'left' with absurd identity politics. ..."
"... It is a sham since no evidence of election influence by the Russians was provided and no preventive or corrective measures our government is taking to prevent Emmanuel Goldstein (The Russians) from further attacking and usurping our elections was put forth. ..."
"... I'm surprised that some of those folks, notably Thom Hartmann, choose not to practice what they preach -- you know, the platitudes about studying the facts and coming to your own conclusions rather than following the herd. They rightly condemn acting on prejudice, out of pure self-interest, without verifiable facts (indeed at odds with empirical fact) and using group intimidation, as per McCarthyist tactics, and then they go ahead and embrace those vices to their own ends. ..."
Jul 26, 2018 | consortiumnews.com

Hammering on Russia is a losing strategy for progressives as most Americans care about economic issues and it is the Republicans and corporate Democrats who stand to gain, argues Norman Solomon.

Progressives should figure it out. Amplifying the anti-Russia din helps to drown out the left's core messages for economic fairness, equal rights, environmental protection, diplomacy and so much more. Echoing the racket of blaming Russia for the USA's severe shortages of democracy plays into the hands of Republicans and corporate Democrats eager to block progressive momentum.

When riding on the "Russiagate" bandwagon, progressives unwittingly aid political forces that are eager to sideline progressive messages. And with the midterm elections now scarcely 100 days away, the torrents of hyperbolic and hypocritical claims about Russia keep diverting attention from why it's so important to defeat Republicans.

As a practical matter, devoting massive amounts of time and resources to focusing on Russia has reduced capacities to effectively challenge the domestic forces that are assaulting democratic possibilities at home -- with such tactics as state voter ID laws, purging of voter rolls, and numerous barriers to suppress turnout by people of color.

Instead of keeping eyes on the prize, some of the Democratic base has been watching and trusting media outlets like MSNBC. An extreme Russia obsession at the network has left precious little airtime to expose and challenge the vast quantity of terrible domestic-policy measures being advanced by the Trump administration every day.

Likewise with the U.S. government's militarism. While some Democrats and Republicans in Congress have put forward legislation to end the active U.S. role in Saudi Arabia's mass-murderous war on Yemen, those efforts face a steeper uphill climb because of MSNBC.

This week, under the headline " It's Been Over a Year Since MSNBC Has Mentioned U.S. War in Yemen ," journalist Adam Johnson reported for the media watchdog group FAIR about the collapse of journalistic decency at MSNBC, under the weight of the network's Russia Russia Russia obsession. Johnson's article asks a big-type question: "Why is the No. 1 outlet of alleged anti-Trump #resistance completely ignoring his most devastating war?"

Maddow: Most Americans don't care for her obsession.

The FAIR report says: "What seems most likely is MSNBC has found that attacking Russia from the right on matters of foreign policy is the most elegant way to preserve its 'progressive' image while still serving traditional centers of power -- namely, the Democratic Party establishment, corporate sponsors, and their own revolving door of ex-spook and military contractor-funded talking heads."

Russia Doesn't Concern Americans

Corporate media have been exerting enormous pressure on Democratic officeholders and candidates to follow a thin blue party line on Russia. Yet polling shows that few Americans see Russia as a threat to their well-being; they're far more concerned about such matters as healthcare, education, housing and overall economic security.

The gap between most Americans and media elites is clear in a nationwide poll taken after the Trump-Putin summit in Helsinki, which was fiercely condemned by the punditocracy. As The Hill newspaper reported this week under the headline "Most Americans Back Trump's Call for Follow-Up Summit With Putin," 54 percent of respondents favored plans for a second summit. "The survey also found that 61 percent of Americans say better relations with Russia are in the best interest of the United States."

Yet most Democratic Party leaders have very different priorities. After investing so much political capital in portraying Putin's government as an implacable enemy of the United States, top Democrats on Capitol Hill are hardly inclined to help thaw relations between the world's two nuclear superpowers.

It would be easy for news watchers to see that the Democratic Party is much more committed to a hard line against Russia than a hard line against the corporate forces imposing extreme economic inequality here at home.

National polling underscores just how out of whack and out of touch the party's top dogs are. Last month, the Gallup organization asked: "What do you think is the most important problem facing the country today?" The results were telling. "Situation with Russia" came in at below one-half of 1 percent.

The day after the Helsinki summit, The Washington Post reported: "Citing polls and focus groups that have put Trump and Russia far down the list of voter priorities, Democratic strategists have counseled candidates and party leaders for months to discuss 'kitchen table' issues. Now, after a remarkable 46-minute news conference on foreign soil where Trump stood side by side with a former KGB agent to praise his 'strong' denials of election interference and criticize the FBI, those strategists believe the ground may have shifted."

Prominent corporate Democrats who want to beat back the current progressive groundswell inside their party are leading the charge. Jim Kessler, a senior vice president at the "centrist" Third Way organization, was quick to proclaim after the summit: "It got simple real fast. I've talked to a lot of Democrats that are running in purple and red states and districts who have said that Russia rarely comes up back home, and I think that has now changed."

The Democratic National Committee and other official arms of the party keep sending out Russia-bashing emails to millions of people on a nearly daily basis. At times the goals seem to involve generating and exploiting manic panic.

At the end of last week, as soon as the White House announced plans (later postponed) for Vladimir Putin to meet with President Trump in Washington this fall, the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee fired off a mass email -- from "RUSSIA ALERT (via DCCC)" -- declaring that the Russian president "must NOT be allowed to set foot in our country." The email strained to conflate a summit with Russian interference in U.S. elections. "We cannot overstate how dangerous this is," the DCCC gravely warned. And: "We need to stop him at all costs."

For Democrats who move in elite circles, running against Putin might seem like a smart election move. But for voters worried about economic insecurity and many other social ills, a political party obsessed with Russia is likely to seem aloof and irrelevant to their lives.

Norman Solomon is the national coordinator of the online activist group RootsAction.org and the executive director of the Institute for Public Accuracy. He is the author of a dozen books including "War Made Easy: How Presidents and Pundits Keep Spinning Us to Death."


Nop , July 31, 2018 at 10:38 am

"Amplifying the anti-Russia din helps to drown out the left's core messages for economic fairness, equal rights, environmental protection, diplomacy and so much more." That, of course, is the purpose and intent. Just like hobbling the 'left' with absurd identity politics.

Bill Goldman , July 30, 2018 at 6:44 pm

If the Democrats don't turn primaries into housecleaning out establishment Dems, they will gain no seats in the midterm election and Trump will retain his Republican majority in both chambers. Putin is an heroic figure to the global electorates. They admire and respect him and even wish he were running on their tickets. Most Americans want nothing to do with mainstream media be it the NYT, WSJ, Fox, Financial Times, Guardian, MSNBC, or CNN. They are mostly viewed as extreme liars and propagandists of the Goebbels variety. The real action is in the alternative media who realize capitalist wars are military-industrial rackets. The play is at RT, Sputnik International, Consortium, The Saker, New Eastern Outlook, and Greenville Post, among others.

Taras77 , July 30, 2018 at 11:42 am

Not sure where this link would fit but here it is:

https://www.washingtonpost.com/outlook/putin-wanted-to-interrogate-me-trump-called-it-an-incredible-offer-why/2018/07/26/7bb11552-90d2-11e8-b769-e3fff17f0689_story.html?noredirect=on&utm_term=.a8100ef8e8fd

Article is strong on self-pity and whine-evidently this neocon had a serious case of the vapors when putin made an "offer" to interview him.

It remains to be seen as to the extent of Mcfaul's cooperation with Browder, who he describes simply as a british businessman.

Skip Scott , July 30, 2018 at 12:03 pm

Tony Cartalucci has the straight dope on McFaul.

https://www.globalresearch.ca/anti-russia-hysteria-putin-proposed-interrogating-u-s-officials-interfering-in-russian-affairs/5648966

Furtive , July 30, 2018 at 11:27 am

It was ok when Hillary said we need a "strong" Russia:
"We want very much to have a strong Russia because a strong, competent, prosperous, stable Russia is , we think, in the interests of the world," Clinton said as Obama's secretary of state in her 2010 interview with the partially Russian government-owned First Channel Television.

Russia is not the USSR, although PMSNBC wants the ignorant to "stay ignorant, my friend.."
Thedems are their own worst enemy.

Lois Gagnon , July 29, 2018 at 11:41 pm

Rachel Maddow is unfortunately a cult hero in my neck of the Western Mass woods as she makes her permanent home here. It's impossible to penetrate the total brainwashing she has managed to accomplish among the pink hat wearing crowd. It's very dispiriting.

This is a great interview with Russian scholar Prof. Stephen Cohen on the Real News. Maybe it will at least cause a few second thoughts among the not completely zombified.
https://therealnews.com/stories/debunking-the-putin-panic-with-stephen-f-cohen

Furtive , July 30, 2018 at 11:33 am

Here is part one of the Cohen interview: https://therealnews.com/stories/the-russia-national-security-crisis-is-a-u-s-creation

Antiwar7 , July 30, 2018 at 3:18 pm

It's sad when someone like Rachel Maddow uses their social gifts to advance tribalism. In this case, one could say the Russia bashing amounts to racism.

H Beazley , July 29, 2018 at 9:55 pm

I have a foolproof method for proving which journalists are controlled by the C.I.A. The agency always advocates for war and always claims that JFK was killed by a "lone nut." Rachel Maddow always goes along with war propaganda and supports the Warren Commission every November 22. Therefore, she is a tool for the C.I.A. and cannot be trusted.

H Beazley , July 29, 2018 at 10:24 pm

https://kennedysandking.com/john-f-kennedy-articles/rachel-maddow-jfk-and-easy-money

Reference for above statement. Jim DiEugenio is a real source for the truth of the JFK assassination, not Phil Shenon.

glitch , July 31, 2018 at 7:23 am

JFK is their most blatant "tell". Some can't even say his name without spitting it out.

CitizenOne , July 29, 2018 at 9:26 pm

Today on ABC Martha Raddatz hosted "This Week" which featured James Lankford a Republican from Oklahoma describing how Russia and Putin were actively trying to ruin our democracy and also were trying to influence elections at every possible turn. The Russian Bear and Putin according to Lankford were also trying to rewrite the Constitution, trying to upend every election and were seeking to disrupt our national electrical grid not to be confused with our national election grid which they were also trying to destroy as well as to control the most local elections by a means of electronic control that was beyond any means to control.

Of course no mention was made about possible solutions to thwart the Russians was mentioned and it is doubtful that there are any serious efforts to counteract the alleged Russian hacking of US elections since not one single preventive action to stop the Orwellian monster of Russia, like Emmanuel Goldstein in Orwell's novel "Nineteen Eighty Four" was put forth.

Apparently ABC and the other media are trying to convince Americans that there is an overwhelming force in Russia that is somehow able to infiltrate and control all our national elections. Apparently the Russians are unstoppable.

It is a sham.

It is a sham since no evidence of election influence by the Russians was provided and no preventive or corrective measures our government is taking to prevent Emmanuel Goldstein (The Russians) from further attacking and usurping our elections was put forth.

Instead the publishers of "This Week" on ABC were content to provide evidence-free incriminations of Russia and attribute all manner of influence in our elections to the incredibly sneaky and unstoppable Russian-Putin election Influencing machine which is unstoppable by our intelligence agencies.

What is missing from Martha Radditz's show? There will never be any admission that they have jobs because of Citizens United, their corporate benefactors (Koch Industries), Gerrymandering, Dark Money, Media Bias which ensures that the Iron Triangle of corporate election dark money flows to hand picked political candidates that will support conservative causes or that these are the real election influencing mechanisms which have the most power in our country to influence elections.

As long as ABC, NBC, CBS and other cable news shows fail to correctly identify the real reasons of election corruption which is our very near and dear corporate money funded political organizations we will continue to be duped by the free press to believe that Russia has control over our national elections and not believe that US Corporations hold all the power.

Cassandra , July 29, 2018 at 8:43 pm

Hell hath no fury like a Clinton scorned. The Goldwater Girl just can't over her loss to El Chumpo. It had to be the Russians, not the thoroughly disgusted American people who voted with their feet by not going to the polls at all.

JOHN CHUCKMAN , July 29, 2018 at 5:51 am

Yes, but the great Putin Scare is not just the tactic of a political interest group or party

It feeds off of something more fundamental and much more pervasive and dangerous.

https://chuckmanwordsincomments.wordpress.com/2018/07/21/john-chuckman-comment-trump-is-out-maneuvering-his-enemies-on-russia-official-u-s-russophobia-is-epidemic-it-serves-real-interests-trump-does-not-have-leverage-he-cant-even-build-his-silly/

https://chuckmanwordsincomments.wordpress.com/2017/02/07/john-chuckman-comment-putin-orders-air-force-to-prepare-for-a-time-of-war-he-is-wise-to-do-so-america-and-russia-today-a-completely-unnecessary-conflict-thanks-to-obama/

rosemerry , July 28, 2018 at 6:39 pm

Thanks to Norman for reminding us of the continued waste of time and effort on the 'russiagate' stories based on allegations and indictments, NOT evidence or possible reasons for such behavior. The USA is fully capable of unfair election practices, helped by the undemocratic system of electoral college, partisan gerrymandering, voter suppression, lack of response to voter desires .plus of course Israel being the very large external factor.
Trump's influence on workers, environment, USA's reputation are negative, but blaming Russia when this is in nobody's real interest is hardly the way forward for the Democratic Party.

SteveK9 , July 28, 2018 at 3:57 pm

Incredible as it seems, the re-election of Donald Trump (assuming he is not deposed or killed before then) is not essential to preserve our democracy. If they bring him down (whatever you may think of him), then we might just as well have a 'Star Chamber' of the Military/Industrial/Intelligence complex choose the President, not that it would matter who that might be.

Jessika , July 28, 2018 at 9:35 am

It really is peculiar what's happened to these dimwit Dems. I used to listen to Thom Hartmann and Rachel Maddow when they were on Air America, and their main political positions were for working people. Now, all they do is partisan politics which they don't seem to understand benefits only the Deep State war party.

Incidentally, State of the Nation website, http://www.sott.net , has an article by Alex Krainer, who wrote the book about Bill Browder's crooked dealings in Russia. His book, which was suppressed by Browder first, i think is "Grand Deception", now available from Red Pill Press for $25 (and must be selling well because it's being reprinted). I wrote this hastily but you'll see it on sott.net. Russia's resurgence under Putin is nothing short of astounding.

Also, there is a video on Youtube, "The Rise of Putin and the Fall of the Russian Jewish Oligarchs", 2 parts. I only saw the beginning showing how the Russian people were given state vouchers that led to the oligarchs buying them up for their own profit and plunging Russians into shock therapy disaster instigated by IMF and other US led monetary agencies including Harvard. This is why it is so incredible how Americans receive political "perception control" when the truth is exactly opposite of what they are being told. At least more people are realizing the lies being told about Russia and Putin.

Drew Hunkins , July 27, 2018 at 3:51 pm

Maddow, Corn and the rest of them are playing a dangerous game. This weekend there's a guy over at Counterpunch ("The curious case of pro-Trump leftism") who's essentially saying that any progressives or liberal minded folks who concede that Trump's on the righteous path in pursuing a detente of sorts with the Kremlin is a naive fool and isn't to be taken seriously (Thom Hartmann also had a recent piece saying similar things). He sets up a Manichean world in which you either see Trump as the sole embodiment of evil or you're a dupe playing into rightwing hands. I for one, and most others at CN, have been highly critical of 90% of Trump's platform and policies but we're also not dunderheaded dolts, we know when to give the man a modicum of credit for going against the military industrial media complex on at least this one particular issue.

Realist , July 27, 2018 at 9:26 pm

All those loons you mentioned are effectively practicing a religion, in which there is a dogma everyone must believe to be virtuous and a set of commandments every believer must live by to gain salvation. Don't toe the line on every bit of it and you are rejected as an apostate.

I'm surprised that some of those folks, notably Thom Hartmann, choose not to practice what they preach -- you know, the platitudes about studying the facts and coming to your own conclusions rather than following the herd. They rightly condemn acting on prejudice, out of pure self-interest, without verifiable facts (indeed at odds with empirical fact) and using group intimidation, as per McCarthyist tactics, and then they go ahead and embrace those vices to their own ends.

It is my process on everything in this life to learn as much as I can on my own, without being brainwashed by any group or movement, and only backing a cause if it is congruent with my own conclusions. Unfortunately, most people do the opposite: they are joiners first and analysts only if their biases are not threatened.

I feel entirely justified in agreeing with movements on some things and not others. I doubt that human beings have arrived at definitive answers about most phenomena in the real world or that any single organised group of us has it all down accurate and pat on everything. Listen to any casual debate on the questions big and small in science: the give and take, back and forth, can go on as long as the participants have the interest and energy. I never give my interlocutors any respite, because there is always one more thing to be considered or one more way of looking at a problem. I'm sure I would have been burned at the stake in many previous lives and so would a lot of the readers here.

Dogmatic party-line Democrats, Republicans, Communists, Islamists, Rastafarians, Bokononites and all the rest suffer from the same malady of checking their minds at the door when it comes to movement politics. They will never do the unthinkable and cooperate with the opposition even if they happen to agree on an issue. This is a manifestation of the Manichean approach you mentioned, Drew. Admit that the opposition is right about anything and you open the door to the possibility that they are right about more, AND that you may (heaven forbid!) be wrong more often than absolutely never. The main exception, at least in America, seems to be warfare, which both main factions and a lot of the marginal ones agree enthusiastically upon and engage with relish.

[Jul 31, 2018] The whole corrupt, crazy political process is a distraction from our real problems, and an endless maze of futility.

Notable quotes:
"... The whole corrupt, crazy political process is a distraction from our real problems, and an endless maze of futility. The illusion of democracy is collapsing all around us, and safety lies in abandoning it. ..."
"... Agreed. Our entire national political debate is a theater of smoke and mirrors. The facts most obvious and degrading to the national interest are ignored at all costs, e.g., an out of control military-industrial-intelligence complex that now swallows up an obscene $1 trillion annually (including "defense related expenditures"). ..."
"... My plans for the upcoming Democratic primary in Florida: I will write "none of these clowns" at the top of the ballot. ..."
"... I tend to think that the Cold War bankrupted us as well as the Soviets, but we just haven't figured it that out yet. ..."
"... Most of the human race has been speeding towards the cliff at 100 mph like Thelma and Louise. Certainly America has been. It's getting ever closer. We will get there. Don't expect Zeno's paradox to save us. ..."
"... I share your setiment about the Democrats but voting for Republicans just because is equally foolish. Why support banning labor unions, corporate very expensive health care, greatly reducing and eventually eliminating social security and Medicare, privitzing all public infrastructure and bailing out wall Street at all cost. I could go on but you get the idea. Vote for candidates that stand for the American people and have the guts to stand up to the elites. If no such candidates exist in a particular election don't vote simple as that. ..."
"... tealing a "none of the above" write-in requires the ballot be destroyed, so it can provide a paper trail and/or a potential theft exposure point. ..."
"... I am a registered Democrat; I will NOT be voting for them this fall. They no longer have any credibility with me. Rachel helped them shoot themselves in the foot as far as I'm concerned. How are they any different from neocons??? I'm grateful WikiLeaks pulled off their mask. I'm a historian and know a lot of both CIA and Russian history and am not buying Russiagate or Democrats. ..."
"... I like that, the "Demented-crats"! They are so completely clueless, in their overpaid bubbles, nothing to say about the Race-to-the-Bottom, Hunger Games society they have helped create. ..."
"... The loyal shrills to Clinton? Those aren't progressives. ..."
"... As Jimmy Dore keeps telling us: the Democratic leadership, which is totally corporatist and neocon, would rather lose to the GOP candidate than to see a progressive or liberal Democrat win the office. The Dems have no independent policies of their own and are merely enablers to make sure that the hard right agenda always prevails. ..."
"... And I see Bernie Sanders was spewing this neo-McCarthyite crap on a Sunday morning talk show earlier this week. He really should know better. ..."
"... Isaac Christiansen observes that "As Democrats seek to shift blame away from the discontent with our economic system, their party and their chosen Neoliberal candidate, we are told that Trump came to power almost solely due to Russian interference in the U.S. 2016 election." ..."
"... Remember how the entire anti-Russian theme began? The Clinton team used Russia as their excuse for losing 2016. It didn't get much attention at first because the party/candidate that loses inevitably blames someone or something other than the candidate/party. But the Democrats ran with it from there, using much of the media marketed to liberals to build the Russian Tale. The most insane thing about the claims that Russia hacked voting machines for Trump, etc.: In spite of much Dem voter opposition to the Clinton right wing, H. Clinton got the most votes. (Did Russia do that, and if so, why?) Trump is president because of our antiquated electoral college process. Meanwhile, while Dems ramble on about a Putin/Trump bromance, the sane world has watched as Trump set the stage for our final war, US vs. Russia and China. ..."
"... Everything gets conspicuously twisted by a biased media, yet no one (of consequence) says anything about that. Even as Trump gets bashed, he gets cheered whenever he does something dangerous and stupid, such as launching missiles in the aftermath of an obvious false flag incident. We see the matrix being blatantly and clumsily spun right before our eyes and nobody says a word about the emperor's nakedness. ..."
"... It is time for the progressives to flee the Democratic party en masse and go their own way. ..."
"... "One quarter of all the Democratic challengers in competitive House districts have military-intelligence, State Department or NSC backgrounds. This is by far the largest subcategory of Democratic candidates." ..."
"... We haven't seen any progressives in years. Progressive politics isn't a new invention. In the US, it goes back at least to the early 1900s. It's about building a better nation from the bottom up -- legit aid for the poor at one end, firm restraints in the rich at the other end.We have nothing like that today. This isn't about "political purity," but about not calling an apple an armadillo. ..."
Jul 31, 2018 | consortiumnews.com

mike k , July 27, 2018 at 8:39 am

The whole corrupt, crazy political process is a distraction from our real problems, and an endless maze of futility. The illusion of democracy is collapsing all around us, and safety lies in abandoning it. We need a new way of thinking and acting that clearly and directly sees our problems and deals with them. Politics as now understood is a dead end.

Heather S. , July 28, 2018 at 10:36 am

Agreed. Our entire national political debate is a theater of smoke and mirrors. The facts most obvious and degrading to the national interest are ignored at all costs, e.g., an out of control military-industrial-intelligence complex that now swallows up an obscene $1 trillion annually (including "defense related expenditures"). Even the fact that we no longer live in a democracy but an oligarchy, according to objective studies and noted commentators, including former president Carter, is never commented upon by the miscreant pundits posing as reporters (Hayes, Maddow, Anderson, Cuomo, et al).

Realist , July 27, 2018 at 6:33 am

My plans for the upcoming Democratic primary in Florida: I will write "none of these clowns" at the top of the ballot. Under that I will write "Stop the warmongering and phony Russia-bashing. Stop the obstructionism just to damage Trump and exonerate Hillary for losing a poorly-run campaign. I cannot vote for my party this November, and never again until you stop trying to run to the right of the Republicans." Maybe someone reading the ballot will pass the message on to the party leadership and adjustments will at least be considered.

If not, eff 'em. We will be better off sweeping corrupt corporatist cronies of Hillary, like Wasserman-Schultz, out of congress. Then there will be no doubt that the GOP needs to go too, after they use their mandate to totally wreck all before them, and maybe, after a few election cycles, some third party representing the interests of the people rather than Wall Street and the MIC can emerge. Maybe the Greens and the Libertarians can become at least equal players with the corporatist Dems and GOPers.

Somebody new is going to have to preside over the coming economic and societal collapse, and do we want that to be the military, the police and the spooks? That is who will seize power (not just covertly but overtly) if the usually mercenary politicians cannot effect some workable changes.

Broompilot , July 27, 2018 at 7:01 pm

Like the Eastern Roman Empire, we could wax and wane for 1000 years with the power we possess. Or, like the Soviet Union, we could suffer an economic collapse over a decade throwing a large percentage of us into poverty.

I tend to think that the Cold War bankrupted us as well as the Soviets, but we just haven't figured it that out yet.

Realist , July 27, 2018 at 9:48 pm

"I tend to think that the Cold War bankrupted us as well as the soviets, but we just haven't figured that out yet."

Because we prefer to blow off science and empirically-supported concepts like the first law of thermodynamics which states that energy can neither be created nor destroyed, just transferred or changed in form.

We choose to believe that we can endlessly create money, which is a token representing access to available stored energy, out of nothing by issuing debt. Even if the tokens are infinite, on a finite planet the available energy is certainly not.

Most of the human race has been speeding towards the cliff at 100 mph like Thelma and Louise. Certainly America has been. It's getting ever closer. We will get there. Don't expect Zeno's paradox to save us.

Ma Laoshi , July 27, 2018 at 5:37 am

We are long past the point that this extreme Russophobia has revealed itself to be plain old race hatred. These bouts of hysteria have always been part of the American DNA, and it has been most instructive how fast and seamless the switch has been from Muslims to Russians as the hated. Other. Progressives have solemnly declared themselves to be the good guys without much introspection, so one would expect them to be more susceptible to this bigotry, not less; a more astute observer might have asked "When will the machine turn on me next?", as is of course already happening to Sanders and others.

Yes RussiaGating is a losing strategy, but most of the evidence is that progressives ARE losers. So there's no surprise that they're falling for it, and little to indicate that they deserve any better.

Mike , July 26, 2018 at 11:43 pm

Never voted for Republican congressmen in the past. Never. This time I will. Democrats are the party of open borders and war. Now they want conflict with Russia over this ginned up fake investigation. They don't represent working people any more. I don't even think they put AMERICANS over illegal immigrants. Why is it wrong that people should be forced to obey immigration law? The laws for citizens are enforced. Never thought I'd vote Republican.

Torture This , July 27, 2018 at 9:18 am

I can't think of any reason to vote for 99.9% of the Democrats. The more everyone including the media lies about Russia, the more I empathize with them.

I'd guess the business owners that rely on illegals vote for Republicans because they're business owners. We need to eat and they need to make more money than they deserve so neither party is going to stand in the way of it as long as they bribe their politicians and anybody else that feels entitled to free stuff. Democrats won't get rid of ICE soon, if ever.

Nearly all people coming from the South are escaping conditions we've created and are granted asylum when allowed to make their case in court.

I think treating defenseless people terribly to show how mean we can be is wrong.

Freedomlover , July 28, 2018 at 8:05 am

Mike,

I share your setiment about the Democrats but voting for Republicans just because is equally foolish. Why support banning labor unions, corporate very expensive health care, greatly reducing and eventually eliminating social security and Medicare, privitzing all public infrastructure and bailing out wall Street at all cost. I could go on but you get the idea. Vote for candidates that stand for the American people and have the guts to stand up to the elites. If no such candidates exist in a particular election don't vote simple as that.

glitch , July 28, 2018 at 11:28 am

If you can't vote third party write in none of the above on a paper ballot. If those aren't options spoil your ballot but turn it in. Not voting doesn't register your disdain, it's easier for them to ignore as apathy. And non votes can be spoofed (stolen). S tealing a "none of the above" write-in requires the ballot be destroyed, so it can provide a paper trail and/or a potential theft exposure point.

Diana Lee , July 26, 2018 at 10:20 pm

I am a registered Democrat; I will NOT be voting for them this fall. They no longer have any credibility with me. Rachel helped them shoot themselves in the foot as far as I'm concerned. How are they any different from neocons??? I'm grateful WikiLeaks pulled off their mask. I'm a historian and know a lot of both CIA and Russian history and am not buying Russiagate or Democrats.

Jessika , July 26, 2018 at 9:33 pm

I like that, the "Demented-crats"! They are so completely clueless, in their overpaid bubbles, nothing to say about the Race-to-the-Bottom, Hunger Games society they have helped create.

Meanwhile, over in Russia, the government with leadership of Vladimir Putin has increased the Russians' standard of living, much as was done for Americans under FDR and the New Deal. (Never a word about the 80+ governments the USA/CIA has destabilized or directly overthrown, including Russia's -- oh no! We're exceptional, didn't you know?)

William , July 26, 2018 at 7:12 pm

Yea, I don't get it. Who the hell do you consider to be the progressives!?! Most people I know who consider themselves to be progressives aren't all wrapped up in the Russian narrative. The loyal shrills to Clinton? Those aren't progressives. Clinton herself pretty much backed away from that stamp during the election cycle. Pelosi has quite obviously made it clear she can't even see that side of the fence. Or will she allow it the light of day. In case you missed it, there's a war on progressives going on. And we aren't allowed in that club over there. I follow a hand full of Green Party sites on face hack, and they aren't having the Russia did it by any means. Only those loyal to the liberal democrats have the ignorance to bellow out the talking points and support for Sanders. Yea, those people that wouldn't give him the light of day during that same election cycle when we thought he was a progressive. Easy Bob! Just a hic cup. I hope! Rest peacefully!

Realist , July 27, 2018 at 6:46 am

As Jimmy Dore keeps telling us: the Democratic leadership, which is totally corporatist and neocon, would rather lose to the GOP candidate than to see a progressive or liberal Democrat win the office. The Dems have no independent policies of their own and are merely enablers to make sure that the hard right agenda always prevails. They are a sham party. Enough "blue dogs" and GOP-light types always win as Democrats to ensure that no progressive legislation will ever be enacted even when "the party" has 60% majorities in both houses -- as they did in Obama's first term. This is by design. Even the putative Democratic presidents Bill Clinton and Barack Obama functioned as center-right Republicans. Obama said as much. Clinton didn't have to as his policies were all reactionary and brought us to the impending economic collapse.

Zim , July 26, 2018 at 5:39 pm

Looks like the Inauthentic Opposition Party is gearing up for another ass whooping at the polls. The hypocrisy, the cluelessness is astounding.

JMG , July 26, 2018 at 5:33 pm

From this excellent Norman Solomon's article:

"As The Hill newspaper reported this week under the headline "Most Americans Back Trump's Call for Follow-Up Summit With Putin," 54 percent of respondents favored plans for a second summit. "The survey also found that 61 percent of Americans say better relations with Russia are in the best interest of the United States.""

This is very important.

Poll: Most Americans back Trump's call for follow-up summit with Putin | TheHill
http://thehill.com/hilltv/what-americas-thinking/398370-majority-of-americans-support-follow-up-summit-with-putin-poll

Jay , July 26, 2018 at 5:24 pm

And I see Bernie Sanders was spewing this neo-McCarthyite crap on a Sunday morning talk show earlier this week. He really should know better.

Realist , July 27, 2018 at 7:01 am

He's been co-opted. He's been told that the blame will be his when the Democratic Party collapses unless he works like hell to keep his sheep in the fold. He's following orders from the DNC which believes that the party's last best hope for a comeback, indeed to stave off annihilation, is to keep bashing Putin and Trump because they have no policies, no credibility and no candidates that the people eagerly want to get behind. They think that lies and war are the winning combination. How did that work out for LBJ, Bushdaddy, and Dubya's organisation?

mrtmbrnmn , July 26, 2018 at 5:15 pm

Ever since the Bonnie & Clyde Clinton years, the sclerotic Establishment Dementedcrats have essentially despised their base. They only speak AT them. Never FOR them. Or else they SCOLD them or simply IGNORE them. I hope now they are beginning to FEAR them.

jose , July 26, 2018 at 4:22 pm

Personally speaking, I am yet to see any serious evidence against allege Russia meddling in US elections. And I am not alone in this regard; For instance, according to counterpunch news, " The decision to blame Russian meddling for Hillary Clinton's electoral loss was made in the immediate aftermath of the election by her senior campaign staff." According to Mike Whitney, "So far, no single piece of evidence has been made public proving that the Trump campaign joined with Russia to steal the US presidency."

Isaac Christiansen observes that "As Democrats seek to shift blame away from the discontent with our economic system, their party and their chosen Neoliberal candidate, we are told that Trump came to power almost solely due to Russian interference in the U.S. 2016 election." I reckon that any rational person should believe any Russian interference in US electoral system only when presented with real iron-clad prove. Otherwise, it would be foolhardy to accept at face value speculations and innuendo of a foreign interference that purportedly put Trump in the White House.

DH Fabian , July 26, 2018 at 3:28 pm

Well, a couple of issues here. Liberals have not been about economic justice, but about protecting the advantages of the middle class (with an occasional pat on the head to min. wage workers). They've forgotten that we're over 20 years into one hell of a war on the poor. Not everyone can work, and there aren't jobs for all. The US began shipping out jobs in the '80s, ended actual welfare aid in the '90s -- lost over 6 million manufacturing jobs alone since 2000. What is" justice" for today's jobless poor?

Remember how the entire anti-Russian theme began? The Clinton team used Russia as their excuse for losing 2016. It didn't get much attention at first because the party/candidate that loses inevitably blames someone or something other than the candidate/party. But the Democrats ran with it from there, using much of the media marketed to liberals to build the Russian Tale. The most insane thing about the claims that Russia hacked voting machines for Trump, etc.: In spite of much Dem voter opposition to the Clinton right wing, H. Clinton got the most votes. (Did Russia do that, and if so, why?) Trump is president because of our antiquated electoral college process. Meanwhile, while Dems ramble on about a Putin/Trump bromance, the sane world has watched as Trump set the stage for our final war, US vs. Russia and China.

Realist , July 27, 2018 at 7:09 am

"Meanwhile, while Dems ramble on about a Putin/Trump bromance, the sane world has watched as Trump set the stage for our final war, US vs. Russia and China."

So very right. Everything gets conspicuously twisted by a biased media, yet no one (of consequence) says anything about that. Even as Trump gets bashed, he gets cheered whenever he does something dangerous and stupid, such as launching missiles in the aftermath of an obvious false flag incident. We see the matrix being blatantly and clumsily spun right before our eyes and nobody says a word about the emperor's nakedness.

Skip Scott , July 26, 2018 at 2:27 pm

It is time for the progressives to flee the Democratic party en masse and go their own way. If they haven't learned anything from the 2016 election, they are doomed. The DNC has a stranglehold on the Progressive movement, and sheep dog Bernie will once again herd them over to the corporate sponsored candidate in the end. For the midterms, this is what the Democrats have planned:

https://www.wsws.org/en/articles/2018/03/07/dems-m07.html

"One quarter of all the Democratic challengers in competitive House districts have military-intelligence, State Department or NSC backgrounds. This is by far the largest subcategory of Democratic candidates."

The Green Party has a truly Progressive platform on Domestic and Foreign policy, and are our only hope at this point. They just need the right standard bearers to break through the MSM censorship. If they could get a charismatic candidate for President in 2020 and break the 15% threshold for the debates, the American people would finally see that they really do have a choice for a better future.

DH Fabian , July 26, 2018 at 3:36 pm

We haven't seen any progressives in years. Progressive politics isn't a new invention. In the US, it goes back at least to the early 1900s. It's about building a better nation from the bottom up -- legit aid for the poor at one end, firm restraints in the rich at the other end.We have nothing like that today. This isn't about "political purity," but about not calling an apple an armadillo.

It's true that the Green Party platform does include legitimatrely addressing poverty, but perhaps understandably, this fact was swept under the carpet during their 2016 campaign.

will , July 26, 2018 at 8:32 pm

"We haven't seen any progressives in years" Apparently you don't get out much.

hetro , July 26, 2018 at 4:14 pm

Skip, let's hope we don't have the "hold your nose and vote Democrat" arguments again, with Greens as a vote for Trump (or Putin?). Interestingly, the following poll from FOX news indicates the strum und feces hysteria of the current Democratic machine may not be working out all that well, as 7 in 10 respondents here indicate the political atmosphere in the US at this time is "overheated."

Well, a good deal of that overheat is coming from the "them Russians them Russians" meme continually pushed -- and way over the top for most American people trying to "have a great day!" This poll does indicate Dems are ahead at this point, and in the past several election cycles there has been a regular switch every two years in congressional domination.

http://www.foxnews.com/politics/2018/07/12/fox-news-poll-democrats-ahead-in-election-enthusiasm-interest-and-vote.html

Miranda Keefe , July 26, 2018 at 4:59 pm

"The Green Party has a truly Progressive platform on Domestic and Foreign policy, and are our only hope at this point."

The Green Party is a Capitalist party, just the kindest and gentlest Capitalism of any of the Capitalist parties with the most stringent leash on the mad killer dog that is Capitalism and the best safety net for those chased off the cliff by that mad killer dog.

For those of us who see that Capitalism is the problem, that makes voting Green actually a lesser evil choice. If we're going to vote lesser evil, we might as well vote for the most progressive Democrats, or even centrist ones when they're running against fire breathing Randian Republicans who combine that with a Fundamentalist Christian Theocratic agenda (a combination that makes no sense, but who said the GOP makes sense?)

There are few viable Socialist parties in the US anymore. The biggest jettisoned Socialism nearly 50 years ago when it also jettisoned actually being a political party and decided to just be a lobby group within the Democratic Party. The only political heir of Eugene V. Debs, the Socialist Party USA, is now a fringe group whose national conventions are more like a picnic gathering of a few friends. The other organizations that seem more viable are actually Trotskyite groups, and Trotsky was not non-violent at all, which I am.

I am really at a lost what to do as far as the less important task of voting (which is less important than ongoing activism.) I just did my primary ballot. We've got this terrible top two primary, a system that basically kills movement building.

I could have voted for Gigi Ferguson, the independent, who was endorsed by the Green Party, running for senate against NeoLiberal phony environmentalist Maria Cantwell and not the poser, who said he was Green, (parties have no say in candidates' statements of which party they prefer,) but is for privatizing Social Security. But I instead voted for Steve Hoffman, the only avowed Socialist on the ballot in any race, even though his Freedom Socialist Party is Troskyite.

I voted for Stoney Bird, a real Green, running against TPP loving and indefinite detention loving and NeoLiberal anti-Single Payer Rick Larsen for Congress.

My state legislation had two positions. In one I voted for Alex Ramel, an ecological activist, over the preferred establishment choice of Identity Politics candidate (tribal,) Debra Lekanoff. In the other the incumbent, Jeff Morris, another establishment Democrat, ran unopposed. I wrote in "None." (Morris having the same family name as my mother's maiden name didn't affect me at all.)

But it was all an exercise in futility, voting for my conscience as much as possible. I have little doubt that none of my choices, except maybe Ramel, will make it to the top two. Cantwell and Larsen are shoo-ins and they'll surely face the establishment GOP candidate. Thus cutting out all other options in the Fall.

I'll have to write in my choices then. Oh well.

maryam , July 27, 2018 at 4:54 am

Over here in Europe (not UK) and faced with the similar problem of inapt candidates, we sometimes need to vote creatively: so we vote, of course, but choose to make the ballot sheet invalid. this way our voice is noted and we show that we care about the electoral process, while it also makes clear that we do not care much about the cabdidate(s). "we" will vote, but "they" are not very trustworthy.

MBeaver , July 27, 2018 at 8:12 am

Yep. We in Germany had that lesson already. The Green party was one of the most corrupt one when they finally got elected into the government. They also harmed the social systems massively and supported the first offensive war with German support since WW2. Even as opposition they show all the time how much they lie about their true intentions.
They are not an option, because they are hypocrites.

ronnie mitchell , July 27, 2018 at 4:09 pm

Interesting comment with some good information that I appreciate.\ I live in Bellingham and have filled out my vote for Stony Bird over Rick Larsen whom I truly despise. In fact in previous election cycles I voted for Mike Lapointe instead but he quit running more than a few years ago so the last time I just left it blank and the same goes for the general election vote for Congress.
With the TPP issue Rick Larsen had a townhall meeting at City hall building which was packed and he starts off by saying he hasn't read any of the text of the TPP yet so he was free from answering most questions however he would be checking it out BUT no there would be no further meeting before the voting. In other words he was giving us NOTHING.
I had been part of the protesters outside his fundraising gathering (private and by invitation only) and have been to his local office many times (it's two blocks from where I live) and when myself and a small group were in opposition to building the largest coal terminal in north America at Cherry Point. He would never say he was against it or for it but his fundraisers were backers of the terminal and as each of our group stepped forward to give a statement to his office workers on the issue (Rick was in DC,aka District of Corruption at the time) they just politely listened but neither recorded nor wrote down ANYTHING we said.
The list is long regarding issues on which he is on the opposite side of his constituents wishes and at one gathering was smugly dismissive of requests to represent the votes of the people and not use his super delegate status(not Democratic) to endorse Hillary Clinton because votes in Caucuses were overwhelmingly for Sen. Sanders.
I could go on but it would be too long of a comment but you've given me some good ideas for other choices on the ballot which I needed in particular with Maria Cantwell whom (like fellow neoliberal Patty Murray) I have refused to support in the last two elections.For one of many examples of why, one big one was their stand against importing cheaper medicines from Canada which was word for word straight out of the Big PHarma handbook of talking points, but they DID get quite a lot of flak for it.

I'll look into some of your other suggestions as well before I turn in this ballot, thanks for your comment.

TS , July 27, 2018 at 4:06 am

> Skip Scott

> If they could get a charismatic candidate for President in 2020 and break the 15% threshold for the debates,

And what makes you think the people who decide wouldn't simply shift the goalposts?

Skip Scott , July 27, 2018 at 2:48 pm

I'm sure that would be attempted, but with a strong candidate hopefully there'd be enough of a fuss made to get them to back off. I'd also like to dream that some of the more progressive Democrats in congress would see the writing on the wall, and declare themselves Greens. That'd give us a toehold in two branches of government. I know I'm being overly optimistic, but it keeps me away from the whiskey bottle.

Piotr Berman , July 28, 2018 at 3:06 pm

I have some misgivings to "eco politics", I am not sure to what extend they apply to Greens, and I am sorry to say, liberals have a knack to pick the worst parts of any progressive idea.

Any goal has to consider trade-off. If we think that emitting carbon to the atmosphere is a major problem, solutions must follow economic calculus. Instead, there was two much stress on "aesthetic solutions" and sometimes scientifically unsound solutions. For example, aesthetic solution is electric vehicles, but hybrid vehicles offer a much smaller cost per amount of carbon that is saved, only when majority of vehicles already gain from regenerative braking and having engines work only in fuel optimal conditions (battery absorbing surplus or augmenting the engine power when the amount of needed power is outside parameters optimal for the internal combustion engine) you may get better cost from electric engines.

Or excluding nuclear power from the "approved solutions". One of my many objections on "Republicans on energy" that they promised a few times to be "rational" but they never delivered.

Philosophically, there should be a fat carbon tax and social policies and subsidies to avoid poor people to loose.

"Hyperrational" progressive approach would be to make a balance: as a society, where do we waste, and where do we spent too little.

1. Military/foreign policy. In aggregate, spendings are huge and nobody is overly proud from the results. An open question if this category of spending should be decreased by 50% or 75%, if we proceed in stages we can reach satisfactory point. Mind you, the largest ticket items are improving nuclear weapons or conventional weapon systems that are needed against very few most sophisticated adversaries who also waste resources. USA, Russia, China, the rest of NATO etc. could agree to some disarmament, Russia and China actually accelerated weapon development in response to "Let America dominate forever" policies, bad news are they they do it for less money.

2. Medical robbery complex. Private insurance and lack of costs control leads to spending on medical care around 18% of GDP rather than 10%. This waste is actually larger than all spending on defense.

3. Infrastructure (large public role) and other capital investments (small public role but essential fiscal policies and "thoughtful protectionism"), we spent too little, can be covered by a part of 1 and 2.

I could continue with "hyperrational progressive manifesto" but I will give one example. Enforcing labor standards may eliminate 90% of illegal employment without walls, concentration camps for aliens etc. Some industries cannot make it without cheap illegal aliens, if they REALLY cannot, workers should work legally in their home countries and resulting imports should be encouraged. If picking carrots is too expensive in USA, we may get them from other countries in Western Hemisphere. On that note, lately there are enough jobs in USA, but native born citizens do not flock to carrot picking, they would rather have jobs that required large capital investments and there are too few of those.

Hyperrational rhetoric can borrow from libertarians: if our allies do not feel secure when they spend X times more than their regional adversaries (especially if we add our own regional expenditures), that says that money alone cannot cure their "secure feeling" deficit and we and they are already spending too much. We do not need to hate or demean anyone to reach such conclusions.

Skip Scott , July 29, 2018 at 1:09 pm

Piotr-

I am all in favor of rational solutions to our environmental problems. The problem is the entrenched power of the existing exploitive industries. An incredible amount of progress could be made through on-site power generation and energy efficient building design.

I'm am not in favor of current nuclear power plants, but I am not opposed to research, and I've heard good things about recent designs, especially thorium nukes. I am no engineer, but if we had safe nukes, we could go with hydrogen fuel cells for automobiles. There are plenty of other creative ideas as well for things such as localized food production.

If we find common purpose with the Libertarians to stop the war machine, the amount of energy and resources and creative potential to bring humanity forward would be tremendous. First we have to stop the war machine, and then we can argue about the extent of the role of government in a free society.

[Jul 30, 2018] Jeff Bezos Paper Tells You Not To Worry About Those Billionaires

Looks like a lot of people now have doubts about the legitimacy of neoliberal social system.
Jul 30, 2018 | www.zerohedge.com

buzzsaw99 Sun, 07/29/2018 - 13:04 Permalink

The fact that Mark Zuckerberg is so rich is annoying, and his separateness from Main Street may not be a great thing socially, but in an economic sense, his fortune did not "come from" the paychecks of ordinary workers...

It damn sure did. It came straight out of their pension funds. Thousands of pension funds across the world bought faang stocks and those workers will be getting fucked in the end while while zuck heads back to hawaii with their money. look at elon, his company hasn't made dime one in profit but he is a billionaire. amzn, with a p/e of 228. they didn't get that p/e without millions of ordinary folk buying their overpriced stock. it is pure ponzi-nomics with fascist overtones and the maggots are cashing out big time.

divingengineer -> buzzsaw99 Sun, 07/29/2018 - 13:14 Permalink

The greatest fortunes in history have been built in the last 10 years with 0% interest rates. You were spot on about pensions, they were the casualties, almost every private pension in the country bankrupted by 0% rates so that these fucks could amass unimaginable wealth.

Now the filthy commoner scum have the audacity to suggest that they should pay taxes on it. Where will the madness end?

cankles' server -> divingengineer Sun, 07/29/2018 - 13:24 Permalink

Very soon.

A big reveal of corruption is happening before the end of the month.

The didn't do a half billion dollar renovation on Gitmo for nothing. It's for the treasonous scum that will be on trial in military tribunals.

same2u -> divingengineer Sun, 07/29/2018 - 13:35 Permalink

All my friends Jews knew this was going to happen. They were buying stocks like crazy when I was telling them to buy gold and get ready for a big reset that never happened. Ten years later they are all multimillionaires and I lost half of my money buying gold...

buzzsaw99 -> divingengineer Sun, 07/29/2018 - 13:42 Permalink

institutions bought their shares with real earned money. bezos did not. as far as i'm concerned being a ceo is a license to steal. bezos damn sure didn't earn that money because he is smarter or works harder than anyone else. look at how he treats his workers. what an asshole.

james diamond squid -> buzzsaw99 Sun, 07/29/2018 - 13:48 Permalink

everyone wants to have an IPO or be in on an IPO, so they can dump their shares on a patsy at a later date

Zorba's idea -> divingengineer Sun, 07/29/2018 - 14:09 Permalink

True! The Elites have rigged the system...natural for them to rape our ASSets.

SocratesSolutions -> buzzsaw99 Sun, 07/29/2018 - 13:43 Permalink

It's even worse than that. So much worse. Facebook was stolen by the Satanic Judaic Zionist crowd. Research it. Another gentleman invented it. The Jews stole it, like they've stolen pretty much everything else. No wonder Napoleon said that "The Jews are the master robbers of the modern age". And beyond the criminal vile theft, you have what they are using it for. And that is?

Using it for the 911'd cows in America. And that is you. The Satanic Jews are murdering you and robbing you blind. They 911'd you physically with the Twin Towers. Now they're doing it mentally and financially with Facebook, a control system grid -- a gate to herd cattle which they view you as. They are herding you. You'll be 911'd again in larger and larger numbers until the Satanic Judaic is removed from the World Stage.

Here is the real creator of Facebook: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YJ4KRts8RFc

Zuckerberg is a planted punk Zionist spook. You're going to have to clear the world of all of these Satanic Judaic ladies and gentlemen. First the idea needs to come in to show how and why. This is underway.

divingengineer Sun, 07/29/2018 - 13:08 Permalink

Sickening wealth and sickening poverty, all on display only feet apart on the West Coast.

I don't know the answer, neither do they, but they better figure something out and quick if they know what's good for them.

FORCE Sun, 07/29/2018 - 13:10 Permalink

Amerikan pauper-proles;let them eat cake-apps

same2u Sun, 07/29/2018 - 13:12 Permalink

Ever since the housing crisis I been waiting for the world to become a better place. I see now that I been fooling myself into believing that we live in a civilized and honest world. Nobody gives a shit about anyone nor anything, people only care about themselves...

divingengineer -> same2u Sun, 07/29/2018 - 13:17 Permalink

How do we turn these viscous billionaire dogs on each other rather than on us?

We need to figure out how to play the game like they play it on us.

[Jul 28, 2018] #Walkaway: The immolation of both neoliberal media and Clintonized Democratic Party is occurring simultaneously. Looks like we also have seen Peak Facebook

Jul 28, 2018 | www.zerohedge.com

Justapleb -> BlackChicken Sat, 07/28/2018 - 01:02 Permalink

Yeah, it's amazing to watch. With Trump in 2016 they went with "Racist, Sexist, Homophobe, insane person", etc. and now they're going with "Russia" and censorship.

Labor was such a longtime stronghold for the Democrats and they've lost it. Labor doesn't give a shit about Russia. Everyone though, is sick of the corruption. #Walkaway. The whole "Russia" hoax is designed to blow a huge smoke screen into the felony crimes committed principally by Clinton allies and the deep state.

The immolation of both the legacy media and the democratic party is occurring simultaneously. We have seen Peak Facebook.

We have some real giants out there like Stefan Molyneux. A whole galaxy of them helped bring Trump into the White House and as legacy platforms censor, new ones arise.

I am afraid that historically we better be prepared for what the left does when it doesn't get its way and that is violence. Look at how the media is openly inciting violence. They've made heros out of thugs who rob, out of violent shit-and-piss hurling hooligans, and democratic local bosses have stood down as law-abiding citizens assembled for peaceful speech.

So the wholesale insanity is going to be more than screaming at the sky.

[Jul 24, 2018] Bernie Sanders embraces the anti-Russia campaign by Patrick Martin

Notable quotes:
"... Sanders's support for the anti-Russia and anti-Wikileaks campaign is all the more telling because he was himself the victim of efforts by the Clinton campaign and the Democratic Party leadership to block his 2016 campaign. In June and July 2016, Wikileaks published internal Democratic emails in which officials ridiculed the Sanders campaign, forcing the DNC to issue a public apology: "On behalf of everyone at the DNC, we want to offer a deep and sincere apology to Senator Sanders, his supporters, and the entire Democratic Party for the inexcusable remarks made over email." ..."
"... In the aftermath of his election campaign, Sanders was elevated into a top-level position in the Democratic Party caucus in the US Senate. His first response to the inauguration of Trump was to declare his willingness to "work with" the president, closely tracking remarks of Obama that the election of Trump was part of an "intramural scrimmage" in which all sides were on the same team. As the campaign of the military-intelligence agencies intensifies, however, Sanders is toeing the line. ..."
"... The Sanders campaign did not push the Democrats to the left, but rather the state apparatus of the ruling class brought Sanders in to give a "left" veneer to a thoroughly right-wing party. ..."
"... There is no contradiction between the influx of military-intelligence candidates into the Democratic Party and the Democrats' making use of the services of Sanders and Ocasio-Cortez to give the party a "left" cover. Both the CIA Democrats and their pseudo-left "comrades" agree on the most important questions: the defense of the global interests of American imperialism and a more aggressive intervention in the Syrian civil war and other areas where Washington and Moscow are in conflict. ..."
Jul 23, 2018 | www.wsws.org

Vermont Senator Bernie Sanders appeared on the CBS interview program "Face the Nation" Sunday and fully embraced the anti-Russia campaign of the US military-intelligence apparatus, backed by the Democratic Party and much of the media.

In response to a question from CBS host Margaret Brennan, Sanders unleashed a torrent of denunciations of Trump's meeting and press conference in Helsinki with Russian President Vladimir Putin. A preliminary transcript reads:

SANDERS: "I will tell you that I was absolutely outraged by his behavior in Helsinki, where he really sold the American people out. And it makes me think that either Trump doesn't understand what Russia has done, not only to our elections, but through cyber attacks against all parts of our infrastructure, either he doesn't understand it, or perhaps he is being blackmailed by Russia, because they may have compromising information about him.

"Or perhaps also you have a president who really does have strong authoritarian tendencies. And maybe he admires the kind of government that Putin is running in Russia. And I think all of that is a disgrace and a disservice to the American people. And we have got to make sure that Russia does not interfere, not only in our elections, but in other aspects of our lives."

These comments, which echo remarks he gave at a rally in Kansas late last week, signal Sanders' full embrace of the right-wing campaign launched by the Democrats and backed by dominant sections of the military-intelligence apparatus. Their opposition to Trump is centered on issues of foreign policy, based on the concern that Trump, due to his own "America First" brand of imperialist strategy, has run afoul of geostrategic imperatives that are considered inviolable -- in particular, the conflict with Russia.

Sanders did not use his time on a national television program to condemn Trump's persecution of immigrants and the separation of children from their parents, or to denounce his naming of ultra-right jurist Brett Kavanaugh to the Supreme Court, or to attack the White House declaration last week that the "war on poverty" had ended victoriously -- in order to justify the destruction of social programs for impoverished working people. Nor did he seek to advance his supposedly left-wing program on domestic issues like health care, jobs and education.

Sanders' embrace of the anti-Russia campaign is not surprising, but it is instructive. This is, after all, an individual who presented himself as "left-wing," even a "socialist." During the 2016 election campaign, he won the support of millions of people attracted to his call for a "political revolution" against the "billionaire class." For Sanders, who has a long history of opportunist and pro-imperialist politics in the orbit of the Democratic Party, the aim of the campaign was always to direct social discontent into establishment channels, culminating in his endorsement of the campaign of Hillary Clinton.

Sanders's support for the anti-Russia and anti-Wikileaks campaign is all the more telling because he was himself the victim of efforts by the Clinton campaign and the Democratic Party leadership to block his 2016 campaign. In June and July 2016, Wikileaks published internal Democratic emails in which officials ridiculed the Sanders campaign, forcing the DNC to issue a public apology: "On behalf of everyone at the DNC, we want to offer a deep and sincere apology to Senator Sanders, his supporters, and the entire Democratic Party for the inexcusable remarks made over email."

In the aftermath of his election campaign, Sanders was elevated into a top-level position in the Democratic Party caucus in the US Senate. His first response to the inauguration of Trump was to declare his willingness to "work with" the president, closely tracking remarks of Obama that the election of Trump was part of an "intramural scrimmage" in which all sides were on the same team. As the campaign of the military-intelligence agencies intensifies, however, Sanders is toeing the line.

The experience is instructive not only in relation to Sanders, but to an entire social milieu and the political perspective with which it is associated. This is what it means to work within the Democratic Party. The Sanders campaign did not push the Democrats to the left, but rather the state apparatus of the ruling class brought Sanders in to give a "left" veneer to a thoroughly right-wing party.

New political figures, many associated with the Democratic Socialists of America (DSA) are being brought in for the same purpose. As Sanders gave his anti-Russia rant, Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez sat next to him nodding her agreement. The 28-year-old member of the DSA last month won the Democratic nomination in New York's 14th Congressional District, unseating the Democratic incumbent, Joseph Crowley, the fourth-ranking member of the Democratic leadership in the House of Representatives.

Since then, Ocasio-Cortez has been given massive and largely uncritical publicity by the corporate media, summed up in an editorial puff piece by the New York Times that described her as "a bright light in the Democratic Party who has brought desperately needed energy back to New York politics "

Ocasio-Cortez and Sanders were jointly interviewed from Kansas, where the two appeared Friday at a campaign rally for James Thompson, who is seeking the Democratic nomination for the US House of Representatives from the Fourth Congressional District, based in Wichita, in an August 7 primary election.

Thompson might appear to be an unusual ally for the "socialist" Sanders and the DSA member Ocasio-Cortez. His campaign celebrates his role as an Army veteran, and his website opens under the slogan "Join the Thompson Army," followed by pledges that the candidate will "Fight for America." In an interview with the Associated Press, Thompson indicated that despite his support for Sanders' call for "Medicare for all," and his own endorsement by the DSA, he was wary of any association with socialism. "I don't like the term socialist, because people do associate that with bad things in history," he said.

Such anticommunism fits right in with the anti-Russian campaign, which is the principal theme of the Democratic Party in the 2018 elections. As the World Socialist Web Site has pointed out for many months, the real thrust of the Democratic Party campaign is demonstrated by its recruitment as congressional candidates of dozens of former CIA and military intelligence agents, combat commanders from the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, and war planners from the Pentagon, State Department and White House.

There is no contradiction between the influx of military-intelligence candidates into the Democratic Party and the Democrats' making use of the services of Sanders and Ocasio-Cortez to give the party a "left" cover. Both the CIA Democrats and their pseudo-left "comrades" agree on the most important questions: the defense of the global interests of American imperialism and a more aggressive intervention in the Syrian civil war and other areas where Washington and Moscow are in conflict.

[Jul 23, 2018] The Democratic Party's Pitch to Billionaires by Eric Zuesse

Notable quotes:
"... The wing of the Democratic Party that looks for the dollars instead of the votes is called "The Third Way" and it presents itself as representing the supposedly vast political center, nothing "extremist" or "marginal." But didn't liberal Republicanism go out when Nelson Rockefeller did? Conservative Democrats are like liberal Republicans -- they attract flies and billionaires, but not many votes. And didn't the Rockefeller drug laws fill our prisons with millions of pathetic drug-users and small drug-dealers but not with the kingpins in either the narcotics business or the bankster rackets (such as had crashed the economy in 2008 -- and the Third Way Democrat who had been the exceptional politician and liar that was so slick he actually did attract many votes, President Barack Obama, told the banksters privately, on 27 March 2009, "I'm not out there to go after you. I'm protecting you." And, he did keep his promise to them, though not to his voters .) ..."
"... They want another Barack Obama. There aren't any more of those (unless, perhaps, Michelle Obama enters the contest). But, even if there were: How many Democrats would fall for that scam, yet again -- after the disaster of 2016? ..."
"... Maybe the Third Way is right, and there's a sucker born every minute. But if that's what the Democratic Party is going to rely upon, then America's stunningly low voter-participation rate is set to plunge even lower, because even more voters than before will either be leaving the Presidential line blank, or even perhaps voting for the Republican candidate (as some felt driven to do in 2016). ..."
"... Investigative historian Eric Zuesse is the author, most recently, of They're Not Even Close: The Democratic vs. Republican Economic Records, 1910-2010 , and of CHRIST'S VENTRILOQUISTS: The Event that Created Christianity . He is a frequent contributor to Global Research. ..."
Jul 23, 2018 | www.globalresearch.ca

The wing of the Democratic Party that looks for the dollars instead of the votes is called "The Third Way" and it presents itself as representing the supposedly vast political center, nothing "extremist" or "marginal." But didn't liberal Republicanism go out when Nelson Rockefeller did? Conservative Democrats are like liberal Republicans -- they attract flies and billionaires, but not many votes. And didn't the Rockefeller drug laws fill our prisons with millions of pathetic drug-users and small drug-dealers but not with the kingpins in either the narcotics business or the bankster rackets (such as had crashed the economy in 2008 -- and the Third Way Democrat who had been the exceptional politician and liar that was so slick he actually did attract many votes, President Barack Obama, told the banksters privately, on 27 March 2009, "I'm not out there to go after you. I'm protecting you." And, he did keep his promise to them, though not to his voters .)

They're at it, yet again. On July 22nd, NBC News's Alex Seitz-Wald headlined "Sanders' wing of the party terrifies moderate Dems. Here's how they plan to stop it." And he described what was publicly available from the 3-day private meeting in Columbus Ohio of The Third Way, July 18-20, the planning conference between the Party's chiefs and its billionaires. Evidently, they hate Bernie Sanders and are already scheming and spending in order to block him, now a second time, from obtaining the Party's Presidential nomination. "Anxiety has largely been kept to a whisper among the party's moderates and big donors, with some of the major fundraisers pressing operatives on what can be done to stop the Vermonter if he runs for the White House again." This passage in Seitz-Wald's article was especially striking to me:

The gathering here was an effort to offer an attractive alternative to the rising Sanders-style populist left in the upcoming presidential race. Where progressives see a rare opportunity to capitalize on an energized Democratic base, moderates see a better chance to win over Republicans turned off by Trump.

The fact that a billionaire real estate developer, Winston Fisher, cohosted the event and addressed attendees twice, underscored that this group is not interested in the class warfare vilifying the "millionaires and billionaires" found in Sanders' stump speech.

"You're not going to make me hate somebody just because they're rich. I want to be rich!" Rep. Tim Ryan, D-Ohio, a potential presidential candidate, said Friday to laughs.

I would reply to congressman Ryan's remark: If you want to be rich, then get the hell out of politics! Don't run for President! I don't want you there! And that's no joke!

Anyone who doesn't recognize that an inevitable trade-off exists between serving the public and serving oneself, is a libertarian -- an Ayn Rander, in fact -- and there aren't many of those in the Democratic Party, but plenty of them are in the Republican Party.

Just as a clergyman in some faiths is supposed to take a vow of chastity, and in some faiths also to take a vow of poverty, in order to serve "the calling" instead of oneself, anyone who enters 'public service' and who aspires to "be rich" is inevitably inviting corruption -- not prepared to do war against it . That kind of politician is a Manchurian candidate, like Obama perhaps, but certainly not what this or any country needs, in any case. Voters like that can be won only by means of deceit, which is the way that politicians like that do win.

No decent political leader enters or stays in politics in order to "be rich," because no political leader can be decent who isn't in it as a calling, to public service, and as a repudiation, of any self-service in politics.

Republican Party voters invite corrupt government, because their Party's ideology is committed to it ("Freedom [for the rich]!"); but the only Democratic Party voters who at all tolerate corrupt politicians (such as Governor Andrew Cuomo in New York State) are actually Republican Democrats -- people who are confused enough so as not really to care much about what they believe; whatever their garbage happens to be, they believe in it and don't want to know differently than it.

The Third Way is hoping that there are enough of such 'Democrats' so that they can, yet again, end up with a Third Way Democrat being offered to that Party's voters in 2020, just like happened in 2016. They want another Barack Obama. There aren't any more of those (unless, perhaps, Michelle Obama enters the contest). But, even if there were: How many Democrats would fall for that scam, yet again -- after the disaster of 2016?

Maybe the Third Way is right, and there's a sucker born every minute. But if that's what the Democratic Party is going to rely upon, then America's stunningly low voter-participation rate is set to plunge even lower, because even more voters than before will either be leaving the Presidential line blank, or even perhaps voting for the Republican candidate (as some felt driven to do in 2016).

The Third Way is the way to the death of democracy, if it's not already dead . It is no answer to anything, except to the desires of billionaires -- both Republican and Democratic.

The center of American politics isn't the center of America's aristocracy. The goal of groups such as The Third Way is to fool the American public to equate the two. The result of such groups is the contempt that America's public have for America's Government . But, pushed too far, mass disillusionment becomes revolution. Is that what America's billionaires are willing to risk? They might get it.

*

Investigative historian Eric Zuesse is the author, most recently, of They're Not Even Close: The Democratic vs. Republican Economic Records, 1910-2010 , and of CHRIST'S VENTRILOQUISTS: The Event that Created Christianity . He is a frequent contributor to Global Research.

[Jul 18, 2018] The US public has been fed up with the corruption and disastrous policies of the US government for quite a while. I mean, 10 years ago we elected a black(ish) man with a Muslim name for criizzacks! How desperate were we to do that in the middle of the "Clash of Civilizations" Global War OF Terror?

Jul 18, 2018 | www.moonofalabama.org

Daniel , Jul 17, 2018 10:45:37 PM | 176

Activist Potato @164, well Obama was on record saying that they stood by and watched ISIS grown, and take ever more territory and expected it would weaken the Syrian government, leading to "Mission Accomplished." Even if he did want to prevent Trump from being (s)elected, that would be a hard hill to fight for.


The US public has been fed up with the corruption and disastrous policies of the US government for quite a while. I mean, 10 years ago we elected a black(ish) man with a Muslim name for criizzacks! How desperate were we to do that in the middle of the "Clash of Civilizations" Global War OF Terror?

By the time they were planning out the 2016 (s)election, it should have been clear to anyone that the US was going to vote for real change. It turns out that a good number were so desperate that they said they'd vote for the New York City conman, knowing he was horrible, simply because they thought they were throwing a monkey wrench into "the system."

So, what did they give us? A woman who was not only the most hated and mistrusted candidate in history (until The Donald), but also the very symbol of "more of the same." Then, some how, "leaked" or "hacked" documents came out showing she was even more criminal and corrupt that most had thought. And they came out at just the right time to make a good number of those who were willing to hold their noses and vote for her to refuse to.

Meanwhile, the MSM filled the airwaves with everything Trump such that they sucked the oxygen out of the room for anyone else. And the MSM insisted Trump was "an outsider," and showed us every way possible that "the Establishment" didn't want to let him "win."

I came to see the whole operation as a brilliant psyop about the time of the Party Conventions. I was so sucked into the drama of the DNC stealing the nomination from Sanders that I allowed myself to be sucked right along (as I believe I was meant to be).


But after a year and a half of watching the only changes in US policy have been to escalate the worst of them, and rape the 99% with even greater fury, it takes a special kind of faith to still believe that Trump was ever an "outsider" and that the "establishment" is anything except thrilled with how it's going. Hell, even failed "news" organizations like the NY Times and MSDNC are in boon times again!

And the brilliant irony of it all is that they're making bank on telling us how much they hate what's making them rich! LOL!

Hoarsewhisperer , Jul 17, 2018 10:21:56 PM | 173
As for Trump, the same case is true. He represents the part of America which is realizing it is loosing its sole superpower status. Had Hillary Clinton won in 2016 (which could have happened -- Trump only won because of American system's technicalities) , the cauldron that is today's USA social fabric would've only gathered even more pressure, triggering an even deeper crisis in 2020.
Posted by: vk | Jul 17, 2018 2:09:39 PM | 80

That's the sort of fuzzy logic I was whingeing about in the comment to which this codswallop is purporting to be a response. Team Trump was fully aware of the 'technicalities' and ran a campaign designed to capitalise on them. Not only did they figure out how to maximise the potential advantage of focusing on the Electoral College, Trump campaigned his arse off 7 days a week.

Hillary the "consummate professional insider", on the other hand ran a lazy lacklustre campaign. The over-arching feature of Her public gatherings was that they were little more than an invitation to bask in Hillary's reflected Radiance. So not only did Trump win the race, his victory was enhanced by Hillary's stupidity and chronic self-absorption.

Circe , Jul 17, 2018 8:39:28 PM | 163
@149

The problem is everyone is stuck in the "lesser over greater evil" construct and that's what makes the American Zionist-influenced duopoly so powerful. Trump is part of that failed system that Americans are so dependent on and that always leads to the same place. People should fight this lesser vs greater evil construct, even if Americans are too stupid at this time to get out of it. It means they'd have to choose outside the box, outside the media's choices example Fox and other Rightist outlets for Trump. CNN, MSNBC - Hillary, but the media is all Zionist run and specializes in the brainwash on both sides. It's all part of the same sham. The duopoly.

It starts with primaries for representatives and choosing a candidate that demonstrates independence and integrity; especially those that the media wants to ignore; that's not beholden to special interests or financed by Zionists.

Most importantly when America goes wrong and it's royally f...cked up right now, the rest of the world, the web has to push back against their ignorance and their stupid choices, because those choices hurt others as much as they hurt them only they're still too brainwashed to see it. Americans had the right idea to turn on the establishment, but Trump was the perfect Zionist anti-establishment decoy, a fraud, a pretender just like Obama was for the Left.

In the past election, the only viable contender was Bernie who got railroaded by Democratic Zionists like Wasserman and Podesta. I think Bernie was more authentic than the two evils, Hillary and Trump, and although his Zionist roots are always a concern; he was run out precisely because he was a rogue Jew and Zionists couldn't trust him. He wasn't in the pocket of Zionist financiers although he was running with the Democrats, but in the current status quo he had no choice but to use the Democratic Party as a means to an end and they did him in. If Hillary were not on the ticket who knows what could have been. He was a start in the right direction away from the Zionist financed duopoly.

[Jul 17, 2018] Mass hysteria is exactly what it is, because it threatens their gravy train that comes from money taken by force from taxpayers. the citizens voted against the establishment, and the establishment is fighting back along with their MSM cronies.

Jul 17, 2018 | www.zerohedge.com

MoreFreedom -> 847328_3527 Tue, 07/17/2018 - 14:31 Permalink

... that is a much harder conversation to have about why the Democrats have lost elections than just blaming a foreign villain and saying it's because Vladimir Putin ran some fake Facebook ads and did some phishing emails ... the conversation we need to be having [about lies/corruption from the deep state and powerful actors acting against US citizens interests, and decline of institutions that support US citizens' freedom], but we're not having, because we're evading it by blaming everything on Vladimir Putin.

I agree with Mish on all this, including " Nearly every political action that generates this much complete nonsense and hysteria from the Left and Right is worthy of immense praise" though he doesn't qualify/define "Left and Right" as the Left and Right establishment aka. the Uniparty. The statement wouldn't have applied to say the Left and Right establishment that existed when our founders created the country and were united to create a government that defends our lives, liberties and pursuit of happiness with an extremely limited (by today's standards) government. You don't see the Freedom Caucus getting hysterical about Trump's meeting Putin.

Mass hysteria is exactly what it is, because it threatens their gravy train that comes from money taken by force from taxpayers. the citizens voted against the establishment, and the establishment is fighting back along with their MSM cronies.

Farqued Up -> 847328_3527 Tue, 07/17/2018 - 15:12 Permalink

I've never been enthralled with Neil Cavuto due to considering him inferior as a host on things financial. Today he just crapped in his mess kit with me. He has to be dirty, the way he was defending the wonderful intelligence "community" of the USA, and was hinting that treason may not be a strong assessment of Trump with Putin. He is a real POS along with girly-man Shepard Smith. Not one criticism of any Cabalist about graft and corruption, and especially no mention of the uranium to Russia by Obama's and Hillary's REAL treason.

I repeat, all of you goofy imbeciles, Trump is sucking you down into the depths of embarrassment once the hammer drops. I expected the fruity Smith but must admit the Cavuto stupidity is a bit of a surprise. Someone has pics of that dumb fuck in a compromising situation.

[Jul 13, 2018] Democratic National Committee Votes to Roll Back Power of Superdelegates

Notable quotes:
"... Here's a more apt headline: "Petulant elites throwing tantrum at prospect of their votes not being 10,000x more powerful than regular peasant votes." ..."
Jun 28, 2018 | truthout.org

In the face of fervent opposition from Democratic elites who " think their vote is more important " than the will of the party's base , the Democratic National Committee's (DNC) Rules and Bylaws arm cleared a major hurdle in the fight to curtail the power of superdelegates on Wednesday by approving a plan that would end their ability to cast votes for the presidential candidate on the first ballot at the party's convention.

"The activists that have been concerned that superdelegates will overturn the will of the voters should feel good about this," DNC member Elaine Kamarck said in a statement .

While the plan to gut the influence of superdelegates -- who have been free since 1984 to put their weight behind any candidate no matter how the public voted -- has received broad support from Democrats and Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) as an important first step toward making the party's process more " open and transparent ," establishment figures who stand to lose power if the plan is implemented are staging a last-minute " revolt " to block the rule change.

As investigative reporter Alex Kotch noted in a Twitter thread on Wednesday, at least two of the Democratic insiders who are clinging desperately to their undue influence as superdelegates happen to be corporate lobbyists -- a fact that Politico neglected to mention in its reporting on the party elites' "longshot bid to block the measure."

"They don't realize it but they're proving the point of Sanders and everyone else who's opposed to superdelegates," Kotch writes. "Many prioritize corporate interests over those of everyday people and thus automatically support the less progressive candidate."

Two of the three superdelegates who are opposed to the Sanders plan:

One is a health care lobbyist
Another is a former lobbyist

(Politico neglects to include this info) https://t.co/uVobZfIUFe

-- Alex Kotch 🔥 (@alexkotch) July 11, 2018

As lobbyists, they somehow think their vote is more important than other people's votes.

LOL: pic.twitter.com/lq51raARqV

-- Alex Kotch 🔥 (@alexkotch) July 11, 2018

The U.S. Rep quoted in the article who's opposed to the change, Gerry Connolly (Va.), accepts a bunch of corporate PAC money from good corporate citizens like Northrup Grummon and AT&T. https://t.co/s7KWJGWEGq

Here are his assets: https://t.co/zSAIX3IyxJ pic.twitter.com/ETmjX0H2Qo

-- Alex Kotch 🔥 (@alexkotch) July 11, 2018

Responding to Politico's story on the superdelegates' last-ditch attempt to undermine the push to curtail their power, The Humanist Report offered an alternative headline:

Here's a more apt headline: "Petulant elites throwing tantrum at prospect of their votes not being 10,000x more powerful than regular peasant votes." https://t.co/oUlaXY9jLt

-- The Humanist Report (@HumanistReport) July 11, 2018

Wednesday's vote in favor of the plan to ensure superdelegates cannot overturn the will of voters on the first ballot of the presidential nomination process was the final step before the proposal heads to a vote before the full DNC next month. "Any attempt to derail the rules changes at the summer convention is thought to be a long-shot," concluded Astead Herndon of the New York Times.

[Jul 06, 2018] A Democrat Party composed of moderate Republicans and democratic socialists will be divided against itself and will not stand

Notable quotes:
"... I believe the US is a right of center country (with a growing right and far right segment) and has been for most of it's history. ..."
"... The identity of the "Democratic Party" has also been stolen. They are not the FDR-JFK Democratic Party of my childhood. but rather, Neo-Toxoplasma Gondii-ists, the "Mind Invaders". ..."
"... Back in the early 1980s, the NZ Labour Party (of Mickey Savage and Norman Kirk) was taken over by Neo-liberal, Roger Douglas and his henchmen/women. ..."
Jul 06, 2018 | www.nakedcapitalism.com

JerryB , July 5, 2018 at 3:07 pm

Lambert- Excellent point:

"A Democrat Party composed of moderate Republicans and democratic socialists will be divided against itself and will not stand."

I believe the US is a right of center country (with a growing right and far right segment) and has been for most of it's history. If some of the right of center move to left of center that may look good as far as "not Republican" but as Lambert points out does nothing for the progressive movement. I read an article where Noam Chomsky mentioned that people in the USA who call themselves liberals are more moderates and are not the same as liberals in Europe. If I remember my reading of Thomas Frank's Listen Liberal, his expose' of segments of the liberal class was to show that calling yourself liberal does not mean much if your actions say otherwise, i.e Obama and Hillary.

The sluggish business investment chart just supports what Yves wrote in 2005 about the Incredible Shrinking Corporation. One thing that jumps out is the increasing size of the booms and busts since 1980 i.e. the Neoliberal Era compared to 1950-1980. In the late 1980's I worked at a large medical device company. In 1990 I was laid off as part of a restructuring after an Merger/Acquisition . I remember when the layoffs were announced the director of our group said he feared the US was becoming "a short term quarter to quarter economy". Hence booms and busts or casino capitalism. As we're finding out booms followed by busts, i.e. instability, leads to severe social consequences: inequality, job loss, breakdown of the family and communities etc.

skippy , July 5, 2018 at 4:28 pm

I'm reminded of an old acquaintance that headed a forward M&A team. Once told of an experience in an elevator where some lady asked if he was the same guy that came around at her last employer. He responded yes. She then tentatively asked if she should start looking for new employment. His answer was again yes.

This was in little more space than 6 months for the middle aged lady.

This also coincides with the great Calif M&A episode during the late 80s and early 90s. Huge wave of wage earners selling houses and migrating to states on eastern boarders due to RE affordability and cost of living. Experienced this in the Denver – Boulder CO. corridor at the time, storage tech et al. Funny thing, took less than 10 years before everything reverted to the state of affairs which drove them to leave Calif. Which then promoted me to move to Oz after marrying native wife.

clarky90 , July 5, 2018 at 4:42 pm

Years ago I got an email from an acquaintance; " . I am deathly sick in a hospital in East Africa. .please help by ." His identity had been stolen by con artists.

The identity of the "Democratic Party" has also been stolen. They are not the FDR-JFK Democratic Party of my childhood. but rather, Neo-Toxoplasma Gondii-ists, the "Mind Invaders".

Back in the early 1980s, the NZ Labour Party (of Mickey Savage and Norman Kirk) was taken over by Neo-liberal, Roger Douglas and his henchmen/women.

" the New Zealand dollar was floated, corporate practices were introduced to state services, state assets were sold off, and a swathe of regulations and subsidies were removed. Douglas's economic policies were regarded as a betrayal of Labour's left-wing policy platform, and were deeply unpopular "

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Roger_Douglas

Our NZ Labour Party is finally back to it's old self, after about 35 years.

NZ Prime Minister, Jacinda Ardern is Labour as it used to be. The Big Political Tent with room for all.

https://www.tvnz.co.nz/one-news/new-zealand/watch-worlds-media-reacted-news-jacinda-ardern-s-baby

I believe that the actual political spectrum is an Axis (coalition) of the Neo-Liberals with the Neo-Conservatives .

Who are (in a perfect World) opposed by The Alliance of Everybody Else.

The Axis (a puny minority) are able to exist because they sow constant discord among the The Alliance. (What is the definition of "abortion" or "healthcare" or "security" or "love" ..???? Let's scream at each other! That will help!)

In New Zealand, we have a coalition Government of (1) Labour (Unions), (2) NZ First (populist) and (3) The Greens.

The out-of-power, NZ National Party (Neo-Con/Lib Axis) spend their time trying to conflate and invent "disagreements" within our Labour Coalition Government.

But, it is like a healthy, extended family. You agree to disagree and ENJOY the lively discussions. Parties compromise and life goes on.

Wukchumni , July 5, 2018 at 8:42 pm

I was in NZ after Rogernomics made the Kiwi $ plunge to about 35 cents US in the 1980's, and everything was so cheap, dinners were like US $4, motel rooms US $15, homes in Auckland US $25k.

I dread seeing the prices now, when we visit next year

drumlin woodchuckles , July 5, 2018 at 8:53 pm

If a Democratic Party composed of Romneyfeller Republicans and Democratic Socialists will not stand, then eventually the two separated fighting halves will fight to the death over which half gets to keep the name "Democratic Party".

Meanwhile, the Woodrow Wilson quote above gives some evidence as to why some people have long called Wilson "America's most evil President". His bringing official Jim Crow to the Federal Workforce in Washington DC might be another piece of evidence. His unleashing of a vicious and bigoted campaign of anti-germanitic cultural and social pogroms all over America might be another piece of evidence. The fact that he did this as part of his World War I program, after having worked with Great Britain to lie and manipulate America into World War I ( some would say on the wrong side . . . ) is another piece of evidence. His political "extermination" campaign against the American Left ( Debs in prison, etc) thereby reducing the Left toward its tiny size of today is another such piece of evidence.

The actions of America's most evil President ( Woodrow Wilson) may help explain why America is a center-right country today.

[Jul 05, 2018] America Celebrates Lateral Move From Monarchy To Corporate Rule by Caitlin Johnstone

That's all right and indignation is well deserved, but what is the alternative? Is Sanders program a real alternative or he just served as a sheepdog for Hillary.
The Iron law of oligarchy is a serious constrain that suggest that the socialist system degenerate to oligarchical system really quick and as such is not a viable option.
The USSR experience tells us a lot about how the process of degeneration of "revolutionary elite" once started logically leads to neoliberalism
Notable quotes:
"... The elite class secured its stance as British Rule 2.0 by throwing their money behind politicians who they knew would advance their interests, whether those interests are in ensuring that the arms and munitions they manufacture get used frequently, the expansion of predatory trade policies, keeping tax loopholes open and keeping taxes on the wealthiest of the wealthy very low, deregulating corporations and banks, or enabling underhanded Wall Street practices which hurt the many for the benefit of the few. ..."
"... Buckley v. Valeo ..."
"... First National Bank of Boston v. Bellotti ..."
"... Citizens United v. FEC ..."
"... So if you've ever wondered why seemingly common sense matters like a living wage and healthcare as a right consistently get shot down by your government, this is why. In order to rule you as King George ruled you, the oligarchs need to make sure most of America is toiling just to keep its head above water. Progressives were able to mount an intimidating insurgency using tiny 27-dollar donations on 2016; imagine what they could do if ordinary working Americans were being paid their fair share of the U.S. economy? ..."
"... The oligarchs can keep that from happening by continually escalating income inequality. They use their massive political power to repress the minimum wage, to undermine the power of unions ..."
"... America is a corporatist oligarchy dressed in drag doing a bad impression of a bipartisan democracy. Sometimes it doesn't even keep its wig on; a recent party at the Hamptons saw Jared Kushner, Ivanka Trump, Kellyanne Conway and Charles Koch mixing it up with Chuck Schumer and George Soros. ..."
"... When they're not dining on champagne and rare fillet together, these people pretend to be locked in a vicious partisan battle that is "tearing the nation apart," but at Lally Weymouth's annual Southampton summer party the act stops and the oligarchs frolic together like children. ..."
"... This commentary was originally published on ..."
"... The Constitution, and the Bill of Rights were NOT inclusive documents. Both of these papers were written by, and for rich landowners. Slavers, in short. The writers did not believe that 'the people' were intelligent enough to contribute to government. The 'Founding Fathers' comprised the original oligarchy. ..."
"... America was formed/founded by White men seeking fame, fortune and power outside the existing European political power structure. From its' beginning, it has been a nation of migrants seeking this kind of fortune ..."
"... You can talk all you want about political systems, which is better or how to corral the oligarchs who rule America, but what I've described is America and the world will never have peace or prosperity until the American Empire ends and the whole world can then celebrate American Independence Day – the Day when the rest of the world is Independent from the Evil Empire. ..."
"... Hard to have a Fourth of July celebration when your Bill of Rights and Constitution have been Trashed. ..."
"... Marxists (and much of the broader. "Left") have always maintained that the capitalist mode of production – and the bourgeois-democratic political superstructure it necessitates – represented an immense revolutionary achievement in the course of human development. ..."
"... Casting aside the last vestiges of the feudal system, particularly hereditary monarchy and titles of nobility, was critical to the eventual move toward a more equitable system of political economy. ..."
"... The reactionary system of corporate rule that we see today is a result of the bourgeoisie and capitalist system having (long) outlived their historically progressive role. However, that does not minimize the fact that in relation to the prior system (I.e. feudalism and monarchy), the US capitalist bourgeois-democratic form of political economy was a great achievement. ..."
"... "Looking back on it, I might have given Al Capone a few hints. The best he could do was to operate his racket in three districts. I operated on three continents." Major General Smedley Butler ..."
"... I can't disagree with this articles premise that capitalism has it's flaws but I also contend that socialism has just as sordid a track record with it's own set of oligarchs. ..."
"... The United States did not win independence from George III. Since 1689 the UK/Great Britain has been a CONSTITUTIONAL MONARCHY. (Now go look that up to see what it means.) That means that Parliament does not answer to the monarch. Period. ..."
"... George III was America's eighteenth century Putin. Someone they blame for all their problems, but who is not actually responsible for any of them. Americans, like their precious Second Amendment will not grow up and move on. ..."
"... The establishment of the Central Bank in City-of-London in 1694 or thereabouts, when William of Orange crossed the English Chanel, along with his retinue of immigrant Venetian banksters from the Netherlands, is the one pertinent fact worth remembering. ..."
"... Whether one envisages the traditional concept of royalty with precious stones-studded crowns and all the "royal" trapping, pomp and circumstance or multi-billionaire corporate tax-evading mega-moguls, the groups are essentially the same. Wealth inequality on Earth, ironically and sadly, has grown while so-called "royalty" as a visible phenomenon has slowly diminished. The problems associated with record concentration of wealth on Earth have grown in equal proportion, to the point where people are starting to consider newer, potentially more beneficial economic thought and viable alternative systems. ..."
Jul 05, 2018 | consortiumnews.com

Americans celebrate their independence 242 years ago today from Britain with little thought it seems about who rules them now, comments Caitlin Johnstone.

Today America celebrates its liberation from the shackles of the British Crown and the beginning of its transition into corporatist oligarchy, which is a lot like celebrating your lateral promotion from housekeeping to laundry staff. Fireworks will be set off, hot dogs will be consumed, and a strange yellow concoction known as Mountain Dew will be imbibed by patriotic high-fiving Yankees eager to celebrate their hard-fought freedom to funnel their taxes into corporate welfare instead of to the King.

Spark up a bottle rocket for me, America! In trouncing King George's red-coated goon squad, you made it possible for the donor class to slowly buy up more and more control of your shiny new government, allowing for a system of rule determined not by royal bloodlines, but by wealth bloodlines. Now instead of your national affairs being determined by some gilded schmuck across the pond, they are determined by the billionaire owners of multinational corporations and banks. These oligarchs have shored up their rule to such an extent that congressional candidates who outspend their opponents are almost certain to win , and a 2014 Princeton study found that ordinary Americans have no influence whatsoever over the behavior of their government while the will of the wealthy has a direct influence on US policy and legislation.

The elite class secured its stance as British Rule 2.0 by throwing their money behind politicians who they knew would advance their interests, whether those interests are in ensuring that the arms and munitions they manufacture get used frequently, the expansion of predatory trade policies, keeping tax loopholes open and keeping taxes on the wealthiest of the wealthy very low, deregulating corporations and banks, or enabling underhanded Wall Street practices which hurt the many for the benefit of the few. The existence of legalized bribery and corporate lobbying as illustrated in the video above have enabled the plutocrats to buy up the Legislative and Executive branches of the US government, and with these in their pockets they were eventually able to get the Judicial branch as well since justices are appointed and approved by the other two. Now having secured all three branches in a system of checks and balances theoretically designed to prevent totalitarian rule, the billionaire class has successfully secured totalitarian rule.

By tilting the elections of congressmen and presidents in such a way as to install a corporatist Supreme Court bench, the oligarchs successfully got legislation passed which further secured and expanded their rule with decisions like 1976's Buckley v. Valeo , 1978's First National Bank of Boston v. Bellotti , and 2010's Citizens United v. FEC . This has had the effect of creating a nation wherein money equals power, which has in turn had the effect of creating a system wherein the ruling class is, in a very real way, incentivized to try and keep everyone else poor in order to maintain its rule.

George III: Like today's rulers of America, he didn't give up without a fight. (National Portrait Gallery, London.)

Just as King George didn't give up rule of the New World colonies without a knock-down, drag-out fight, King George 2.0 has no intention of relinquishing its rule either. The oligarchs have been fighting to keep their power, and, in the money-equals-power system that they have built for themselves, this necessarily means keeping you from having money. Just as King George's kingship would have meant nothing if everybody was King, the oligarchs won't be oligarchs anymore if ordinary Americans are ever able to secure enough money for themselves to begin influencing their government within its current money-equals-power paradigm.

So if you've ever wondered why seemingly common sense matters like a living wage and healthcare as a right consistently get shot down by your government, this is why. In order to rule you as King George ruled you, the oligarchs need to make sure most of America is toiling just to keep its head above water. Progressives were able to mount an intimidating insurgency using tiny 27-dollar donations on 2016; imagine what they could do if ordinary working Americans were being paid their fair share of the U.S. economy?

The oligarchs can keep that from happening by continually escalating income inequality. They use their massive political power to repress the minimum wage, to undermine the power of unions , and to continually pull more and more energy away from socialist programs and toward the corporate deregulation of neoliberalism. If you don't depend on running the rat race for some corporate boss in order for your family to have health insurance, you're suddenly free to innovate, create, and become an economically powerful entrepreneur yourself.

America is a corporatist oligarchy dressed in drag doing a bad impression of a bipartisan democracy. Sometimes it doesn't even keep its wig on; a recent party at the Hamptons saw Jared Kushner, Ivanka Trump, Kellyanne Conway and Charles Koch mixing it up with Chuck Schumer and George Soros.

When they're not dining on champagne and rare fillet together, these people pretend to be locked in a vicious partisan battle that is "tearing the nation apart," but at Lally Weymouth's annual Southampton summer party the act stops and the oligarchs frolic together like children.

1776 turned out to be nothing other than a transition from one form of exploitative rule to another, but who knows? Maybe a year in the not-too-distant future will see America celebrating a real Independence Day.

This commentary was originally published on Medium.

Caitlin Johnstone is a rogue journalist, poet, and utopia prepper who publishes regularly at Medium . Follow her work on Facebook , Twitter , or her website . She has a podcast and a new book Woke: A Field Guide for Utopia Preppers . This article was re-published with permission.


Al Pinto , July 5, 2018 at 12:06 pm

@Jean

"Just a reminder; Sanders would have won if not for the hated Hillary"

Even if he did, it would not have made a difference; the POTUS does not make laws, Congress does, at least on paper

Just remember, Bernie did endorse RHC at the DNC. That probably had been the play all along during the primary. Sanders to woo in all of the "dissenters" and then turn them over to RHC, under the "unity" umbrella against Trump.

I still "Feel the Burn", the burn of the rigged system, don't you?

rgl , July 5, 2018 at 12:52 pm

The Constitution, and the Bill of Rights were NOT inclusive documents. Both of these papers were written by, and for rich landowners. Slavers, in short. The writers did not believe that 'the people' were intelligent enough to contribute to government. The 'Founding Fathers' comprised the original oligarchy.

Money (land and slaves) was the basis of political power in the 17th century. Funny that. The more things change the more they stay the same.

Ergo Sum , July 5, 2018 at 7:32 am

@Jean

Just a reminder; Sanders would have won if not for the hated Hillary"

It would not have made any difference, even if he did. The POTUS does not make laws, Congress does.

You should not forget that Sanders endorsed RHC at the DNC. His purpose during the primary has been to channel all of democrats with social, economic and political dissatisfaction to Hillary at the end. "Feel The Burn", the burn of the rigged system. It is another example of how the rigged system allows minor uprising to flourish for a while, and then crush it at the end by the perceived front-runner of the movement. The movement is dead, voters are further disillusioned that enforces the viewpoint of there's nothing that peaceful action can do to change the system. This results in even less people showing up at the voting booth to cast their votes, that the rigged system loves; it does not need to disenfranchise voters and easier to predetermine the outcome any of the upcoming elections.

Happy Birthday America, the home of the free and the brave You are free to rig the system, if you are brave enough

Tom , July 5, 2018 at 5:58 am

America was formed/founded by White men seeking fame, fortune and power outside the existing European political power structure. From its' beginning, it has been a nation of migrants seeking this kind of fortune – bugger those damn savages that get in the way of this greed and desire to take land, resources and culture away from America's native inhabitants. And so it began this way and has continued unabated for more than the life of the nation which began in 1776 – more than 240 years of expansionism, colonization and subjugation of those less powerful – too take away the land and resources of not just the native American Indians, but later the peoples of Cuba, Philippines, Japan, China and on to the World Wars, late 20th century wars in Iraq, Yugoslavia, Afghanistan, Libya, Syria, Yemen and on and on an on – continuous warfare and expansionism of the American Empire to take away land, resources and power of the native inhabitants of every nation the US targets for regime change or conquest.

You can talk all you want about political systems, which is better or how to corral the oligarchs who rule America, but what I've described is America and the world will never have peace or prosperity until the American Empire ends and the whole world can then celebrate American Independence Day – the Day when the rest of the world is Independent from the Evil Empire.

GMC , July 5, 2018 at 5:17 am

Hard to have a Fourth of July celebration when your Bill of Rights and Constitution have been Trashed.

Anonymous , July 5, 2018 at 3:43 am

Marxists (and much of the broader. "Left") have always maintained that the capitalist mode of production – and the bourgeois-democratic political superstructure it necessitates – represented an immense revolutionary achievement in the course of human development.

Anonymous , July 5, 2018 at 12:25 pm

Casting aside the last vestiges of the feudal system, particularly hereditary monarchy and titles of nobility, was critical to the eventual move toward a more equitable system of political economy.

The reactionary system of corporate rule that we see today is a result of the bourgeoisie and capitalist system having (long) outlived their historically progressive role. However, that does not minimize the fact that in relation to the prior system (I.e. feudalism and monarchy), the US capitalist bourgeois-democratic form of political economy was a great achievement.

Mukadi , July 4, 2018 at 10:24 pm

July 4 Is Matrix Reinforcement Day

https://www.paulcraigroberts.org/2018/07/03/tomorrow-is-matrix-reinforcement-day/

Joe Tedesky , July 5, 2018 at 12:02 am

"Looking back on it, I might have given Al Capone a few hints. The best he could do was to operate his racket in three districts. I operated on three continents." Major General Smedley Butler

Good on you Mukadi for posting this link. PCR did a great analogy of our American war culture. Joe

Jessika , July 4, 2018 at 9:49 pm

It's a knee-jerk celebration, anyway, for the most part. The citizens are told to celebrate, so they celebrate. Just like Thanksgiving, Christmas, Valentine's Day, the Fourth of July is a day to generate money. The firecrackers are popping right now, a worship of the warship that the US has become.

Susan Lee Schwartz , July 4, 2018 at 9:47 pm

Caitlin, I just finished reading an article that I think you would love. "The Birth of Predatory Capitalism "at Eudaimonia and Co: https://eand.co/how-predatory-capitalism-imploded-the-future-6a6396b8f2fc

Herman , July 4, 2018 at 8:37 pm

Much of my time is spent reading commentary that I agree with and articles I agree with. Something to consider for the website, descriptive articles yes but more prescriptive ones. For example, articles by people who have ideas for change, addressing important policy questions like taxation, health insurance, technology stuff like robotics and how to spread its benefits. and of course, reform of the process of selecting and electing our leaders. Just a thought.

Kenny , July 4, 2018 at 5:43 pm

I can't disagree with this articles premise that capitalism has it's flaws but I also contend that socialism has just as sordid a track record with it's own set of oligarchs.

Jerry Alatalo , July 4, 2018 at 4:41 pm

Horrendous global economic conditions require new economic thinking that improves the health and well-being of the most number of people. Economist and author Henry George (1839-1897) nailed it decades ago in his multi-million copy, bestselling 1879 book "Progress and Poverty" – the "single tax" or land value tax.

Consortium News would do humanity a great service by bringing the writings of Henry George economic philosophy advocates to readers and CN's massive group of supporters around the world. For example, an excellent guest writer suggestion is Henry George expert, confirmed enthusiast, and author of many books on the subject, Mr. Fred Harrison.

System-wide implementation of Henry George economic principles addresses the real concerns raised by Caitlin Johnstone and so many others in this time of unprecedented wealth inequality, faulty economics, the new royals called corporate oligarchs, seeming endless war, and the great societal problems manifested as a consequence.

Peace.

Drew Hunkins , July 4, 2018 at 4:28 pm

Jefferson was very old when he first saw the fledgling stages of early corporate power, they called them "moneyed incorporations" or something like that. Jefferson warned that these new "moneyed incorporations" had the potential power to undermine everything the revolution accomplished.

John2o2o , July 4, 2018 at 4:18 pm

Sigh. I know I'm probably wasting my time saying this as Caitlin's groupies will not tolerate criticism of their anointed one.

The United States did not win independence from George III. Since 1689 the UK/Great Britain has been a CONSTITUTIONAL MONARCHY. (Now go look that up to see what it means.) That means that Parliament does not answer to the monarch. Period.

"In the Kingdom of England, the Glorious Revolution of 1688 led to a constitutional monarchy restricted by laws such as the Bill of Rights 1689 and the Act of Settlement 1701, although limits on the power of the monarch ('a limited monarchy') are much older than that (see Magna Carta). At the same time, in Scotland the Convention of Estates enacted the Claim of Right Act 1689, which placed similar limits on the Scottish monarchy." wikipedia.

George III was America's eighteenth century Putin. Someone they blame for all their problems, but who is not actually responsible for any of them. Americans, like their precious Second Amendment will not grow up and move on.

I know it suits some of you to believe that somehow the royals are super powerful, but they are not. They don't call the shots and haven't done so now for over 300 years.

Joe Lauria , July 4, 2018 at 4:43 pm

"War began in 1775 and was prolonged in 1779, *at the king's insistence,* to prevent copycat protests elsewhere. The British defeat in 1781 prompted North to resign. In 1783, North and the prominent Whig politician Fox formed a coalition government. Their plans to reform the East India Company gave George the chance to regain popularity. He *forced the bill's defeat* in Parliament, and the two resigned. In their place George *appointed* William Pitt the Younger."

George blocked legislation and he appointed the first minister, i.e. he had power over parliament.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/history/historic_figures/george_iii_king.shtml

cal , July 4, 2018 at 6:17 pm

The Continental Congress was primarily frustrated with Parliament, a resent that had been brewing since the conclusion of the Seven Years War. But, at the same time, royalist enthusiasm had been budding, with an increasing obsession within the colonies of being faithful servants of the crown. Thus, the Congress styled their petitions to the monarch, hoping he would quash his evil ministers, with George III being the hoped for "patriot king". When George attacked the colonies, and began efforts to crackdown on political unrest, the otherwise unpopular and extreme option of independence became feasible. George was not an absolute monarch or a tyrant, but he did have significant power, and he could, if he played parliamentary politics well enough, get his way. The Glorious Revolution did not disempower the monarchy or firmly establish parliamentary power, both of these phenomena began both before and after the events of 1688.

Brad Owen , July 5, 2018 at 4:20 am

The establishment of the Central Bank in City-of-London in 1694 or thereabouts, when William of Orange crossed the English Chanel, along with his retinue of immigrant Venetian banksters from the Netherlands, is the one pertinent fact worth remembering.

THIS is what the Founders actually declared their independence from, establishing the National Bank in the process (which was shut down relatively quickly thereafter, by agents loyal to City-of-London Central Bank). Independence has been a farce from the beginning and we never had our Republic, let alone keeping it, as Benjamin Franklin had warned us would be the problem.

We've had a phony Republic based on the model supplied by Venice (and established by Venetian "Dutch Masters" in The Netherlands in the 17th century) throughout the Medieval/Renaissance eras. It is the same old, ongoing, Citizens' Republic vs Oligarchs' Empire fight that Western Civilzation inherited from Roman times.

Jerry Alatalo , July 4, 2018 at 4:04 pm

Whether one envisages the traditional concept of royalty with precious stones-studded crowns and all the "royal" trapping, pomp and circumstance or multi-billionaire corporate tax-evading mega-moguls, the groups are essentially the same. Wealth inequality on Earth, ironically and sadly, has grown while so-called "royalty" as a visible phenomenon has slowly diminished. The problems associated with record concentration of wealth on Earth have grown in equal proportion, to the point where people are starting to consider newer, potentially more beneficial economic thought and viable alternative systems.

The ideas of economist and author of "Progress and Poverty" – HENRY GEORGE (1839-1897) "Single tax" proponent (or "land value tax") – are both disappointingly under-discussed and under-appreciated, while offering precisely the economic alternative for effectively dealing with today's orthodox economy-centric global, societal problems. People might take the time in researching Henry George's ideas when they understand (only one of many benefits) that implementation of Georgist economic principles means no more income tax taken out of their paychecks

Consortium News (CN) is the perfect platform for support of Henry George economic thought and raising awareness of an idea whose time may just have arrived. We might suggest Consortium News publish the writings of Henry George expert and author of many books on the subject Mr. Fred Harrison, who would likely happily provide his impressive writings for free.

We might also suggest the many millions of men and women from all regions of the Earth reading Consortium News consider finding out more on Henry George economic thought, do the researching, then understand the economic philosophy's virtually immeasurable, positive and transforming potential.

Source information search suggestion: Henry George School of Social Science.

Peace.

[Jun 27, 2018] Pelosi Pissed As Liberal Media Loves Socialist Millennial Who Beat Democratic Leader

Jun 27, 2018 | www.zerohedge.com

wee-weed up -> DiotheDog Wed, 06/27/2018 - 15:52 Permalink

Pe-lousy is pissed because the unknown little socialist beat her hand-picked successor (Crowley) for after she retires, whenever that is.

Handful of Dust -> DaBard51 Wed, 06/27/2018 - 16:03 Permalink

Here be Maxine Waters running away from voters:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1mHz83wnXDg

techpriest -> Scanderbeg Wed, 06/27/2018 - 16:54 Permalink

The Asians are starting to shift away from the DNC, from what I can see. They built up some actual wealth, and at this point they no longer receive the same minority protections as other groups. The minute you are the target of theft, you stop hanging around the thieves.

Aside from this, I was recently listening to an Asian libertarian who goes by "Pholosopher" on Youtube, and she explained that as a "normie" she just thought of government programs as "society helping the little guy." IMO, 80% of Democrats are in this very naive space. Her mind changed in part because some of her family members were victims of the Khmer Rouge, and this led to some actual thought about what would possess people to do the things they did.

https://tomwoods.com/ep-1185-her-family-fled-three-communist-countries-

IMO, the crazier this gets, the more obvious it is that it is time to re-dedicate our lives to rebuilding a sound culture, otherwise we will not see any culture rebuilt until we go through another multi-century Dark Age.

venturen -> IridiumRebel Wed, 06/27/2018 - 15:55 Permalink

lots of experience....waitree...bartending...."educator"...she is like a bad joke

Ocasio-Cortez graduated from Boston University in 2011, where she majored in economics and international relations. After college, she moved back to the Bronx and supported her mother by bartending at Flats Fix taqueria in Union Square, Manhattan, and working as a waitress. She also got a job as an educator in the nonprofit National Hispanic Institute . [11] [12]

She worked as an organizer for Bernie Sanders in his 2016 presidential campaign . [13]

GunnerySgtHartman -> junction Wed, 06/27/2018 - 16:14 Permalink

Obama (and dozens of members of Congress) set the "standard" for that ...

DosZap -> GunnerySgtHartman Wed, 06/27/2018 - 16:56 Permalink

28 yr old radical, her SURE TO WIN incumbent outspent her 20-1, she went door to door.

skinwalker Wed, 06/27/2018 - 15:49 Permalink

Pelosi has full blown Alzheimer's. She's the poster child for term limits on Congress creatures.

Chief Joesph Wed, 06/27/2018 - 15:57 Permalink

At least she is far cuter than her competition... Democrats need new blood anyway. Its a party that seems to be going nowhere, has the Clinton mafia running it, and hasn't done anyone any good since the time Jimmy Carter was president.

Schooey Wed, 06/27/2018 - 16:07 Permalink

Bernie might have done better than Hillary against Trump. Will the kids get out and vote for a Joe Biden? NO The Dems are going to have to go way way left on a hale mary. But Trump is much much stronger now than in 2016. They lose. They got nothing and their divisions are getting worse. We should support and encourage them to move further and further to the left. We can drive them there.

If you live in an area that is Democrat controlled and your own preference is safe, then register Democrat and vote for people like her.

gimme-gimme-gimme Wed, 06/27/2018 - 17:25 Permalink

If you simply divert all the money from the following socialist programs:

1) ZIRP

2) QE

3) Bank bailouts

4) Farming subsidies

5) Defense contract subsidies

6) Big pharma subsidies

Problem is Americans are too easily fooled that stuff which is to their benefits are something they should not vote for and vise versa. Like all money channeled to MIC.

[Jun 27, 2018] Earthquake in the Bronx Ocasio-Cortez Beat 14 Term Establishment Dem Crowley in Primary naked capitalism

Notable quotes:
"... The democratic machine in NYC does absolutely everything it can to suppress turnout to protect incumbents so I was happy to see it blow up in their face today. But still pretty grim to see only 25,000 people voting. ..."
"... The interesting question is how the Democrats will react to this. They may try to sabotage her in some other way. The other is the top 10%ers and other upper middle class voters. I would not be surprised if many Establishment Democrats vote for the GOP over a Berniecrat. ..."
Jun 27, 2018 | www.nakedcapitalism.com

Posted on June 26, 2018 by Yves Smith ... ... ...

Needless to say, neoliberal Vox had to tut-tut her policy positions while effectively conceding that they are winners:

But here is the bigger implication, again from Vox:

Ocasio-Cortez's victory is a story of the complacent establishment taking voters for granted. It's the story of how the Democratic Party is getting pulled to the left. It's also about how it's not just progressive policies that are reshaping the party, but also people of color.

Ocasio-Cortez ran decidedly to the left of Crowley, but she also shook up how Democrats go about getting elected. Until now, Democrats have seen big money in politics as simply a deal with the devil that had to be made. Democrats are so often outspent by Republican mega-donors that they viewed courting big-dollar donors and corporations as part of creating a level playing field.

But if one of Democrats' top fundraisers and likely successor to Nancy Pelosi can be toppled, perhaps Democrats need to rethink that deal.

What was most exciting for progressives is the degree to which Ocasio-Cortez ran to Crowley's left. As a member of the DSA, her website is a laundry list of every blue-sky progressive policy: Medicare-for-all, housing and jobs guarantees, gun control, ending private prisons, abolishing ICE, and investment in post-hurricane Puerto Rico.

Crowley also had the endorsement of Governor Andrew Cuomo. 'Nuff said. AstoriaBlowin , June 26, 2018 at 11:10 pm

The democratic machine in NYC does absolutely everything it can to suppress turnout to protect incumbents so I was happy to see it blow up in their face today. But still pretty grim to see only 25,000 people voting.

I voted against Crowley cause he came out against installing protected bike lanes in Sunnyside which was none of his business anyway as a federal official. I wrote to him expressing my disappointment and he actually called me to talk about it! We had a nice conversation but still once you choose parking over people's lives it's over.

Ocasio has some good talking points but she also comes across as a NIMBY which is not a good look in a city with a serious housing affordability and availability crisis.

Altandmain , June 26, 2018 at 11:18 pm

It is certainly a major step forward and will hopefully be the first of many victories. Ultimately, what we desperately need are politicians that will truly fight for the common citizen to get into office and in enough numbers as to fundamentally alter the direction of government from an institution that is co-opted by the rich to one that is for the people.

The interesting question is how the Democrats will react to this. They may try to sabotage her in some other way. The other is the top 10%ers and other upper middle class voters. I would not be surprised if many Establishment Democrats vote for the GOP over a Berniecrat.

Bottom line – this is a step forward, but we are not out of the woods yet. There is a lot of work to do and while we should celebrate, the Establishment will fight back. There also remains the question of how this person will actually govern. The fact that the Establishment was against her though is very encouraging.

[Jun 26, 2018] Identity politics has always served as a diversion for elites to pursue stealth neoliberal policies like decreasing public spending. Fake austerity is necessary for pursuing neoliberal privatization of public enterprises

Highly recommended!
Notable quotes:
"... In a mature society, it would not matter if someone was black, white, gay, Jewish, young, old, whatever but what policies they bring to the party. This article, going out of its way to label Nixon as LGBT and Sanders as Jewish, really only means that they are letting the other side set the rules and that is never a winning position. Unfortunately we do not live in a mature society. ..."
"... Not until people are done with identity politics will it be really possible to bring a new order into focus. Support Kamala Harris, for example, because she is not white and a woman? Not unless she has policies that the bulk of Americans want and is not just the old party in a new guise. I suspect that this use of the term 'progressive' is just a term to describe what the majority of Americans want out of their governments. People like Clinton, Pelosi, Waters and Albright can not and will not do this so time for them to be pushed aside. I think that the US Presidential election of 2020 will be very telling of how things play out as the results of the 2018 mid-terms are absorbed. ..."
"... I think identity politics has always served as a diversion for elites to play within the neoliberal bandwidth of decreasing public spending. Fake austerity and an unwillingness to use conjured money for public QE are necessary for pursuing neoliberal privatization of public enterprises. Therefore Bernie and his MMT infrastructure are anathema to corporate democrats and their Wall St. benefactors. ..."
"... Moral Monday represents what I deem as people over profit. I would rather be a spoiler than enable corporate sociopaths to.expand mass incarceration, end welfare as we know it, consider the killing of a half-million Iraqi children an acceptable cost, or oversee the first inverted debt jubilee in 2008 to forgive the liabilities of fraudsters by pauperizing debtors. ..."
"... Once you abandon class-based politics, and all parties accept the neoliberal consensus, you still have the problem of attracting support. You can only do that by turning to the politics of identity, as practised in Africa or the Balkans, where you seek to corral entire groups to vote for you, based on ethnicity, skin colour etc. ..."
"... Modern parties of the "Left" have taken over the methods, if not the ideology, of the old Communist parties, which is to say they present themselves as natural leaders, whom the membership should follow and vote for. ..."
"... Readers should examine the recent book Asymmetric Politics. The key point is that the Democratic Party is as described by David in some fair part an identity-based party, so it is supported by, e.g., many African-Americans. The Republican Party, unusual in the Western World, is not an identity based party; it is an idea-based party. It may not be very good at putting its ideas into effect, but it is an idea-based party that anyone can support. ..."
"... The Republicans are an "ideas-based" party? Well, I guess if you consider the interest-motivated "product" of Overclass-funded think tanks to be "idea-based," then OK. Me, I've haven't seen the Republicans as anything other than a class and (white) race-based party since I was a youth half a century ago. ..."
"... As for the cynicism of how the Democrats use identity politics: granted. Nevertheless, African-Americans have some tangible and valid reasons for voting for them, awful as they are. ..."
"... George Phillies didn't say the Republicans had "good" ideas. He just noted that the Republicans have "ideas". A "bad" idea is still an "idea". ..."
"... So Pelosi's final bequest to the public is a corrupt successor? What a world! ..."
"... Pelosi's been quoted a number of times saying, "we lead with our values". You certainly do, Mrs. Speaker! Thanks for making it clear! ..."
"... Come on, folks. By now you should have learned that what politicians say doesn't mean a damn thing -- it's what they do. The establishment is only interested in perpetuating the establishment. ..."
"... As far as I've seen, they trot out identity politics only when it suits their aims and it has nothing to do with what the voters actually want. ..."
"... Identity politics are to Democrats what religious politics are to Republicans: A pious high ground they use whenever they want to denounce anyone opposed to them as corrupt and immoral, but immediately gets shelved the moment it interferes with the money and power. ..."
"... To me, it's a dishonest policy erasure tactic for favoring establishment candidates. If you're against Hillary Clinton, it's must be ..."
"... Of course the most important identity is that of the worker, the person who must sell their labor power in the marketplace to survive. But you will rarely hear the Democrats discuss that identity. You might hear about "working families" and the "middle class" but it really means nothing. The Republicans use the same language and they are just as mendacious. ..."
"... Working families: Groups of people related genetically or by choice, all of whom, regardless of age, have to work to ensure they have food, clothing, and shelter. ..."
"... I can think of a couple of identity-words to offer to see if anyone identifies with them. Ex-middle class. Nouveau poor. ..."
"... Western Democrats focus too much on a minority which has barely any impact on the economy at the expense of the majority which actually dictates the general economic trend and therefore also creates the byproduct welfare/life quality of all the meme minorities to whom it trickles down. That's the issue here. The difference between normal people and minorities is that normal people know they don't matter in the larger picture, while minorities think they matter while at the same time asking to be treated as part of the normal people even though their very mentality is a paradox towards being normal. ..."
"... The West is simply too bankrupt on things that matter in the bigger picture and too involved in things that don't, a complete lack of prioritization. ..."
Jun 26, 2018 | www.nakedcapitalism.com

sgt_doom , June 26, 2018 at 2:07 pm

Eric Holder: Please declare for the US presidency

Eric Holder, former attorney general of the USA under President Obama, has publicly announced that he is considering a run for the White House in 2020. (Thanks to that WikiLeaked email awhile back, we know that Citigroup directed a newly elected President Obama to appoint him to the position of A.G.)

I fervently pray that Eric Holder, of Covington & Burling, declares himself a candidate!

Only then will the opportunity again present itself to expose Eric Holder -- and Covington & Burling -- in their involvement with the creation and operation of MERS (Mortgage Electronic Reporting System) and its connection to the global economic meltdown (2007 -- 2009), the greatest illegal wealth transfer and insurance swindle in human history!

How we would welcome such transparency of evil, how BlackRock profited from that economic meltdown, then oversaw the disbursement of those TARP bailout funds.

Exposure of the network of BlackRock and Vanguard and State Street and Fidelity; exposure of their major investors. Further exposure of the Blackstone Group and Carlyle Group and other such PE/LBO giants!

How the InterContinental Exchange (ICE) was involved in nefarious commodity price rigging, etc., manipulated derivatives dealing and how today they oversee LIBOR rates!

The further exposure of the influence and perfidy of the Group of Thirty (www.group30.org) and the Bretton Woods Committee (www.brettonwoods.org) -- oh how we'd love to see such exposure!

Please declare for the presidency, Mr. Holder!

drumlin woodchuckles , June 26, 2018 at 4:28 pm

Holder for President? Oh boy Mr. Peabody! That's great!

If a critical difference-making margin of non-voting Black non-voters in Milwaukee were willing to non-vote between Clinton and Trump even at the price of letting Trump take Wisconsin, that could mean that the Race Card is wearing thin. Who exactly would Mr. Holder be able to fool in Milwaukee? He would do well in Hyde Park though . . . getting the Guilty White Privilege Expiation vote. Will that be enough? Will the Madison vote be enough to make up for the Milwaukee non-vote?

You know who would be a perfect pair? Holder and Harris. Or Holder and Booker. Or some such. Seriously, if the DemParty nominates Holder, I will vote for Trump all over again. And at the Senate or Representative level, I would vote for an old legacy New Deal Democrat if there is one. But if they run a Clintonite, some protest Third Party looks very attractive by comparison.

The Rev Kev , June 26, 2018 at 1:54 am

In a mature society, it would not matter if someone was black, white, gay, Jewish, young, old, whatever but what policies they bring to the party. This article, going out of its way to label Nixon as LGBT and Sanders as Jewish, really only means that they are letting the other side set the rules and that is never a winning position. Unfortunately we do not live in a mature society.

If push came to shove you would have to describe both the Republican and Democrat parties as bastions of neoliberalism and both parties play games with identity politics as it fractures those who would oppose them and encourages internecine warfare. Like a kaleidoscope shifting focus, the 2008 crash has started off a shift in how politics is done and the success of Trump in the US, Brexit in the UK as well as other leaders is this shift in its first efforts of readjusting.

Not until people are done with identity politics will it be really possible to bring a new order into focus. Support Kamala Harris, for example, because she is not white and a woman? Not unless she has policies that the bulk of Americans want and is not just the old party in a new guise. I suspect that this use of the term 'progressive' is just a term to describe what the majority of Americans want out of their governments. People like Clinton, Pelosi, Waters and Albright can not and will not do this so time for them to be pushed aside. I think that the US Presidential election of 2020 will be very telling of how things play out as the results of the 2018 mid-terms are absorbed.

Larry Coffield , June 26, 2018 at 5:27 am

I think identity politics has always served as a diversion for elites to play within the neoliberal bandwidth of decreasing public spending. Fake austerity and an unwillingness to use conjured money for public QE are necessary for pursuing neoliberal privatization of public enterprises. Therefore Bernie and his MMT infrastructure are anathema to corporate democrats and their Wall St. benefactors.

Moral Monday represents what I deem as people over profit. I would rather be a spoiler than enable corporate sociopaths to.expand mass incarceration, end welfare as we know it, consider the killing of a half-million Iraqi children an acceptable cost, or oversee the first inverted debt jubilee in 2008 to forgive the liabilities of fraudsters by pauperizing debtors.

David , June 26, 2018 at 5:47 am

The obvious answer is "very" and this applies pretty much to every major allegedly leftist party in the western world.

The fact is that if you want to form a political party and take power, or even make good careers, you have to find supporters and get them to vote for you. Historically, after the growth of modern political parties, they differentiated themselves by reference to social and economic groups. In most countries there was a traditionalist party, often rural, with links to church and aristocracy and the socially conservative, a middle-class professional/small business party and a mass working class party often under middle-class leadership. Depending on the country, this could, in practice, be more than three or less than three distinct parties.

Once you abandon class-based politics, and all parties accept the neoliberal consensus, you still have the problem of attracting support. You can only do that by turning to the politics of identity, as practised in Africa or the Balkans, where you seek to corral entire groups to vote for you, based on ethnicity, skin colour etc. The problem is that whilst the old political distinctions were objective, the new ones are much more subjective, overlapping and sometimes in conflict with each other. After all, you are objectively employed or unemployed, a shareholder or landowner or not, an employee or an employer, you have debt or savings, you earn enough to live on or you don't. It's therefore easier to construct political parties on that basis than on the basis of ascriptive, overlapping and conflicting subjective identities.

Modern parties of the "Left" have taken over the methods, if not the ideology, of the old Communist parties, which is to say they present themselves as natural leaders, whom the membership should follow and vote for. This worked well enough when the markers were economic, much less well when they are identity based. Trying to herd together middle-class professional socially-liberal voters, and immigrants from a socially conservative background afraid of losing their jobs backfired disastrously for the Socialist party in the 2017 elections in France, and effectively destroyed the party. People don't like being instructed who it is their duty to vote for.

The other very clarifying moment of that election was the complete absence, up and down the western world, of voices supporting Marine Le Pen for President. Not a single voice was raised in her support, although her victory would have been epoch-making in terms of French politics, and certainly not Albright's.

That tells you everything you need to know, really.

George Phillies , June 26, 2018 at 11:31 am

Readers should examine the recent book Asymmetric Politics. The key point is that the Democratic Party is as described by David in some fair part an identity-based party, so it is supported by, e.g., many African-Americans. The Republican Party, unusual in the Western World, is not an identity based party; it is an idea-based party. It may not be very good at putting its ideas into effect, but it is an idea-based party that anyone can support.

Note that many Democrats are totally terrified by the idea that the Republican Party would become an identity-based party, namely the white people's party, because if the white vote supported the Republicans nationally the way it already does in the south the Democrats would, in the immortal words of Donald Trump, be schlonged.

Indeed, that support is now advancing up through the Appalachians into central Pennsylvania and the Southern Tier of New York. West Virginia was once heavily Democratic.

And while some Democrats propose that America is becoming a majority-minority country, others have worked out that, e.g., persons of Hispanic or Chinese ancestry may over several generations follow the Irish and the Italians and the Hungarians and the Jews, none of whom were originally viewed* as being white, by being reclassified in the popular mind as being part of the white majority.

*Some readers will recall that quaint phrase "the colored races of Europe". At the time, a century and then a fair amount ago, it was meant literally. Anglo-Saxons were a race. Irishmen were a distinct race.

Michael Fiorillo , June 26, 2018 at 12:46 pm

The Republicans are an "ideas-based" party? Well, I guess if you consider the interest-motivated "product" of Overclass-funded think tanks to be "idea-based," then OK. Me, I've haven't seen the Republicans as anything other than a class and (white) race-based party since I was a youth half a century ago.

That Republicans will distract, misdirect and dissemble to mask their class and race-based identity doesn't change the reality of it.

As for the cynicism of how the Democrats use identity politics: granted. Nevertheless, African-Americans have some tangible and valid reasons for voting for them, awful as they are.

drumlin woodchuckles , June 26, 2018 at 4:36 pm

George Phillies didn't say the Republicans had "good" ideas. He just noted that the Republicans have "ideas". A "bad" idea is still an "idea".

blennylips , June 26, 2018 at 7:25 am

Stephen Fry is back, taking another idea out for a walk in the latest Munk Debate:

Political Correctness
Be it resolved, what you call political correctness, I call progress
MAY 18, 2018
https://www.munkdebates.com/The-Debates/Political-Correctness

On the Con side: Stephen Fry, Jordan Peterson
On the Pro side: Michael Dyson, Michelle Goldberg

Stephen and Jordan complained at the end that it ended up about identity politics rather than the PC debate they'd rather have had.

IguanaBowtie , June 26, 2018 at 10:19 am

Dyson neatly derailed the whole thing with his 'mean white man' line. Could have just been Fry vs Goldberg too, Peterson talked past the others yhe whole time. Whole thing deserves a do-over.

blennylips , June 26, 2018 at 11:14 am

I agree IguanaB, Dyson was as awful as Mr. Fry was magnificent – but I could be as deluded as the next guy of course.

I loved how Fry gritted his teeth at being on the same side as Jordan, but considered the issues too important for a personal tantrum.

johnnygl , June 26, 2018 at 8:08 am

I'm really worried about a repeat of 2016 with a heavy dose of voter purges and reregistrations. Ocasio-Cortez will need a strong GOTV ground game to pull off the upset.

DJG , June 26, 2018 at 9:07 am

Cuomo may be part of a political dynasty, but I recall that when Mario Cuomo was sending out feelers about running for president, there was plenty of "Who's the furriner?" I can't find the quote, but some Southern politician opined that there weren't many Marios and fewer Cuomos in the South. (And when Geraldine Ferraro was on the ticket with Mondale, journalists and columnists "miraculously" discovered that her husband was a mafioso.) So there's white and there's white.

Not that I'd vote for Cuomo. And I certainly agree with Glenn Greenwald. But ethnic politics cut all different ways.

DJG , June 26, 2018 at 9:09 am

From the quotes above: 'Maybe we need to run Bland White Guy 2020 to appease the fake socialists and jackass mansplainers.'"

Just in case you wanted to have the National Conversation on the Deep Insights that Rebecca Solnit Has Bestowed on Us with Her Term "Mansplaining."

Carolinian , June 26, 2018 at 9:15 am

So Pelosi's final bequest to the public is a corrupt successor? What a world!

JohnnyGL , June 26, 2018 at 11:06 am

Pelosi's been quoted a number of times saying, "we lead with our values". You certainly do, Mrs. Speaker! Thanks for making it clear!

sharonsj , June 26, 2018 at 10:55 am

Come on, folks. By now you should have learned that what politicians say doesn't mean a damn thing -- it's what they do. The establishment is only interested in perpetuating the establishment.

Here in Pennsylvania, Republican senator Pat Toomey has stayed in office only because the Dem establishment here has refused to back Joe Sestak, a terrific but rebellious candidate, for years. Last time around, it endorsed a woman over Sestak and another fantastic male candidate–but she was as crappy as they come. As far as I've seen, they trot out identity politics only when it suits their aims and it has nothing to do with what the voters actually want.

drumlin woodchuckles , June 26, 2018 at 4:41 pm

If Sestak and his supporters started a little Third Party just for Pennsylvania, how many votes would he get? If he and his supporters called it the Revenge Against Betrayal Party, how many votes would he get?

Big Tap , June 26, 2018 at 4:56 pm

Exactly

PKMKII , June 26, 2018 at 11:10 am

Identity politics are to Democrats what religious politics are to Republicans: A pious high ground they use whenever they want to denounce anyone opposed to them as corrupt and immoral, but immediately gets shelved the moment it interferes with the money and power.

Jeff W , June 26, 2018 at 6:05 pm

To me, it's a dishonest policy erasure tactic for favoring establishment candidates. If you're against Hillary Clinton, it's must be because she's a woman, not because she's, say, a neoliberal, corporatist warmonger -- it deliberately supplants legitimate policy differences with identity. Not only is it breathtakingly dopey as a psychological theory -- because it's pretty obvious that someone could oppose a person based on those policy differences -- it's also obnoxiously presumptuous: "I'm going to substitute my statements as to motivation for yours." None of that matters, of course, as long as the work of erasing policy from the discourse is done.

Lee , June 26, 2018 at 11:38 am

And while it surely matters who is in congress and who sits in the oval office, possibly we should all become more focused and engaged with system change rather than just individuals running for office. (although damn am I impressed with Alexandria's keen appreciation of democracy), To that end I offer ideas from the brain of Gar Alperovitz https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=k1-Ss5h9F9k

HotFlash , June 26, 2018 at 2:14 pm

Thank you, Lee. About a quarter of the way through Gar's talk and may need to take a little rest to let my soul catch up. For me, in my community which is being hard hit by gentrification and rents are, for many long-time residents, becoming unaffordable, this might be the exactly the right ideas at the right time. Tomorrow I will be going to the last meeting of our neighbourhood food co-op as it dissolves, after 10 years, and I can't decide whether I am more angry or sad. It was well-intentioned, but just couldn't make it work. Perhaps a bad plan, or maybe no systematic plan at all. Anyway. I never really expected to see my $1000 again when I bought that bond 10 years ago.

Meantime, I will listen to Gar finish his talk, and pro'ly get his book from the library.

So here is Gar talking about the Evergreen Co-ops of Cleveland: "That is a community-building, wealth-democratizing, decentralized, combination of community and worker ownership, supported by quasi-public procurement, through a planning system using quasi-public moneys. That is a planning system. {It} begins with a vision of community which starts by democratizing as far as you can from the ground up, building capacity at the national level or the regional level, to purchase and thereby stabilize the system in a form of economic planning. Now think about those things. Those are ideas in a fragmentary developmental process as the pain of the system grows and there are no other solutions. "

It is strong stuff, but reading it seems dense and dull, but Gar makes it all make sense on first hearing. So, in anyone interested in community economic action, do check it out.

Synoia , June 26, 2018 at 12:46 pm

Which means, if you take this view, that their vocal support for the underlying principles of "identity politics" is both cynical and insincere.

There, removed the superfluous words.

Left in Wisconsin , June 26, 2018 at 1:44 pm

Also noticing that Emily's List has failed to endorse either Nixon or Ocasio-Cortez. Why am I not shocked.

Livius Drusus , June 26, 2018 at 3:34 pm

Of course the most important identity is that of the worker, the person who must sell their labor power in the marketplace to survive. But you will rarely hear the Democrats discuss that identity. You might hear about "working families" and the "middle class" but it really means nothing. The Republicans use the same language and they are just as mendacious.

I wouldn't mind the slogans and euphemisms if there was some substance behind them. I get that Americans generally like to think of themselves as "middle class" whether they are making minimum wage or millions of dollars but at least put some substance behind your rhetoric.

Both parties are using identity politics to win elections while avoiding the economic issues that every poll indicates Americans care about the most. The result is an increasingly disillusioned and depressed population that hates the entire political system. Almost half of the eligible electorate stays home during election years. Non-voters tend to be poorer while the political junkies who are increasingly shrill, angry and unreasonable tend to be wealthier. These are the people who form the base for identity politics because they have the luxury to worry about such nonsense.

Elizabeth Burton , June 26, 2018 at 6:10 pm

Working families: Groups of people related genetically or by choice, all of whom, regardless of age, have to work to ensure they have food, clothing, and shelter.

drumlin woodchuckles , June 26, 2018 at 4:44 pm

I can think of a couple of identity-words to offer to see if anyone identifies with them. Ex-middle class. Nouveau poor.

Jean , June 26, 2018 at 6:20 pm

"It's about the children " Madeline Albright, when asked about 500,000+ dead Iraqi children caused by the sanctions she promoted said "We think the price was worth it " When will this nauseating hag slink off the public stage? https://fair.org/extra/we-think-the-price-is-worth-it/

Somebody , June 26, 2018 at 6:35 pm

An average person with their limited lifespan can barely manage a quota of about a dozen people to truly care about and about 70 to be acquainted with. Chances of any of those belonging to some of those special category people are low to the point of it being irrelevant and worthless to get acquainted with the categories themselves and their cultures/language, unless they live in a few congregation capitals on this planet like San Francisco, capitals which can be numbered on both my hands.

Unless the average person decides for themselves to care, trying to convince them to care about special identity is tantamount to attempting to rob them of their precious lifespan, over what? Superficial identities. There are religions which worship the supernatural. Now there's a religion which worships the superficial called Identity Politics or Social Justice Evangelism as i like to call it (as usual it has about as much to do with social justice as Christianity had to do with world peace, and all to do with identity masturbation), arisen jointly as a result of inflated and growing narcissism and unwarranted sense of self-importance personality disorders influenced by spending too much time on social media such as Facebook and Twitter.

Bah. Western Democrats focus too much on a minority which has barely any impact on the economy at the expense of the majority which actually dictates the general economic trend and therefore also creates the byproduct welfare/life quality of all the meme minorities to whom it trickles down. That's the issue here. The difference between normal people and minorities is that normal people know they don't matter in the larger picture, while minorities think they matter while at the same time asking to be treated as part of the normal people even though their very mentality is a paradox towards being normal.

The West is simply too bankrupt on things that matter in the bigger picture and too involved in things that don't, a complete lack of prioritization.

[Jun 16, 2018] There's Fking No One Else; DNC Strategist Laments Over Broken Party; Bill Clinton Toxic, Carter Too Old Zero Hedge

Jun 16, 2018 | www.zerohedge.com

Following a Monday report that President Obama is "secretly" meeting with top Democratic contenders for the 2020 election, The Hill notes that desperate Democrats beset with Clinton fatigue are freaking out over the fact that the much "blue wave" appears to be crashing on the rocks , and there's nobody around to salvage the party ahead of midterms and the 2020 election.

" There's f---ing no one else ," one frustrated Democratic strategist said. " Bill Clinton is toxic, [former President] Carter is too old, and there's no one else around for miles ." - The Hill

In the hopes of reinvigorating the DNC (of which up to 40 state chapters stand accused of funneling up to $84 million to the Clinton campaign), downtrodden dems are hoping that Obama will get off the sidelines and help rally support.

" He's been way too quiet ," said one longtime Obama bundler who rarely criticizes the former president, according to The Hill . " There are a lot of people who think he's played too little a role or almost no role in endorsing or fundraising and he's done jack shit in getting people to donate to the party. "

After the GOP made sweeping gains in the 2016 election, the DNC was left in disarray - and anyone who might be able to lead the party, be it Joe Biden or Elizabeth Warren, may run in 2020. Bernie Sanders is of course out because he may run and he's not a Democrat.

Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) was among five possible contenders for the Democratic crown attending the "We the People" conference in Washington on Wednesday. He received the loudest applause and heard chants of "Bernie."

But he can't play the elder role for the party, both because he may run for president and because he's not a Democrat.

Former Vice President Joe Biden and Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.), two other possibilities, have mass followings but also may join the 2020 race. - The Hill

That leaves the spotlight squarely on Barrack Hussein Obama - whose lack of endorsements during the primary season and general absence has frustrated Democrats.

Bill Clinton, who is more radioactive than ever after making ill-advised comments over "what you can do to somebody against their will," has endorsed several candidates since leaving office, yet Obama has declined to do the same thus far.

"You have all these people running for office, some of them against other Democrats, and his strategy has been to not endorse anyone and that's what's been so f---ing ridiculous because not only are you not helping them, you're hurting them ," said the bundler.

Former aides and Democratic strategists said Obama has sought to maintain a lower profile not only for his party to find new life, but also to avoid playing a foil to President Trump and Republicans.

A source close to Obama said the former president is looking forward to hitting the campaign trail, fundraising and issuing more endorsements closer to the midterms. But the source added that injecting himself into day-to-day politics would do the Democratic Party a disservice by making it more difficult for other Democratic voices to rise to prominence. - The Hill

Others say that Obama has remained the unofficial leader of the Democratic Party since leaving office.

"He always wanted to help, without a doubt. He cares tremendously about our country and our party. But I think he always intended to be a little more on the sidelines than he's been," said one former Obama aide. "I think he realizes he is needed and needed badly."

Former Obama aides say that the ex-President is unsettled by policies flowing from the Trump administration, along with the "tone and tenor" of the White House (but not enough to aggressively help active Democrats fight, apparently).

According to Democratic strategist David Wade: " It's certainly not the post-presidency he might've preferred. "

Maybe Obama is just having a good time hanging out?

Tags Politics

Comments
Vote up! 26 Vote down! 1

JimmyJones -> BandGap Fri, 06/15/2018 - 15:29 Permalink

The Neo-cons, excuse me Democrats better get moving. (its so hard to tell them apart these days) The clock is ticking, November is coming and more reports showing criminal behavior are on the way.

$60,000 dollars worth of "Succulent Hot dogs"

Theosebes Goodfellow -> TeamDepends Fri, 06/15/2018 - 16:36 Permalink

~"Many of you impatient homos are whining about no arrests or indictments have been made yet. When will it happen? I'll tell you: Early October."~

Bingo.

The dems have another problem and appear too stupid to focus on it. They apparently much rather worry about having a figurehead to lead them, but their real problem is much, much larger. Simply put, they have no message, save "Hate Trump!!!" What exactly do they promise voters these days? Trump impeachment as an economic program?

Also curious is the fact they want no part of Hillary. Do they admit she's as tainted as a leper?

crazzziecanuck -> TeamDepends Fri, 06/15/2018 - 16:46 Permalink

The problem with that will be people will see through it as cheap, partisan electioneering. The result will be an EASIER time to motivate Democratic get-out-the-vote efforts.

There's as much chance of an implosion of Democrats in 2018 as there were back in 2006 when the GOP was nearly blasted out of existence then too. Remember how all the predictions about the imminent doom of the GOP were front and centre?

Journalists are so lazy, they're just using Liquid Paper to erase "Republican" to "Democrat" and change the date from stuff they wrote back in 2006.

Doesn't matter if Republicans or Democrats win. In the end, everyone else simply loses. How much you lose is proportional to the distance from the party elite you actually are.

07564111 -> JimmyJones Fri, 06/15/2018 - 15:38 Permalink

Interesting shit. The world should now conclude that there are no qualified people left in the USA.

Is it that all are corrupt or none are corrupt enough. ??

[Jun 09, 2018] Rotten to the Heart: Authoritarian Chickens Roosting at Home by Paul Street

Notable quotes:
"... insult to common human decency ..."
"... They Rule: The 1% v. Democracy ..."
"... going so far to the left ..."
"... climate crisi ..."
"... New York Timesapprovingly explains ..."
"... the two major political parties, in which we don't count ..."
"... inauthentic opposition ..."
"... our government's support for Saudi Arabia and Egypt are not exceptions to the rule at all. They are the rule ..."
"... In the Shadows of the American Century: The Rise and Decline of US Global Power , ..."
"... Help Street keep writing at https://www.paulstreet.org/subscribe/ ..."
Jun 08, 2018 | www.counterpunch.org

Yes, He's Awful

Much of what liberals say about Donald Trump and the chilling political moment the Trump presidency represents is true enough.

Trump really is the arch-authoritarian malignant narcissist that liberals say he is. Trump thinks he deserves to rule the nation like an absolute monarch or some ridiculous Banana Republic dictator. He believes he's above all the law, consistent with Louis XIV's dictum L'etat, C'est Moi ("the state is me"). The notion that Trump can pardon himself from any crime really is the height of imperial arrogance.

Trump really does value nothing but the advancement of his own wealth and image. There is no person, no principle, no higher loyalty he is not willing to sacrifice on the altar of self.

Trump really is the almost perfect embodiment of venal malevolence that liberals say he is. The idiotic military parade Trump has scheduled for the next Veterans Day is an exercise in proto-fascistic, Mussolini-like imperial-presidential self-adulation.

This racist and sexist beast befouls the nation and world with his ghastly, eco-cidal presence. The sooner he draws his last undeserved breath, the better for all living things (or maybe not: Mike Pence could be worse).

The Authoritarian and Inauthentic Opposition

Fine, but why does this despicable, orange-tinted insult to common human decency occupy the White House? He holds the most powerful office in the world because the Democratic Party has long been and remains what the late liberal-left Princeton political scientist Sheldon Wolin called the Inauthentic Opposition. "Should Democrats somehow be elected," Wolin prophesied in early 2008, they would do nothing to "alter significantly the direction of society" or "substantially revers[e] the drift rightwards. The timidity of a Democratic Party mesmerized by centrist precepts," Wolin wrote, "points to the crucial fact that for the poor, minorities, the working class and anti-corporatists there is no opposition party working on their behalf." The corporatist Democrats would work to "marginalize any possible threat to the corporate allies of the Republicans."

Wolin called it. A nominal Democrat was elected president along with Democratic majorities in both houses of Congress in 2008. What followed under Barack Obama (as under his Democratic presidential predecessor Bill Clinton ) – a different and possibly more dangerous kind of malignant narcissist – was the standard "elite" neoliberal manipulation of campaign populism and identity politics in service to the reigning big-money bankrollers and their global empire. Wall Street's control of Washington and the related imperial agenda of the "Pentagon System" were advanced more effectively by the nation's first Black president than they could have been by stiff and wealthy white Republicans like John McCain or Mitt Romney. The reigning U.S. system of corporate and imperial "inverted totalitarianism" (Wolin) was given a deadly, fake-democratic re-branding. The underlying "rightward drift" sharpened, fed by a widespread and easily Republican-exploited sense of popular abandonment and betrayal, as the Democrats depressed and demobilized their own purported popular base.

Presidential candidate Hillary Clinton did nothing to correct that problem. Quite the opposite. With a colossal campaign finance war-chest fed not just by the usual Wall Street and Silicon Valley suspects but also by many traditionally Republican big money donors who were repelled by Trump's faux "populism," the transparently corporate establishmentarian candidate Clinton could barely deign to pretend to be a progressive. She ran almost completely on the argument that Trump was too terrible and unqualified to be president. Making candidate character and qualities her sole selling point was a critical and historic mistake given the angry and anti-establishment mood of the electorate and her own epic unpopularity. So was calling Trump's flyover county supporters a "basket of" racist and sexist " deplorables " in a sneering comment (one that accurately reflected her aristocratic "progressive"-neoliberal world view) to rich Manhattan campaign donors.

Authoritarianism? Single-Payer national health insurance had long been supported by most U.S.-Americans when Obama ascended to the White House. Who cared? Not the "radical socialist" Barack Obama. Like the Clintons before him, Obama coldly froze Single Payer advocates out of the health insurance policy debate. He worked with the leading drug and insurance corporations and their Wall Street backers to craft a richly corporatist "reform" that preserved those companies' power to write their super-profits into the obscenely exaggerated cost of American medical care.

As our greatest intellectual Noam Chomsky noted two years ago, Obama "punished more whistle-blowers than all previous presidents combined." The Obama administration repeatedly defended George W. Bush's position on behalf of indefinite detention, maintaining that prisoners (US-Americans included) in the US global "war on [of] terror" were not entitled to habeas corpus or protection from torture or execution. Obama carried overseas assassination (by drone and Special Forces) – execution (even of U.S. citizens) without trial or even formal charge – to new levels. Regarding Obama's drone assassination program, Chomsky wrote acidly about how "the [Obama] Justice Department explained that the constitutional guarantee of due process, tracing to Magna Carta, is now satisfied by internal deliberations in the executive branch alone. The constitutional lawyer in the White House agreed. King John (1199-1216) might have nodded with satisfaction."

Hillary Clinton's 2016 Vice Presidential ticket partner, Senator Tim Kaine (D-VA), is currently a leading sponsor of the " Forever AUMF 2018" (SJRes 59 ) (Authority for the Use of Military Force). As the ACLU's Renee Parsons explains , the measure would " eliminate Congress' sole, inviolate Constitutional authority 'to declare war.'" It "would remove Congress from its statutory authority as it transfers 'uninterrupted' authority on 'the use of all necessary and appropriate force' to one individual." That would garner another thumbs-up from King John.

Such examples are just tips of the richly bipartisan "deep state" iceberg of authoritarian class and imperial rule that lurks beneath the visible-state surface dramas of "our" so-called and oxymoronic "capitalist democracy." (See my book They Rule: The 1% v. Democracy for a more comprehensive account, just one of many studies [here's a recent one ] that document the eclipse of anything like democracy in New Gilded Age America)

The Democrats: Corrupt, not Feckless

The Democrats could well have won the 2016 election by running Bernie Sanders. Bernie would have tapped popular anger from the center-left, advancing a policy agenda and anti-plutocratic sentiments consistent with longstanding majority-progressive public opinion in the U.S. But so what? The Democratic nomination process was rigged against Sanders for some very good ruling-class reasons. As William Kaufman told Barbara Ehrenreich on Facebook last year, "The Democrats aren't feckless, inept, or stupid, unable to 'learn' what it takes to win. They are corrupt. They do not want to win with an authentically progressive program because it would threaten the economic interests of their main corporate donor base The Democrats know exactly what they're doing. They have a business model: sub-serving the interests of the corporate elite."

The reigning corporate Democrats would rather lose to the right, even to a proto-fascistic white nationalist and eco-exterminist right, than lose to the left, even to a mildly progressive social democratic left within their own party.

Among other things, Russiagate is the Inauthentic Opposition, following its business model, doing its job, working to cover its tracks by throwing the debacle of its corporatist politics down Orwell's memory hole and attributing its self-made defeat to Russia's allegedly powerful interference in our supposed democracy. Russiagate is meant to provide corporate Democrats cover not only for 2016 but also for 2018 and 2020. It advances a narrative that lets the Democrats continue nominating business-friendly neoliberal shills and imperialists who pretend to be progressive while they are owned by the nation's homegrown oligarchs. This year's crop of Democratic Congressional candidates is loaded with military and intelligence veterans, a reflection of the Democrats' determination to run as the true party of empire.

"Some Discipline and Pragmatism to the Oval Office"

Under the cover of Russiagate, the pinstripe politicos atop the nation's not-so leftmost major party seem to have the Sanders wing under control. Clintonite Democratic National Committee (DNC) chair Tom Perez purged progressive, Sanders Democrats from leading positions in the DNC last fall. Bernie-endorsed candidates have flailed in the Democrats' 2018 Congressional primaries . The not-so "socialist" Sanders' not-so revolutionary "political [though not social] revolution" seems largely spent, skewered on the fork of a major party electoral-industrial-complex it falsely promised to transform from within. In the Iowa Democratic gubernatorial primary last Tuesday, the progressive Democrat union member and "Our Revolution" candidate Cathy Glasson was trounced by the vapid and centrist but super-wealthy businessman Fred Hubbell, who self-financed his campaign with millions of dollars.

I recently watched a "liberal" morning CNN talking head salivate over the prospect of the Democrats running a billionaire business mogul who "shares the party's world view" – someone like the just-retired Starbucks CEO Howard Schultz. The latte and cappuccino mogul recently and absurdly ripped the Democratic Party for " going so far to the left ." Sounding like a once-traditional Republican, Schultz elaborated :

"I say to myself, 'How are we going to pay for these things,' in terms of things like single payer [and] people espousing the fact that the government is going to give everyone a job. I don't think that's realistic. I think we got to get away from these falsehoods and start talking about the truth and not false promises I think the greatest threat domestically to the country is this $21 trillion debt hanging over the cloud of America and future generations. The only way we're going to get out of that is we've got to grow the economy, in my view, 4 percent or greater. And then we have to go after entitlements."

How to pay for progressive policies long but irrelevantly supported by most U.S.-Americans ? With (to mention some other measures that have long been quaintly and trivially preferred by most U.S. citizens) seriously progressive taxation including a financial transaction tax and with a long-overdue transfer of taxpayer dollars from the bloated and monumentally mass-murderous Pentagon budget. There's nothing remotely mysterious about how we could fund Single Payer and green jobs programs that would help save the nation and (oh, by the way) the human race from the actual "greatest threat to the country" (and to the world): environmental catastrophe , fed by toxic capitalist "growth" (let's hit "4 percent of higher"!) and with the climate crisi s ("climate change" does not begin to capture to the gravity of the problem) in the lead.

Here's the accurate translation for "go after entitlements": (1) slash Social Security and Medicare further; (2) use the fiscal crisis created by arch-plutocratic tax cuts for the already absurdly rich and by the persistently gargantuan "defense" (empire) budget as an excuse to decimate further the already weak U.S. social safety net and to (in what promises to be an epic windfall for Wall Street) privatize the nation's old age insurance system. The real entitlement that matters most – the inherited oligarchic class rule and despotism of capital over workers, citizens, and ever more poisoned commons – remains untouched and is indeed expanded in coffee baron Schultz's glorious "liberal" agenda,

All of which is fairly consistent with the Wall Street- and corporate-friendly records and agenda of the Democratic Party during and between the ugly "neoliberal" years when a Georgia peanut farmer (deregulation leader Jimmy Carter) and two silver-tongued Ivy League law school graduates (NAFTA champion and public assistance-wrecker Bill Clinton and big bank bailout champion and Trans Pacific Partnership advocate Barack Obama) occupied the White House. I expect the dismal Democrats to nominate the longtime centrist politician Joe "Regular Guy" Biden (who claims he would have kicked Trump's ass in high school ) or the newly hatched faux-progressive Senator and former longtime prosecutor Kamala "Obama 2.0" Harris (D-CA), but, hey, why not go full corporate monty and try to put an actual full-on corporate CEO in the White House in the name of the Democratic Party's "liberal world view"? As the "liberal" New York Timesapprovingly explains :

"The election of Mr. Trump, a real estate developer and reality television personality, certainly opened that door of opportunity, making it clear that American voters were willing to elect a president with no prior government experience .American companies -- including Starbucks -- have become more political in recent years, wading into issues like immigration, gun rights and climate policy And at a moment when many voters say they are frustrated with partisan gridlock and ineffective government programs, some believe that an efficiency-minded business executive might bring some discipline and pragmatism to the Oval Office."

Besides Schultz, other corporate CEOs I've heard and read self-described liberals discuss as potentially desirable presidential candidates include Oprah Winfrey, Mark Cuban, Disney CEO Bob Iger, Facebook's spooky cult-leader Mark Zuckerberg, and even the JP Morgan Chase chairman and CEO Jamie Dimon. What the Hell: why not drop the pretense of independence from the nation's corporate and financial dictatorship and run an actual corporate or financial chieftain for president?

That would be an act of oligarchic honesty on the part of the dismal dollar Dems. "I like the idea of Dimon," one left correspondent writes me: "maybe with him as a candidate people would finally wake up to the fact that the Democrats are the real problem." Don't hold your breath. "Because," another comrade tells me, "being a ruthless plutocrat is their world view."

"Trump is Terrible, So Let's Give Him More Spying and Killing Powers!"

What is the Democrats' leading cry? That the terrible Trump is truly terrible – and a tool of Russia. And, of course, the "terrible" part is all too terribly true – the Russia part not so much. But after you've bemoaned the terribleness of Trump for the ten thousandth time, are you ready to get serious about the systemic and richly bipartisan, oligarchic context within which Trump has emerged? "The Trump administration ," Chris Hedges reminded us on Truthdig two weeks ago, "did not rise like Venus on a half shell from the sea. Donald Trump is the result of a long process of political, cultural and social decay. He is a product of our failed democracy . The problem is not Trump," writes Hedges. "It is a political system, dominated by corporate power and the mandarins of the two major political parties, in which we don't count " (emphasis added).

And if Trump is as much of a dangerous and authoritarian monster as liberal Democrats say he is (and he is), then why, pray tell, have most Democrats in Congress been willing to grant him record levels of military funding along with re-authorized and expanded warrantless surveillance and spying powers ? Why are Tim Kaine and other top Democrats ready to grant him (and his successors) a freaking "Forever AUMF"? Hello? What does that say about the not-so leftmost of the two reigning corporate parties? The glaring schizophrenia ("Trump is a monster, let's give him more war and spying powers!") is yet more proof that the Democrats are indeed an inauthentic opposition , committed to the same imperial and police state Trump heads today. They are merely waiting to put one of their ruling-class own atop the same exact and in fact richly bipartisan structures.

What Goes Around: "Trampling on the Helpless Abroad" Comes Home

A final matter concerns the problem of imperial chickens coming home to roost. Liberals don't like to hear it, but the ugly, richly documented historical fact of the matter is that their party of binary and tribal choice has long joined Republicans in backing and indeed crafting a U.S. foreign policy that has imposed authoritarian regimes (and profoundly undemocratic interventions including invasions and occupations) the world over . The roster of authoritarian and often-mass murderous governments the U.S. military and CIA and allied transnational business interests have backed, sometimes even helped create, with richly bipartisan support, is long indeed.

Last fall, Illinois Green Party leader Mike Whitney ran some fascinating numbers on the 49 nation-states that the right-wing "human rights" organization Freedom House identified as "dictatorships" in 2016. Leaving aside Freedom House's problematic inclusion of Russia, Cuba, and Iran on its list, the most remarkable thing about Whitney's research was his finding that the U.S. offered military assistance to 76 percent of these governments. (The only exceptions were Belarus, China, Central African Republic, Cuba, Equatorial Guinea, Iran, Myanmar, North Korea, Russia, South Sudan, Sudan, and Syria.). "Most politically aware people," Whitney wrote:

"know of some of the more highly publicized instances examples of [U.S. support for foreign dictatorships], such as the tens of billions of dollars' worth of US military assistance provided to the beheading capital of the world, the misogynistic monarchy of Saudi Arabia, and the repressive military dictatorship now in power in Egypt apologists for our nation's imperialistic foreign policy try to rationalize such support, arguing that Saudi Arabia and Egypt are exceptions to the rule. But my survey demonstrates that our government's support for Saudi Arabia and Egypt are not exceptions to the rule at all. They are the rule ."

The Pentagon and State Department data Whitney used came from Fiscal Year 2015. It dated from the next-to-last year of the Obama administration, for which so many liberals recall with misplaced nostalgia. Freedom House's list should have included Honduras, ruled by a vicious right-wing government that Obama and his Secretary of State Hillary Clinton helped install in a June 2009 military coup .

The problem here isn't just liberal hypocrisy and double standards. The deeper issue is that, as the great American iconoclast Mark Twain knew, you cannot maintain democracy at home while conducting an authoritarian empire abroad. During the United States' blood-soaked invasion and occupation of the Philippines, Twain penned an imaginary history of the twentieth-century United States. "It was impossible," Twain wrote, "to save the Great Republic. She was rotten to the heart. Lust of conquest had long ago done its work; trampling upon the helpless abroad had taught her, by a natural process, to endure with apathy the like at home."

"Just a decade after Twain wrote those prophetic words," the historian Alfred W. McCoy has observed , "colonial police methods came home to serve as a template for the creation of an American internal security apparatus in wartime." The nation's first Red Scare, which crushed left and labor movements during and after World War One, drew heavily on the lessons and practices of colonial suppression in the Philippines and Cuba. As McCoy shows in his latest book, In the Shadows of the American Century: The Rise and Decline of US Global Power , the same basic process – internal U.S. repression informed and shaped by authoritarian and imperial practices abroad and justified by alleged external threats to the "homeland" – has recurred ever since. Today, the rise of an unprecedented global surveillance state overseen by the National Security Agency has cost the US the trust of many of its top global allies (under Bush43 and Obama44, not just under Trump45) while undermining civil liberties and democracy within as beyond the U.S.

"The fetters imposed on liberty at home," James Madison wrote in 1799 , "have ever been forged out of the weapons provided for defense against real, pretended, or imaginary dangers abroad." Those are wise words well worth revisiting amidst the current endless Russiagate madness, calculated among other things to tell us that the FBI, the CIA, and the rest of the nation's vast and ever more ubiquitous intelligence and surveillance state are on our side.

Help Street keep writing at https://www.paulstreet.org/subscribe/

[Jun 06, 2018] Are Democrats too invested in New Deal history?

Jun 06, 2018 | newrepublic.com

Writing in The Week on Monday, Ryan Cooper argued that the Democrats have betrayed their New Deal heritage for a mess of neoliberalism. "Up through about the early 1970s, it had been a fairly straightforward working-class party, but after a generation of reform, under Bill Clinton it stood for a muddle of capitalism worship leavened with means-tested welfare programs," Cooper contended. "At bottom, it was a left-inflected version of the same neoliberalism that comprises Republican Party doctrine."

Cooper's column provoked a lively Twitter canoe where some of the most prominent voices in left of center journalism weighed in:

Well, it was a working class party in 1936. Then the Southern Dems figured out that the black people were in the working class too and also wanted to join unions.

-- Richard Yeselson (@yeselson) June 4, 2018

your argument that there has been no neoliberal turn among Democrats is still absolutely ludicrous

-- ryan cooper (@ryanlcooper) June 4, 2018

The problem of being on the side of the neoliberal sellouts is that they'll sell you out

-- Jonathan Chait (@jonathanchait) June 4, 2018

[May 25, 2018] The Simulation of Democracy, by C.J. Hopkins - The Unz Review

Notable quotes:
"... C. J. Hopkins is an award-winning American playwright, novelist and satirist based in Berlin. His plays are published by Bloomsbury Publishing (UK) and Broadway Play Publishing (USA). His debut novel, ZONE 23 , is published by Snoggsworthy, Swaine & Cormorant. He can reached at cjhopkins.com or consentfactory.org . ..."
May 25, 2018 | www.unz.com

One of the most complicated and frustrating aspects of operating a global capitalist empire is maintaining the fiction that it doesn't exist. Virtually every action you take has to be carefully recontextualized or otherwise spun for public consumption. Every time you want to bomb or invade some country to further your interests, you have to mount a whole PR campaign. You can't even appoint a sadistic torture freak to run your own coup-fomenting agency, or shoot a few thousand unarmed people you've imprisoned in a de facto ghetto, without having to do a big song and dance about "defending democracy" and "democratic values."

Naked despotism is so much simpler, not to mention more emotionally gratifying. Ruling an empire as a godlike dictator means never having to say you're sorry. You can torture and kill anyone you want, and conquer and exploit whichever countries you want, without having to explain yourself to anyone. Also, you get to have your humongous likeness muraled onto the walls of buildings, make people swear allegiance to you, and all that other cool dictator stuff.

Global capitalists do not have this luxury. Generating the simulation of democracy that most Western consumers desperately need in order to be able to pretend to believe that they are not just smoothly-functioning cogs in the machinery of a murderous global empire managed by a class of obscenely wealthy and powerful international elites to whom their lives mean exactly nothing, although extremely expensive and time-consuming, is essential to maintaining their monopoly on power. Having conditioned most Westerners into believing they are "free," and not just glorified peasants with gadgets, the global capitalist ruling classes have no choice but to keep up this fiction. Without it, their empire would fall apart at the seams.

This is the devil's bargain modern capitalism made back in the 18th Century. In order to wrest power from the feudal aristocracies that had dominated the West throughout the Middle Ages, the bourgeoisie needed to sell the concept of "democracy" to the unwashed masses, who they needed both to staff their factories and, in some cases, to fight revolutionary wars, or depose and publicly guillotine monarchs. All that gobbledegook about taxes, tariffs, and the unwieldy structure of the feudal system was not the easiest sell to the peasantry. "Liberty" and "equality" went over much better. So "democracy" became their rallying cry, and, eventually, the official narrative of capitalism. The global capitalist ruling classes have been stuck with "democracy" ever since, or, more accurately, with the simulation of democracy.

The purpose of this simulation of democracy is not to generate fake democracy and pass it off as real democracy. Its purpose is to generate the concept of democracy , the only form in which democracy exists. It does this by casting a magic spell (which I'll do my best to demystify in a moment) that deceives us into perceiving the capitalist marketplace we Westerners inhabit, not as a market, but as a society. An essentially democratic society. Not a fully fledged democratic society, but a society progressing toward "democracy" which it is, and simultaneously isn't.

Obviously, life under global capitalism is more democratic than under feudal despotism, not to mention more comfortable and entertaining. Capitalism isn't "evil" or "bad." It's a machine. Its fundamental function is to eliminate any and all despotic values and replace them with a single value, i.e., exchange value, determined by the market. This despotic-value-decoding machine is what freed us from the tyranny of kings and priests, which it did by subjecting us to the tyranny of capitalists and the meaningless value of the so-called free market, wherein everything is just another commodity toothpaste, cell phones, healthcare, food, education, cosmetics, et cetera. Despite that, only an idiot would argue that capitalism is not preferable to despotism, or that it hasn't increased our measure of freedom. So, yes, we have evolved toward democracy, if we're comparing modern capitalism to medieval feudalism.

The problem is that capitalism is never going to lead to actual democracy (i.e., government by and for the people). This is never going to happen. In fact, capitalism has already reached the limits of the freedom it can safely offer us. This freedom grants us the ability to make an ever-expanding variety of choices none of which have much to do with democracy. For example, Western consumers are free to work for whatever corporation they want, and to buy whatever products they want, and to assume as much debt as the market will allow to purchase a home wherever they want, and to worship whichever gods they want (as long as they conform their behavior to the values of capitalism and not their religion), and men can transform themselves into women, and white people can deem themselves African Americans, or Native Americans, or whatever they want, and anyone can mock or insult the President or the Queen of England on Facebook and Twitter, none of which freedoms were even imaginable, much less possible, under feudal despotism.

But this is as far as our "freedom" goes. The global capitalist ruling classes are never going to allow us to govern ourselves, not in any meaningful way. In fact, since the mid-1970s, they've been systematically dismantling the framework of social democracy throughout the West, and otherwise relentlessly privatizing everything. They've been doing this more slowly in Europe, where social democracy is more entrenched, but, make no mistake, American "society" is the model for our dystopian future. The ruling classes and their debt-enslaved servants, protected from the desperate masses by squads of hyper-militarized police, medicated in their sanitized enclaves, watching Westworld on Amazon Prime as their shares in private prisons rise and the forces of democracy defend their freedom by slaughtering men, women, and children in some faraway country they can't find on a map, and would never visit on vacation anyway this is where the USA already is, and where the rest of the West is headed.

Which is why it is absolutely crucial to maintain the simulation of democracy, and the fiction that we're still living in a world where major geopolitical events are determined by sovereign nations and their leaders, rather than by global corporations and a class of supranational elites whose primary allegiance is to global capitalism, rather than to any specific nation, much less to the actual people who live there. The global capitalist ruling classes need the masses in the West to believe that they live in the United States of America, the United Kingdom, Germany, France, and so on, and not in a global marketplace. Because, if it's all one global marketplace, with one big global labor force (which global corporations can exploit with impunity), and if it's one big global financial system (where the economies of supposed adversaries like China and the United States, or the European Union and Russia, are almost totally interdependent), then there is no United States of America, no United Kingdom, no France, no Germany or not as we're conditioned to perceive them. There is only the global capitalist empire, divided into "national" market territories, each performing slightly different administrative functions within the empire and those territories that have not yet surrendered their sovereignty and been absorbed into it. I think you know which those territories are.

But getting back to the simulation of democracy (the purpose of which is to prevent us from perceiving the world as I just suggested above), how that works is, we are all conditioned to believe we are living in these imperfect democracies, which are inexorably evolving toward "real" democracy but just haven't managed to get there quite yet. "Real" being the key word here, because there is no such thing as real democracy. There never has been, except among relatively small and homogenous groups of people. Like Baudrillard's Disneyland, "Western democracy" is presented to us as "imperfect" or "unfinished" (in other words, as a replica of "real democracy") in order to convince us that there exists such a thing as "real democracy," which we will achieve someday.

This is how simulations work. The replica does not exist to deceive us into believing it is the "real" thing. It exists to convince us that there is a "real" thing . In essence, it invokes the "real" thing by pretending to be a copy of it. Just as the images of God in church invoke the "god" of which they are copies (if only in the minds of the faithful), our imperfect replica of democracy invokes the concept of "real democracy" (which does not exist, and has never existed, beyond the level of tribes and bands).

This is, of course, ceremonial magic but then so is everything else, really. Take out a twenty dollar bill, or a twenty Euro note, or your driver's license. They are utterly valueless, except as symbols, but no less powerful for being just symbols. Or look at some supposedly solid object under an electron microscope. Try this with a tablespoon. As that bald kid in The Matrix put it, you will "realize that there is no spoon" or, rather, that there is only the spoon we've created by believing that there is a spoon.

Look, I don't mean to get all spooky. What that kid (among various others throughout history) was trying to get us to understand is that we create reality, collectively, with symbols or we allow reality to be created for us. Our collective reality is also our religion, in that we live our lives and raise our children according to its precepts and values, regardless of whatever other rituals we may or may not engage in on the weekend. Western consumers, no matter whether nominally Christians, Jews, Muslims, Atheists, or of any other faith, live their lives and raise their children according to the values and rules of capitalism. Capitalism is our religion. Like every religion, it has a cosmology.

In the cosmology of global capitalism, "democracy" is capitalist heaven. We hear it preached about throughout our lives, we're surrounded by graven images of it, but we don't get to see it until we're dead. Attempting to storm its pearly gates, or to create the Kingdom of Democracy on Earth, is heresy, and is punishable by death. Denying its existence is blasphemy, for which the punishment is excommunication, and consignment to the City of Dis, where the lost souls shout back and forth at each other across the lower depths of the Internet, their infernal voices unheard by the faithful but, hey, don't take the word of an apostate like me. Go ahead, try it, and see what happens.

C. J. Hopkins is an award-winning American playwright, novelist and satirist based in Berlin. His plays are published by Bloomsbury Publishing (UK) and Broadway Play Publishing (USA). His debut novel, ZONE 23 , is published by Snoggsworthy, Swaine & Cormorant. He can reached at cjhopkins.com or consentfactory.org .


animalogic , May 23, 2018 at 2:49 pm GMT

Really good, amusing article.
Our replica of democracy is not to deceive us, but to convince us that there really IS an(unattainable) democracy. The promised land is always just beyond the horizon
SunBakedSuburb , May 23, 2018 at 5:26 pm GMT
"It does this by casting a magic spell that deceives us into perceiving the capitalist marketplace we Westerners inhabit, not as a market, but as a society."

Yes. Consumer capitalism requires illusion and MK-ULTRA programs to function.

"We create reality, collectively, with symbols "

And those symbols, often repurposed from earlier iterations like the swastika, stem from ancient sources. Maybe the structure of our reality was designed years ago.

"This is, of course, ceremonial magic but then so is everything else, really."

Yep. The narrow-focused rationalists who have degraded science into a religion will never accept that there is a sliver of magic and sorcery, originating from Kabbalistic practices, that operate as a higher level science, the mechanics of which non-initiates can't quantify.

Excellent, thought-provoking article.

Per/Norway , May 23, 2018 at 8:08 pm GMT
well written.
Speak Truth To Power , May 24, 2018 at 4:55 am GMT
I agree with much of what this columnist wrote. However this entire globalist criminal enterprise is rapidly crumbling. This is shown in the rise of patriotic/loyalist and Marxist parties in Europe and the Far Right and Far Left in the U.S. The globalist elite 0.001% empire of the banksters, crapitalists and fingerciers and their lackeys, knaves and varlets, along with their political prostitute puppets, is built on sand. These worthless cretins have loaded down every nation on earth, and especially in the West, with massive, crushing debt. Ditto for individuals and businesses. It is not sustainable. In addition they have off shored much of Western industry into Third World nations and flooded Western nations with Third World proles to hold down wages and depress living conditions. Reaction among the native Whites is building stronger by the day. At some point this volcano is going to blow. When it does all bets are off as to how much destruction will happen.

At this point the super rich and their banks and trans-national corporations can either gradually give way to democratic change and re-industrialize the West, discount all these debts, and stop this Third World invasion and begin swift repatriation of these interlopers and save much of their wealth and power or they will soon face armed revolution and civil/class/racial war in the streets. These worthless elites have fouled their own nests since they have left virtually no Western nation untouched by these triple evils of debt, immigration and de-industrialization. They either never learned the lessons of the French and Russian revolutions or believe it could not happen in the 21st Century to them. Either way it makes no difference. Globalism is crumbling and going the way of other evil isms: Fascism, Communism, Nazism, Imperialism, Colonialism, etc. Its days are numbered and the writing is on the wall. Meanwhile those nations not controlled by the Western White Collar Mafia, namely Russia and China, along with Iran and a few other Asian and Middle Eastern nations, are building up their economies and militaries and increasingly challenging the Western tyrants. We are definitely in for troubled times ahead. Always remember: Those who make peaceful change impossible, make violent change inevitable. Globalism has had its evil day and its black sun is setting. The only questions now are will it go peacefully and quietly or loudly and violently and what will replace it. I hope and pray something good and true.A new world order built that that is God and Christ and not man based with peace, prosperity, and justice for all in a natural order of things.

jilles dykstra , May 24, 2018 at 6:41 am GMT
Free movement of capital, in Europe since 1997, took away power from politicians.
The German Lafontaine made it clear.
He stated that when in Basel a German spoke to the bankers assembled there, blaming them, they clapped their hands.
One sees it in the terminology used, what in the good old days was called protectionism, a word suggesting something positive, now is trade war, definitely something bad.
It for me is the same as with privatisation of universal services, water, electricity, etc., neither privatising anything is good, also a state economy is not good, as the USSR made clear.
In the good old days in W European countries we had mixed exonomies, commercial enterprises for cars and jeans, state enterprise for electricity and public transport.
In my opinion a mixed world economy also is the best option, this means regulation of capital movement, to mention one thing.
gsjackson , May 24, 2018 at 6:43 am GMT
A little snapshot to illustrate the point. Standing in the passport control line at Newark Airport -- interminably, because of about 24 stations for checking people back in to the motherland, maybe five were manned. This was in mid-afternoon on a weekday, a time when many international flights were arriving. The wait was about an hour and a half.

While waiting, you get a superb view through the window of the Manhattan skyline, and might have occasion to think about all the swells in the financial sector whose ever-growing prosperity has sucked money not only out of the real economy of goods and services, but out of government as well, a point Michael Hudson often makes. E.g., cap those property taxes in California, but drive housing prices in California and interest rates sky high to transfer wealth out of the hands of home owners and governments, and into finance capital.

You can work yourself up into a pretty good lather thinking about this while you wait your turn at an under-funded passport control station.

renfro , May 24, 2018 at 7:37 am GMT
I would recommend this book to unz readers. I read it years ago and its basic premise becomes more observably true every year .and pertains to the US as well, something Chu didn't mention.

World on Fire: How Exporting Free Market Democracy Breeds Ethnic Hatred and Global Instability

By Amy Chua
Category: World Politics | Economics | Management

https://www.penguinrandomhouse.com/books/27643/world-on-fire-by-amy-chua/9780385721868/

"Chua shows how in non-Western countries around the globe, free markets have concentrated starkly disproportionate wealth in the hands of a resented ethnic minority. These "market-dominant minorities" – Chinese in Southeast Asia, Croatians in the former Yugoslavia, whites in Latin America and South Africa, Indians in East Africa, Lebanese in West Africa, Jews in post-communist Russia – become objects of violent hatred.
At the same time, democracy empowers the impoverished majority, unleashing ethnic demagoguery, confiscation, and sometimes genocidal revenge."

So maybe revolutions will be the new way of managing the world,

llloyd , Website May 24, 2018 at 9:51 am GMT
@Speak Truth To Power

An ex furniture salesman, now the Prime Minister of Israel would not agree. He thinks history has ended. Jerusalem is soon to be or already is the capital of the globalist world. Hate speech laws replace the sanctity of the Monarchs and Churches with the sanctity of Israel and identity politics. His lackeys have even taken away the freedom to shop via the criminalisation of BDS. Talpiot program has turned everything into a video game. He is either a genius or a complete fool. But I hope you are right and he is wrong. Another point. Democracy real and simulated only became fashionable a hundred years ago.

Daniil Adamov , May 24, 2018 at 11:05 am GMT
That's the first I've heard of "progressing towards democracy" as a major feature of the modern Western worldview (a la USSR progressing towards communism, I suppose). No, I've encountered such ideas before among pundits, but I don't think most people in America, say, believe that they currently don't live in a democracy but will later live in a "true" democracy. That seems like a rather exotic notion outside of very narrow intellectual circles.

Also, "as long as they conform their behavior to the values of capitalism and not their religion". But people are free to conform their behaviour to the values of their religion to a large extent. They're not free to violate the laws of what you'd call capitalist society. But that is not the same as being forced to conform to its values.

Jake , May 24, 2018 at 11:14 am GMT
Another CJ Hopkins must-read.

So how long before he is imprisoned alongside Julian Assange? Truth-telling is not allowed in Globalist Democracy.

Miro23 , May 24, 2018 at 11:26 am GMT

Which is why it is absolutely crucial to maintain the simulation of democracy, and the fiction that we're still living in a world where major geopolitical events are determined by sovereign nations and their leaders, rather than by global corporations and a class of supranational elites whose primary allegiance is to global capitalism, rather than to any specific nation, much less to the actual people who live there.

But it can go wrong. The simulation was supposed to make Hillary Clinton President – but, in the event, it veered over to real Democracy and produced Trump.

Equally the Brexit vote was planned to fail – but that also turned in a real Democratic result with a majority for Brexit.

Simulated Democracy is a difficult process and it's probably due for more failures given the difficulty of controlling the modern flow of information.

Borsalino , May 24, 2018 at 11:43 am GMT
Damn, Hopkins, you nailed it!
ScientistInHiding , May 24, 2018 at 11:49 am GMT
I suppose we are all going to spend the rest of our lives listening to bitter millenials rant about the evils of capitalism. After all, they could move out of their parent's basement if the government would force the banks to forgive all their student loans.

It should be obvious by now that all forms of government eventually morph into what we see all around us today. But let's not confuse free market capitalism (which has never existed) with the aristocratic fascisms that we call "Communism" or "Democracy."

The only way to really solve the problem of government is make government irrelevant.

Ronald Thomas West , Website May 24, 2018 at 12:32 pm GMT
Well, CJ, If I were your political science professor, I'd fail your sorry ass for 'communist jargon' and 'Marxist jingoism' maybe that works fine if you're into looking for strokes when singing to the choir but it won't build alliances that accomplish anything. But maybe that's not your point, and the substance of your butt-hurt whining is about "I'm CJ Hopkins!" kinda like "I'm Rick James!"

Look dude, if you want to get down and dirty with your enemies, hit below the belt, and do it like this:

https://ronaldthomaswest.com/2015/11/29/whereas-the-enemy-of-your-friend-is-your-favorite-fk/

If you want to entertain, you do it like this:

https://ronaldthomaswest.com/2015/04/01/merge/

And like this:

https://ronaldthomaswest.com/2014/10/09/liberals/

^

DESERT FOX , May 24, 2018 at 12:44 pm GMT
The worlds elites have us mind controlled and financially controlled via the Zionist Fed that creates money out of thin air and then loans this money to our gov and we goyim and charge interest on this ether created money and there in lies the control for by their control over the money they control every thing.

In addition the Zionists fastened the IRS on we goyims and this IRS is a off shoot of the FED and so our money is sent to the Zionist bankers who own the FED to make sure we pay for the wars that the Zionists have arranged for we Americans and so this is a trap that has been laid by the central bankers which insures their dominance for ever and ever.

This system of control has been in existence since 1913 when the zionist bankers fastened the FED and the IRS on to the American people and the author of this article is exactly right, we are in a financial prison a prison without bars but a prison none the less.

In regards to voting as Stalin said ie it is not who votes that counts but who counts the votes.

Seamus Padraig , May 24, 2018 at 1:52 pm GMT

there is no such thing as real democracy. There never has been, except among relatively small and homogenous groups of people.

Yeah, like Sweden in the 50s.

ancient archer , May 24, 2018 at 2:05 pm GMT
Best article I have read in a long long time.
Keep it up
manorchurch , May 24, 2018 at 2:16 pm GMT
@Speak Truth To Power

These worthless cretins have loaded down every nation on earth, and especially in the West, with massive, crushing debt. Ditto for individuals and businesses. It is not sustainable.

Any given iteration of the capitalism model is unsustainable by its very nature, of course. Any capitalist instantiation is self-exhausting, as capitalism eventually transfers all wealth (or some very large fraction) to the wealthy. ALL. At that point, that instance collapses at some rate determined by its state of monetization.

But not all wealth evaporates. After a financial collapse, a new zero-point establishes at or near "true value". The capitalism model reasserts, and continues. It may be inherent to the nature of Man.

manorchurch , May 24, 2018 at 2:18 pm GMT
@Ronald Thomas West

Gee, Ron, usually you write something with some trace of substance.

TG , May 24, 2018 at 2:19 pm GMT
Well said!

'Democracy' is a scam that privatizes power, while socializing responsibility.

Reminds me of Oswald Spengler, though he is better read about than read, IMHO. From wikipedia: "Spengler asserts that democracy is simply the political weapon of money, and the media are the means through which money operates a democratic political system."

But one minor quibble: yes, for now, in the West, fake democracy is certainly better than old-style feudalism. But it doesn't have to be, and it doesn't have to stay that way. In many nominally capitalist and 'democratic' countries – like India, Bangladesh, etc. – half the population is chronically malnourished, the physical standard of living well below that of late medieval europe (!). Now that communism has been vanquished, capitalism has no need of a bargain of power for a decent standard of living, and the rich are moving towards dragging the entire world towards the Indian model of cheap-labor serfdom. Yes it can happen here.

redmudhooch , May 24, 2018 at 2:22 pm GMT
Citizens United isn't helping, brought to you by the corrupt Supreme Court. They're starting to push putting Ted Cruz in SCOTUS, that would be a huge mistake.

"Democracy" is a sham, the candidates are carefully pre-selected and promoted by the corrupt media, if that fails, the unelected delegates and super delegates can always void your vote.

This is why we only get Mitt Romneys, Clintons, Bushes, the same ol dirtbags out of millions of people.
Americans clearly want the homicidal wars to end, are the wars/occupations ending?
More Americans clearly are turning away from supporting Israel, does it matter?
Most Americans want mass immigration and illegal immigration stopped, is it stopping?

There is a petition to End the Federal Reserve scam, do any of the petitions go anywhere? Go sign it, lets find out .

https://petitions.whitehouse.gov/petition/petition-president-congress-remove-privately-owned-federal-reserve-our-central-bank

manorchurch , May 24, 2018 at 2:24 pm GMT
@Jake

So how long before he is imprisoned alongside Julian Assange? Truth-telling is not allowed in Globalist Democracy.

Long time. He circumspects skillfully. Besides, he uses a level of abstraction that few Inet denizens will understand.

Dagon Shield , May 24, 2018 at 2:37 pm GMT
The Mexican maid is the answer to our collective misery. What do I mean? Well! The white boys have given up on rebelling against the Empire (1% + 10% Jews and Whites with a small sprinkling of non-white goys) and da coloreds (Indians and Chinese) are too wrapped up in trying to prove their worth to the lost crackas while the niggas (Blacks et al) are simply too stupid to understand, let alone do anything about improving their lot. Alas, fear not! The unwelcome army of latinas from Central America, employed as caretakers will prove their worth by simply poisoning the whole perfidious lot, slowly. So, welcome to America, Guadalupe!
Justwondering , May 24, 2018 at 3:09 pm GMT
The suffocating hold that propaganda has on an uncritical public must rank as an historic coup for the ages. It is the modern version of the allegory of the cave. Simpletons are willing to die for their puppeteers in wars that serve no other purpose than to enrich their owners. But die for their masters they will. Yet there is a glaring contradiction in foreign wars and America's favorite pastime, regime change. The chances of "real" democracy, for instance, taking root in Saudi Arabia, the Gulf Emirates, Egypt are virtually non-existent. Worse still, they are simply not allowed. And any other countries that steer an independent course from American hegemony will suffer consequences -- regime change, economic sanctions or direct military action. Yet it is the public sold on its exceptionalism, living in a "real" democracy (confused with rampant consumerism and hedonism) that has so utterly failed to see -- and act, on these contradictions. Although the notion of "inching" toward "real" democracy may serve to pacify the public, with the ever growing militarization of the deep police state, true democracy will simply not be allowed to flourish. It is the only credible threat to rampant capitalism. What is significant is that the lumpen proletariat firmly believe that they live in a democracy. So change is rendered redundant in such a scenario.
m___ , May 24, 2018 at 3:20 pm GMT
Best expression of capitalism, religion, democracy as a Weltanschauung.

To fuse the totalitarian, univeral concept that paires so well to 98% of the world population we suggest consumerism.

Do not take for granted that our de facto global elites, and the mercenary middle-classes have a clear understandig where they are heading. There is cognitive dissonance in idea, method and projection of their in-group opportunism. Ethics being nothing more then superior opportunism. Smart, but ailing and failing a religion. In fact the theory proves the cognitive capacity of the authors.

Wally , May 24, 2018 at 3:51 pm GMT
@Per/Norway

said:
"well written"

Seriously?

The usual Marxist strawmen in play here by Hopkins.

What Hopkins describes is not "capitalism", yet he tries to excoriate capitalism.

Wally , May 24, 2018 at 4:02 pm GMT
@llloyd

said:
"Hate speech laws "

The ongoing debunking of the sacred yet impossible '6M Jews' is what is really driving so called "hate speech laws". What your told is merely the pretext.

Below is where free speech on the impossible 'holocaust' storyline is illegal, violators go to prison for Thought Crimes.
An obvious admission that the storyline doesn't stand up to scientific, logical, & rational scrutiny.
And coming to your neighborhood.

discussion: https://forum.codoh.com/download/file.php?id=1858

Why is this happening you ask:

The 'holocaust' storyline is one of the most easily debunked narratives ever contrived. That is why those who question it are arrested and persecuted. That is why violent, racist, & privileged Jewish supremacists demand censorship. What sort of truth is it that denies free speech and the freedom to seek the truth? Truth needs no protection from scrutiny.

Only liars demand censorship.

http://www.codoh.com

manorchurch , May 24, 2018 at 4:04 pm GMT
@Wally

What Hopkins describes is not "capitalism", yet he tries to excoriate capitalism.

True, but that's what the elites call it.

Stop complaining about terminology. You are so whiny.

densa , May 24, 2018 at 4:11 pm GMT
This is an elegant fleshing out of fashionable despair. Yes, self-rule is a myth. What does Hopkins recommend to replace it with? Is the aspiration of a democratic republic the problem, or is it money, media, and the subversion of power?

As flawed as our belief in democracy is, I haven't heard the better alternative. Just as some say we must go to Mars because we are destroying earth, I think we should take care of this earth as repairing and caring for it might be within our means. Instead of throwing democracy out, we should try and make it work.

For example, been reading about the rise of antibiotic resistant germs and industrial farming. The problem was long known, but there was no political will to do anything about it because the industry could lobby and also control regulators. In theory, the government worked for the greater good of all the people, but in practice it auctions us all to special interest.

Capitalists defend the current system by saying it's not really capitalism. Well, whatever it is, it came about because democracy was not actual but rather an ongoing auction of national interest to special interest.

It's a good article and makes a good case, but you will have to wait just a bit longer until us believers die off as you will not pry this democracy, our heritage and our best chance, from my cold hands.

bjondo , May 24, 2018 at 5:24 pm GMT
@gsjackson

similar experience coming through Atlanta.
Want to create jobs? Coulda created 50 there. At least. And prevented missed flight connections. Obama time.

Wally , May 24, 2018 at 6:02 pm GMT
@manorchurch

Oh yeah, you're another whining Zionist who has been demolished by my 'holocaust' debunking information. Hurts don't it?

Your projection is noted. LOL

"If you can't say what you mean, then you can't mean what you say".

http://www.codoh.com

AaronB , May 24, 2018 at 6:11 pm GMT
I shall proudly call myself an idiot then, as I believe capitalism and democracy are both bad.

The only system capable of inspiring passion and loyalty is some form of feudalism – personal loyalty to a lord is a beautiful thing, noblesse oblige a beautiful thing, sacred kingship is a beautiful thing, the tradition of beautiful craftsmanship that arises when economic considerations are not uppermost is a beautiful thing, the standards of excellence that are natural to a system that recognizes hierarchy and inequality is a beautiful thing.

I also think personal freedom, and tolerance for eccentricity is far greater when the social system is firmly grounded. In a democracy where nothing is secure conformity of opinion and personality become urgent – to maintain even minimum stability.

Japan has retained elements of feudalism to this day yet is economically far more egalitarian than America – because when economics is the sole standard of value, the ambitious will gather all wealth into their hands.

Seeing the Japanese bow to each other – such a beautiful gesture.

Ronald Thomas West , Website May 24, 2018 at 6:14 pm GMT
@manorchurch

Yeah, I suppose I could have half tried but the self-righteous indignation (tone) puts me off. It's like Tom Englehardt, get people all tied up in some hopeless, helpless outrage that accomplishes precisely nothing, no solutions, no pointing to a direction that might get something done. In any case CJ is in Berlin but I bet he wouldn't give a New York second's thought to risking his butt and work to put the German politicians nuts in a vise, but Hey! you never know, here's his chance, he can promote this:

https://ronaldthomaswest.com/2018/04/08/open-letter-to-die-linke/

Of my five years exile in Germany, two of those years were in Berlin and I can assure you the German political animal is an authentic coward, and Gregor Gysi of Die Linke is no exception, he'd go after CJ before he'd go after the NATO war criminals is my best bet. Maybe CJ has the balls to risk it?

Backwoods Bob , May 24, 2018 at 6:53 pm GMT
Marxist twaddle about "democracy", lol. As if the founders didn't warn us so strenuously about the tyranny of the majority.

Our government was formed not so that we could vote on what I am allowed to eat, but so that others would have no say in it.

The centralization of power and conformity across previously sovereign states now prohibits people from voting with their feet. The globalists are the next extension of the same tyranny.

We don't have limited governments and free markets. We have big brother government and a captured regulatory apparatus ensuring only large corporations can survive. Regulatory law is nowhere in the constitution and they dictate over subjects also not in the constitution.

I knew it was over when the US electorate was swooned over Iraqis having purple fingers voting "secret ballots". The candidates names were secret. But all you need to tell the sheeple is that they voted.

This piece is typical Marxist sleight of hand. To have a government of the people, by the people, and for the people, you limit what the government can do. Then you have liberty. Self-rule.

exiled off mainstreet , May 24, 2018 at 7:02 pm GMT
Mr. Hopkins' article is an effective, accurate description of why and how things have declined into a sort of soft fascism during the last 40 years or so in particular.
The Scalpel , Website May 24, 2018 at 7:24 pm GMT
@Ronald Thomas West

If you want to hijack someone else's article for the purpose of shameless self-promotion, do it like Ronald Thomas West lol.

The Scalpel , Website May 24, 2018 at 7:28 pm GMT
Democracy can easily be done on the individual level. There are plenty of resources for this. I am not my brother's keeper anyway. don't tell me there is no democracy – just people who want others to give it to them. Go all Thoreau on the world. Go off the grid, or Alaska, or an island somewhere. Democracy is not for pansies.
manorchurch , May 24, 2018 at 7:40 pm GMT
@Ronald Thomas West

no solutions, no pointing to a direction that might get something done

Preceding "solution" is description, and descriptive explanation. The article is not intended as a set of solutions. It is a description and explanation.

Perhaps you have an axe to grind. Not my problem

HPLCguru , Website May 24, 2018 at 7:43 pm GMT
Excellent article with much needed humor. We no longer have a word for an economic system that supports human life. Hunting and gathering was early agriculture. Moving some rocks and dirt out of the way to get some obsidian was mining. Knocking rocks against the obsidian was early manufacturing. The excess from farms, mines and factories is what WAS called capital. We are supposed to believe that a farmer can't plant a seed without a loan! We are in the last stages of financialism. Since the word capitalism is useless how about "real stuffism"? I'm a physical scientist and I can guarantee that math and the physical world always ends financialism.
manorchurch , May 24, 2018 at 7:43 pm GMT
@Backwoods Bob

This piece is typical Marxist sleight of hand.

That line got me to laughing a lot harder than the rest of your bullshit, so I had to stop reading. Your comments are now relegated to the "Duuuuuuuhhhhhh .MARXISM!!!" bin.

Ronald Thomas West , Website May 24, 2018 at 8:36 pm GMT
@The Scalpel

Thanks for the promotion, here's one for CJ's 'democracy'

https://ronaldthomaswest.com/2013/05/19/maison-de-lhistoire-de-france/

^

Cheery Bint , May 24, 2018 at 10:05 pm GMT
You could open up the scope of this post's valid point and say that it's not just democracy that's simulated here. Rights and rule of law are simulated too. Democracy, fetishized though it is, in degenerate ritual form, is a very small part of rights and rule of law (specifically, ICCPR Article 25, one article of one of nine core human rights instruments or about 100 total instruments in world-standard customary and conventional international law. http://www.ohchr.org/EN/ProfessionalInterest/Pages/UniversalHumanRightsInstruments.aspx )

Here's CIA telling you how the world works now.

https://medium.com/@caityjohnstone/deep-state-swamp-monster-says-there-is-no-deep-state-f4c944e21533

This exchange is a really good catch. Latching on to the term deep state allows CIA to bat away a puffball question that avoids the real question. Their scripted answer to the scripted easy question: employees 'aimed at' the president's objectives and Amerca's objectives. This is clever first of all because it says objectives and not orders. It's a weaker formulation that the Pike-Committee era line, CIA works for the president. CIA is trying to evade the US commitment to command responsibility in the Geneva Conventions and the Convention Against Torture. Secondly, the DCI purports to interpret the president's objectives and proclaim America's objectives. Used to be State or NSC did that, subject to presidential directives or decision documents. Pompeo says CIA works for him. We're at the point Frank Zappa told us to expect: CIA's removing the stage set so we're sitting looking at the brick wall. Pompeo's telling you that CIA's in charge.

The hard question is: Does CIA have impunity in municipal law? The answer is yes, of course it does. It's there in black and white in the Central Intelligence Agency Act, the Houston memo, the Intelligence Identities Protection Act, the operational files exemption, and the political questions doctrine. If the DCI had no impunity the new DCI would be in prison. CIA is obligated to prosecute or extradite its torturers and murderers. Na ga happen. CIA has the arbitrary life-and-death power of a totalitarian state. CIA is beyond criminal. Its arbitrary suspension of non-derogable rights and jus cogens says, Law? Fuck law.

Miro23 , May 24, 2018 at 10:57 pm GMT
I agree that the US is the ultimate expression of materialism.

The original Pilgrim Fathers were looking for religious freedom, but later waves of immigrants came for economic opportunity, and the US was the first place that "Citizens" morphed into "Consumers".

Congressmen are bought and sold, and they're probably OK with that, along the lines that their vote has value, and they'll support whoever bids the highest (which isn't the electors back home).

Like AaronB says, the US (and West in general) has no spiritual foundation, and is just a cynical game of exploitation and corruption pretending to be "Democratic" . Real Democracy does exist, but it's not something that Americans would want to be involved with – it requires a high level of personal commitment and responsibility (probably obligatory), regular local public meetings, investment in studying issues, and the primacy of local decision making and voting over Federal power ( i.e. power residing at the lowest level possible – which in the US would be the County and State). In other words it's hard and time consuming work.

To take a parallel, the late Roman Empire was also a sink of absolute corruption and self interest that couldn't defend its frontiers and finally collapsed, first socially, then economically.

The spiritual Phoenix that rose out of its ashes was Christianity, with the barbarian invaders converting and building Christendom in Europe (Rome) and also in the Middle East (Byzantium). The early Christian communities in the Late Roman Empire were heavily persecuted but still recognized for their high level of morality, work ethic and "respectability", and in its last days (too late), the Empire actually adopted to Christianity through the conversion of Constantine.

A good but difficult source is Robin Lane Fox's "Pagans and Christians" https://www.amazon.com/PAGANS-CHRISTIANS-Robin-Lane-Fox/dp/0394554957/ref=sr_1_2?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1527202127&sr=1-2&keywords=pagans+christians+lane+fox

Stonehands , May 24, 2018 at 11:01 pm GMT
@ScientistInHiding

It should be obvious by now that all forms of government eventually morph into what we see all around us today. But let's not confuse free market capitalism (which has never existed) with the aristocratic fascisms that we call "Communism" or "Democracy."

You are on the right path, good observations.

Thinking people are aware of the fact that Moderns have permission not freedom.

Realist , May 24, 2018 at 11:09 pm GMT
@Speak Truth To Power

Sadly your scenario is probably not viable.
A dream of the pipe variety.

Realist , May 24, 2018 at 11:12 pm GMT
Great article.
Stonehands , May 24, 2018 at 11:52 pm GMT
@manorchurch

Peckerwood you are a fine specimen of American Communism. Where were you indoctrinated- Columbia University or the New School?

76239 , Website May 25, 2018 at 12:53 am GMT
What a surprise another commie writer on economic issues on Unz! These economic pos articles resemble what you read in the NY times. Sheesh.

"Western consumers are free to buy whatever products they want"

Pure crap. Depending on the state you live in, think for a moment of all the restrictions, taxes and permission you must go through to own a car, buy gass, freon, herbicide. Pharmacy products, illegal drugs guns etc. A list a mile long. Anyone who describes the USA as a free market is plain wrong and has no idea about the problems we face.

Liberty and the free market are not part of the problem. They are part of the solution.

Switzerland, Singapore, and old Hong Kong to name a few examples are some of the wealthiest in the world because of low to no taxes and max economic freedom. Two of the three were crushed by ww2. Came back stronger than ever in 40 yrs or so.

manorchurch , May 25, 2018 at 1:17 am GMT
@Stonehands

Peckerwood you are a fine specimen of American Communism.

Pecker-putty, fuck off. You wouldn't know commanizm if it bit you in the ass.

Wally , May 25, 2018 at 1:21 am GMT
@AaronB

You won't see the Japanese opening their borders to low IQ illegal immigrants.

Ilya G Poimandres , May 25, 2018 at 2:00 am GMT
You only discuss democracy as some monolithic idea, with some idealised notion that 'real' democracy can only be tribal or small scale. This is not true.

Representative democracy = evolutionary autocracy and the right to shout. Laws and regulations, being made by representatives – and only representatives – remain purely autocratic in their creation and destruction.

Direct democracy – those tribes. Doesn't work for a society that has a huge population and needs a 'directing mind' as Aurelius likened the individuals' equivalent.

Semi-direct democracy – a combination of the power to create or strike law by both representatives (elected or selected), and the electorate. Switzerland has it (to a degree because of its media, just check the June 10th banking referendum propaganda machine), China approximates it because it polls its population on every level, decision and preference.

At the very least, the electorate should have power to strike laws made by representatives and rescind previously struck laws by representatives. This is only fair – people should have a process for declaring directly what laws they want to abide by. Representatives may not like it, but society is society, it should be able to make these choices, for good or bad.

Representative democracy – democracy in the spirit of the law, and autocracy in the letter of the law – is for the most part an autocracy, with a progressive dumbing down, frustration, and marginalisation of the electorate due to their practical lack of true power to change society.

Then there's the question of education and media, as you need a smart and well informed public with semi-direct much more than with representative. And preferably constitutionally enforced armed military neutrality, as herd behaviour often tends to violence.

Finally – revolutionary democracy: revolts against systems can often be democratic, if bloody, so build an effective system that considers the opinions and worries of the masses.

willieskull68 , May 25, 2018 at 2:02 am GMT
Three sentences and I was done; and a play wright living in Berlin. Berrrrlin Dude, lets do some history, Socialism sucks. But I do agree that my vote has been diluted to zero, by design.
Biff , May 25, 2018 at 2:45 am GMT
@Speak Truth To Power

A new world order built that that is God and Christ

Been there, done that, and it sucked! Anymore dumb ideas?

[May 23, 2018] 2016 Hillary fiasco post mortem by Lambert Strether

Notable quotes:
"... Chasing Hillary ..."
"... As one person who had talked to Clinton about the difference between Trump and Sanders crowds recounted, her feeling was that 'at least white supremacists shaved.'" ..."
"... Why does Trump get away with corruption? Because Bill and Hillary Clinton normalized it ..."
May 23, 2018 | www.nakedcapitalism.com

"Clinton to be honored at Harvard for 'transformative impact'" [ The Hill ]. Irony is not dead.

"From the Jaws of Victory" [ Jacobin ]. Some highlights from Amy Chozick's Chasing Hillary , which really does sound like a fun read:

"In the public's mind, Clinton's 'deplorables' quip is remembered as evidence of her disdain for much of Trump's fan base. But there was one other group Clinton had a similar dislike of: Bernie Sanders supporters.

As one person who had talked to Clinton about the difference between Trump and Sanders crowds recounted, her feeling was that 'at least white supremacists shaved.'"

UPDATE "Why does Trump get away with corruption? Because Bill and Hillary Clinton normalized it" [Josh Barro, Business Insider ].

[May 03, 2018] Alert The Clintonian empire is still here and tries to steal the popular vote throug

Highly recommended!
The dramatic rise fo the number of CIA-democrats as candidates from Democratic Party is not assedental. As regular clintonites are discredited those guys can still appeal to patriotism to get elected.
Notable quotes:
"... Bernie continuously forcing Hillary to appear apologetic about her campaign funding from big financial interests. She tries hard to persuade the public that she will not serve specific interests. Her anxiety can be identified in many cases and it was very clear at the moment when she accused Bernie of attacking her, concerning this funding. Hillary was forced to respond with a deeply irrational argument: anyone who takes money from big interests doesn't mean that he/she will vote for policies in favor of these interests! ..."
"... Bernie drives the discussion towards fundamental ideological issues. He forced Hillary to defend her "progressiveness". She was forced to speak even about economic interests by names. A few years ago, this would be nearly a taboo in any debate between any primaries. ..."
"... After the disastrous defeat by Trump in 2016 election, the corporate Democrats realized that the progressive movement, supported mostly by the American youth, would not retreat and vanish. On the contrary, Bernie Sanders' popularity still goes up and there is a wave of progressive candidates who appear to be a real threat to the DNC establishment and the Clintonian empire. ..."
"... It seems that the empire has upgraded its dirty tactics beyond Hillary's false relocation to the Left. Seeing the big threat from the real progressives, the empire seeks to "plant" its own agents, masked as progressives, inside the electoral process, to disorientate voters and steal the popular vote. ..."
"... This is a Master's class in blatant historical revisionism and outright dishonesty. Beals was not a soldier unwillingly drafted into service, but an intelligence officer who voluntarily accepted an influential and critically important post for the Bush Administration in its ever-expanding crime against humanity in Iraq. ..."
May 03, 2018 | failedevolution.blogspot.gr

Beware of wolves in sheep's clothing

globinfo freexchange

During the 2016 Democratic party primaries we wrote that what Bernie achieved, is to bring back the real political discussion in America, at least concerning the Democratic camp. Bernie smartly "drags" his primary rival, Hillary Clinton, into the heart of the politics. Up until a few years ago, you could not observe too much difference between the Democrats and the Republicans, who were just following the pro-establishment "politics as usual", probably with a few, occasional exceptions. The "politics as usual" so far, was "you can't touch the Wall Street", for example.

Bernie continuously forcing Hillary to appear apologetic about her campaign funding from big financial interests. She tries hard to persuade the public that she will not serve specific interests. Her anxiety can be identified in many cases and it was very clear at the moment when she accused Bernie of attacking her, concerning this funding. Hillary was forced to respond with a deeply irrational argument: anyone who takes money from big interests doesn't mean that he/she will vote for policies in favor of these interests!

Bernie drives the discussion towards fundamental ideological issues. He forced Hillary to defend her "progressiveness". She was forced to speak even about economic interests by names. A few years ago, this would be nearly a taboo in any debate between any primaries.

After the disastrous defeat by Trump in 2016 election, the corporate Democrats realized that the progressive movement, supported mostly by the American youth, would not retreat and vanish. On the contrary, Bernie Sanders' popularity still goes up and there is a wave of progressive candidates who appear to be a real threat to the DNC establishment and the Clintonian empire.

It seems that the empire has upgraded its dirty tactics beyond Hillary's false relocation to the Left. Seeing the big threat from the real progressives, the empire seeks to "plant" its own agents, masked as progressives, inside the electoral process, to disorientate voters and steal the popular vote.

Eric Draitser gives us valuable information for such a type of candidate. Key points:

One candidate currently generating some buzz in the race is Jeff Beals, a self-identified "Bernie democrat" whose campaign website homepage describes him as a " local teacher and former U.S. diplomat endorsed by the national organization of former Bernie Sanders staffers, the Justice Democrats. " And indeed, Beals centers his progressive bona fides to brand himself as one of the inheritors of the progressive torch lit by Sanders in 2016. A smart political move, to be sure. But is it true?

Beals describes himself as a "former U.S. diplomat," touting his expertise on international issues born of his experience overseas. In an email interview with CounterPunch, Beals describes his campaign as a " movement for diplomacy and peace in foreign affairs and an end to militarism my experience as a U.S. diplomat is what drives it and gives this movement such force. " OK, sounds good, a very progressive sounding answer. But what did Beals actually do during his time overseas?

By his own admission, Beals' overseas career began as an intelligence officer with the CIA. His fluency in Arabic and knowledge of the region made him an obvious choice to be an intelligence spook during the latter stages of the Clinton Administration.

Beals shrewdly attempts to portray himself as an opponent of neocon imperialism in Iraq. In his interview with CounterPunch, Beals argued that " The State Department was sidelined as the Bush administration and a neoconservative cabal plunged America into the tragic Iraq War. As a U.S. diplomat fluent in Arabic and posted in Jerusalem at the time, I was called over a year into the war to help our country find a way out. "

This is a Master's class in blatant historical revisionism and outright dishonesty. Beals was not a soldier unwillingly drafted into service, but an intelligence officer who voluntarily accepted an influential and critically important post for the Bush Administration in its ever-expanding crime against humanity in Iraq.

Moreover, no one who knows anything about the Iraq War could possibly swallow the tripe that CIA/State Department officials in Iraq were " looking to help our country find a way out " a year into the war. A year into the war, the bloodletting was only just beginning, and Halliburton, Exxon-Mobil, and the other corporate vultures had yet to fully exploit the country and make billions off it. So, unfortunately for Beals, the historical memory of the anti-war Left is not that short.

It is self-evident that Beals has a laundry list of things in his past that he must answer for. For those of us, especially Millennials, who cut our activist teeth demonstrating and organizing against the Iraq War, Beals' distortions about his role in Iraq go down like hemlock tea. But it is the associations Beals maintains today that really should give any progressive serious pause.

When asked by CounterPunch whether he has any connections to either Bernie Sanders and his surrogates or Hillary Clinton and hers, Beals responded by stating: " I am endorsed by Justice Democrats, a group of former Bernie Sanders staffers who are pledged to electing progressives nationwide. I am also endorsed for the Greene County chapter of the New York Progressive Action Network, formerly the Bernie Sanders network. My first hire was a former Sanders field coordinator who worked here in NY-19. "

However, conveniently missing from that response is the fact that Beals' campaign has been, and continues to be, directly managed in nearly every respect by Bennett Ratcliff, a longtime friend and ally of Hillary Clinton. Ratcliff is not mentioned in any publicly available documents as a campaign manager, though the most recent FEC filings show that as of April 1, 2018, Ratcliff was still on the payroll of the Beals campaign. And in the video of Beals' campaign kickoff rally, Ratcliff introduces Beals, while only being described as a member of the Onteora School Board in Ulster County . This is sort of like referring to Donald Trump as an avid golfer.

Beals has studiously, and rather intelligently, avoided mentioning Ratcliff, or the presence of Clinton's inner circle on his campaign. However, according to internal campaign documents and emails obtained by CounterPunch, Ratcliff manages nearly every aspect of the campaign, acting as a sort of éminence grise behind the artifice of a progressive campaign fronted by a highly educated and photogenic political novice.

By his own admission, Ratcliff's role on the campaign is strategy, message, and management. Sounds like a rather textbook description of a campaign manager. Indeed, Ratcliff has been intimately involved in "guiding" Beals on nearly every important campaign decision, especially those involving fundraising .

And it is in the realm of fundraising that Ratcliff really shines, but not in the way one would traditionally think. Rather than focusing on large donations and powerful interests, Ratcliff is using the Beals campaign as a laboratory for his strategy of winning elections without raising millions of dollars.

In fact, leaked campaign documents show that Ratcliff has explicitly instructed Beals and his staffers not to spend money on food, decorations, and other standard campaign expenses in hopes of presenting the illusion of a grassroots, people-powered campaign with no connections to big time donors or financial elites .

It seems that Ratcliff is the wizard behind the curtain, leveraging his decades of contact building and close ties to the Democratic Party establishment while at the same time manufacturing an astroturfed progressive campaign using a front man in Beals .

One of Ratcliff's most infamous, and indefensible, acts of fealty to the Clinton machine came in 2009 when he and longtime Clinton attorney and lobbyist, Lanny Davis, stumped around Washington to garner support for the illegal right-wing coup in Honduras, which ousted the democratically elected President Manuel Zelaya in favor of the right-wing oligarchs who control the country today. Although the UN, and even U.S. diplomats on the ground in Honduras, openly stated that the coup was illegal, Clinton was adamant to actively keep Zelaya out.

Essentially then, Ratcliff is a chief architect of the right-wing government in Honduras – the same government assassinating feminist and indigenous activists like Berta Cáceres, Margarita Murillo, and others, and forcibly displacing and ethnically cleansing Afro-indigenous communities to make way for Carribbean resorts and golf courses.

And this Washington insider lobbyist and apologist for war criminals and crimes against humanity is the guy who's on a crusade to reform campaign finance and fix Washington? This is the guy masquerading as a progressive? This is the guy working to elect an "anti-war progressive"?

In a twisted way it makes sense. Ratcliff has the blood of tens of thousands of Hondurans (among others) on his hands, while Beals is a creature of Langley, a CIA boy whose exceptional work in the service of Bush and Clinton administration war criminals is touted as some kind of merit badge on his resume.

What also becomes clear after establishing the Ratcliff-Beals connection is the fact that Ratcliff's purported concern with campaign financing and "taking back the Republic" is really just a pretext for attempting to provide a "proof of concept," as it were, that neoliberal Democrats shouldn't fear and subvert the progressive wing of the party, but rather that they should co-opt it with a phony grassroots facade all while maintaining links to U.S. intelligence, Wall Street, and the power brokers of the Democratic Party .

Info from the article How Clintonites Are Manufacturing Faux Progressive Congressional Campaigns by Eric Draitser

[Apr 30, 2018] Neoliberalization of the US Democratic Party is irreversible: It is still controlled by Clinton gang even after Hillary debacle

Highly recommended!
An interesting new term is used in this discussion: "CIA democrats". Probably originated in Patrick Martin March 7, 2018 article at WSWS The CIA Democrats Part one - World Socialist Web Site but I would not draw an equivalence between military and intelligence agencies.
"f the Democrats capture a majority in the House of Representatives on November 6, as widely predicted, candidates drawn from the military-intelligence apparatus will comprise as many as half of the new Democratic members of Congress."
Notable quotes:
"... @leveymg ..."
"... @CS in AZ ..."
"... @CS in AZ ..."
"... @CS in AZ ..."
"... "I was truly fired up about Bernie Sanders at that time. I've come a very long ways since then." ..."
"... @arendt ..."
"... @The Voice In the Wilderness ..."
"... @The Voice In the Wilderness ..."
Apr 30, 2018 | caucus99percent.com

Postmodern progressives

arendt on Sat, 04/28/2018 - 9:28am

The left has never been welcome in the Republican party; and since the neoliberal Clinton machine showed up, they have not been welcome in the Democratic party either. As Clinton debauched the historical, FDR/JFK/LBJ meaning of the word "liberal", the left started calling itself "progressives". The left had long been the grassroots of the Democratic party; and after being left in the lurch by John Kerry (no lawsuits against Ohio fraud), lied to by Barack Obama, and browbeaten by the increasingly neocon Clintonite DNC, they enthusiastically coalesced around Bernie Sanders.

If our political system were honest, Bernie Sanders would have been the Democratic nominee; and Hillary Clinton and Debbie W-S (of Aman Brothers infamy) would be on trial for violating national security and corrupting the DNC. But, our political system isn't honest. Our political system, including the Democratic party, is completely bought and paid for. And, unfortunately, Bernie Sanders - despite being a victim of that corruption - continues to refuse to make that point. He refused to join the lawsuit (complete with dead process server and suspicious phone call from DWS's office) against the DNC. All in the name of working within a party he does not even belong to.

After the 2016 election, the DNC, continuing its corrupt ways, blatantly favored Tom Perez over the "progressive" Keith Ellison, smearing Ellison as a Moslem lover. Bernie's reaction to this continuing manipulation was muted. On foreign policy, Bernie continues to be either AWOL or pro-MIC (F-35 plant in VT)/pro-Israel. These are not progressive positiions. AFAIAC, Bernie is half a leftist. He is left on economics and social policy; but he is rightwing on the MIC, foreign policy, and Israel. There is very little democracy left in this country, and I am not going to waste my time supporting Bernie, who has shown himself to be a sheepdog. That's my take on the 2018 version of Bernie. I will always treasure the early 2016 version of Bernie, the only political candidate in my life that I gave serious money to.

Neither will I waste my time pretending that honest, inside-the-system efforts can take the Democratic party back from the plutocrats who own it, lock, stock, and checkbook. You might think there is a chance to work inside the system. You might think the DNC is vulnerable because it learned nothing from the 2016 debacle; but you would be wrong. After the Hillary debacle, they have learned how to manufacture more credible fake progressives.

------

For it seems that progressive candidates aren't the only ones who learned the lesson of Bernie Sanders in 2016; the neoliberal Clintonites have too. So, while left-wing campaigns crop up in every corner of the country, so too do astroturf faux-progressive campaigns. And it is for us on the left to parse through it all and separate the authentic from the frauds.

One candidate currently generating some buzz in the race is Jeff Beals, a self-identified "Bernie democrat" whose campaign website homepage describes him as a "local teacher and former U.S. diplomat endorsed by the national organization of former Bernie Sanders staffers, the Justice Democrats." And indeed, Beals centers his progressive bona fides to brand himself as one of the inheritors of the progressive torch lit by Sanders in 2016. A smart political move, to be sure. But is it true?

By his own admission, Beals' overseas career began as an intelligence officer with the CIA. His fluency in Arabic and knowledge of the region made him an obvious choice to be an intelligence spook during the latter stages of the Clinton Administration.

Beals was not a soldier unwillingly drafted into service, but an intelligence officer who voluntarily accepted an influential and critically important post for the Bush Administration in its ever-expanding crime against humanity in Iraq.

Moreover, no one who knows anything about the Iraq War could possibly swallow the tripe that CIA/State Department officials in Iraq were "looking to help our country find a way out" a year into the war. A year into the war, the bloodletting was only just beginning, and Halliburton, Exxon-Mobil, and the other corporate vultures had yet to fully exploit the country and make billions off it. So, unfortunately for Beals, the historical memory of the anti-war Left is not that short.

How Clintonites Are Manufacturing Faux Progressive Congressional Campaigns

The takeaway here is that many of these self-declared "Bernie Democrats" are, in reality, the "CIA Democrats" that we have been warned about. And Bernie has not called them out. Another thing he has not called out is the fact that the party leadership is still blatantly sabotaging even modestly "progressive" candidates in the primaries.

In the latest striking example of how the Democratic Party resorts to cronyism (and perhaps corruption) to ensure that its favored candidates beat back progressive challengers in local races, a candidate for Colorado's 6th Congressional District has leaked a recording of a conversation with Minority Leader Steny Hoyer to The Intercept which published it overnight. In it, Hoyer can be heard essentially lecturing the candidate about why he should step aside and let the Democratic Party bosses - who of course have a better idea about which candidate will prevail over a popular Republican in the general election - continue pulling the strings.

The candidate, Levi Tillemann, is hardly a party outsider. Tillemann had grandparents on both sides of his family who were elected Democratic representatives, and his family is essentially Democratic Party royalty.

Still, the party's campaign arm - the notorious Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee (better known as the DCCC, or D-trip) - refused to provide Tillemann with access to party campaign data or any of the other resources he requested.


Secret Recording Reveals Democratic Party Boss Ordering Progressive Candidate To Quit Race

Here is yet another thing that Bernie has not called out: The DNC, which is reportedly badly behind in fundraising, is nevertheless willing to spend obscene amounts of money in primaries just to keep progressives out of races - even Red district races that are guaranteed losses for Democrats.

Dan Feehan has successfully bought the Democratic nomination for Minnesota's first congressional district (MN-CD1). Dan, having lived outside the state since the age of 14, has allegedly misled the public on his FEC form, claiming residence at his cousin's address. Here is Dan's FEC filing form. One can see that it his cousin who lives at this address...

Mr. Feehan has no chance to win in November. While nobody likes a candidate from Washington D.C., people hate Washington money even more. To be fair to Dan he hasn't taken super PAC money, somehow. But he has raised 565,000 dollars, an outrageous sum for a congressional race. 94% of this money has come from outside the district, and 79% from outside the state. Where does this money come from? Well, according to the campaign, from people around the country who want to keep Minnesota blue. If this was the case, why not wait to give money until Minnesota voted for a candidate in the primary and then donate? And who on earth has this much money to pour into an obscure race outside of their state?

Dan Feehan is of the same breed that most post-Trump Democrats are. Clean cut, military experience, stern, anti-gun, anti-crazy Orange monsters, anti-negativity, and anti-discrimination of rich people who fall under a marginalized group. What are they for? No one knows. If pushed they want "good" education, health care, jobs, environment, etc. But they want Big money too for various reasons, but the ones cited are: because that is the only way to win, because rich people are smart and poor people are dumb, and because money is speech. So they cannot and will not make any concrete commitments. Hence energy becomes "all inclusive", as if balancing clean and dirty energy was a college admissions department diversity issue, rather than a question of life or death for the entire planet. Healthcare becomes not a right, but a requirement with a giant handout to insurance companies. Near full employment (with the near being very important, when we consider leverage) comes with part-time, short-term, and low paying work.

The Clintonite Democrats and their spawn are postmodern progressives. In their world, there is no way to test if one is progressive.
Within the world of the Democratic party, there is no relativity. It is merely a universe that exists only to clash with (but mostly submit to) the parallel Republican universe. Whoever proves to be the victor should be united behind without a thought given to their place within the political spectrum of Democrat voters. They believe, if I were to paraphrase René Descartes: "I Democrat, therefore I progressive."

How To Buy A Seat In Congress 101

Tell me again why I must be a loyal Democrat, why I must support candidates who are corporate/MIC shills, why I must submit to the constant harassment and sabotage of progressive efforts. Tell me again how Bernie is fighting the party leadership. (That is, explain away all the non-activity related to the items posted above.)

I'm with Chris Hedges. Formal democracy is dead in the US; all we have left are actions in the streets (and those are being slowly made illegal). The only people in this country who deserve my support are: 1) the striking teachers, many of them non-unionized, 2) the oil pipeline protestors, who are being crushed by police state tactics, 3) the fighters for $15 minimum wage, again non-unionized. The Democratic Party used to stand for unions. It doesn't any more. It doesn't stand for anything except getting more money from the 1% to sell out the 99% with fake progressive CIA candidates. Oh, and it stands for pussy hats.

Anyone who tells me to get in line behind Bernie is either a naive pollyana or a disingenuous purity troll.


leveymg on Sat, 04/28/2018 - 9:44am
We have all been here before. 1948. That was the year that the clawback of the Democratic Party and the purge of the Left was formalized. It really dates to the engineered hijacking of the nomination of Henry Wallace at the 1944 Democratic Convention. History does repeat itself for those who didn't learn or weren't adequately taught it.
arendt on Sat, 04/28/2018 - 10:00am
I appreciate being reminded of the history... @leveymg @leveymg

however tragic it is. Instead of a true leftwinger, we got Harry Truman, a naive wardheeler from corrupt Kansas City. He was led by the nose to create the CIA.

I do take your point; but the question is, can anything be done? If democracy has become meaningless kabuki, and the neocon warmongers are in charge no matter whom we "elect", what is there to do besides build that bomb shelter?

That is why I say that only genuine issues will galvanize the public; and even then, they can run a hybrid war against the left. They have created this ludicrous Identity Politics boogeyman that energizes the right and makes the postmodern progressives look stupid. No matter what tactic I think of, TPTB have already covered that base. The problem is that the left has absolutely no base in the U.S. today.

Alligator Ed on Sun, 04/29/2018 - 3:56am
The post-modern progressives are stupid @arendt They are not progressive. They do not have a platform (except "I anti-Trump, therefore I progressive".

How will the pseudo-progressives be able to justify being both "progressive" and pro-war?

Talk about cognitive dissonance. But wait. Democraps of any stripe, don't cogitate, hence no dissonance.

zoebear on Sat, 04/28/2018 - 10:12am
Appreciate you posting this essay This is only one of the many troubling signs which convince me he is being controlled by my enemy.

The takeaway here is that many of these self-declared "Bernie Democrats" are, in reality, the "CIA Democrats" that we have been warned about. And Bernie has not called them out.

CS in AZ on Sat, 04/28/2018 - 11:12am
Thanks for the essay, arendt I came to this site in the great purge at daily kos, and I was truly fired up about Bernie Sanders at that time. I've come a very long ways since then. Thanks to the people here.

And to kos, who now rather infamously said "if you think Hillary Clinton can't beat Donald Trump, you're a fucking moron. Seriously, you're dumb as rocks." And he said if you're not going to cheerlead for democrats, "go the fuck away. This is not your place." True words!!

So this site was here and Bernie supporters flocked here. Including me. But over this time I have seen the mistakes I made. Such a lot of wasted time and energy.

Still searching for answers myself, but I know what doesn't work, and how important for the status quo to keep the illusion of democracy alive. But more and more people are not buying it anymore. I suspect that a few more crumbs will be forthcoming on some issues. That's the very best way to keep the show going. And the show must go on.

Pulling back the curtain is really the first and most important weapon we have. Thank you for doing that.

zoebear on Sat, 04/28/2018 - 11:45am zoebear on Sat, 04/28/2018 - 11:45am
Whose dumb as rocks now? @CS in AZ

Countered with Russia, Russia, Russia. God he was such a prick.

I came to this site in the great purge at daily kos, and I was truly fired up about Bernie Sanders at that time. I've come a very long ways since then. Thanks to the people here.

And to kos, who now rather infamously said "if you think Hillary Clinton can't beat Donald Trump, you're a fucking moron. Seriously, you're dumb as rocks." And he said if you're not going to cheerlead for democrats, "go the fuck away. This is not your place." True words!!

So this site was here and Bernie supporters flocked here. Including me. But over this time I have seen the mistakes I made. Such a lot of wasted time and energy.

Still searching for answers myself, but I know what doesn't work, and how important for the status quo to keep the illusion of democracy alive. But more and more people are not buying it anymore. I suspect that a few more crumbs will be forthcoming on some issues. That's the very best way to keep the show going. And the show must go on.

Pulling back the curtain is really the first and most important weapon we have. Thank you for doing that.

arendt on Sat, 04/28/2018 - 12:19pm
"important for the SQ to keep the illusion of democracy alive" @CS in AZ

That's how I feel about it. I've been suckered one time too many. The 2016 election was a complete farce. Bernie was sabotaged. The DNC and Hillary broke their own rules to do it. But Bernie, with a perfect opportunity and lots of support, just walked away from the fight that he had promised his people.

Sheep dog.

TPTB want the political "fight" to be between slightly different flavors of neoliberal looting/neocon warmongering. They want unions, teachers, environmentalists, and minorities to, in the words of a UK asshole, "shut up and go away".

The CIA literally paid $600M to the Washington Post, whose purchase price was only $300M. Bezos made 200% of his money back in a month. The media is completely corporatized; and they are coming for the internet with censorship. Where is Bernie on this? Haven't heard a word.

Sheep dog.

As TPTB simply buy what is left of the Democratic party, they will enforce this kabuki politics. Any deviation will be labeled Putin-loving, Assad-loving, China-loving, etc.

You can't have a democracy when free speech is instantly labeled fake news or enemy propaganda.

snoopydawg on Sat, 04/28/2018 - 5:47pm
I think this is the gist of people who don't care for Bernie @CS in AZ

"I was truly fired up about Bernie Sanders at that time. I've come a very long ways since then."

This is how I see the way some people feel about him. This same thing happened after I voted for Obama. I thought that he would do what "I heard him say that he would", but he let me down by not even bothering to try doing anything.

What soured me on Bernie was his saying that Her won the election fair and square after everything we saw happen. Even after learning how the primary was rigged against him. And now he has jumped on the Russian interference propaganda train when he knows that Russia had no hand with Trump beating Her out the presidency.

Bottom line is that I no longer believe that Bernie is being up front with me. I know that others feel differently, but remember how people changed their minds on Obama and never accepted Herheinous! People should be free here to say how they feel.

dkmich on Sat, 04/28/2018 - 11:51am
Obama was the template.

"I guess the lesson is we shouldn't be fooled by good-looking liberals no matter how well-spoken they are," Fonda said.

I don't trust the Justice Dems as far as I can throw them. DailyKos indoctrinated us for 10 years with more and better. It is all bull shit.

Bernie also lied to us. "He is in it to win it" - as long as he doesn't piss off the Clintons and Obama.

arendt on Sat, 04/28/2018 - 12:21pm
I don't folllow all the BS. Who are the "justice" dems? @dkmich

Purportedly Bernie? Perportedly Obama?

I just don't care. The Democratic Party is dead to me. I had a wake a while back.

dkmich on Sun, 04/29/2018 - 7:44am
Berniecrats that want to work from within just like Bernie does @arendt

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Justice_Democrats

Lookout on Sun, 04/29/2018 - 11:35am
The Obomber template has been exported @dkmich

Don't you think Trudeau and Macron seem to be cut from an Obama cloth?

Would that we had a Corbyn in the US. At lest he request evidence before bombing and ejecting diplomats.

zoebear on Sun, 04/29/2018 - 9:58am
Withdrawing in "purity" @The Voice In the Wilderness

Isn't making it "easier" for them to cheat when they are already doing that. What participating in their corruption does do is keep the illusion of democracy alive for their benefit. Easier? They're already achieving their end game. Controlling us, electing their candidates, and collecting our taxes.

Frankly we've been participating in their potemkin village passing as democracy for decades with no effect.

CS in AZ on Sun, 04/29/2018 - 10:09am
No, that's not what it means @The Voice In the Wilderness

First, a boycott is not "ignoring" voting. It's an organized protest against fake elections. It's actually not that uncommon for people in other countries to call for election boycotts in protest when a significant portion of people feel the election is staged or rigged with a predetermined outcome, or where all of the candidates are chosen by the elite so none represent the will of the people.

In that type of situation, boycotting the election -- and obviously that means saying why, and making a protest out of it -- is really the only recourse people have. It may not be effective at stopping the fake election, but it lets the world know the vote was fake.

If you line up to go obediently cast your vote anyway, then you are the one who is empowering the enemy, by giving the illusion of legitimacy to the fake vote.

Now about this big worry about what "they" will say... first, look at what they already say about third party voters. In the media and political world, third party voters are a joke, useful idiots, who can be simultaneously written off as "fringe" wackos who can and should be ignored, and also childish spoilers who can be scapegoated and blamed for eternity for election loses. Witness Ralph Nader and Jill Stein. Of course people should still vote third party if there's someone that truly represents them, and if they believe the election process is genuine. Because you don't let your voting choices be dictated by what the powers that be say about it!

For those of us who believe the election process is a sham and a scam, voting is playing into their hands, giving legitimacy to their show. That is what makes it easier for them to keep the status quo firmly in place, and is literally helping them do it.

As has been pointed out, if an organized protest/boycott that called the elections fake were to take root and grow, they would not be able to say we don't care. That's a big if, obviously, but it's better than playing your assigned role in The Voting Show. Because that show is what everyone points to as proof that the American people want this fucked up warmongering government we keep voting back into power every two years.

Enough is enough. One of Bernie's slogans, which I still agree with.

[Apr 24, 2018] The Democratic Party has embraced the agenda of the military-intelligence apparatus and sought to become its main political voice

Highly recommended!
Notable quotes:
"... World Socialist Web Site ..."
"... The media campaign alleging Russian intervention in the 2016 US elections has been based entirely on handouts from the CIA, NSA and FBI, transmitted by reporters who are either unwitting stooges or conscious agents of the military-intelligence apparatus. This has been accompanied by the recruitment of a cadre of top CIA and military officials to serve as highly paid "experts" and "analysts" for the television networks ..."
"... Washington Post ..."
"... The CIA operation in 2018 is unlike its overseas activities in one major respect: it is not covert. On the contrary, the military-intelligence operatives running in the Democratic primaries boast of their careers as spies and special ops warriors. Those with combat experience invariably feature photographs of themselves in desert fatigues or other uniforms on their websites. And they are welcomed and given preferred positions, with Democratic Party officials frequently clearing the field for their candidacies. ..."
"... the Democratic Party has opened its doors to a "friendly takeover" by the intelligence agencies. ..."
"... The incredible power of the military-intelligence agencies over the entire government is an expression of the breakdown of American democracy. The central cause of this breakdown is the extreme concentration of wealth in the hands of a tiny elite, whose interests the state apparatus and its "bodies of armed men" serve. Confronted by an angry and hostile working class, the ruling class is resorting to ever more overt forms of authoritarian rule. ..."
"... But it is impossible to carry out this fight through the "axis of evil" that connects the Democratic Party, the bulk of the corporate media, and the CIA. The influx of military-intelligence candidates puts paid to the longstanding myth, peddled by the trade unions and pseudo-left groups, that the Democrats represent a "lesser evil." On the contrary, working people must confront the fact that within the framework of the corporate-controlled two-party system, they face two equally reactionary evils. ..."
Mar 13, 2018 | www.wsws.org
by Patrick Martin

In a three-part series published last week, the World Socialist Web Site documented an unprecedented influx of intelligence and military operatives into the Democratic Party. More than 50 such military-intelligence candidates are seeking the Democratic nomination in the 102 districts identified by the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee as its targets for 2018. These include both vacant seats and those with Republican incumbents considered vulnerable in the event of a significant swing to the Democrats.

... ... ...

The media campaign alleging Russian intervention in the 2016 US elections has been based entirely on handouts from the CIA, NSA and FBI, transmitted by reporters who are either unwitting stooges or conscious agents of the military-intelligence apparatus. This has been accompanied by the recruitment of a cadre of top CIA and military officials to serve as highly paid "experts" and "analysts" for the television networks .

In centering its opposition to Trump on the bogus allegations of Russian interference, while essentially ignoring Trump's attacks on immigrants and democratic rights, his alignment with ultra-right and white supremacist groups, his attacks on social programs like Medicaid and food stamps, and his militarism and threats of nuclear war, the Democratic Party has embraced the agenda of the military-intelligence apparatus and sought to become its main political voice.

This process was well under way in the administration of Barack Obama, which endorsed and expanded the various operations of the intelligence agencies abroad and within the United States. Obama's endorsed successor, Hillary Clinton, ran openly as the chosen candidate of the Pentagon and CIA, touting her toughness as a future commander-in-chief and pledging to escalate the confrontation with Russia, both in Syria and Ukraine.

The CIA has spearheaded the anti-Russia campaign against Trump in large part because of resentment over the disruption of its operations in Syria, and it has successfully used the campaign to force a shift in the policy of the Trump administration on that score. A chorus of media backers -- Nicholas Kristof and Roger Cohen of the New York Times , the entire editorial board of the Washington Post , most of the television networks -- are part of the campaign to pollute public opinion and whip up support on alleged "human rights" grounds for an expansion of the US war in Syria.

The 2018 election campaign marks a new stage: for the first time, military-intelligence operatives are moving in large numbers to take over a political party and seize a major role in Congress. The dozens of CIA and military veterans running in the Democratic Party primaries are "former" agents of the military-intelligence apparatus. This "retired" status is, however, purely nominal. Joining the CIA or the Army Rangers or the Navy SEALs is like joining the Mafia: no one ever actually leaves; they just move on to new assignments.

The CIA operation in 2018 is unlike its overseas activities in one major respect: it is not covert. On the contrary, the military-intelligence operatives running in the Democratic primaries boast of their careers as spies and special ops warriors. Those with combat experience invariably feature photographs of themselves in desert fatigues or other uniforms on their websites. And they are welcomed and given preferred positions, with Democratic Party officials frequently clearing the field for their candidacies.

The working class is confronted with an extraordinary political situation. On the one hand, the Republican Trump administration has more military generals in top posts than any other previous government. On the other hand, the Democratic Party has opened its doors to a "friendly takeover" by the intelligence agencies.

The incredible power of the military-intelligence agencies over the entire government is an expression of the breakdown of American democracy. The central cause of this breakdown is the extreme concentration of wealth in the hands of a tiny elite, whose interests the state apparatus and its "bodies of armed men" serve. Confronted by an angry and hostile working class, the ruling class is resorting to ever more overt forms of authoritarian rule.

Millions of working people want to fight the Trump administration and its ultra-right policies. But it is impossible to carry out this fight through the "axis of evil" that connects the Democratic Party, the bulk of the corporate media, and the CIA. The influx of military-intelligence candidates puts paid to the longstanding myth, peddled by the trade unions and pseudo-left groups, that the Democrats represent a "lesser evil." On the contrary, working people must confront the fact that within the framework of the corporate-controlled two-party system, they face two equally reactionary evils.

Patrick Martin

[Apr 24, 2018] Midwestern Democrats Want The DNC To STFU About Trump-Russia

"Brennan/CIA democrats" can't talk about about anything else because they sold themselves under Bill Clinton to Financial oligarchy. And stay sold since then.
Notable quotes:
"... do they honestly think that people that were just laid off another shift at the car plant in my home county give a shit about Russia when they don't have a frickin' job? ..."
Apr 24, 2018 | www.zerohedge.com

Democrats in midwestern battleground states want the Democratic National Committee (DNC) to back off the Trump-Russia rhetoric, as state-level leaders worry it's turning off voters.

"The DNC is doing a good job of winning New York and California," said Mahoning, OH Democratic county party chair David Betras.

"I'm not saying it's not important -- of course it's important -- but do they honestly think that people that were just laid off another shift at the car plant in my home county give a shit about Russia when they don't have a frickin' job? "

Betras says that Trump and Russia is the "only piece they've been doing since 2016. [ Trump ] keeps talking about jobs and the economy, and we talk about Russia. "

The Democratic infighting comes on the heels of a multimillion-dollar lawsuit filed by the DNC against the Trump campaign, Wikileaks and several other parties including the Russian government, alleging an illegal conspiracy to disrupt the 2016 election in a "brazen attack on American Democracy."

Many midwestern Democrats, however, are rolling their eyes.

"I'm going to be honest; I don't understand why they're doing it," one Midwestern campaign strategist told BuzzFeed. "My sense was it was a move meant to gin up the donor base, not our voters. But it was the biggest news they've made in a while."

The strategist added "I wouldn't want to see something like this coming out of the DNC in October."

Another Midwest strategist said that the suit was "politically unhelpful" and that they havent seen "a single piece of data that says voters want Democrats to relitigate 2016. ... The only ones who want to do this are Democratic activists who are already voting Democratic."

Perhaps Midwestern Democrats aren't idiots, and realize that a two-year counterintelligence operation against Donald Trump which appears to have been a coordinated "insurance policy" against a Trump win, might not be so great for optics, considering that criminal referrals have been submitted to the DOJ for individuals involved in the alleged scheme to rig the election in favor of Hillary Clinton.

[Apr 16, 2018] Why democratic party is better then Republican in the USA

Apr 16, 2018 | caucus99percent.com

"The Democratic Party is better than the Republican Party in the way that manslaughter is slightly better than murder: It might seem like a lesser crime, but the victim can't really tell the difference." -- Michael Harriot

[Apr 05, 2018] Barack Obama supporters outraged by Bernie Sanders's 'deplorable' attack on Democratic Party on anniversary of Martin Luther King assassination by Peter Stubley

Apr 05, 2018 | independent.co.uk

Vermont Senator says business model of Democratic Party has been a failure for 15 years

Bernie Sanders has triggered a backlash by making comments interpreted as an attack on [Wall Street/CIA troll] Barack Obama on the 50th anniversary of the assassination of Martin Luther King. The senator for Vermont appeared to criticise the first black US President as he branded the Democratic Party a "failure".

Speaking in Jackson, Mississippi, he said Democrats had lost a record number of legislative seats. "The business model, if you like, of the Democratic Party for the last 15 years or so has been a failure,'' said the Vermont Senator...Mr Sanders's comments were quickly branded "patronising" and "deplorable".

[Apr 02, 2018] How the East can save the West by The Saker

Notable quotes:
"... Frankly, Saker reads too much into this Chinese article. It is not about Russia. It is not because Skrypal hoax dialed ritual Russophobia over eleven. It just is a coincidence. Yet before loosing the elections Hillary was promising military war with Russia. Yet before winning the elections Trump was promising economic war with China. ..."
"... Russia`s biggest weakness is the incompetent, useless leaders they had from the 80`s to Yeltsin. The mess that the USSR left behind with unstable states on its borders with no treaty to prevent NATO expansion was a huge gift to the US that just keeps giving!! ..."
"... I`ll go as far as saying this gift to the US might lead to Russia`s end as a country in its present form. You can hardly blame the US I mean in 1990 Russia agreed to basically throw the towel in and live in a US dominated world in practice. Whatever they say about promises at the time that lasted for as long as their breath was warm ..."
"... the problem right now is the Imperial US (ruled from Israel). If it succeeds in destroying Russia, then the Chinese are irrelevant, and have nothing to say about anything. ..."
"... The US public are irretrievably useless and are going to have to go the whole way, with WW3 and/or an economic collapse, with the best bet being on WW3 (which they may well lose). ..."
Apr 01, 2018 | www.unz.com

Europe: My honor is solidarity!

"That tells you all you need to know about the difference between modern Britain and the government of Vladimir Putin. They make Novichok, we make light sabers. One a hideous weapon that is specifically intended for assassination. The other an implausible theatrical prop with a mysterious buzz. But which of those two weapons is really more effective in the world of today?".

(Boris Johnson)

Let's begin this discussion with a few, basic questions.

Question one: does anybody sincerely believe that "Putin" (the collective name for the Russian Mordor) really attempted to kill a man which "Putin" himself had released in the past, who presented no interest for Russia whatsoever who, like Berezovsky , wanted to return back to Russia , and that to do the deed "Putin" used a binary nerve agent? Question two: does anybody sincerely believe that the British have presented their "allies" (I will be polite here and use that euphemism) with incontrovertible or, at least, very strong evidence that "Putin" indeed did such a thing? Question three: does anybody sincerely believe that the mass expulsion of Russian diplomats will somehow make Russia more compliant to western demands (for our purposes, it does not matter what demands we are talking about)? Question four: does anybody sincerely believe that after this latest episode, the tensions will somehow abate or even diminish and that things will get better? Question five: does anybody sincerely believe that the current sharp rise in tensions between the AngloZionist Empire (aka the "West") does not place the Empire and Russia on collision course which could result in war, probably/possibly nuclear war, maybe not deliberately, but as the result of an escalation of incidents?

If in the zombified world of the ideological drones who actually remain in the dull trance induced by the corporate media there are most definitely those who answer "yes" to some or even all of the questions above, I submit that not a single major western decision maker sincerely believes any of that nonsense. In reality, everybody who matters knows that the Russians had nothing to do with the Skripal incident, that the Brits have shown no evidence, that the expulsion of Russian diplomats will only harden the Russian resolve, that all this anti-Russian hysteria will only get worse and that this all puts at least Europe and the USA, if not the entire planet, in great danger.

And yet what just happened is absolutely amazing: instead of using fundamental principles of western law (innocent until proven guilty by at least a preponderance of evidence or even beyond reasonable doubt), basic rules of civilized behavior (do not attack somebody you know is innocent), universally accepted ethical norms (the truth of the matter is more important than political expediency) or even primordial self-preservation instincts (I don't want to die for your cause), the vast majority of western leaders chose a new decision-making paradigm which can be summarized in two words:

"highly likely" "solidarity"

This is truly absolutely crucial and marks a fundamental change in the way the AngloZionist Empire will act from now on. Let's look at the assumptions and implications of these two concepts.

First, "highly likely". While "highly likely" does sound like a simplified version of "preponderance of evidence" what it really means is something very different and circular: "Putin" is bad, poisoning is bad, therefore it is "highly likely" that "Putin" did it. How do we know that the premise "Putin is bad" is true? Well -- he does poison people, does he not?

You think I am joking?

Check out this wonderful chart presented to the public by "Her Majesty's government" entitled "A long pattern of Russian malign activity":

In the 12 events listed as evidence of a "pattern of Russian malign activity" one is demonstratively false (2008 invasion of Georgia), one conflates two different accusations (occupation of Crimea and destabilization of the Ukraine), one is circular (assassination of Skripal) and all others are completely unproven accusations. All that is missing here is the mass rape of baby penguins by drunken Russian sailors in the south pole or the use of a secret "weather weapon" to send hurricanes towards the USA. You don't need a law degree to see that, all you need is an IQ above room temperature and a basic understanding of logic. For all my contempt for western leaders, even I wouldn't make the claim that they all lack these. So here is where "solidarity" kicks-in:

"Solidarity" in this context is simply a "conceptual placeholder" for Stephen Decatur 's famous " my country, right or wrong " applied to the entire Empire. The precedent of Meine Ehre heißt Treue just slightly rephrased into Meine Ehre heißt Solidarität also comes to mind.

Solidarity simply means that the comprador ruling elites of the West will say and do whatever the hell the AngloZionists tell them to. If tomorrow the UK or US leaders proclaim that Putin eats babies for breakfast or that the West needs to send a strong message to "Putin" that a Russian invasion of Vanuatu shall not be tolerated, then so be it: the entire AngloZionist nomenklatura will sing the song in full unison and to hell with facts, logic or even decency!

Solemnly proclaiming lies is hardly something new in politics, there is nothing new here. What is new are two far more recent developments: first, now everybody knows that these are lies and, second, nobody challenges or debunks them. Welcome to the AngloZionist New World Order indeed!

The Empire: by way of deception thou shalt do war

Ye are of your father the devil, and the lusts of your father ye will do. He was a murderer from the beginning, and abode not in the truth because there is no truth in him. When he speaketh a lie, he speaketh of his own: for he is a liar and the father of it.

(John 8:44)

ORDER IT NOW

Over the past weeks I have observed something which I find quite interesting: both on Russian TV channels and in the English speaking media there is a specific type of anti-Putin individual who actually takes a great deal of pride in the fact that the Empire has embarked on a truly unprecedented campaign of lies against Russia. These people view lies as just another tool in a type of "political toolkit" which can be used like any other political technique. As I have mentioned in the past, the western indifference to the truth is something very ancient coming, as it does, from the Middle-Ages: roughly when the spiritual successors of the Franks in Rome decided that their own, original brand of "Christianity" had no use for 1000 years of Consensus Patrum . Scholasticism and an insatiable thrust for worldly, secular, power produced both moral relativism and colonialism (with the Pope's imprimatur in the form of the Treaty of Tordesillas ). The Reformation (with its very pronounced Judaic influence) produced the bases of modern capitalism which, as Lenin correctly diagnosed, has imperialism as its highest stage. Now that the West is losing its grip on the planet (imagine that, some SOB nations dare resist!), all of the ideological justifications have been tossed away and we are left with the true, honest, bare-bones impulses of the leaders of the Empire: messianic hubris (essentially self-worship), violence and, above all, a massive reliance on deception and lies on every single level of society, from the commercial advertisements targeted at children to Colin Powell shaking some laundry detergent at the UNSC to justify yet another war of aggression.

Self-worship and a total reliance on brute force and falsehoods -- these are the real "Western values" today. Not the rule of law, not the scientific method, not critical thought, not pluralism and most definitely not freedom. We are back, full circle, to the kind of illiterate thuggery the Franks so perfectly embodied and which made them so infamous in the (then) civilized world (the south and eastern Mediterranean). The agenda, by the way, is also the same one as the Franks had 1000 years ago: either submit to us and accept our dominion, or die, and the way to accept our dominion is to let us plunder all your riches. Again, not much difference here between the sack of the First Rome in 410, the sack of the Second Rome in 1204 and the sack of the Third Rome in 1991. As psychologists well know, the best predictor of future behavior is past behavior.

Interestingly, the Chinese saw straight through this strategic psyop and they are now sounding the alarm in their very official Global Times : (emphasis added)

The accusations that Western countries have hurled at Russia are based on ulterior motives, similar to how the Chinese use the expression "perhaps it's true" to seize upon the desired opportunity. From a third-person perspective, the principles and diplomatic logic behind such drastic efforts are flawed, not to mention that expelling Russian diplomats almost simultaneously is a crude form of behavior. Such actions make little impact other than increasing hostility and hatred between Russia and their Western counterparts ( ) The fact that major Western powers can gang up and "sentence" a foreign country without following the same procedures other countries abide by and according to the basic tenets of international law is chilling. During the Cold War, not one Western nation would have dared to make such a provocation and yet today it is carried out with unrestrained ease. Such actions are nothing more than a form of Western bullying that threatens global peace and justice. ( ) It is beyond outrageous how the US and Europe have treated Russia. Their actions represent a frivolity and recklessness that has grown to characterize Western hegemony that only knows how to contaminate international relations. Right now is the perfect time for non-Western nations to strengthen unity and collaborative efforts among one another. These nations need to establish a level of independence outside the reach of Western influence while breaking the chains of monopolization declarations, predetermined adjudications and come to value their own judgment abilities. ( ) The West is only a small fraction of the world and is nowhere near the global representative it once thought it was. The silenced minorities within the international community need to realize this and prove just how deep their understanding is of such a realization by proving it to the world through action.

As the French say " à bon entendeur, salut! ": the Chinese position is crystal clear, as is the warning. I would summarize it as so: if the West is an AngloZionist doormat, then the East is most definitely not.

[Sidebar: I know that there are some countries in Europe who have, so far, shown the courage to resist the AngloZionist Diktat . Good for them. I will wait to see how long they can resist the pressure before giving them a standing ovation]

The modern Ahnenerbe' Generalplan Ost

The decision, therefore, lies here in the East; here must the Russian enemy, this people numbering two hundred million Russians, be destroyed on the battlefield and person by person, and made to bleed to death

(Reichsführer Heinrich Himmler)

Still, none of that explain why the leaders of the Empire have decided to engage in a desperate game of "nuclear chicken" to try to, yet again, force Russia to comply with its demands to "go away and shut up". This is counter-intuitive and I get several emails each week telling me that there is absolutely no way the leaders of the AngloZionist Empire would want a war with Russia, especially not a nuclear-armed one. The truth is that while western leaders are most definitely psychopaths, they are neither stupid nor suicidal, and neither were Napoleon or Hitler! And, yes, they probably don't really want a full-scale war with Russia. The problem is that these rulers are also desperate, and for good cause.

Let's look at the situation just a few months ago. The US was defeated in Syria, ridiculed in the DPRK, Trump was hated in Europe, the Russians and the Germans were working on North Stream, the British leaders forced to at least pretend to work on Brexit, the entire "Ukrainian" project had faceplanted, the sanctions against Russia had failed, Putin was more popular than ever and the hysterical anti-Trump campaign was still in full swing inside the USA. The next move by the AngloZionist elites was nothing short of brilliant: by organizing a really crude false flag in the UK the Empire achieved the following results:

The Europeans have been forced right back into the Anglosphere's fold ("solidarity", remember?) The Brexiting Brits are now something like the (im-)moral leaders of Europe again. The Russians are now demonized to such a degree that any accusation, no matter how stupid, will stick. In the Middle-East, the US and Israel now have free reign to start any war they want because the (purely theoretical) European capability to object to anything the Anglos want has now evaporated, especially now that the Russians have become "known chemical-criminals" from Ghouta to Salisbury At the very least, the World Cup in Russia will be sabotaged by a massive anti-Russian campaign. If that campaign is really successful, there is still the hope that the Germans will finally cave in and, if maybe not outright cancel, then at least very much delay North Stream thereby forcing the Europeans to accept, what else, US gas.

This is an ambitious plan and, barring an unexpected development, it sure looks like it might work. The problem with this strategy is that it falls short of getting Russia to truly "go away and shut up". Neocons are particularly fond of humiliating their enemies (look at how they are still gunning for Trump even though by now the poor man has become their most subservient servant) and there is a lot of prestige at stake here. Russia, therefore, must be humiliated, truly humiliated, not just by sabotaging her participation in Olympic games or by expelling Russian diplomats, but by something far more tangible like, say, an attack on the very small and vulnerable Russian task force in Syria. Herein lies the biggest risk.

The Russian task force in Syria is tiny, at least compared to the immense capabilities of CENTCOM+NATO. The Russians have warned that if they are attacked, they will shoot down not only the attacking missiles but also their launchers. Since the Americans are not dumb enough to expose their aircraft to Russian air defenses, they will use air power only outside the range of Russian air defenses and they will use only cruise missiles to strike targets inside the "protection cone" of the Russians air defenses. The truth is that I doubt that the Russians will have the opportunity to shoot down many US aircraft, at least not with their long-range S-300/S-400 SAMs. Their ubiquitous and formidable combined short to medium range surface-to-air missile and anti-aircraft artillery weapon system, the Pantsir, might have a better chance simply because it's location is impossible to predict. But the real question is this: will the Russians shoot back at the USN ships if they launch cruise missiles at Syria?

My strictly personal guess is that they won't unless Khmeimim, Tartus or another large Russian objective (official Russian compounds in Damascus) are hit. Striking a USN ship would be tantamount to an act of war and that is just not something the Russians will do if they can avoid it. The problem with that is this restraint will, yet again, be interpreted as a sign of weakness, not civilization, by the "modern Franks" (visualize a Neanderthal with a nuclear club in his fist). Should the Russians decide to act à la American and use violence to "send a message", the Empire will immediately perceive that as a loss of face and a reason to immediately escalate further to reestablish the "appropriate" hierarchy between the "indispensable nation" and the "gas station masquerading as a country". So here is the dynamic at work

Russia limits herself to words of protests ==>> the Empire sees that as a sign of weakness and escalates

Russia responds in kind with real actions==>> The Empire feels humiliated and escalates

Now look at this from a Russian point of view for a second and ask yourself what you would do in this situation?

The answer, I think, is obvious: you try to win as much time as possible and you prepare for war. The Russians have been doing exactly that since at least early 2015.

For Russia this is really nothing new: been there, done that, and remember it very, very well, by the way. The "western project" for Russia has always been the same since the Middle-Ages, the only difference today is the consequences of war. With each passing century the human cost of the various western crusades against Russia got worse and worse and now we are not only looking at the very real possibility of another Borodino or Kursk, and not even at another Hiroshima, but at something which we can't even really imagine: hundreds of millions of people die in the course of just a few hours.

How do we stop that?

Is the West even capable of acting in a different way?

I very much doubt it.

The one actor who can stop the upcoming war: China

There is one actor which might, perhaps, stop the current skid towards Armageddon: China. Right now, the Chinese have officially declared that they have what they call a " comprehensive strategic partnership of cooperation " later shortened to " strategic partnership ". This is a very apt expression as it does not speak of an "alliance": two countries of the size of Russia and China cannot have an alliance in the traditional sense -- they are too big and different for that. They are, however, in a symbiotic relationship, that both sides understand perfectly (see this White Paper for details). What this means in very simple terms is this: the Chinese cannot let Russia be defeated by the Empire because once Russia is gone, they will be left one on one with a united, triumphal and infinitely arrogant West (likewise I would argue that Russia cannot afford to have Iran defeated by the Empire for exactly the same reasons, and neither can Iran let the Israelis destroy Hezbollah). Of course, in terms of military power, China is a dwarf compared to Russia, but in terms of economic power Russia is the dwarf when compared to China in this "strategic community of interests". Thus, China cannot assist Russia militarily. But remember that Russia does not need this if only because military assistance is what you need to win a war. Russia does not want to win a war, Russia desperately needs to avoid a war! And here is where China can make a huge difference: psychologically.

Yes, the Empire is currently taking on both Russia and China, but everybody, from its leaders to its zombified population, seems to think that these are two, different and separate foes. [We can use this opportunity to most sincerely thank Donald Trump for so "perfectly" timing his trade war with China.] They are not: not only are Russia and China symbionts who share the same vision of a prosperous and peaceful Eurasia united by a common future centered around the OBOR and, crucially, free from the US dollar or, for that matter, from any type of major US role, but Russia and China also stand for exactly the same notion of a post-hegemonic world order: a multi-polar world of different and truly sovereign nations living together under the rules of international law. If the AngloZionists have their way, this will never happen. Instead, we will have the New World Order promised by Bush, dominated by the Anglosphere countries (basically the ECHELON members, aka the "Five Eyes") and, on top of that pyramid, the global Zionist overlord. This is something China cannot, and will not allow. Neither can China allow a US-Russian war, especially not a nuclear one because China, like Russia, also needs peace.

Conclusion

I don't see what Russia could do to convince the Empire to change its current course: the US leaders are delusional and the Europeans are their silent, submissive servants. As shown above, whatever Russia does it always invites further escalation from the Empire. Of course, Russia can turn the West into a pile of smoldering radioactive ashes. This is hardly a solution since, in the inevitable exchange, Russia herself will also be turned into a similar pile of smoldering radioactive ashes by the Empire. In spite of that, the Russian people have most clearly indicated by their recent vote that they have absolutely no intention of caving in to the latest western crusade against them. As for the Empire, it will never accept the fact that Russia refuses to submit. It therefore seems to me that the only thing which can stop Armageddon would be for the Chinese to ceaselessly continue to repeat to the rulers of the Empire and the people of the West what the wrote in the article quoted above: that " The West is only a small fraction of the world and is nowhere near the global representative it once thought it was" and "the silenced minorities within the international community need to realize this and prove just how deep their understanding is of such a realization by proving it to the world through action."

History teaches us that the West only strikes against those opponents it sees as defenseless or, at least, weaker. The fact that the Popes, Napoleon or Hitler were wrong in their evaluation of the strength of Russia does not change this truism. In fact, the Neocons today are making exactly the same mistake. So telling them about the fact that Russia is much stronger than what the western propaganda says and which, apparently, many western rulers believe (you always end up believing your own propaganda), does not help. Russian "reminders of reality" will do no good simply because the West is out of touch with reality and lacks the ability to understand its own limitations and weaknesses. But if China stepped in and conveyed that crucial message " The West is only a small fraction of the world " and that the rest of the world will prove this " through action " then other countries will step in and a war can be averted because even the current delusion-based "solidarity" will collapse in the face of a united Eurasia.

Russia alone cannot continue to carry the burden of stopping the messianic psychopaths ruling the Empire.

The rest of the world, led by China, now needs to step in to avert the war.


NoseytheDuke , March 30, 2018 at 6:49 am GMT

This plan for global dominance has been over 100 years in the making and has already cost over 100 million lives so far. How likely is it for them to back off now? The Chinese are far from stupid so it will be interesting to see how they view the situation and act.

I've stated previously that the people who really can put a halt to it are Americans themselves but it won't be easy. The ideal situation would be a mass mutiny of US military personnel and the line, The Empire: by way of deception thou shalt do war should probably read, The Israeli Empire: by way of deception thou shalt do war. It would be useful to repeat this ad nauseam until it truly sinks in for US military personnel that the US is a supplicant to Israel and to understand who they will be fighting and dying for. A mass mutiny would be the best way to save their families and future.

Anon [425] Disclaimer , March 30, 2018 at 7:16 am GMT
Again, not much difference here between the sack of the First Rome in 410, the sack of the Second Rome in 1204 and the sack of the Third Rome in 1991. As psychologists well know, the best predictor of future behavior is past behavior.

But all three Romes were empires too filled with lies.

yurivku , March 30, 2018 at 11:00 am GMT
Oh, appears it's China who should do something !

But I think that if stupid westerners won't wake up, -- nobody will help. China is big and possibly can think that in world where no Russia, no Europe nor US/Canada are exist, some place will still be for China.

It's "higly posssible" a mistake, but if silly westerners will continue to munch their MSM grass their shadows will be printed on the walls of history.
Actually they deserve to be.

Seamus Padraig , March 30, 2018 at 11:53 am GMT

"Solidarity" in this context is simply a "conceptual placeholder" for Stephen Decatur's famous "my country, right or wrong" applied to the entire Empire.

Kind of disappointed in the Saker here. Just like liberals, he omits the rest of Decatur's famous toast: "Our country -- in her intercourse with foreign nations, may she always be in the right , and always successful, right or wrong. [ Emphasis mine. ]" Decatur was not trying to encourage amoral behavior, such as that which we now see with the AngloZionists running Washington.

By the way, I've heard the Russians are now telling a joke about Boris Johnson: they're saying he was poisoned with durachok (bonehead)!

Issac , March 30, 2018 at 3:53 pm GMT
China has deep ties to the western empire. Russians would be drinking too deeply from their own propaganda to miss this fact. Indeed, the latest crippling of Trumpist reform was lead by heavily Chinese invested men Ryan and McConnell. Israel has a strong grip on US foreign policy for obvious reasons, but Israel has no reason to see Russia bullied into submission. China does.

It should be plain to any objective observer of global politics that the west is internally incoherent and will wane in power by the crush weight of demographic change alone. China observes this and realizes the only long-term competitor to their ascendant position, one generation hence, is an independent Russia. Far better for the Chinese that Russia is mortally wounded or harried into Chinese vassal status before the west breaks down into a third world non-entity.

Fran Macadam , March 30, 2018 at 5:22 pm GMT
The real reasons for the expulsions is the revelation of Russia's next generation war weapons. It was taken up as an invitation to fight, not to make peace, and making it as hard as possible for Russians to either influence opinion or gather information.

Somebody wanted Skripal dead, and while it may be a useful false flag provocation, with his involvement with the Steele Dossier a possible trigger, it could be serving more than one purpose. As usual, we are assigning to the Russkies both more omnipotence and stupidity than is merited. I supoose it is our own elites who believe their omniscience in surveilling all of us means they are also smarter than the rest of us. Maybe

Boris M Garsky , March 30, 2018 at 6:18 pm GMT
Well said and accurate. There is no consensus among the hoipolloi with the neocon push for war. This will never come about. The west is desperate, no doubt, and will continue to beat its chest, much to its own detriment. If the west intended on war, it would have come about. Time is not on their side. The neocons have backed themselves into a corner and, therefore, must create chaos, camouflage, obfuscation, in order to bamboozle the world until they can safely go back into their holes. Most likely, they are looking for concessions. Remember the Wasserman-Schuiltz spy scandal? Remember the many deadly false flags being exposed to the public for what they are?
Arioch , Website March 30, 2018 at 6:25 pm GMT
Frankly, Saker reads too much into this Chinese article. It is not about Russia. It is not because Skrypal hoax dialed ritual Russophobia over eleven. It just is a coincidence. Yet before loosing the elections Hillary was promising military war with Russia. Yet before winning the elections Trump was promising economic war with China.

USA ruling 1% was making a strategic choice year ago.

When Trump got elected he inherited the raging war. He could not stop it, obviously. Then he turned it overboard. He started demanding so many wars at once that US Army got overstretched and paralyzed. Syria, Afghanistan, Iraq, Itan, Yemen, Korea, new European garrisons . Trump send Army to prepare to war everywhere and now Pentagon can not scratch together enough forces to attack anywhere specifically.
By his "clumsy and incompetent bravado" Trump neutralized the army, made and exposed it as incapable pretend-force.

Now Trump can switch to his programme -- economic war with China.

And that is why Chinese diplomats and media run crazy. Now it is their war, not Russia's. Now their tails are on the line. Now Russia mostly can move to backlines to lick wounds while China would exchange blows and collect bruises.

This turned recent Chinese statements so bald and pushing. This, and not a concern for Russia.

JVC , March 30, 2018 at 6:42 pm GMT
something the Russians might consider -- immediately cutting off all gas to Europe and restoring such service for payment only in gold or the new "petrol yuan" . Europe depends heavily on that Russian Gas, and such a move would re-align some European thinking. Replacing it with US provided LPG would take far too long and be much more expensive having to be shipped by sea

In fact, maybe if Russia, China, the other brics and aligned countries suddenly cut off all ties to the west, it would hasten the coming economic collapse of the EU and US, and that dreamed of multipolar world would arise from the ashes.
Better that than the ashes of a nuclear exchange I would think.

CARLOS231 , March 30, 2018 at 6:57 pm GMT
China is too smart to show its hand yet, they are building their economic & military strength quietly, they don't want to scare the westerners yet with threats.

Russia`s biggest weakness is the incompetent, useless leaders they had from the 80`s to Yeltsin. The mess that the USSR left behind with unstable states on its borders with no treaty to prevent NATO expansion was a huge gift to the US that just keeps giving!!

I`ll go as far as saying this gift to the US might lead to Russia`s end as a country in its present form. You can hardly blame the US I mean in 1990 Russia agreed to basically throw the towel in and live in a US dominated world in practice. Whatever they say about promises at the time that lasted for as long as their breath was warm .

Carlton Meyer , Website March 30, 2018 at 9:16 pm GMT
How the East Can Save the West

A couple centuries ago the phrase "The White Man's Burden" was used to explain why citizens of Western nations must devote resources to civilize the world. Gore Vidal used "The Yellow Man's Burden" to explain why citizens of Asian nations were devoting so much wealth to keep the USA and much of Europe wealthy. If our citizens suddenly lost 30% of their annual income due to tax increases and spending cuts needed to truly balance our national budgets, they would be outraged. They might learn that this was the result of "free trade", which might result in revolution and wars. Those who have profited off "free trade" by selling out their citizens know its best to let the working class learn this truth slowly.

_____________________

Trump's proclamation to pull out of Syria may be good news, but probably not. He hired psychopath Bolton, so we can assume the US military is just consolidating forces in Iraq to hold off attacks whilst they bomb, bomb, bomb Iran. The Iraqis aren't our allies, they just act to get free stuff, and they will know we are not bombing Iran to save Iranians. It might be wise to get our troops out of Iraq too!

____________________________

To answer:

Let's begin this discussion with a few, basic questions.

Question one (thru five): does anybody sincerely believe

Yes, this bimbo does, and she's the State Department spokesman. The State Department is still infected with Clinton-hysteria and uses sexy women to spin lies so the foreign press doesn't laugh and scorn absurd BS too loudly. The American press are just stenographers and eagerly copy her lies. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dL9UxED4uuI

Sergey Krieger , March 30, 2018 at 9:50 pm GMT
The problem is that Russia/USSR submitted once and the West think it can be achieved again. Hence everything must be made clear. No partners word should be used and the West must be clearly warned that violence of unimaginable level will be used if they dare and what will follow if Russian force anywhere attacked and that any use of nukes against Russia means the end of humanity.

Unfortunately acting adequately and carefully Russia never was able to avoid war. It is in the books. Right now bets are life on earth hence being too careful and being perceived as weak is a bad thing. Russia IMHO must act boldly. Respond to USA and UK harassment by cutting diplomatic relations and giving straight terse warning.

myself , March 30, 2018 at 10:27 pm GMT
@Godfree Roberts

I think what disturbs China about this whole situation regarding the ENTIRE Western world (US, Canada, Western Europe, Australia) is not simply that it is an overreaction to Russia, but the whole idea that one particular people -- the Russian people -- have once again been SINGLED OUT for collective intimidation and eventually for possible dismemberment.

China has very long and very bitter experience of this itself. In the 19th century, the imperial powers, for some reason, ganged up on China.

In other parts of the world, the experience of other backward peoples was with but ONE particular Empire (ex. only the Americans vs the Amerinds, only the Spanish in South America, only Great Britain in India and Australia, only Russians in Central Asia and Siberia, and only Japanese in Korea. The British, French, Germans, Italians and Belgians each had separate RIVAL spheres in Africa, and ditto for South-East Asia.

But when it came to China, ALL these competing powers set aside their differences. It's as if they said to each other "Hey, China is so enormous and juicy, we should not fight among ourselves, there's enough for everyone!" Unbelievably vicious.

And now, we see the same pattern. the whole Western world against Russia. I think in this instance, the Han don't need anyone to tell them what to think -- it is 100% certain they do not approve of what the collective West is doing.

Miro23 , March 30, 2018 at 10:37 pm GMT

But if China stepped in and conveyed that crucial message "The West is only a small fraction of the world"

They can do better than this, and explicitly state that a nuclear war with Russia is a nuclear war with China -- just to make it clear -- and let the US do some more realistic calculations.

Seamus Padraig , March 30, 2018 at 10:45 pm GMT
@Issac

Israel has a strong grip on US foreign policy for obvious reasons, but Israel has no reason to see Russia bullied into submission.

Sure they do: Syria.

Seamus Padraig , March 30, 2018 at 10:47 pm GMT
@Arioch

"war is a path of deceit. When you are strong -- pretend weak ."

Am familiar with Sun-tzu a well. But what are you saying here? That the UK is stronger than Russia. I would definitely have to disagree with that proposition!

Miro23 , March 30, 2018 at 11:06 pm GMT
@Issac

It should be plain to any objective observer of global politics that the west is internally incoherent and will wane in power by the crush weight of demographic change alone. China observes this and realizes the only long-term competitor to their ascendant position, one generation hence, is an independent Russia.

Maybe, but the problem right now is the Imperial US (ruled from Israel). If it succeeds in destroying Russia, then the Chinese are irrelevant, and have nothing to say about anything.

myself , March 30, 2018 at 11:15 pm GMT
Something just occurred to me.

The recent THREATENED tariffs have an INTERESTING TIMING to them. It is being used by Washington to convince China to stay passive as the West takes down Russia. Conversely, if China "bends the knee", then the West promises that the threats won't materialize. (The West loves worthless promises). Washington calculates that the mere threat of tariffs will make China stand by as a neighbor is destroyed. Any turmoil in your neighbor's house, spills over into yours whether you want it to or not. A neighbor is a neighbor, period.

And THAT, IMHO, is why the protectionist threats are happening NOW. Don't get me wrong, the tariffs were going to happen anyway, eventually. China, whatever it does, cannot escape them.

But to threaten a trade war RIGHT NOW with the one power guaranteed to be Russia's economic lifeline (we know that China couldn't care less what Russia does in its backyard, in the Ukraine) while preparing to attack Russia itself? Well, the whole thing is WAY TOO OBVIOUS.

And if someone like me can see, so can a lot of other people in Moscow and Beijing. Washington thinks its being "smart", but they are so ridiculously easy to read.

myself , March 30, 2018 at 11:24 pm GMT
@Seamus Padraig

No, not that UK is really stronger than Russia but appears weaker. It's that the West is actually not capable of defeating Russia but loudly shouts that it CAN defeat them easily, and tries to look powerful and intimidating to Russia. In this situation, the weaker-positioned West pretends to Russia that we are stronger, and we want Russia to believe us. That way, it won't come to actual war, and we think Russia will back down. It's an extremely risky plan.

Miro23 , March 30, 2018 at 11:26 pm GMT
@peterAUS

That could, perhaps, take minds of US citizens from shopping and social media to, perhaps, more serious matters.

Won't hold my breath.

Taking everything into account, I think the you're right. The US public are irretrievably useless and are going to have to go the whole way, with WW3 and/or an economic collapse, with the best bet being on WW3 (which they may well lose).

myself , March 30, 2018 at 11:39 pm GMT
In fact, it's very possible RUSSIA is NOT, at this time, the target of Western aggression. Sure, the West shall SURELY try to destroy Russia, but the urgency is not there YET. Maybe the real target right now is CHINA, shortly to have the world's largest economy in absolute terms. They must be destroyed NOW! The West is trying to cut a deal with Russia: "Stab China in the back, and bow down to us. You can live A LITTLE LONGER, before we come for you. Otherwise we get pissed and kill you TODAY".

An entirely plausible master-plan from Washington, London and Paris. Also a pretty transparent one, if it's the case. The problem with this "Divide and Conquer" plan, aside from being easy to read, is that it counts on both Russia and China to be dumb enough to believe they are not BOTH in the cross-hairs. How stupid does the West think China and Russia are?

myself , March 30, 2018 at 11:47 pm GMT
@Miro23

It would have a psychological effect, at most. Russia has 5,000 warheads, China only admits to having around 500 or 600 strategic city-killers. They may have more, but if you don't admit something it doesn't count for deterrence. Maybe a decade from now, as China builds its arsenal, the statement could be much more effective.

Mikel , March 31, 2018 at 12:09 am GMT
No, the Chinese are surely disgusted with this bullying behavior of the West (even many Europeans are, just read the comments to the news in the different media outlets) but China cannot seriously confront the West. That would make them lose trillions of dollars in exports and investments and put an abrupt end to their miraculous but still ongoing economic development. Not gonna happen anytime soon.

The situation will continue to deteriorate until some sort of modus vivendi is reached (like at the beginning of the first Cold War). Or perhaps it's just been too long since the last World War and the time is ripe for the next one.

As for the Skripal murder attempt, it's hard to imagine Putin ordering it at this time and in that manner but it's not that hard to imagine someone from the Kremlin sewers being behind it.

In the somewhat less likely scenario of a false flag operation, I would consider an Israeli asymmetrical response to the recent downing of their jet by the Syrians with obvious help from the Russians. They have plenty of experience in extraterritorial assassinations and more than enough knowledge to fabricate a Russian-like nerve agent.

Franklin , March 31, 2018 at 12:22 am GMT
@Anon

I respect and value Saker as a commentator on Russian and military affairs. Those are his areas of expertise and professional experience. I do not value him as a historian, because there enters into his writing a clear bias. I respect the fact of his commitment to his Orthodox faith, but I don't appreciate being almost hammerlocked into having to take a side in his prejudices.

He has a way of lumping 1,000 years of exceedingly complex history into what amounts practically to silly formulas that remind one of adolescent pique. West is characterized by "thuggery," whereas the "East," is presumably the source -- and is possibly the monopoly -- of the virtues Saker has in mind, while Western-like manifestations of military violence and conquest are unknown there.

And there is this pearl: "Scholasticism and an insatiable thrust for worldly, secular, power produced both moral relativism and colonialism " This is downright embarrassing in its silliness. Of course, after deep study of Aquinas or Bonaventure the light comes on: moral relativism! Clearly, subtlety and essential distinctions are not the Saker's strong points, to say the least, when it comes to registering his annoyance and bitterness in his 1000 year view of "the West," whereas sweeping and frankly spectacularly inept generalizations are. One is really tempted to accuse him of a lack of intellectual integrity when it comes to these matters.

At root, Saker is a highly emotional and touchy "rooter" for Orthodoxy. Fine, that's his right, but he is no scholar. One looks in vain either for impartiality, for breadth and depth of understanding and sympathy, and hence for generosity of spirit. Thankfully, there are many great scholars of history, East and West.

Johann Ricke , March 31, 2018 at 1:01 am GMT
@myself

In the 19th century, the imperial powers, for some reason, ganged up on China.

That's the opposite of reality. If they had ganged up on China, each would have taken large piece for itself. In reality, they were overawed by China, and tried to preserve it much as they tried to preserve Ottoman rule against both breakup and dismemberment by Russia. The Ottomans were too far gone, so they failed in both respects. But they did manage to prevent China's breakup while failing to keep Russia from annexing a large chunk of Chinese territory.

Heck, they even helped China defeat the millenarian Taiping rebels who racked up a large body count during their rebellion. Note that when the Jurchens detected internal rebellion during the Ming dynasty, they waited until the imperial armies were occupied with rebel suppression before delivering the coup de grace to the Ming dynasty. The Western powers were too tied up competing with each other to really cooperate in anything more than avenging the honor of their envoys and getting trading posts set up on Chinese territory.

myself , March 31, 2018 at 2:06 am GMT
@Johann Ricke

By "ganging up" I refer to the way in which China was COLLECTIVELY FORCED to extend any and all concessions granted any single Imperial Power to ALL Imperial powers. And all the Imperial powers were on-board with this policy , again as a unified group.

For example, if Russia forced a railroad treaty on China, China by unequal, at-gun-point "Treaty" with the Eight Powers (at the time Great Britain, France, Japan, Germany, Russia, The United States, Austria-Hungary and Italy) would also have to grant EVERYONE railroad concessions in their respective zones.

Or say if China was forced to open trade relations by America, China would automatically be forced to open trade to EVERYONE ELSE , and even the instigators in that case, the United States, would force China to do it. All in the name of the relevant Treaties, of course.

Also by mutual agreement among the imperial powers, they would not support China in any efforts to get better terms in any negotiation with any other power . So Russia refused to, say provide support for Chinese efforts to fend off the Japanese, though normally it might have done so. This was because, both being part of the Imperial Powers grouping, Russia and Japan had agreed to co-exist in mutual exploitation of China.

It was all designed so that China would have no ability to shift its favor diplomatically from one power to another, but had to negotiate from a position of deliberately imposed weakness. Diplomacy was the only tool available to China in that execrably weak state, pathetic as that tool was. By collective agreement among the Empires, that tool was taken away.

In effect, exploitation of China became a COOPERATIVE project between such disparate rivals as Britain, France and Germany, or United States, Japan and Russia. Such a thing, of a coordinated desire to apportion one country among many, was not seen anywhere else in the Colonial Age .

That is my meaning when I referred to the Empires "ganging up" on China.

Issac , March 31, 2018 at 2:37 am GMT
@Miro23

How absurd. The foremost producer of virtually all modern goods is irrelevant without Russia? A weakened Russia is a boon to Chinese expansion into their desired role as Eurasian leader state. The only irrelevant nations are in the West as their post-national suicide becomes all the more certain.

Anonymous [392] Disclaimer , March 31, 2018 at 4:03 am GMT
@Issac

Ridiculous, China needs Russia as Russia is a perfect complement to Chinas weaknesses. In fact, neither China nor Russia could have picked a better strategic partner than each other as neither country could confront the West on it's own but together the West cannot topple either nation. No other combination between countries would provide near as much synergies.

China is not looking to expand into Russia. Why would they when they have a shrinking population. They are expanding into the SCS in order to keep their oil lines free.

The real strategic advantage Russia and China have with each other is the OBOR. This is key to everything and is the reason why the West is targeting Russia so aggressively.

myself , March 31, 2018 at 8:13 am GMT
@Anonymous

If Mackinder's Heartland theory is at play, and you want to cut China off from Europe, taking down Russia would seem to be an enormous effort to accomplish that. There are much easier ways. Why not just lobby your European "allies" not to trade at all with China? Mission accomplished, and no war with Russia as a bonus. If the EU won't follow the Empire's orders, you need to take out not only Russia, but probably Pakistan, and all the Central Asian nations, plus Iran and Turkey. If not, and you only destroy one or a few of these, China's One Belt One Road reaches Europe anyway.

Also don't forget the outright blockade of China's maritime trade to be conducted by the U.S. Navy -- kind of an act of war in itself.

Seems far easier, if you want to slow China down, to just ORDER America's NATO allies to stop all trade with China. The rest of the world all together won't be able to fill the gap, not any time soon.

Voila, you lower China's GDP growth by some significant percentage, using just strong-arm diplomacy in Europe.

Buys America another full decade as number one economy, maybe.

myself , March 31, 2018 at 8:29 am GMT
In the fevered dreams of Western strategists, they hope for Russia and China to turn on each other, sparing the Atlantic powers the trouble. Then, they come in and pick up the pieces. They hope to replicate the success of Britain in playing off France against Germany pre-World War One. The problem is they have in fact encouraged the Sino-Russian strategic alignment, not hindered it.

No matter, after all, there can never be such a thing, thought the British, of a long-term common interest between France and Germany -- a "European Union" will never come about. French and Germans naturally hate each other! Right?

And how did Britain make out with that thinking? How will America make out in coming decades? In geopolitics, not that well. Not as long as we are short-sighted.

Anon [384] Disclaimer , March 31, 2018 at 2:11 pm GMT

"solidarity"

Those with the power, and the happily ruled, have always needed synonyms for "obedience." Solidarity is a choice in line with our social-mediatic times and the related communication standards.

Herald , March 31, 2018 at 3:36 pm GMT
@myself

As well as being extremely risky it's also bloody stupid and doomed to failure.

Arioch , March 31, 2018 at 3:40 pm GMT
@Seamus Padraig

I mean, like i said above, Johnson and other western politicians are not "boneheads" (intellectually weak) as you said, no, they are smart (intellectually strong) and pretending, faking their intellectual weakness (appearance of stupidity)

Sean , March 31, 2018 at 5:35 pm GMT
Answers:-
One and two. Proof beyond reasonable doubt does not mean there is no chance of a mistake, and the standard necessary for thinking Putin responsible is less than what would be needed for finding him guilty in a court of law. He cannot hide behind his country and diplomatic immunity while claiming the protection of British Law for evidence necessary to convict someone on trial for a capital offence.

Three. We want nothing from Russia , for indeed they have nothing to offer. To go away and shut up is the most they can do, and that is why are sending the worst of the Russian goons back were they came from, whether they want to go back or not (they would love to stay in London*).

Four. Punishment is essential, otherwise they will see weakness.

Five. No chance of nuclear war or any other kind or war. Russia is destined to become the lonely old man of Europe. It has nothing anyone wants at the price of being treated like an imbecile, and our diplomats dislike living there*).

Arioch , March 31, 2018 at 8:22 pm GMT
@TT

Oh, we have a copypaste contest? Okay then, i'd copy here my reply at saker's blog too.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

[MORE]
> China will be blackmailed into submission.

Wooop! Then it is not "existential threat" for China.
Clash for power, clash for sovereignty, clash fo prosperity -- but not for survival.

> Russia & China are working closely

Which does not mean China's role is making harsh diplomatic statements in favor of Russia. At least it was not so before today. So i think it is not today either. Also remember that Chinese social mindset is build upon idea of "indebting with gifts and aids" and then requesting payback when they need it. Which means Russia should be very wary about accepting any help from China unless it wishes to be seen by China as a deeply indebted beggar incapable of sustaining itself. And since diplomatic situation for Russia is not deadly critical I do not think Russia needed that newspaper article. If Russia would request China's support of the kind -- it would be in official diplomatic venues like UN.

> Russia needs to save Syria for its own skin
> Iran needs to save its skin

But is it so for China? Is China in critical need of sovereign and friendly Syria? I doubt it.

> China has been backing up with big cheque book for last few years, signing hundreds of billions deal with upfront payments to prop Russia economy for prolong war.

Which is very important, but is not diplomatic statements nor Chinese newspaper articles.

That is exactly the Chinese role in this fight like i said many times before -- economic and financial warfare is Chinese responsibility, while military and diplomatic warfare is Russian's.

> Global times news mostly reflected the China think tank policy that they wish to propagate to English speaking world.

And here we are getting back to the topic. Why such a harsh, explicitly worded article did appeared today? Was it because of Russia or of China itself? Was that article reaction to some new threat to Syria, to russia, or to China itself?
And i believe in the latter option. This article is not linked to any recent events around Russia, it is caused by Sino-American relations shift.

> China has sensed West is tightened noose around Russia to cut it off from world, seeing from Olympic & now the Skirpal circus

Skripal affair is much less than Olympics was. Even European states many did not jumped Skripal wagon. Additionally, if Russia would be "cut off from Western world" -- what the West did not dared to do even in 2014 on the height of Crimea and MH17 accusations and on the hopes of "gas station" imminent and fast collapse, so would hardly dare now just because some Skripal -- but if Russia would somehow gets politically isolated from the West, what bad is it for China? Russia would become more dependent on China, like many of the trade with West would had to go through Chinese "laundry". China gets more influence over Russia. Russia gets much more limited in its options. Good (for China) development, why hurry to cancel it before Russia even asked for ?

> Trade war will be too bloody for the world

Yes, but the said trade war is not having Russia as primary adversary -- Russian economy i not that significant to the western world, and for USA in particular it has but zero significance. The trade war we see igniting -- is the war against China. China can no more be "wise monkey up the trees", when USA moved their chaingun aim from Russia onto China. Now China is being shot at, and the article is Chinese response to China being attacked. Not to anything around Russia.

> You are silly self center viewer

Frankly, it is exactly the opposite here. It is you who claim Russia being behind that article in Global Time. It is me who claims Russia has no any relation to the timing and wording of that article.

> China special force is operating in Syria.

Maybe it is, but seems no one ever saw those operations.

> Lot of weapons supply to SAA.

Maybe they are, but can you name those Chinese weapons and show me where SAA is employing it?

> Lot of money pump in to sustain Syria war,

If they are, then China does it part of the fight, good. Like USA supplied money and material to fighting European states during WW2. However that has no relation with the Global Times article being discussed.

> always throwing allies under bus whenever possible,

.because Putin is evil and just enjoys every opportunity to do bad thing. Always. I wish i would hear somethign remotely creative from you.

> hence Russia deserve to be raped by West like 1990 is natural.

Oh, i see. Yet another russophobic preaching that "Russians should repent and repay, repay, and repent", then frustrated when Russia shrugs this lecture off.

Vidi , March 31, 2018 at 8:34 pm GMT
@Anonymous

And, as you said, the west has many ways of neutralizing China.

Don't forget that China has an enormous internal market too, which in time should be larger than the U.S. and EU combined. European countries that stay out of this vast and rapidly growing market will be cutting their own throats. Good luck convincing them to do that.

[Apr 02, 2018] Russophobia Anti-Russian Lobby and American Foreign Policy by A. Tsygankov

Highly recommended!
Notable quotes:
"... I wanted to investigate whether the growing volume of criticism toward Russia, sometimes by people who could hardly claim to be knowledgeable about the country, concealed a political agenda. ..."
"... I discovered evidence of Russophobia shared by different circles within the American political class and promoted through programs and conferences at various think tanks, congressional testimonies, activities of NGOs, and the media. Russophobia is not merely a critique of Russia, but a critique beyond any sense of proportion, waged with the purpose of undermining the nation's political reputation. ..."
"... To these individuals, Russophobia is merely a means to pressure the Kremlin into submitting to the United States in the execution of its grand plans to control the world's most precious resources and geostrategic sites. In the meantime, Russia has grown increasingly resentful, and the war in the Caucasus in August 2008 has demonstrated that Russia is prepared to act unilaterally to stop what it views as US unilateralism in the former Soviet region. ..."
"... Anti-American attitudes are strongly present in Russian media and cultural products, as a response to the US policies of nuclear, energy, and military supremacy in the world. Extreme hegemonic policies tend to provoke an extreme response, and Russian nationalist movements and often commentators react harshly to what they view as unilateral encroachment on Russia's political system and foreign policy interests. Russia's reactions to these policies by the United States are highly negative and frequently inadequate, but hardly more extreme than the American hegemonic and imperial discourse. ..."
"... The central objective of the Lobby has been to preserve and strengthen America's power in the post-Cold War world through imperial or hegemonic policies. The Lobby has viewed Russia with its formidable nuclear power, energy reserves, and important geostrategic location as a major obstacle in achieving this objective. Even during the 1990s, when Russia looked more like a failing state3 than one capable of projecting power, some members of the American political class were worried about the future revival of the Eurasian giant as a revisionist power. In their percep- tion, it was essential to keep Russia in a state of military and economic weakness-not so much out of emotional hatred for the Russian people and their culture, but to preserve American security and promote its val- ues across the world. To many within the Lobby, Russophobia became a useful device for exerting pressures on Russia and controlling its policies. Although to some the idea of undermining and, possibly, dismembering Russia was personal, to others it was a necessity of power dictated by the realities of international politics. ..."
"... According to this dominant vision, there was simply no place in this "New American Century" for power competitors, and America was destined eventually to assume control over potentially threatening military capabilities and energy reserves of others. As the two founders of the Project for the New' American Century (PNAC), William Kristol and Robert Kagan, asserted when referring to the large military forces of Russia and China, "American statesmen today ought to recognize that their charge is not to await the arrival of the next great threat, but rather to shape the international environment to prevent such a threat from arising in the first place."4 ..."
"... Russia was either to agree to assist the United States in preserving its world-power status or be forced to agree. It had to either follow the U.S. interpretation of world affairs and develop a political and economic system sufficiently open to American influences or live as a pariah state, smeared by accusations of pernicious behavior, and in constant fear for its survival in the America-centered world. As far as the U.S. hegemonic elites were concerned, no other choice was available. ..."
"... This hegemonic mood was largely consistent with mainstream ideas within the American establishment immediately following the end of the Cold War. For example, 1989 saw the unification of Germany and the further meltdown of the Soviet Union, which some characterized as "the best period of U.S. foreign policy ever."5 President Jimmy Carter's former national security advisor Zbigniew Brzezinski envisioned the upcoming victory of the West by celebrating the Soviet Union's "grand failure."6 ..."
"... Charles Krauthammer, went as far as to proclaim the arrival of the United States' "unipolar moment," a period in which only one super- power, the United States, would stand above the rest of the world in its military, economic, and ideological capacity ..."
"... The mid-1990s saw the emergence of post-Soviet Russophobia. The Lobby's ideology was not principally new, as it still contained the three central myths of Sovietophobia left over from the Cold War era: Russia is inherently imperialist, autocratic, and anti-Western. This ideology now had to be modified to the new conditions and promoted politically, which required a tightening of the Lobby's unity, winning new allies within the establishment, and gaining public support.15 ..."
"... During the period of 2003-2008, Vice President Richard Dick Cheney formed a cohesive and bipartisan group of Russia critics, who pushed for a more confrontational approach with the Kremlin. ..."
"... Cheney could not tolerate opposition to what he saw as a critical step in establishing worldwide US hegemony. He was also harboring the idea of controlling Russia's energy reserves.91 ..."
"... In Russia, however, the Cold War story has been mainly about sovereignty and independence, rather than Western-style liberalism. To many Russians it is a story of freedom from colonization by the West and of preserving important attributes of sovereign statehood. ..."
"... In a world where neocolonialism and cultural imperialism are potent forces, the idea of freedom as independence continues to have strong international appeal and remains a powerful alternative to the notion of liberal democracy. ..."
"... The West's unwillingness to recognize the importance of this legitimizing myth in the role of communist ideology has served as a key reason for the Cold War.5 Like their Western counterparts, the Soviets were debating over methods but not the larger assumptions that defined their struggle. ..."
"... Yet another analyst wrote "at the Cold War's end, the United States was given one of the great opportunities of history: to embrace Russia, the largest nation on earth, as partner, friend, ally. Our mutual interests meshed almost perfectly. There was no ideological, territorial, his- toric or economic quarrel between us, once communist ideology was interred. We blew it. We moved NATO onto Russia's front porch, ignored her valid interests and concerns, and, with our 'indispensable-nation' arrogance, treated her as a defeated power, as France treated Weimar Germany after Versailles."114 ..."
Jun 09, 2017 | www.amazon.com

It was during the spring of 2006 that I began this project. I wanted to investigate whether the growing volume of criticism toward Russia, sometimes by people who could hardly claim to be knowledgeable about the country, concealed a political agenda.

As I researched the subject, I discovered evidence of Russophobia shared by different circles within the American political class and promoted through programs and conferences at various think tanks, congressional testimonies, activities of NGOs, and the media. Russophobia is not merely a critique of Russia, but a critique beyond any sense of proportion, waged with the purpose of undermining the nation's political reputation.

... ... ....

Although a critical analysis of Russia and its political system is entirely legitimate, the issue is the balance of such analysis. Russia's role in the world is growing, yet many U.S. politicians feel that Russia doesn't matter in the global arena. Preoccupied with international issues, such as Iraq and Afghanistan, they find it difficult to accept that they now have to nego- tiate and coordinate their international policies with a nation that only yesterday seemed so weak, introspective, and dependent on the West. To these individuals, Russophobia is merely a means to pressure the Kremlin into submitting to the United States in the execution of its grand plans to control the world's most precious resources and geostrategic sites. In the meantime, Russia has grown increasingly resentful, and the war in the Caucasus in August 2008 has demonstrated that Russia is prepared to act unilaterally to stop what it views as US unilateralism in the former Soviet region.

And some in Moscow are tempted to provoke a much greater confrontation with Western states. The attitude of ignorance and self-righteousness toward Russia tells us volumes about the United States' lack of preparation for the twenty-first century's central challenges that include political instability, weapons proliferation, and energy insecurity. Despite the dislike of Russia by a considerable number of American elites, this attitude is far from universally shared. Many Americans understand that Russia has gone a long way from communism and that the overwhelming support for Putin's policies at home cannot be adequately explained by high oil prices and the Kremlin's manipulation of the public-despite the frequent assertions of Russophobic observers.

Balanced analysts are also aware that many Russian problems are typical difficulties that nations encounter with state-building, and should not be presented as indicative of Russia's "inherent drive" to autocracy or empire. As the United States and Russia move further to the twenty-first century, it will be increasingly important to redefine the relationship between the two nations in a mutually enriching way.

Political and cultural phobias are, of course, not limited to those of an anti-Russian nature. For instance, Russia has its share of America-phobia -- a phenomenon that I have partly researched in my book Whose World Order (Notre Dame, 2004) and in several articles. Anti-American attitudes are strongly present in Russian media and cultural products, as a response to the US policies of nuclear, energy, and military supremacy in the world. Extreme hegemonic policies tend to provoke an extreme response, and Russian nationalist movements and often commentators react harshly to what they view as unilateral encroachment on Russia's political system and foreign policy interests. Russia's reactions to these policies by the United States are highly negative and frequently inadequate, but hardly more extreme than the American hegemonic and imperial discourse.

The Anti-Russian Lobby

When the facile optimism was disappointed, Western euphoria faded, and Russophobia returned ... The new Russophobia was expressed not by the governments, but in the statements of out-of-office politicians, the publications of academic experts, the sensational writings of jour- nalists, and the products of the entertainment industry. (Rodric Braithwaite, Across the Moscow River, 2002)1

....

Russophobia is not a myth, not an invention of the Red-Brovvns, but a real phenomenon of political thought in the main political think tanks in the West . .. [T]he Yeltsin-Kozyrev's pro-U.S. "giveaway game" was approved across the ocean. There is reason to say that the period in ques- tion left the West with the illusion that Russia's role was to serve Washington's interests and that it would remain such in the future. (Sergei Mikoyati, International Affairs /October 2006j)2

This chapter formulates a theory of Russophobia and the anti-Russian lobby's influence on the U.S. Russia policy. 1 discuss the Lobby's objec- tives, its tactics to achieve them, the history of its formation and rise to prominence, and the conditions that preserved its influence in the after- math of 9/11.1 argue that Russophobia has been important to American hegemonic elites in pressuring Russia for economic and political conces- sions in the post-Cold War era.

1. Goals and Means

Objectives

The central objective of the Lobby has been to preserve and strengthen America's power in the post-Cold War world through imperial or hegemonic policies. The Lobby has viewed Russia with its formidable nuclear power, energy reserves, and important geostrategic location as a major obstacle in achieving this objective. Even during the 1990s, when Russia looked more like a failing state3 than one capable of projecting power, some members of the American political class were worried about the future revival of the Eurasian giant as a revisionist power. In their percep- tion, it was essential to keep Russia in a state of military and economic weakness-not so much out of emotional hatred for the Russian people and their culture, but to preserve American security and promote its val- ues across the world. To many within the Lobby, Russophobia became a useful device for exerting pressures on Russia and controlling its policies. Although to some the idea of undermining and, possibly, dismembering Russia was personal, to others it was a necessity of power dictated by the realities of international politics.

According to this dominant vision, there was simply no place in this "New American Century" for power competitors, and America was destined eventually to assume control over potentially threatening military capabilities and energy reserves of others. As the two founders of the Project for the New' American Century (PNAC), William Kristol and Robert Kagan, asserted when referring to the large military forces of Russia and China, "American statesmen today ought to recognize that their charge is not to await the arrival of the next great threat, but rather to shape the international environment to prevent such a threat from arising in the first place."4

Russia was either to agree to assist the United States in preserving its world-power status or be forced to agree. It had to either follow the U.S. interpretation of world affairs and develop a political and economic system sufficiently open to American influences or live as a pariah state, smeared by accusations of pernicious behavior, and in constant fear for its survival in the America-centered world. As far as the U.S. hegemonic elites were concerned, no other choice was available.

This hegemonic mood was largely consistent with mainstream ideas within the American establishment immediately following the end of the Cold War. For example, 1989 saw the unification of Germany and the further meltdown of the Soviet Union, which some characterized as "the best period of U.S. foreign policy ever."5 President Jimmy Carter's former national security advisor Zbigniew Brzezinski envisioned the upcoming victory of the West by celebrating the Soviet Union's "grand failure."6

In his view, the Soviet "totalitarian" state was incapable of reform. Communism's decline was therefore irreversible and inevitable. It would have made the system's "practice and its dogma largely irrelevant to the human conditions," and communism would be remembered as the twentieth century's "political and intellectual aberration."7 Other com- mentators argued the case for a global spread of Western values. In 1990 Francis Fukuyama first formulated his triumphalist "end of history" thesis, arguing a global ascendancy of the Western-style market democracy.®

... ... ...

Marc Plattner declared the emergence of a "world with one dominant principle of legitimacy, democracy."9 When the Soviet system had indeed disintegrated, the leading establishment journal Foreign Affairs pronounced that "the Soviet system collapsed because of what it was, or more exactly, because of what it was not. The West 'won' because of what the democracies were-because they were free, prosperous and successful, because they did justice, or convincingly tried to do so."10 Still others, such as Charles Krauthammer, went as far as to proclaim the arrival of the United States' "unipolar moment," a period in which only one super- power, the United States, would stand above the rest of the world in its military, economic, and ideological capacity.11

In this context of U.S. triumphalism, at least some Russophobes expected Russia to follow the American agenda. Still, they were worried that Russia may still have surprises to offer and would recover as an enemy.12

Soon after the Soviet disintegration, Russia indeed surprised many, although not quite in the sense of presenting a power challenge to the United States. Rather, the surprise was the unexpectedly high degree of corruption, social and economic decay, and the rapid disappointment of pro-Western reforms inside Russia. By late 1992, the domestic economic situation was much worsened, as the failure of Western-style shock ther- apy reform put most of the population on the verge of poverty. Russia was preoccupied not with the projection of power but with survival, as poverty, crime, and corruption degraded it from the status of the indus- trialized country it once was. In the meantime, the economy was largely controlled by and divided among former high-ranking party and state officials and their associates. The so-called oligarchs, or a group of extremely wealthy individuals, played the role of the new post-Soviet nomenklatura; they influenced many key decisions of the state and suc- cessfully blocked the development of small- and medium-sized business in the country.13 Under these conditions, the Russophobes warned that the conditions in Russia may soon be ripe for the rise of an anti-Western nationalist regime and that Russia was not fit for any partnership with the United States.14

The mid-1990s saw the emergence of post-Soviet Russophobia. The Lobby's ideology was not principally new, as it still contained the three central myths of Sovietophobia left over from the Cold War era: Russia is inherently imperialist, autocratic, and anti-Western. This ideology now had to be modified to the new conditions and promoted politically, which required a tightening of the Lobby's unity, winning new allies within the establishment, and gaining public support.15

... ... ...

The impact of structural and institutional factors is further reinforced by policy factors, such as the divide within the policy community and the lack of presidential leadership. Not infrequently, politicians tend to defend their personal and corporate interests, and lobbying makes a difference in the absence of firm policy commitments.

Experts recognize that the community of Russia watchers is split and that the split, which goes all the way to the White House, has been responsible for the absence of a coherent policy toward the country. During the period of 2003-2008, Vice President Richard Dick Cheney formed a cohesive and bipartisan group of Russia critics, who pushed for a more confrontational approach with the Kremlin. The brain behind the invasion of Iraq, Cheney could not tolerate opposition to what he saw as a critical step in establishing worldwide US hegemony. He was also harboring the idea of controlling Russia's energy reserves.91

Since November 2004, when the administration launched a review of its policy on Russia,92 Cheney became a critically important voice in whom the Lobby found its advocate. Secretaries of State Condoleezza Rice and, until November 2004, Colin Powell opposed the vice president's approach, arguing for a softer and more accommodating style in relations with Moscow.

President Bush generally sided with Rice and Powell, but he proved unable to form a consistent Russia policy. Because of America's involvement in the Middle East, Bush failed to provide the leadership committed to devising mutually acceptable rules in relations with Russia that could have prevented the deterioration in their relationship. Since the end of 2003, he also became doubtful about the direction of Russia's domestic transformation.93 As a result, the promising post-9/11 cooperation never materialized. The new cold war and the American Sense of History

It's time we start thinking of Vladimir Putin's Russia as an enemy of the United States. (Bret Stephens, "Russia: The Enemy," The Wall Street Journal, November 28, 2006)

If today's reality of Russian politics continues ... then there is the real risk that Russia's leadership will be seen, externally and internally, as illegitimate. (John Edwards and Jack Kemp, "We Need to Be Tough with Russia," International Herald Tribune, July 12, 2006)

On Iran, Kosovo, U.S. missile defense, Iraq, the Caucasus and Caspian basin, Ukraine-the list goes on-Russia puts itself in conflict with the U.S. and its allies . . . here are worse models than the united Western stand that won the Cold War the first time around.

("Putin Institutionalized," The Wall Street Journal, November 19, 2007) In order to derail the U.S.-Russia partnership, the Lobby has sought to revive the image of Russias as an enemy of the United States. The Russophobic groups have exploited important differences between the two countries' historical self-perceptions, presenting those differences as incompatible.

1. Contested History

Two versions of history

The story of the Cold War as told from the U.S. perspective is about American ideas of Western-style democracy as rescued from the Soviet threat of totalitarian communism. Although scholars and politicians disagreed over the methods of responding to the Soviet threat, they rarely questioned their underlying assumptions about history and freedom.' It therefore should not come as surprise that many in the United States have interpreted the end of the Cold War as a victory of the Western freedom narrative. Celebrating the Soviet Union's "grand failure"-as Zbigniew Brzezinski put it2-the American discourse assumed that from now on there would be little resistance to freedom's worldwide progression. When Francis Fukuyama offered his bold summary of these optimistic feelings and asserted in a famous passage that "what we may be witnessing is not just the end of the Cold War... but the end of history as such,"3 he meant to convey the disappearance of an alternative to the familiar idea of free- dom, or "the universalization of Western liberal democracy as the final form of human government."4

In Russia, however, the Cold War story has been mainly about sovereignty and independence, rather than Western-style liberalism. To many Russians it is a story of freedom from colonization by the West and of preserving important attributes of sovereign statehood.

In a world where neocolonialism and cultural imperialism are potent forces, the idea of freedom as independence continues to have strong international appeal and remains a powerful alternative to the notion of liberal democracy. Russians formulated the narrative of independence centuries ago, as they successfully withstood external invasions from Napoleon to Hitler. The defeat of the Nazi regime was important to the Soviets because it legitimized their claims to continue with the tradition of freedom as independence.

The West's unwillingness to recognize the importance of this legitimizing myth in the role of communist ideology has served as a key reason for the Cold War.5 Like their Western counterparts, the Soviets were debating over methods but not the larger assumptions that defined their struggle.

This helps to understand why Russians could never agree with the Western interpretation of the end of the Cold War. What they find missing from the U.S. narrative is the tribute to Russia's ability to defend its freedom from expansionist ambitions of larger powers. The Cold War too is viewed by many Russians as a necessarily defensive response to the West's policies, and it is important that even while occupying Eastern Europe, the Soviets never celebrated the occupation, emphasizing instead the war vic- tory.6 The Russians officially admitted "moral responsibility" and apolo- gized for the Soviet invasions of Hungary and Czechoslovakia.7 They may be prepared to fully recognize the postwar occupation of Eastern Europe, but only in the context of the two sides' responsibility for the Cold War. Russians also find it offensive that Western VE Day celebrations ignore the crucial contribution of Soviet troops, even though none of the Allies, as one historian put it, "paid dearer than the Soviet Union for the victory. Forty Private Ivans fell in battle to every Private Ryan."8 Victory over Nazi Germany constitutes, as another Russian wrote, "the only undisputable foundation of the national myth."9

If the two sides are to build foundations for a future partnership, the two historical narratives must be bridged. First, it is important to recognize the difficulty of negotiating a common meaning of freedom and accept that the idea of freedom may vary greatly across nations. The urge for freedom may be universal, but its social content is a specific product of national his- tories and local circumstances. For instance, the American vision of democracy initially downplayed the role of elections and emphasized selection by merit or meritocracy. Under the influence of the Great Depression, the notion of democracy incorporated a strong egalitarian and poverty-fighting component, and it was not until the Cold War- and not without its influence-that democracy has become associated with elections and pluralistic institutions.10 Second, it is essential to acknowledge the two nations' mutual respon- sibility for the misunderstanding that has resulted in the Cold War. A historically sensitive account will recognize that both sides were thinking in terms of expanding a territorial space to protect their visions of security. While the Soviets wanted to create a buffer zone to prevent a future attack from Germany, the Americans believed in reconstructing the European continent in accordance with their ideas of security and democracy. A mutual mistrust of the two countries' leaders exacerbated the situation, making it ever more difficult to prevent a full-fledged political confronta- tion. Western leaders had reason to be suspicious of Stalin, who, in his turn, was driven by the perception of the West's greed and by betrayals from the dubious Treaty of Versailles to the appeasement of Hitler in Munich. Arrangements for the post-World War II world made by Britain, the USSR, and the United States proved insufficient to address these deep-seated suspicions.

In addition, most Eastern European states created as a result of the Versailles Treaty were neither free nor democratic and collaborated with Nazi Germany in its racist and expansionist policies. The European post-World War 1 security system was not working properly, and it was only a matter of time before it would have to be transformed.

Third, if an agreeable historical account is to emerge, it would have to accept that the end of the Cold War was a product of mutually beneficial a second Cold War, "it also does not want the reversal of the U.S. geopolitical gains that it made in the decade or so after the end of the Cold War."112 Another expert asked, "What possible explanation is there for the fact that today-at a moment when both the U.S. and Russia face the common enemy of Islamist terrorism-hard-liners within the Bush administration, and especially in the office of Vice President Dick Cheney, are arguing for a new tough line against Moscow along the lines of a scaled-down Cold War?"113

Yet another analyst wrote "at the Cold War's end, the United States was given one of the great opportunities of history: to embrace Russia, the largest nation on earth, as partner, friend, ally. Our mutual interests meshed almost perfectly. There was no ideological, territorial, his- toric or economic quarrel between us, once communist ideology was interred. We blew it. We moved NATO onto Russia's front porch, ignored her valid interests and concerns, and, with our 'indispensable-nation' arrogance, treated her as a defeated power, as France treated Weimar Germany after Versailles."114

[Apr 02, 2018] Confronting Russophobia by Srdja Trifkovic

Notable quotes:
"... The roots of Russophobia's emotional appeal to the left seem clear: It comes as a huge mental relief to the ultrasensitive liberal mind to be able to hate an outside group with impunity, and even to appear virtuous in the process . Of course, the object of that animus is a Christian and European nation that stubbornly refuses to be postmodernized, or become gripped by self-hate and morbid introspection; a nation not ashamed of its past and unwilling to surrender its future to alien multitudes; a nation where nobody obsesses over transgender bathrooms, microaggressions, and other "issues" indicative of a society's moral and intellectual decrepitude. ..."
"... The liberals' ideological and emotional Russophobia has blended seamlessly with the bread-and-butter hostility to Russia shared by Deep State operatives in the intelligence and national-security apparatus, in the military-industrial complex, and in the congressional duopoly. ..."
"... The late Anna Politkovskaya thus wrote in the Los Angeles Times 12 years ago that "it is common knowledge that the Russian people are irrational by nature." It is impossible to imagine a mainstream publication publishing a similar statement about Jews or Muslims. ..."
"... Cheesepopes be gaslighting ..."
"... Nothing give a NYC Wall Street banker more of a wet dream than the possibility of war between the goy. Oil, white slaves, truly a banker's dream come true. ..."
Apr 23, 2017 | www.zerohedge.com
by Srdja Trifkovic via The Strategic Culture Foundation,

There is a paranoid, hysterical quality to the public discourse on Russia and all things Russian in today's America. The corporate media machine and its Deep State handlers have abdicated reason and common decency in favor of raw hate and fear-mongering. We have not seen anything like it before, even in the darkest days of the Cold War.

The roots of Russophobia's emotional appeal to the left seem clear: It comes as a huge mental relief to the ultrasensitive liberal mind to be able to hate an outside group with impunity, and even to appear virtuous in the process . Of course, the object of that animus is a Christian and European nation that stubbornly refuses to be postmodernized, or become gripped by self-hate and morbid introspection; a nation not ashamed of its past and unwilling to surrender its future to alien multitudes; a nation where nobody obsesses over transgender bathrooms, microaggressions, and other "issues" indicative of a society's moral and intellectual decrepitude.

The liberals' ideological and emotional Russophobia has blended seamlessly with the bread-and-butter hostility to Russia shared by Deep State operatives in the intelligence and national-security apparatus, in the military-industrial complex, and in the congressional duopoly. The result is a surreal narrative that mixes supposedly unprovoked "Russian aggression" in Ukraine, hostile intent in the Baltics, serial war crimes in Syria, political destabilization in Western Europe, and gross interference in America's "democratic process". The result is an altogether fictitious "existential threat," which has made President Trump's intended détente with Moscow impossible. He may have been serious about turning over a new leaf, but the Deep State counterpressure proved just too great. A solid rejection front emerged, left and right, conservative and liberal, which extends even into his own team and finally inhibited him from making moves that could have appeared too friendly to Putin.

The Russophobes' narrative is unrelated to Russia's actual policies. It reflects a deep odium of the elite class toward Russia-as-such. That animosity has been developing in its current form since roughly the time of the Crimean War, when in his Letters From Russia the Marquis de Custine said that the country's "veneer of European civilization was too thin to be credible."

"No human beings, black, yellow or white, could be quite as untruthful, as insincere, as arrogant-in short, as untrustworthy in every way-as the Russians," President Theodore Roosevelt wrote in 1905. John Maynard Keynes, after a trip to the Soviet Union in 1925, wondered whether the "mood of oppression" might be "the fruit of some beastliness in the Russian nature." J. Robert Oppenheimer opined in 1951 that, in Russia, "We are coping with a barbarous, backward people." More recently, Sen. John McCain declared that "Russia is a gas station masquerading as a country." "Russia is an anti-Western power with a different, darker vision of global politics," Slate wrote in early 2014, even before the Ukrainian crisis reached its climax.

This narrative has two key pillars. In terms of geopolitics, we see the striving of maritime empires-Britain before World War II, and the United States after - to "contain" and if possible control the Eurasian heartland, the core of which is of course Russia. Equally important is the already noted cultural antipathy, the desire not merely to influence Russian policies and behavior but to effect an irreversible transformation of Russia's identity. Some of the most viscerally Russophobic stereotypes come from Russia herself, from those members of Moscow's "intelligentsia" who feel more at home in New York or London than anywhere in their own country. The late Anna Politkovskaya thus wrote in the Los Angeles Times 12 years ago that "it is common knowledge that the Russian people are irrational by nature." It is impossible to imagine a mainstream publication publishing a similar statement about Jews or Muslims.

The Russophobic frenzy comes at a cost. It further devalues the quality of public discourse on world affairs in the United States, which is already dismally low. It has already undermined the prospects for a mutually beneficial new chapter in U.S.-Russian relations, based on a realist assessment that those two powers have no "existential" differences - and share many actual and potential commonalities. It perpetrates the arrogant delusion that there is a superior, "Western" model of social and cultural thought and action that can and should be imposed everywhere, but especially in Russia.

Saddest of all, Russophobic mania prolongs the European civil war that exploded in July 1914, continued in 1939, and has never properly ended - not even with the fall of the Berlin Wall. It would be in the American interest, as well as Russia's and Europe's, for that conflict to end, so that the existential challenge common to all- that of resurgent jihad and Europe's demographic crisis - can be properly addressed.

francis soyer , Apr 23, 2017 7:28 PM

Cheesepopes be gaslighting

Blue Balls -> francis soyer , Apr 23, 2017 7:35 PM

Nothing give a NYC Wall Street banker more of a wet dream than the possibility of war between the goy. Oil, white slaves, truly a banker's dream come true.

Ramesees -> Blue Balls , Apr 23, 2017 7:39 PM

We don't have to go to war with Russia, but let's agree that Russia is, at a minimum, a rival.

Lumberjack -> Ramesees , Apr 23, 2017 7:40 PM

Wrong. China is.

Ramesees -> Lumberjack , Apr 23, 2017 7:43 PM

Russia has its own interests, just like the United States. Sometimes our interests align, more often they do not.

How is that any different than China, other than Russia's demographic death spiral that will eliminate them as a rival in 50-75 years?

knukles -> Ramesees , Apr 23, 2017 7:46 PM

Why can't we all just get along?

Dizzy Malscience -> knukles , Apr 23, 2017 8:16 PM

..it seems like our foreign policy is like an angry poor, innocent "motorist", whacked out on amphetamines, speeding over 100 mph and destined to drown in his liberal negro lottery swimming pool.

Volkodav -> Ramesees , Apr 23, 2017 8:09 PM

missed fact Russian demographic is much improve

sure better than europe

Centerist -> Volkodav , Apr 23, 2017 8:24 PM

Da, comrade. Russian demographic is much improve. Population shrink less fast now.

Lumberjack -> Lumberjack , Apr 23, 2017 8:10 PM

Comment: why US allies Israel, Saudi Arabia are cosying up to China

http://m.scmp.com/news/china/diplomacy-defence/article/2082673/comment-w...

Furthermore...

Breaking:

The United States is closely watching a recent increase in piracy off the coast of Somalia, a senior U.S. military official said on Sunday as Defense Secretary Jim Mattis visited an important military base in Djibouti.

http://www.reuters.com/article/us-usa-mattis-africa-idUSKBN17P0C7?utm_ca ...

-----

Hate to use huffpo but this is relevent...

Why China and Saudi Arabia Are Building Bases in Djibouti http://www.huffingtonpost.com/joseph-braude/why-china-and-saudi-arabi_b_ ...

Then this:

http://thediplomat.com/2017/02/the-chinese-navys-djibouti-base-a-support ...

malek -> Ramesees , Apr 23, 2017 7:49 PM

"Russia is, at a minimum, a rival."

If I ignore your bullshit "but at the maximum..." implication:

So what do you conclude from that. Is it a bad thing to have rivals? Should we strive to turn every remaining rival into a vassal? Is there a limit on methods allowed toward a rival?

Centerist -> Ramesees , Apr 23, 2017 8:20 PM

I'll give you a green arrow to make up for the narrow-mindedness of the simpletons who all gave you red arrows.

We don't need a war with Russia, and the US won't instigate one, either. The juice wouldn't be worth the squeeze.

With all of that being said, Russia is a rival to the US in other parts of the world. The US isn't the only country with a desire for influence around the world.

As much as there is a "Russo-phobia" being perpetuated in the US, you can bet a buck that there is an "Ameri-phobia" being perpetuated out there.

The big difference is that in Russia, they don't have message boards full of people sh*tting on their own country.

Lumberjack -> Centerist , Apr 23, 2017 9:03 PM

They will accomplish the war by proxy.

Centerist -> Lumberjack , Apr 23, 2017 9:17 PM

Well, that is kind of how major powers compete for influence. It takes two to tango. We can't exactly engage in war by proxy if the Russians aren't involved in it, too.

monk27 -> Blue Balls , Apr 23, 2017 7:49 PM

I hate to say it but the so called "elites", in charge of our beloved deep state controlling everything, are quite stupid -- This continuous news hysteria, against whatever subject du jour our intelligentsia decides to float publicly, proves beyond any reasonable doubt that said "elites" suffer from a combination of low IQ, partial education (at best !), and high self-delusion... We might get to witness nuclear war, just because our "elites" are too idiotic to realize what a nuclear war really is...

dsty , Apr 23, 2017 7:29 PM

Yes ZH, tell us once again how wonderful and humane Putin's Russia is.

Don't forget the loving relationship he has with little Kimmy of NK.

Billy the Poet -> dsty , Apr 23, 2017 7:34 PM

I see no such thing in this article. Can you provide quotes to support your criticism?

rccalhoun -> dsty , Apr 23, 2017 7:39 PM

dsty-- ZH does promote putin too much (ZH bias), but ZH is correct in that the MSM has the full court press on to instigate

and insult russia in any way possible.

my question; why the fuck does the USSA stick their fucking nose into everything? if the USSA wants supreme power...then go

conquer these nations and see how that works out.

Justin Case -> rccalhoun , Apr 23, 2017 7:47 PM

They stick their hook nose into everything because they want to own the whole 4th rock from the sun. These people are ill, very ill and as I read these comments it's obvious that some just don't get it yet.

Pure Evil -> Justin Case , Apr 23, 2017 7:59 PM

If we're the fourth rock from the sun, then the other three rocks between us and the sun are.......Venus, Mercury and ?

Implied Violins -> Pure Evil , Apr 23, 2017 9:03 PM

Nibiru. Or Wormwood. Nemesis? Planet X?? Ah fuck it.

knukles -> rccalhoun , Apr 23, 2017 7:48 PM

Which tells us that since we all live rent free in Tyler's pro-Russian basement, that we're now on 2 different sets of lists? That's disturbing.

Brazen Heist -> dsty , Apr 23, 2017 7:40 PM

Do tell us of that more loving butt-buddy relationship the US government has with the Wahhabi terrorist state.

Squid Viscous -> dsty , Apr 23, 2017 8:08 PM

Dsty, dirty stinking tacky yid?

35 Whelen , Apr 23, 2017 7:39 PM

"haven't seen anything like this since the darkest days of the cold war" ... that's because the media was by and large pro-Soviet.

Normalcy Bias , Apr 23, 2017 7:41 PM

All of this B.S. Russophobia evolved from a convenient distraction from the CONTENT of the leaked DNC emails, and has been amplified because of the symbiosis with Neoconservative/Globalist strategies.

dilligaff , Apr 23, 2017 7:42 PM

What amazes me is how well the propaganda seems to be working. There's a bunch of old farts (not that I'm really young!) at the gym every morning talking about how awesome it is that we bombed Syria and it'll show that bastard Putin we're tough and mean business. "America, Fuck yeh!" I wanted to ask them if they were mentally defective or just fucking retards...

Justin Case -> dilligaff , Apr 23, 2017 7:49 PM

Typical merica pie. Fuck tarts

UncleChopChop -> dilligaff , Apr 23, 2017 7:50 PM

sad

monk27 -> dilligaff , Apr 23, 2017 7:51 PM

Propaganda works very well with stupid subjects; the dumber the better...

Reaper -> dilligaff , Apr 23, 2017 7:58 PM

They "think/emote" alike, because each fears the others would otherwise discover their real ignorance.

Reaper , Apr 23, 2017 7:42 PM

Hate = emote. Emote = antithesis of reason. Hate controls the hater. Ergo, the creators of the hate control the haters.

medium giraffe -> Reaper , Apr 23, 2017 8:02 PM

Pretty much. Society has opted to run on emotion rather than fact, emotional manipulation being the key part of the most popular forms of entertainment. Sadly this bleeds into our dealings with each other which are increasingly emotional or insulting. Most of human behaviour and attitudes are due to fear, particularly the egoic fear of inadequacy. As a control mechanism, fear is a formidable tool. But fear is also a choice.

Reaper -> medium giraffe , Apr 23, 2017 8:18 PM

Fear is less effective tool than respect, especially in diplomacy. http://www.businessinsider.com/dale-carnegie-on-habits-of-influential-pe...

aloha_snakbar , Apr 23, 2017 7:44 PM

"Say Russia one more time... I DARE you"...

IranContra , Apr 23, 2017 7:50 PM

The Strategic Culture Foundation who published this piece has an evil agenda, and they are not even friends of Putin. They are very subtle warmongers. You will see when the time comes.

Putin was duped by Iran in Syria, Iran got Syria, not Putin. Trump and Saudi can give Russia what it needs to survive, if Putin stops being duped by deceptive hegemonial Iran.

Billy the Poet -> IranContra , Apr 23, 2017 7:56 PM

The Saudis gave us September 11 -- the gift that keeps on giving. But I doubt that Putin's jealous.

earleflorida -> IranContra , Apr 23, 2017 8:39 PM

"Iran approves six presidential candidates-- blocks Ahmadinejad"

have you any ideal how powerful this nutjob was? ahmadinejab was so powerful at one tyme he challenged the actual ayatollah position as last word! now, this guy was nuts!!! http://news.antiwar.com/2017/04/20/iran-approves-six-presidential-candidates-blocks-ahmadinejad/

sbenard , Apr 23, 2017 8:00 PM

This reminds me of when the ZerroHedge owners mentioned that Bloomberg article several months back that involved an interview of a former Zero Hedge writer blowing the lid off this place. He mentioned how pro-Russia the ZH owners were. This article suggests that he may have been right after all!

number06 -> sbenard , Apr 23, 2017 8:10 PM

Its pretty obvious many around here are in the superbowl ring stealing midgets pocket

stpioc -> sbenard , Apr 23, 2017 8:16 PM

Here is that article showing the Russiophile Zerohedgers:

http://rightwingers.org/forums/thread-156.html

Yea, we shouldn't be afraid of a country with nukes, that invades it's neigbours, has an uber crony economy the size of Italy's, dominated by oligarchs in mining and the obligation to keep friendly with the Kremlin or risk being put in jail and have your assets taken away on trumped up charges. The country that murders it's opponents and critics with nasty stuff like Polonium, even abroad, that interferes in others elections with misinformation campaigns and troll factories, that is on the side of the ayatolla's of Iran and the mass murderer in Syria, helping him by bombing hospitals and refugees, only to be "recognized as a player again on the world stage" A coutry of alcoholics with one of the lowest life expectancy in the developed world. Really, a model state.

As Paul Graig Roberts, the inhouse idiot here noted, Putin for the Nobel peace price!

Neochrome -> stpioc , Apr 23, 2017 8:33 PM

Which of the above does NOT apply to US and even worse?

Volkodav -> sbenard , Apr 23, 2017 8:24 PM

maybe here is one few places balance from the foamy mouth MSM

ZH far more logic, reason informed visitors

momprayn , Apr 23, 2017 8:28 PM

Wikileaks has disclosed the tactic to blame Russia for the election results, Trump's collusion, etc. back to spring of 2016 --- I remember when they started making those "Russia" comments. They wanted to start the thoughts about him/his staff being in collusion with the Russians. That was to hopefully make more decide not to vote for him and in case he won, use it to prove election fraud, treason and somehow impeach him.

Those who know about the Globalists NWO agenda, Deep State, Neocons, etc. realize we've all been lied to about Russia (among all the other lies) since the end of the Cold War. for "their" agenda purposes - need for continuous wars for MIC, etc. also. Putin is not as portrayed at all. Russia is not the "big bad Commie" beast that wants to take over the world as they want us to believe to "justify" another war.

Putin is an Eastern Orthodox Chrsitian who protects Christians, hates and fights terrorists and Globalism. He is not a Globalist. We have those goals in common and Pres. Trump and Putin would be a fantastic duo that when united, terrorism and Globalism would finally be dealt death blows,

Our enemies within know that and therefore they're trying to do everything they can to hurt that relationship and not let it happen because it would mean finally - the end of their evil world order plan.

VW Nerd -> momprayn , Apr 23, 2017 8:45 PM

Excellent assessment. I'll have to share it with my sister. She's a Republican Russia/Iran/Syria hater.

Neochrome , Apr 23, 2017 8:34 PM

Amount of pressure applied commensurate to strength of a country in question. For some of them all it takes is a stern talk from the ambassador, Russia right now is safely beyond the US ability to apply the required pressure, including the threat of Nuclear War. What is happening instead is that world being interconnected the way it is, applying pressure at hardened point that is Russia is also increasing pressure at other weaker points as well, pretty much all over the world. EU and NATO are posturing against Russia in display of lunacy that is symptomatic for the West, it seems that God is taking away humans ability to reason. Day 1, Russia announces indefinite cuts of gas supplies to Europe, stocks crater, world economy craters, Russia and China who were hoarding gold watch the West collapse like a house of cards while passing the popcorn. The End.

earleflorida -> Neochrome , Apr 23, 2017 8:51 PM

"Where Empires go to Die?"?!?

Afghanistan is about to go full retard again, as taliban cuts ussa out of heroin billions--- as our afghan troops turn their weapons on their masters[1]

seems, we bunker-busted the wrong cavity?

http://news.antiwar.com/tag/afghanistan/

Spinkbottle , Apr 23, 2017 8:51 PM

The Jewish media has been obsessed with this business about Russia allegedly influencing the recent 2016 U.S. election. This obsession has concealed the real problem with foreign influence over the American electoral system. It isn't Russian influence that's the problem, it is Israeli influence that's the problem.

Below is a list of stories showing how Israelis or Jews substantively connected to Israel have been subverting the American electoral process.

https://www.dailystormer.com/israel-is-the-main-foreign-power-subverting-the-american-election-system/

globalintelhub , Apr 23, 2017 8:55 PM

Read it and weep www.splittingpennies.com

Son of Captain Nemo , Apr 23, 2017 8:59 PM

You know we will have turned the corner when Donald Trump gives the American people a "Fireside Chat" and tells the public the real reasons the media spearheads a constant barrage of hate filled anti-Russian LYING PROPAGANDA filled rhetoric... BECAUSE

A) THEY ARE THE WORLDS LEADER IN OIL PRODUCTION B) HAVE NO DEBT C) HAVE THERE OWN BALANCE OF PAYMENT CREDIT SYSTEM MIR THAT WILL REPLACE THE WESTERN CENTRAL BANK(S) SYSTEM "SWIFT"

And after he delivers that truthful message he will NEVER BE ALLOWED TO EVER AGAIN... He will probably be shot like HOWARD BEALE in the movie NETWORK... Or WWWIII will be LAUNCHED!!!

[Apr 01, 2018] Big American Money, Not Russia, Put Trump in the White House: Reflections on a Recent Report by Paul Street

Highly recommended!
Notable quotes:
"... Running against what she (wrongly) perceived (along with most election prognosticators) as a doomed and feckless opponent and as the clear preferred candidate of Wall Street and the intimately related U.S foreign policy elite , including many leading Neoconservatives put off by Trump's isolationist and anti-interventionist rhetoric, the "lying neoliberal warmonger" Hillary Clinton arrogantly figured that she could garner enough votes to win without having to ruffle any ruling-class feathers. ..."
"... Smart Wall Street and K Street Democratic Party bankrollers have long understood that Democratic candidates have to cloak their dollar-drenched corporatism in the deceptive campaign discourse of progressive- and even populist-sounding policy promise to win elections. ..."
"... Trump trailed well behind Clinton in contributions from defense and aerospace – a lack of support extraordinary for a Republican presidential hopeful late in the race. ..."
"... one fateful consequence of trying to appeal to so many conservative business interests was strategic silence about most important matters of public policy. Given the candidate's steady lead in the polls, there seemed to be no point to rocking the boat with any more policy pronouncements than necessary ..."
"... Misgivings of major contributors who worried that the Clinton campaign message lacked real attractions for ordinary Americans were rebuffed. The campaign sought to capitalize on the angst within business by vigorously courting the doubtful and undecideds there, not in the electorate ..."
"... Of course, Bill and Hillary helped trail-blaze that plutocratic "New Democrat" turn in Arkansas during the late 1970s and 1980s. The rest, as they say, was history – an ugly corporate-neoliberal, imperial, and racist history that I and others have written about at great length. ..."
"... My Turn: Hillary Clinton Targets the Presidency ..."
"... Queen of Chaos: The Misadventures of Hillary Clinton ..."
"... The Condemnation of Little B: New Age Racism in America ..."
"... Still, Trump's success was no less tied to big money than was Hillary's failure. Candidate Trump ran strangely outside the longstanding neoliberal Washington Consensus, as an economic nationalist and isolationist. His raucous rallies were laced with dripping denunciations of Wall Street, Goldman Sachs, and globalization, mockery of George W. Bush's invasion of Iraq, rejection of the New Cold War with Russia, and pledges of allegiance to the "forgotten" American "working-class." He was no normal Republican One Percent candidate. ..."
"... Globalization has made the financial elite who donate to politicians very wealthy. But it has left millions of our workers with nothing but poverty and heartache ..."
"... "In a frontal assault on the American establishment, the Republican standard bearer proclaimed 'America First.' Mocking the Bush administration's appeal to 'weapons of mass destruction' as a pretext for invading Iraq, he broke dramatically with two generations of GOP orthodoxy and spoke out in favor of more cooperation with Russia . He even criticized the 'carried interest' tax break beloved by high finance" (emphasis added). ..."
"... "What happened in the final weeks of the campaign was extraordinary. Firstly, a giant wave of dark money poured into Trump's own campaign – one that towered over anything in 2016 or even Mitt Romney's munificently financed 2012 effort – to say nothing of any Russian Facebook experiments [Then] another gigantic wave of money flowed in from alarmed business interests, including the Kochs and their allies Officially the money was for Senate races, but late-stage campaigning for down-ballot offices often spills over on to candidates for the party at large." ..."
"... "In a harbinger of things to come, additional money came from firms and industries that appear to have been attracted by Trump's talk of tariffs, including steel and companies making machinery of various types [a] vast wave of new money flowed into the campaign from some of America's biggest businesses and most famous investors. Sheldon Adelson and many others in the casino industry delivered in grand style for its old colleague. Adelson now delivered more than $11 million in his own name, while his wife and other employees of his Las Vegas Sands casino gave another $20 million. ..."
"... Peter Theil contributed more than a million dollars, while large sums also rolled in from other parts of Silicon Valley, including almost two million dollars from executives at Microsoft and just over two million from executives at Cisco Systems. ..."
"... Among those were Nelson Peltz and Carl Icahn (who had both contributed to Trump before, but now made much bigger new contributions). In the end, along with oil, chemicals, mining and a handful of other industries, large private equity firms would become one of the few segments of American business – and the only part of Wall Street – where support for Trump was truly heavy the sudden influx of money from private equity and hedge funds clearly began with the Convention but turned into a torrent " ..."
"... The critical late wave came after Trump moved to rescue his flagging campaign by handing its direction over to the clever, class-attuned, far-right white- and economic- nationalist "populist" and Breitbart executive Steve Bannon, who advocated what proved to be a winning, Koch brothers-approved "populist" strategy: appeal to economically and culturally frustrated working- and middle-class whites in key battleground states, where the bloodless neoliberal and professional class centrism and snooty metropolitan multiculturalism of the Obama presidency and Clinton campaign was certain to depress the Democratic "base" vote ..."
"... Neither turnout nor the partisan division of the vote at any level looks all that different from other recent elections 2016's alterations in voting behavior are so minute that the pattern is only barely differentiated from 2012." ..."
"... An interesting part of FJC's study (no quick or easy read) takes a close look at the pro-Trump and anti-Hillary Internet activism that the Democrats and their many corporate media allies are so insistently eager to blame on Russia and for Hillary's defeat. FJC find that Russian Internet interventions were of tiny significance compared to those of homegrown U.S. corporate and right-wing cyber forces: ..."
"... By 2016, the Republican right had developed internet outreach and political advertising into a fine art and on a massive scale quite on its own. ..."
"... Breitbart and other organizations were in fact going global, opening offices abroad and establishing contacts with like-minded groups elsewhere. Whatever the Russians were up to, they could hardly hope to add much value to the vast Made in America bombardment already underway. Nobody sows chaos like Breitbart or the Drudge Report ." ..."
"... no support from Big Business ..."
"... Sanders pushed Hillary the Goldman candidate to the wall, calling out the Democrats' capture by Wall Street, forcing her to rely on a rigged party, convention, and primary system to defeat him. The small-donor "socialist" Sanders challenge represented something Ferguson and his colleagues describe as "without precedent in American politics not just since the New Deal, but across virtually the whole of American history a major presidential candidate waging a strong, highly competitive campaign whose support from big business is essentially zero ." ..."
"... American Oligarchy ..."
"... teleSur English ..."
"... we had no great electoral democracy to subvert in 2016 ..."
"... Only candidates and positions that can be financed can be presented to voters. As a result, in countries like the US and, increasingly, Western Europe, political parties are first of all bank accounts . With certain qualifications, one must pay to play. Understanding any given election, therefore, requires a financial X-ray of the power blocs that dominate the major parties, with both inter- and intra- industrial analysis of their constituent elements." ..."
"... Elections alone are no guarantee of democracy, as U.S. policymakers and pundits know very well when they rip on rigged elections (often fixed with the assistance of U.S. government and private-sector agents and firms) in countries they don't like ..."
"... Majority opinion is regularly trumped by a deadly complex of forces in the U.S. ..."
"... Trump is a bit of an anomaly – a sign of an elections and party system in crisis and an empire in decline. He wasn't pre-approved or vetted by the usual U.S. " deep state " corporate, financial, and imperial gatekeepers. The ruling-class had been trying to figure out what the Hell to do with him ever since he shocked even himself (though not Steve Bannon) by pre-empting the coronation of the "Queen of Chaos." ..."
"... His lethally racist, sexist, nativist, nuclear-weapons-brandishing, and (last but not at all least) eco-cidal rise to the nominal CEO position atop the U.S.-imperial oligarchy is no less a reflection of the dominant role of big U.S. capitalist money and homegrown plutocracy in U.S. politics than a more classically establishment Hillary ascendancy would have been. It's got little to do with Russia, Russia, Russia – the great diversion that fills U.S. political airwaves and newsprint as the world careens ever closer to oligarchy-imposed geocide and to a thermonuclear conflagration that the RussiaGate gambit is recklessly encouraging. ..."
Mar 30, 2018 | www.counterpunch.org

"She Doesn't Have Any Policy Positions"

On the Friday after the Chicago Cubs won the World Series and prior to the Tuesday on which the vicious racist and sexist Donald Trump was elected President of the United States, Bernie Sanders spoke to a surprisingly small crowd in Iowa City on behalf of Hillary Clinton. As I learned months later, Sanders told one of his Iowa City friends that day that Mrs. Clinton was in trouble. The reason, Sanders reported, was that Hillary wasn't discussing issues or advancing real solutions. "She doesn't have any policy positions," Sanders said.

The first time I heard this, I found it hard to believe. How, I wondered, could anyone run seriously for the presidency without putting issues and policy front and center? Wouldn't any serious campaign want a strong set of issue and policy positions to attract voters and fall back on in case and times of adversity?

Sanders wasn't lying. As the esteemed political scientist and money-politics expert Thomas Ferguson and his colleagues Paul Jorgensen and Jie Chen note in an important study released by the Institute for New Economic Thinking two months ago, the Clinton campaign "emphasized candidate and personal issues and avoided policy discussions to a degree without precedent in any previous election for which measurements exist .it stressed candidate qualifications [and] deliberately deemphasized issues in favor of concentrating on what the campaign regarded as [Donald] Trump's obvious personal weaknesses as a candidate."

Strange as it might have seemed, the reality television star and presidential pre-apprentice Donald Trump had a lot more to say about policy than the former First Lady, U.S. Senator, and Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, a wonkish Yale Law graduate.

"Courting the Undecideds in Business, not in the Electorate"

What was that about? My first suspicion was that Hillary's policy silence was about the money. It must have reflected her success in building a Wall Street-filled campaign funding war-chest so daunting that she saw little reason to raise capitalist election investor concerns by giving voice to the standard fake-progressive "hope" and "change" campaign and policy rhetoric Democratic presidential contenders typically deploy against their One Percent Republican opponents. Running against what she (wrongly) perceived (along with most election prognosticators) as a doomed and feckless opponent and as the clear preferred candidate of Wall Street and the intimately related U.S foreign policy elite , including many leading Neoconservatives put off by Trump's isolationist and anti-interventionist rhetoric, the "lying neoliberal warmonger" Hillary Clinton arrogantly figured that she could garner enough votes to win without having to ruffle any ruling-class feathers. She would cruise into the White House with no hurt plutocrat feelings simply by playing up the ill-prepared awfulness of her Republican opponent.

If Ferguson, Jorgensen, and Chen (hereafter "JFC") are right, I was on to something but not the whole money and politics story. Smart Wall Street and K Street Democratic Party bankrollers have long understood that Democratic candidates have to cloak their dollar-drenched corporatism in the deceptive campaign discourse of progressive- and even populist-sounding policy promise to win elections. Sophisticated funders get it that the Democratic candidates' need to manipulate the electorate with phony pledges of democratic transformation. The big money backers know it's "just politics" on the part of candidates who can be trusted to serve elite interests (like Bill Clinton 1993-2001 and Barack Obama 2009-2017 ) after they gain office.

What stopped Hillary from playing the usual game – the "manipulation of populism by elitism" that Christopher Hitchens once called "the essence of American politics" – in 2016, a year when the electorate was in a particularly angry and populist mood? FJC's study is titled " Industrial Structure and Party Competition in an Age of Hunger Games : Donald Trump and the 2016 Presidential Election." It performs heroic empirical work with difficult campaign finance data to show that Hillary's campaign funding success went beyond her party's usual corporate and financial backers to include normally Republican-affiliated capitalist sectors less disposed than their more liberal counterparts to abide the standard progressive-sounding policy rhetoric of Democratic Party candidates. FJC hypothesize that (along with the determination that Trump was too weak to be taken all that seriously) Hillary's desire get and keep on board normally Republican election investors led her to keep quiet on issues and policy concerns that mattered to everyday people. As FJC note:

"Trump trailed well behind Clinton in contributions from defense and aerospace – a lack of support extraordinary for a Republican presidential hopeful late in the race. For Clinton's campaign the temptation was irresistible: Over time it slipped into a variant of the strategy [Democrat] Lyndon Johnson pursued in 1964 in the face of another [Republican] candidate [Barry Goldwater] who seemed too far out of the mainstream to win: Go for a grand coalition with most of big business . one fateful consequence of trying to appeal to so many conservative business interests was strategic silence about most important matters of public policy. Given the candidate's steady lead in the polls, there seemed to be no point to rocking the boat with any more policy pronouncements than necessary . Misgivings of major contributors who worried that the Clinton campaign message lacked real attractions for ordinary Americans were rebuffed. The campaign sought to capitalize on the angst within business by vigorously courting the doubtful and undecideds there, not in the electorate " (emphasis added). Hillary Happened

FJC may well be right that a wish not to antagonize off right-wing campaign funders is what led Hillary to muzzle herself on important policy matters, but who really knows? An alternative theory I would not rule out is that Mrs. Clinton's own deep inner conservatism was sufficient to spark her to gladly dispense with the usual progressive-sounding campaign boilerplate. Since FJC bring up the Johnson-Goldwater election, it is perhaps worth mentioning that 18-year old Hillary was a "Goldwater Girl" who worked for the arch-reactionary Republican presidential candidate in 1964. Asked about that episode on National Public Radio (NPR) in 1996 , then First Lady Hillary said "That's right. And I feel like my political beliefs are rooted in the conservatism that I was raised with. I don't recognize this new brand of Republicanism that is afoot now, which I consider to be very reactionary, not conservative in many respects. I am very proud that I was a Goldwater girl."

It was a revealing reflection. The right-wing Democrat Hillary acknowledged that her ideological world view was still rooted in the conservatism of her family of origin. Her problem with the reactionary Republicanism afoot in the U.S. during the middle 1990s was that it was "not conservative in many respects." Her problem with the far-right Republican Congressional leaders Newt Gingrich and Tom DeLay was that they were betraying true conservatism – "the conservatism [Hillary] was raised with." This was worse even than the language of the Democratic Leadership Conference (DLC) – the right-wing Eisenhower Republican (at leftmost) tendency that worked to push the Democratic Party further to the Big Business-friendly right and away from its working-class and progressive base.

Of course, Bill and Hillary helped trail-blaze that plutocratic "New Democrat" turn in Arkansas during the late 1970s and 1980s. The rest, as they say, was history – an ugly corporate-neoliberal, imperial, and racist history that I and others have written about at great length. (I cannot reprise here the voluminous details of Mrs. Clinton's longstanding alignment with the corporate, financial, and imperial agendas of the rich and powerful. Two short and highly readable volumes are Doug Henwood, My Turn: Hillary Clinton Targets the Presidency [OR Books, 2015]; Diana Johnstone, Queen of Chaos: The Misadventures of Hillary Clinton [CounterPunch Books, 2015]. On the stealth, virulent racism of the Clintons in power, see Elaine Brown's classic volume The Condemnation of Little B: New Age Racism in America [2003].)

What happened? Horrid corporate Hillary happened. And she's still happening. The "lying neoliberal warmonger" recently went to India to double down on her "progressive neoliberal" contempt for the "basket of deplorables" (more on that phrase below) that considers poor stupid and backwards middle America to be by saying this : "If you look at the map of the United States, there's all that red in the middle where Trump won. I win the coasts. But what the map doesn't show you is that I won the places that represent two-thirds of America's gross domestic product (GDP). So I won the places that are optimistic, diverse, dynamic, moving forward" (emphasis added).

That was Hillary Goldman Sachs-Council on Foreign Relations-Clinton saying "go to Hell" to working- and middle-class people in Iowa, Wisconsin, Pennsylvania, Ohio, Michigan, Missouri, Indiana, and West Virginia. It was a raised middle and oligarchic finger from a super-wealthy arch-global-corporatist to all the supposedly pessimistic, slow-witted, and retrograde losers stuck between those glorious enclaves (led by Wall Street, Yale, and Harvard on the East coast and Silicon Valley and Hollywood on the West coast) of human progress and variety (and GDP!) on the imperial shorelines. Senate Minority Leader Dick Durbin had to go on television to say that Hillary was "wrong" to write off most of the nation as a festering cesspool of pathetic, ass-backwards, lottery-playing, and opioid-addicted white-trash has-beens. It's hard for the Inauthentic Opposition Party (as the late Sheldon Wolin reasonably called the Democrats ) to pose as an authentic opposition party when its' last big-money presidential candidate goes off-fake-progressive script with an openly elitist rant like that.

Historic Mistakes

Whatever the source of her strange policy silence in the 2016 campaign, that hush was "a miscalculation of historic proportion" (FJC). It was a critical mistake given what Ferguson and his colleagues call the "Hunger Games" misery and insecurity imposed on tens of millions of ordinary working- and middle-class middle-Americans by decades of neoliberal capitalist austerity , deeply exacerbated by the Wall Street-instigated Great Recession and the weak Obama recovery. The electorate was in a populist, anti-establishment mood – hardly a state of mind favorable to a wooden, richly globalist, Goldman-gilded candidate, a long-time Washington-Wall Street establishment ("swamp") creature like Hillary Clinton.

In the end, FJC note, the billionaire Trump's ironic, fake-populist "outreach to blue collar workers" would help him win "more than half of all voters with a high school education or less (including 61% of white women with no college), almost two thirds of those who believed life for the next generation of Americans would be worse than now, and seventy-seven percent of voters who reported their personal financial situation had worsened since four years ago."

Trump's popularity with "heartland" rural and working-class whites even provoked Hillary into a major campaign mistake: getting caught on video telling elite Manhattan election investors that half of Trump's supporters were a "basket of deplorables." There was a hauntingly strong parallel between Wall Street Hillary's "deplorables" blooper and the super-rich Republican candidate Mitt Romney's infamous 2012 gaffe : telling his own affluent backers saying that 47% of the population were a bunch of lazy welfare cheats. This time, though, it was the Democrat – with a campaign finance profile closer to Romney's than Obama's in 2012 – and not the Republican making the ugly plutocratic and establishment faux pas .

"A Frontal Assault on the American Establishment"

Still, Trump's success was no less tied to big money than was Hillary's failure. Candidate Trump ran strangely outside the longstanding neoliberal Washington Consensus, as an economic nationalist and isolationist. His raucous rallies were laced with dripping denunciations of Wall Street, Goldman Sachs, and globalization, mockery of George W. Bush's invasion of Iraq, rejection of the New Cold War with Russia, and pledges of allegiance to the "forgotten" American "working-class." He was no normal Republican One Percent candidate. As FJC explain:

"In 2016 the Republicans nominated yet another super-rich candidate – indeed, someone on the Forbes 400 list of wealthiest Americans. Like legions of conservative Republicans before him, he trash-talked Hispanics, immigrants, and women virtually non-stop, though with a verve uniquely his own. He laced his campaign with barely coded racial appeals and in the final days, ran an ad widely denounced as subtly anti-Semitic. But in striking contrast to every other Republican presidential nominee since 1936, he attacked globalization, free trade, international financiers, Wall Street, and even Goldman Sachs. ' Globalization has made the financial elite who donate to politicians very wealthy. But it has left millions of our workers with nothing but poverty and heartache . When subsidized foreign steel is dumped into our markets, threatening our factories, the politicians do nothing. For years, they watched on the sidelines as our jobs vanished and our communities were plunged into depression-level unemployment.'"

"In a frontal assault on the American establishment, the Republican standard bearer proclaimed 'America First.' Mocking the Bush administration's appeal to 'weapons of mass destruction' as a pretext for invading Iraq, he broke dramatically with two generations of GOP orthodoxy and spoke out in favor of more cooperation with Russia . He even criticized the 'carried interest' tax break beloved by high finance" (emphasis added).

Big Dark Money and Trump: His Own and Others'

This cost Trump much of the corporate and Wall Street financial support that Republican presidential candidates usually get. The thing was, however, that much of Trump's "populist" rhetoric was popular with a big part of the Republican electorate, thanks to the "Hunger Games" insecurity of the transparently bipartisan New Gilded Age. And Trump's personal fortune permitted him to tap that popular anger while leaping insultingly over the heads of his less wealthy if corporate and Wall Street-backed competitors ("low energy" Jeb Bush and "little Marco" Rubio most notably) in the crowded Republican primary race.

A Republican candidate dependent on the usual elite bankrollers would never have been able to get away with Trump's crowd-pleasing (and CNN and FOX News rating-boosting) antics. Thanks to his own wealth, the faux-populist anti-establishment Trump was ironically inoculated against pre-emption in the Republican primaries by the American campaign finance "wealth primary," which renders electorally unviable candidates who lack vast financial resources or access to them.

Things were different after Trump won the Republican nomination, however. He could no longer go it alone after the primaries. During the Republican National Convention and "then again in the late summer of 2016," FJC show, Trump's "solo campaign had to be rescued by major industries plainly hoping for tariff relief, waves of other billionaires from the far, far right of the already far right Republican Party, and the most disruption-exalting corners of Wall Street." By FJC's account:

"What happened in the final weeks of the campaign was extraordinary. Firstly, a giant wave of dark money poured into Trump's own campaign – one that towered over anything in 2016 or even Mitt Romney's munificently financed 2012 effort – to say nothing of any Russian Facebook experiments [Then] another gigantic wave of money flowed in from alarmed business interests, including the Kochs and their allies Officially the money was for Senate races, but late-stage campaigning for down-ballot offices often spills over on to candidates for the party at large."

"The run up to the Convention brought in substantial new money, including, for the first time, significant contributions from big business. Mining, especially coal mining; Big Pharma (which was certainly worried by tough talk from the Democrats, including Hillary Clinton, about regulating drug prices); tobacco, chemical companies, and oil (including substantial sums from executives at Chevron, Exxon, and many medium sized firms); and telecommunications (notably AT&T, which had a major merge merger pending) all weighed in. Money from executives at the big banks also began streaming in, including Bank of America, J. P. Morgan Chase, Morgan Stanley, and Wells Fargo. Parts of Silicon Valley also started coming in from the cold."

"In a harbinger of things to come, additional money came from firms and industries that appear to have been attracted by Trump's talk of tariffs, including steel and companies making machinery of various types [a] vast wave of new money flowed into the campaign from some of America's biggest businesses and most famous investors. Sheldon Adelson and many others in the casino industry delivered in grand style for its old colleague. Adelson now delivered more than $11 million in his own name, while his wife and other employees of his Las Vegas Sands casino gave another $20 million.

Peter Theil contributed more than a million dollars, while large sums also rolled in from other parts of Silicon Valley, including almost two million dollars from executives at Microsoft and just over two million from executives at Cisco Systems. A wave of new money swept in from large private equity firms, the part of Wall Street which had long championed hostile takeovers as a way of disciplining what they mocked as bloated and inefficient 'big business.' Virtual pariahs to main-line firms in the Business Roundtable and the rest of Wall Street, some of these figures had actually gotten their start working with Drexel Burnham Lambert and that firm's dominant partner, Michael Milkin.

Among those were Nelson Peltz and Carl Icahn (who had both contributed to Trump before, but now made much bigger new contributions). In the end, along with oil, chemicals, mining and a handful of other industries, large private equity firms would become one of the few segments of American business – and the only part of Wall Street – where support for Trump was truly heavy the sudden influx of money from private equity and hedge funds clearly began with the Convention but turned into a torrent "

The critical late wave came after Trump moved to rescue his flagging campaign by handing its direction over to the clever, class-attuned, far-right white- and economic- nationalist "populist" and Breitbart executive Steve Bannon, who advocated what proved to be a winning, Koch brothers-approved "populist" strategy: appeal to economically and culturally frustrated working- and middle-class whites in key battleground states, where the bloodless neoliberal and professional class centrism and snooty metropolitan multiculturalism of the Obama presidency and Clinton campaign was certain to depress the Democratic "base" vote . Along with the racist voter suppression carried out by Republican state governments (JFC rightly chide Russia-obsessed political reporters and commentators for absurdly ignoring this important factor) and (JFC intriguingly suggest) major anti-union offensives conducted by employers in some battleground states, this major late-season influx of big right-wing political money tilted the election Trump's way.

The Myth of Potent Russian Cyber-Subversion

As FJC show, there is little empirical evidence to support the Clinton and corporate Democrats' self-interested and diversionary efforts to explain Mrs. Clinton's epic fail and Trump's jaw-dropping upset victory as the result of (i) Russian interference, (ii), then FBI Director James Comey's October Surprise revelation that his agency was not done investigating Hillary's emails, and/or (iii) some imagined big wave of white working-class racism, nativism, and sexism brought to the surface by the noxious Orange Hulk. The impacts of both (i) and (ii) were infinitesimal in comparison to the role that big campaign money played both in silencing Hillary and funding Trump.

The blame-the-deplorable-racist-white-working-class narrative is belied by basic underlying continuities in white working class voting patterns. As FJC note: " Neither turnout nor the partisan division of the vote at any level looks all that different from other recent elections 2016's alterations in voting behavior are so minute that the pattern is only barely differentiated from 2012." It was about the money – the big establishment money that the Clinton campaign took (as FJC at least plausibly argue) to recommend policy silence and the different, right-wing big money that approved Trump's comparative right-populist policy boisterousness.

An interesting part of FJC's study (no quick or easy read) takes a close look at the pro-Trump and anti-Hillary Internet activism that the Democrats and their many corporate media allies are so insistently eager to blame on Russia and for Hillary's defeat. FJC find that Russian Internet interventions were of tiny significance compared to those of homegrown U.S. corporate and right-wing cyber forces:

"The real masters of these black arts are American or Anglo-American firms. These compete directly with Silicon Valley and leading advertising firms for programmers and personnel. They rely almost entirely on data purchased from Google, Facebook, or other suppliers, not Russia . American regulators do next to nothing to protect the privacy of voters and citizens, and, as we have shown in several studies, leading telecom firms are major political actors and giant political contributors. As a result, data on the habits and preferences of individual internet users are commercially available in astounding detail and quantities for relatively modest prices – even details of individual credit card purchases. The American giants for sure harbor abundant data on the constellation of bots, I.P. addresses, and messages that streamed to the electorate "

" stories hyping 'the sophistication of an influence campaign slickly crafted to mimic and infiltrate U.S. political discourse while also seeking to heighten tensions between groups already wary of one another by the Russians miss the mark.' By 2016, the Republican right had developed internet outreach and political advertising into a fine art and on a massive scale quite on its own. Large numbers of conservative websites, including many that that tolerated or actively encouraged white supremacy and contempt for immigrants, African-Americans, Hispanics, Jews, or the aspirations of women had been hard at work for years stoking up 'tensions between groups already wary of one another.' Breitbart and other organizations were in fact going global, opening offices abroad and establishing contacts with like-minded groups elsewhere. Whatever the Russians were up to, they could hardly hope to add much value to the vast Made in America bombardment already underway. Nobody sows chaos like Breitbart or the Drudge Report ."

" the evidence revealed thus far does not support strong claims about the likely success of Russian efforts, though of course the public outrage at outside meddling is easy to understand. The speculative character of many accounts even in the mainstream media is obvious. Several, such as widely circulated declaration by the Department of Homeland Security that 21 state election systems had been hacked during the election, have collapsed within days of being put forward when state electoral officials strongly disputed them, though some mainstream press accounts continue to repeat them. Other tales about Macedonian troll factories churning out stories at the instigation of the Kremlin, are clearly exaggerated."

The Sanders Tease: "He Couldn't Have Done a Thing"

Perhaps the most remarkable finding in FJC's study is that Sanders came tantalizingly close to winning the Democratic presidential nomination against the corporately super-funded Clinton campaign with no support from Big Business . Running explicitly against the "Hunger Games" economy and the corporate-financial plutocracy that created it, Sanders pushed Hillary the Goldman candidate to the wall, calling out the Democrats' capture by Wall Street, forcing her to rely on a rigged party, convention, and primary system to defeat him. The small-donor "socialist" Sanders challenge represented something Ferguson and his colleagues describe as "without precedent in American politics not just since the New Deal, but across virtually the whole of American history a major presidential candidate waging a strong, highly competitive campaign whose support from big business is essentially zero ."

Sanders pulled this off, FJC might have added, by running in (imagine) accord with majority-progressive left-of-center U.S. public opinion. But for the Clintons' corrupt advance- control of the Democratic National Committee and convention delegates, Ferguson et al might further have noted, Sanders might well have been the Democratic presidential nominee, curiously enough in the arch-state-capitalist and oligarchic United States

Could Sanders have defeated the billionaire and right-wing billionaire-backed Trump in the general election? There's no way to know, of course. Sanders consistently out-performed Hillary Clinton in one-on-one match -up polls vis a vis Donald Trump during the primary season, but much of the big money (and, perhaps much of the corporate media) that backed Hillary would have gone over to Trump had the supposedly "radical" Sanders been the Democratic nominee.

Even if Sanders has been elected president, moreover, Noam Chomsky is certainly correct in his recent judgement that Sanders would have been able to achieve very little in the White House. As Chomsky told Lynn Parramore two weeks ago, in an interview conducted for the Institute for New Economic Thinking, the same think-tank that published FJC's remarkable study:

"His campaign [was] a break with over a century of American political history. No corporate support, no financial wealth, he was unknown, no media support. The media simply either ignored or denigrated him. And he came pretty close -- he probably could have won the nomination, maybe the election. But suppose he'd been elected? He couldn't have done a thing. Nobody in Congress, no governors, no legislatures, none of the big economic powers, which have an enormous effect on policy. All opposed to him. In order for him to do anything, he would have to have a substantial, functioning party apparatus, which would have to grow from the grass roots. It would have to be locally organized, it would have to operate at local levels, state levels, Congress, the bureaucracy -- you have to build the whole system from the bottom."

As Chomsky might have added, Sanders oligarchy-imposed "failures" would have been great fodder for the disparagement and smearing of "socialism" and progressive, majority-backed policy change. "See? We tried all that and it was a disaster!"

I would note further that the Sanders phenomenon's policy promise was plagued by its standard bearer's persistent loyalty to the giant and absurdly expensive U.S.-imperial Pentagon System, which each year eats up hundreds of billions of taxpayer dollars required to implement the progressive, majority-supported policy agenda that Bernie F-35 Sanders ran on.

"A Very Destructive Ideology"

The Sanders challenge was equally afflicted by its candidate-centered electoralism. This diverted energy away from the real and more urgent politics of building people's movements – grassroots power to shake the society to its foundations and change policy from the bottom up (Dr. Martin Luther King's preferred strategy at the end of his life just barely short of 50 years ago, on April 4 th , 1968) – and into the narrow, rigidly time-staggered grooves of a party and spectacle-elections crafted by and for the wealthy Few and the American Oligarchy 's "permanent political class" (historian Ron Formisano). As Chomsky explained on the eve of the 2004 elections:

"Americans may be encouraged to vote, but not to participate more meaningfully in the political arena. Essentially the election is a method of marginalizing the population. A huge propaganda campaign is mounted to get people to focus on these personalized quadrennial extravaganzas and to think, 'That's politics.' But it isn't. It's only a small part of politics The urgency is for popular progressive groups to grow and become strong enough so that centers of power can't ignore them. Forces for change that have come up from the grass roots and shaken the society to its core include the labor movement, the civil rights movement, the peace movement, the women's movement and others, cultivated by steady, dedicated work at all levels, every day, not just once every four years sensible [electoral] choices have to be made. But they are secondary to serious political action."

"The only thing that's going to ever bring about any meaningful change," Chomsky told Abby Martin on teleSur English in the fall of 2015, "is ongoing, dedicated, popular movements that don't pay attention to the election cycle." Under the American religion of voting, Chomsky told Dan Falcone and Saul Isaacson in the spring of 2016, "Citizenship means every four years you put a mark somewhere and you go home and let other guys run the world. It's a very destructive ideology basically, a way of making people passive, submissive objects [we] ought to teach kids that elections take place but that's not politics."

For all his talk of standing atop a great "movement" for "revolution," Sanders was and remains all about this stunted and crippling definition of citizenship and politics as making some marks on ballots and then returning to our domiciles while rich people and their agents (not just any "other guys") "run [ruin?-P.S.] the world [into the ground-P.S.]."

It will take much more in the way of Dr. King's politics of "who' sitting in the streets," not "who's sitting in the White House" (to use Howard Zinn's excellent dichotomy ), to get us an elections and party system worthy of passionate citizen engagement. We don't have such a system in the U.S. today, which is why the number of eligible voters who passively boycotted the 2016 presidential election is larger than both the number who voted for big money Hillary and the number who voted for big money Trump.

(If U.S. progressives really want to consider undertaking the epic lift involved in passing a U.S. Constitutional Amendment, they might want to focus on this instead of calling for a repeal of the Second Amendment. I'd recommend starting with a positive Democracy Amendment that fundamentally overhauls the nation's political and elections set-up in accord with elementary principles and practices of popular sovereignty. Clauses would include but not be limited to full public financing of elections and the introduction of proportional representation for legislative races – not to mention the abolition of the Electoral College, Senate apportionment on the basis of total state population, and the outlawing of gerrymandering.)

Ecocide Trumped by Russia

Meanwhile, back in real history, we have the remarkable continuation of a bizarre right-wing, pre-fascist presidency not in normal ruling-class hands, subject to the weird whims and tweets of a malignant narcissist who doesn't read memorandums or intelligence briefings. Wild policy zig-zags and record-setting White House personnel turnover are par for the course under the dodgy reign of the orange-tinted beast's latest brain spasms. Orange Caligula spends his mornings getting his information from FOX News and his evenings complaining to and seeking advice from a small club of right-wing American oligarchs.

Trump poses grave environmental and nuclear risks to human survival. A consistent Trump belief is that climate change is not a problem and that it's perfectly fine – "great" and "amazing," in fact – for the White House to do everything it can to escalate the Greenhouse Gassing-to-Death of Life on Earth. The nuclear threat is rising now that he has appointed a frothing right-wing uber-warmonger – a longtime advocate of bombing Iran and North Korea who led the charge for the arch-criminal U.S. invasion of Iraq – as his top "National Security" adviser and as he been convinced to expel dozens of Russian diplomats. Thanks, liberal and other Democratic Party RussiaGaters!

The Clinton-Obama neoliberal Democrats have spent more than a year running with the preposterous narrative that Trump is a Kremlin puppet who owes his presence in the White House to Russia's subversion of our democratic elections. The climate crisis holds little for the Trump and Russia-obsessed corporate media. The fact that the world stands at the eve of the ecological self-destruction, with the Trump White House in the lead, elicits barely a whisper in the reigning commercial news media. Unlike Stormy Daniels, for example, that little story – the biggest issue of our or any time – is not good for television ratings and newspaper sales.

Sanders, by the way, is curiously invisible in the dominant commercial media, despite his quiet survey status as the nation's "most popular politician." That is precisely what you would expect in a corporate and financial oligarchy buttressed by a powerful corporate, so-called "mainstream" media oligopoly.

Political Parties as "Bank Accounts"

One of the many problems with the obsessive Blame-Russia narrative that a fair portion of the dominant U.S. media is running with is that we had no great electoral democracy to subvert in 2016 . Saying that Russia has "undermined [U.S.-] American democracy" is like me – middle-aged, five-foot nine, and unblessed with jumping ability – saying that the Brooklyn Nets' Russian-born center Timofy Mozgof subverted my career as a starting player in the National Basketball Association. In state-capitalist societies marked by the toxic and interrelated combination of weak popular organization, expensive politics, and highly concentrated wealth – all highly evident in the New Gilded Age United States – electoral contests and outcomes boil down above all and in the end to big investor class cash. As Thomas Ferguson and his colleagues explain:

"Where investment and organization by average citizens is weak, however, power passes by default to major investor groups, which can far more easily bear the costs of contending for control of the state. In most modern market-dominated societies (those celebrated recently as enjoying the 'end of History'), levels of effective popular organization are generally low, while the costs of political action, in terms of both information and transactional obstacles, are high. The result is that conflicts within the business community normally dominate contests within and between political parties – the exact opposite of what many earlier social theorists expected, who imagined 'business' and 'labor' confronting each other in separate parties Only candidates and positions that can be financed can be presented to voters. As a result, in countries like the US and, increasingly, Western Europe, political parties are first of all bank accounts . With certain qualifications, one must pay to play. Understanding any given election, therefore, requires a financial X-ray of the power blocs that dominate the major parties, with both inter- and intra- industrial analysis of their constituent elements."

Here Ferguson might have said "corporate-dominated" instead of "market-dominated" for the modern managerial corporations emerged as the "visible hand" master of the "free market" more than a century ago.

We get to vote? Big deal.

People get to vote in Rwanda, Russia, the Congo and countless other autocratic states as well. Elections alone are no guarantee of democracy, as U.S. policymakers and pundits know very well when they rip on rigged elections (often fixed with the assistance of U.S. government and private-sector agents and firms) in countries they don't like, which includes any country that dares to "question the basic principle that the United States effectively owns the world by right and is by definition a force for good" ( Chomsky, 2016 ).

Majority opinion is regularly trumped by a deadly complex of forces in the U.S. The list of interrelated and mutually reinforcing culprits behind this oligarchic defeat of popular sentiment in the U.S. is extensive. It includes but is not limited to: the campaign finance, candidate-selection, lobbying, and policy agenda-setting power of wealthy individuals, corporations, and interest groups; the special primary election influence of full-time party activists; the disproportionately affluent, white, and older composition of the active (voting) electorate; the manipulation of voter turnout; the widespread dissemination of false, confusing, distracting, and misleading information; absurdly and explicitly unrepresentative political institutions like the Electoral College, the unelected Supreme Court, the over-representation of the predominantly white rural population in the U.S. Senate; one-party rule in the House of "Representatives"; the fragmentation of authority in government; and corporate ownership of the reigning media, which frames current events in accord with the wishes and world view of the nation's real owners.

Yes, we get to vote. Super. Big deal. Mammon reigns nonetheless in the United States, where, as the leading liberal political scientists Benjamin Page and Martin Gilens find , "government policy reflects the wishes of those with money, not the wishes of the millions of ordinary citizens who turn out every two years to choose among the preapproved, money-vetted candidates for federal office."

Trump is a bit of an anomaly – a sign of an elections and party system in crisis and an empire in decline. He wasn't pre-approved or vetted by the usual U.S. " deep state " corporate, financial, and imperial gatekeepers. The ruling-class had been trying to figure out what the Hell to do with him ever since he shocked even himself (though not Steve Bannon) by pre-empting the coronation of the "Queen of Chaos."

He is a homegrown capitalist oligarch nonetheless, a real estate mogul of vast and parasitic wealth who is no more likely to fulfill his populist-sounding campaign pledges than any previous POTUS of the neoliberal era.

His lethally racist, sexist, nativist, nuclear-weapons-brandishing, and (last but not at all least) eco-cidal rise to the nominal CEO position atop the U.S.-imperial oligarchy is no less a reflection of the dominant role of big U.S. capitalist money and homegrown plutocracy in U.S. politics than a more classically establishment Hillary ascendancy would have been. It's got little to do with Russia, Russia, Russia – the great diversion that fills U.S. political airwaves and newsprint as the world careens ever closer to oligarchy-imposed geocide and to a thermonuclear conflagration that the RussiaGate gambit is recklessly encouraging.

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[Mar 31, 2018] Where Have You Gone, George McGovern by Maj. Danny Sjursen

Notable quotes:
"... Still, George McGovern was a humble man who carried the burden, and honor, of his military service with grace. Though proud of his service, he was never constrained by it. When he saw a foolish war, an immoral war -- like Vietnam -- he stood ready to dissent. He was an unapologetic liberal and unwavering in his antiwar stance. These days, his kind is an endangered species on Capitol Hill and in the Democratic National Committee. McGovern died in 2012. His party, and the United States, are lesser for his absence. ..."
"... Today's Democrats are mostly avid hawks, probably to the right of Richard Nixon on foreign policy. ..."
"... Heck, even Gen. David "Generational War" Petraeus , once found himself in some hot water when -- in a rare moment of candor -- he admitted that the Israeli-Palestinian conflict "foments anti-American sentiment, due to a perception of US favoritism for Israel." Translation: US policy toward Israel (and, no doubt, the foolhardy 2003 invasion of Iraq) make American soldiers less safe. ..."
"... So does the basic post-9/11 American policy of sovereignty violation and expansive military intervention whenever and wherever Washington feels like it -- so long as it's in the name of fighting (you guessed it) "terrorism." ..."
"... George McGovern -- a true patriot, a man who knew war but loved peace -- wouldn't recognize the likes of Klobuchar, Clinton, Schumer and company. He'd be rightfully embarrassed by their supplication to the national warfare state. ..."
"... In 1972, McGovern's presidential campaign (as, to some extent, Bernie's did) reached out to impassioned youth in the "New Left," and formed a rainbow coalition with African-Americans and other minority groups. His Democrats were no longer the party of Cold War consensus, no longer the party of LBJ and Vietnam. No, McGovern's signature issue was peace, and opposition to that disastrous war. ..."
"... His campaign distributed pins and T-shirts bearing white doves . Could you even imagine a mainstream Democrat getting within 1,000 meters of such a symbol today? Of course not. ..."
Mar 29, 2018 | original.antiwar.com

This article originally appeared at TruthDig .

He knew war well -- well enough to know he hated it.

George McGovern was a senator from South Dakota, and he was a Democrat true liberals could admire. Though remembered as a staunch liberal and foreign policy dove, McGovern was no stranger to combat. He flew 35 missions as a B-24 pilot in Italy during World War II. He even earned the Distinguished Flying Cross for executing a heroic emergency crash landing after his bomber was damaged by German anti-aircraft fire.

Still, George McGovern was a humble man who carried the burden, and honor, of his military service with grace. Though proud of his service, he was never constrained by it. When he saw a foolish war, an immoral war -- like Vietnam -- he stood ready to dissent. He was an unapologetic liberal and unwavering in his antiwar stance. These days, his kind is an endangered species on Capitol Hill and in the Democratic National Committee. McGovern died in 2012. His party, and the United States, are lesser for his absence.

Today's Democrats are mostly avid hawks, probably to the right of Richard Nixon on foreign policy. They dutifully voted for Bush's Iraq war . Then, they won back the White House and promptly expanded an unwinnable Afghan war . Soon, they again lost the presidency -- to a reality TV star -- and raised hardly a peep as Donald Trump expanded America's aimless wars into the realm of the absurd.

I've long known this, but most liberals -- deeply ensconced (or distracted) by hyper-identity politics -- hardly notice. Still, every once in a while something reminds me of how lost the Democrats truly are.

I nearly spit up my food the other day. Watching on C-SPAN as Sen. Amy Klobuchar, D-Minn., gleefully attended a panel at the American Israeli Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC) conference, I couldn't help but wonder what has happened to the Democratic Party. The worst part is I like her, mostly. Look, I agree with Sen. Klobuchar on most domestic issues: health care, taxes and more. But she -- a supposed liberal -- and her mainstream Democratic colleagues are complicit in the perpetuation of America's warfare state and neo-imperial interventionism. Sen. Klobuchar and other Democrats' reflexive support for Israel is but a symptom of a larger disease in the party -- tacit militarism.

AIPAC is a lobbying clique almost as savvy and definitely as effective as the NRA. Its meetings -- well attended by mainstream Democrats and Republicans alike -- serve as little more than an opportunity for Washington pols to kiss Benjamin Netanyahu's ring and swear fealty to Israel. Most of the time, participants don't dare utter the word "Palestinian." That'd be untoward -- Palestinians are the unacknowledged elephants in the room .

The far right-wing Israeli government of Netanyahu, who is little more than a co-conspirator and enabler for America's failed project in the Middle East, should be the last group "liberals" pander to. That said, the state of Israel is a fact. Its people -- just like the Palestinians -- deserve security and liberty. Love it or hate it, Israel will continue to exist. The question is: Can Israel remain both exclusively Jewish and democratic? I'm less certain about that. For 50 years now, the Israeli military has divided, occupied and enabled the illegal settlement of sovereign Palestinian territory , keeping Arabs in limbo without citizenship or meaningful civil rights.

This is, so far as international law is concerned, a war crime. As such, unflinching American support for Israeli policy irreversibly damages the U.S. military's reputation on the "Arab street." I've seen it firsthand. In Iraq and Afghanistan, hundreds and thousands of miles away from Jerusalem, captured prisoners and hospitable families alike constantly pointed to unfettered US support for Israel and the plight of Palestinians when answering that naive and ubiquitous American question: "Why do they hate us?"

Heck, even Gen. David "Generational War" Petraeus , once found himself in some hot water when -- in a rare moment of candor -- he admitted that the Israeli-Palestinian conflict "foments anti-American sentiment, due to a perception of US favoritism for Israel." Translation: US policy toward Israel (and, no doubt, the foolhardy 2003 invasion of Iraq) make American soldiers less safe.

So does the basic post-9/11 American policy of sovereignty violation and expansive military intervention whenever and wherever Washington feels like it -- so long as it's in the name of fighting (you guessed it) "terrorism." So, which "liberals" are raising hell and ringing the alarm bells for their constituents about Israeli occupation and America's strategic overreach? Sen. Klobuchar? Hardly. She, and all but four Democrats, voted for the latest bloated Pentagon budget with few questions asked. Almost as many Republicans voted against the bill. So, which is the antiwar party these days? It's hard to know.

Besides, the Dems mustered fewer than 30 votes in support of the Rand Paul amendment and his modest call to repeal and replace America's outdated, vague Authorization for the Use of Military Force (AUMF). All Sen. Paul, a libertarian Republican, wanted to do was force a vote -- in six months -- to revisit the AUMF. This wasn't radical stuff by any means. The failure of Paul's amendment, when paired with the absolute dearth of Democratic dissent on contemporary foreign policy, proves one thing conclusively: There is no longer an antiwar constituency in a major American political party. The two-party system has failed what's left of the antiwar movement.

By no means is Amy Klobuchar alone in her forever-war complicity. Long before she graced the halls of the Senate, her prominent precursors -- Joe Biden, Hillary Clinton and Chuck Schumer (to name just a few) -- rubber-stamped a war of aggression in Iraq and mostly acquiesced as one president after another (including Barack Obama) gradually expanded America's post-9/11 wars. When will it end? No one knows, really, but so far, the US military has deployed advisers or commandos to 70 percent of the world's countries and is actively bombing at least seven . That's the problem with waging clandestine wars with professional soldiers while asking nothing of an apathetic public: These conflicts tend to grow and grow, until, one day -- which passed long ago -- hardly anyone realizes we're now at war with most everyone.

So where are the doves now? On the fringe, that's where. Screaming from the distant corners of the libertarian right and extreme left. No one cares, no one is listening, and they can hardly get a hearing on either MSNBC or Fox. It's the one thing both networks agree on: endless, unquestioned war. Hooray for 21st century bipartisanship.

Still, Americans deserve more from the Democrats, once (however briefly) the party of McGovern. These days, the Dems hate Trump more than they like anything. To be a principled national party, they've got to be more than just anti-Trump. They need to provide a substantive alternative and present a better foreign policy offer. How about a do-less strategy: For starters, some modesty and prudent caution would go a long way.

George McGovern -- a true patriot, a man who knew war but loved peace -- wouldn't recognize the likes of Klobuchar, Clinton, Schumer and company. He'd be rightfully embarrassed by their supplication to the national warfare state.

In 1972, McGovern's presidential campaign (as, to some extent, Bernie's did) reached out to impassioned youth in the "New Left," and formed a rainbow coalition with African-Americans and other minority groups. His Democrats were no longer the party of Cold War consensus, no longer the party of LBJ and Vietnam. No, McGovern's signature issue was peace, and opposition to that disastrous war.

His campaign distributed pins and T-shirts bearing white doves . Could you even imagine a mainstream Democrat getting within 1,000 meters of such a symbol today? Of course not.

Today's Dems are too frightened, fearful of being labeled "soft" (note the sexual innuendo) on "terror," and have thus ceded foreign policy preeminence to the unhinged, uber-hawk Republicans. We live, today, with the results of that cowardly concession.

The thing about McGovern is that he lost the 1972 election, by a landslide. And maybe that's the point. Today's Democrats would rather win than be right. Somewhere along the way, they lost their souls. Worse still, they aren't any good at winning, either.

Sure, they and everybody else "support the troops." Essentially, that means the Dems will at least fight for veterans' health care and immigration rights when vets return from battle. That's admirable enough. What they won't countenance, or even consider, is a more comprehensive, and ethical, solution: to end these aimless wars and stop making new veterans that need "saving."

Major Danny Sjursen, an Antiwar.com regular, is a U.S. Army officer and former history instructor at West Point. He served tours with reconnaissance units in Iraq and Afghanistan. He has written a memoir and critical analysis of the Iraq War, Ghost Riders of Baghdad: Soldiers, Civilians, and the Myth of the Surge . He lives with his wife and four sons in Lawrence, Kansas. Follow him on Twitter at @SkepticalVet and check out his new podcast "Fortress on a Hill," co-hosted with fellow vet Chris 'Henri' Henrikson.

[ Note: The views expressed in this article are those of the author, expressed in an unofficial capacity, and do not reflect the official policy or position of the Department of the Army, Department of Defense, or the U.S. government.]

Copyright 2018 Danny Sjursen

[Mar 29, 2018] The US is by no means a "functioning democracy with proper rule of law". More like a corrupt plutocracy

Mar 29, 2018 | discussion.theguardian.com

Aseoria -> ID6902426 , 28 Mar 2018 12:48

The US has been cracking down on protected First Amendment rights for years now. Just heard that someone was kicked off the post office lawn last week for protesting, so FIrday's peace vigil may be at risk again.We haven't had any problems with the police harassing us for probably 12 years, but that may be raising its head again.

The US government has a lot to answer for in terms of press freedom and its reaction to organized protest. One only need remember the clusterfuck at Standing Rock during the final months of Obama's presidency to see that this country has major problems with racism, violence, liberty, equality, fraternity. The US is by no means a "functioning democracy with proper rule of law". More like a corrupt plutocracy riding full-speed into overt fascism, where who you know and who you blow makes the most difference if you wind up in trouble with the law.

I never take First Amendment rights for granted. I am totally aware that if you don't use your rights, and often, you lose them. I have never had an account on Facebook, but sometimes I cruise other people's pages to the extent that Zuckerburg will allow without gathering my information(or maybe they can get it if you just look at a page). Always thought it was a supremely wrong idea to allow your identity to be taken away by some fat cat with a clever idea.

[Mar 28, 2018] It's Not a Conspiracy Anymore; Public Belief in 'Deep State' Soars by Mike Whitney

Notable quotes:
"... Monmouth University Poll ..."
"... It's impossible to overstate the significance of the survey. The data suggest that representative democracy is a largely a fraud, that congressmen and senators are mostly sock-puppets who do the bidding of wealthy powerbrokers, and that the entire system is impervious to the will of the people. These are pretty damning results and a clear indication of how corrupt the system really is. ..."
"... So, along with the fact, that most Americans think democracy is a pipe-dream, a clear majority also believe that the country has changed into a frightening, lock-down police state in which government agents gather all-manner of electronic communications on everyone without the slightest suspicion of wrongdoing. ..."
"... There's no doubt in my mind that the relentless attacks on Donald Trump have reinforced the public's belief that the country is controlled by an invisible group of elites whose agents in the bureaucracy follow their diktats ..."
"... Brennan says "America will triumph over you." But whose America is he talking about? The American people elected Trump, he is the legitimate president of the United States. Many people may not like his policies, but they respect the system that put him in office. ..."
"... Brennan and his cadres of rogue agents have been at war with Trump since Day 1. Brennan does not accept the results of the election because it did not produce the outcome that he and his powerful constituents wanted. Brennan wants to destroy Trump. He even admits as much in his statement. ..."
"... And why do Brennan and his fatcat allies hate Trump so much? They don't. Because it's not really about Trump. It's about the presidency, the highest office in the land. The US Plutocrat Class honestly believe that they are entitled to govern the country that they physically own. It's theirs, they own it and they are taking it back. That's what this is all about ..."
Mar 28, 2018 | www.unz.com

On Monday, the Monmouth University Polling Institute released the results of a survey that found that "a large bipartisan majority feel that national policy is being manipulated or directed by a 'Deep State' of unelected government officials .. [1] Public Troubled By Deep State, Monmouth University Polling Institute

The Monmouth University Poll was conducted by telephone from March 2 to 5, 2018 with 803 adults in the United States. The results in this release have a margin of error of +/- 3.5 percent. The poll was conducted by the Monmouth University Polling Institute in West Long Branch, NJ.

https://www.monmouth.edu/polling-institute/reports/m...31918/

According to the survey:" 6-in-10 Americans (60%) feel that unelected or appointed government officials have too much influence in determining federal policy. Just 26% say the right balance of power exists between elected and unelected officials in determining policy. Democrats (59%), Republicans (59%) and independents (62%) agree that appointed officials hold too much sway in the federal government. ("Public Troubled by 'Deep State", Monmouth.edu)

The survey appears to confirm that democracy in the United States is largely a sham. Our elected representatives are not the agents of political change, but cogs in a vast bureaucratic machine that operates mainly in the interests of the behemoth corporations and banks. Surprisingly, most Americans have not been taken in by the media's promotional hoopla about elections and democracy. They have a fairly-decent grasp of how the system works and who ultimately benefits from it. Check it out:

" Few Americans (13%) are very familiar with the term "Deep State ;" another 24% are somewhat familiar, while 63% say they are not familiar with this term. However, when the term is described as a group of unelected government and military officials who secretly manipulate or direct national policy, nearly 3-in-4 (74%) say they believe this type of apparatus exists in Washington. Only 1-in-5 say it does not exist." Belief in the probable existence of a Deep State comes from more than 7-in-10 Americans in each partisan group "

So while the cable news channels dismiss anyone who believes in the "Deep State" as a conspiracy theorist, it's clear that the majority of people think that's how the system really works, that is, "a group of unelected government and military officials secretly manipulate or direct national policy."

It's impossible to overstate the significance of the survey. The data suggest that representative democracy is a largely a fraud, that congressmen and senators are mostly sock-puppets who do the bidding of wealthy powerbrokers, and that the entire system is impervious to the will of the people. These are pretty damning results and a clear indication of how corrupt the system really is.

The Monmouth survey also found that "A majority of the American public believe that the U.S. government engages in widespread monitoring of its own citizens and worry that the U.S. government could be invading their own privacy." .

"Fully 8-in-10 believe that the U.S. government currently monitors or spies on the activities of American citizens, including a majority (53%)who say this activity is widespread Few Americans (18%) say government monitoring or spying on U.S. citizens is usually justified, with most (53%) saying it is only sometimes justified. Another 28% say this activity is rarely or never justified ." ("Public Troubled by 'Deep State", Monmouth.edu)

So, along with the fact, that most Americans think democracy is a pipe-dream, a clear majority also believe that the country has changed into a frightening, lock-down police state in which government agents gather all-manner of electronic communications on everyone without the slightest suspicion of wrongdoing. Once again, the data suggests that the American people know what is going on, know that the US has gone from a reasonably free country where civil liberties were protected under the law, to a state-of-the-art surveillance state ruled by invisible elites who see the American people as an obstacle to their global ambitions–but their awareness has not evolved into an organized movement for change. In any event, the public seems to understand that the USG is not as committed to human rights and civil liberties as the media would have one believe. That's a start.

There's no doubt in my mind that the relentless attacks on Donald Trump have reinforced the public's belief that the country is controlled by an invisible group of elites whose agents in the bureaucracy follow their diktats. From the time Trump became the GOP presidential nominee more than 18 months ago, a powerful faction of the Intelligence Community, law enforcement (FBI) and even elements form the Obama DOJ, have vigorously tried to sabotage his presidency, his credibility and his agenda. Without a scintilla of hard evidence to make their case, this same group and their dissembling allies in the media, have cast Trump as a disloyal collaborator who conspired to win the election by colluding with a foreign government. The magnitude of this fabrication is beyond anything we've seen before in American political history, and the absence of any verifiable proof makes it all the more alarming. As it happens, the Deep State is so powerful it can wage a full-blown assault on the highest elected office in the country without even showing probable cause. In other words, the president of the United States is not even accorded the same rights as a common crook. How does that happen?

Over the weekend, former CIA Director and "Russia-gate" ringleader John Brennan fired off an angry salvo at Trump on his Twitter account. Here's what he said:

"When the full extent of your venality, moral turpitude, and political corruption becomes known, you will take your rightful place as a disgraced demagogue in the dustbin of history. You may scapegoat Andy McCabe, but you will not destroy America America will triumph over you."

Doesn't Brennan's statement help to reinforce the public's belief in the Deep State? How does a career bureaucrat who has never been elected to public office decide that it is appropriate to use the credibility of his former office to conduct a pitch-battle with the President of the United States?

Brennan says "America will triumph over you." But whose America is he talking about? The American people elected Trump, he is the legitimate president of the United States. Many people may not like his policies, but they respect the system that put him in office.

Not so, Brennan. Brennan and his cadres of rogue agents have been at war with Trump since Day 1. Brennan does not accept the results of the election because it did not produce the outcome that he and his powerful constituents wanted. Brennan wants to destroy Trump. He even admits as much in his statement.

And Brennan has been given a platform on the cable news channels so he can continue his assault on the presidency, not because he can prove that Trump is guilty of collusion or obstruction or whatever, but because the people who own the media have mobilized their deep state agents to carry out their vendetta to remove Trump from office by any means possible.

This is the "America" of which Brennan speaks. Not my America, but deep state America.

And why do Brennan and his fatcat allies hate Trump so much? They don't. Because it's not really about Trump. It's about the presidency, the highest office in the land. The US Plutocrat Class honestly believe that they are entitled to govern the country that they physically own. It's theirs, they own it and they are taking it back. That's what this is all about

... ... ...

[Mar 27, 2018] Brzezinski's Heritage West Wants Total Partition and Defeat of Russia

Notable quotes:
"... The views and opinions expressed by Srdja Trifkovic are those of the speaker and do not necessarily reflect those of Sputnik. ..."
Mar 03, 2018 | sputniknews.com
1 5 0 On Monday, a number of European countries, as well as the United States and Canada, announced they were expelling Russian diplomats over the Skripal case. Radio Sputnik discussed the significance of the diplomatic response by the Western powers with Srdja Trifkovic, a US journalist and writer on international affairs. Sputnik: What is your overall assessment about what has happened with this diplomatic response by so many countries? How significant is it?

Srdja Trifkovic: The overall impression is that rational discourse has given way to collective hysteria and that it is indeed remarkable. The extent to which the bandwagon has successfully started rolling while we don't even have elementary answers to the questions concerning the case itself.

The second important and discouraging aspect is that continental European countries have followed the Anglo-American lead in Russophobia and this represents a further trial of the Atlanticist domination over Europe. It is indeed remarkable when both Germany and France, the putative leaders of independent European foreign policy, have been reduced to the status of automatic followers of the lead supported by Washington especially when we bear in mind that the initial round of sanctions in 2014 against Russia was dictated by the United States which had nothing to lose in the proceedings and to the detriments of Europeans' interests.

So overall I think that, one we have the hysterical phase of Russophobic discourse in the West which is not amenable to any rational arguments and two, we have a successful degradation of European diplomacy to the status of pliant satellites comparable to East Germany and Bulgaria vis-à-vis Brezhnev.

Sputnik: Do you think there was some classified evidence that was presented that proves beyond a shadow of doubt that Russia was involved or do you think that the fact that there are 11 countries who have not joined in the protest perhaps hints at the fact that this was not the case?

Srdja Trifkovic: Well, first of all, I would say that President Putin, Foreign Minister Lavrov and others would not have made such categorical denials of Russian involvement if there was any possibility of a smoking gun which could effectively show to the world that they were not telling the truth.

And secondly, it is always possible to present some equivocal evidence in the form that even if that indicates the modus operandi of intelligence agencies nevertheless does not disclose outright state secrets. In fact, we've seen that in the past and I don't think that it would be possible for such confidential information to be disclosed to the diplomats and foreign ministers of EU countries as divergent as the 27 are, without risking these very sources.

So I really believe that if you look at the countries which have taken measures against Russia, they almost read like who is who of those who are prepared to follow the US lead and if you look at those reluctant to do so, including Austria, Hungary, Cyprus, Greece, we are looking at those who actually have a more independent foreign policy. So I don't think it's a reflection of the quality of possible intelligence, it is simply a reflection of the determination of decision-makers of those countries to preserve a modicum of independence.

Sputnik: What would you say about the level to which the actions that were actually taken by individual countries? What can you say about the numbers game that's being played? What do you think determined the number of diplomats?

Srdja Trifkovic: Some of these countries are absolutely insignificant countries like the Former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia, which also expelled one Russian and it's just a pathetic non country. On the other hand in the United States obviously it is a matter of regret that President Trump's initially stated intention to have detente with Russia has been subverted by the deep state, it is a long story but now we have really reached the end of the road with the appointment of Pompeo to State Department and Bolton as the national security adviser.

So we can really look at Trump as the would-be drainer of the swamp who has been swallowed by the swamp. And I think that we are in for a long haul. I was in Moscow two weeks ago and coming again next week and sometimes I am surprised that some of my Russian interlocutors are insufficiently aware of the animosity or end of the rule Russophobic sentiment that currently prevails among the Western elites, both political and academic and media. It's almost pathetic when some Russians still use the term "our Western partners," because for partnership you need to have a modicum of mutual respect and trust and these people really seriously want to destroy Russia.

They want to delegitimize the Russian political system and process as we have seen with the public commentary on President Putin's re-election and they want nothing short of regime change, which would then lead to a permanent and irreversible change of Russia's national character and possibly the country's partition along the lines allocated by Zbigniew Brzezinski. With these people partnership is impossible and Russia needs to be prepared for a long and sustained period of confrontation .

The views and opinions expressed by Srdja Trifkovic are those of the speaker and do not necessarily reflect those of Sputnik.

[Mar 27, 2018] West pushing anti-Russia conspiracy theories for achieving political economic advantage

Notable quotes:
"... "should go away and shut up;" ..."
"... "[Sergei Skripal] was handed in to Britain as a result of an exchange. So, why should Russia hand in a man that is of any importance or that is of any value? It's unimaginable. If he's handed in – so Russia quits with him. He's of zero value or zero importance," ..."
"... "America stands ready to help Poland and other European nations diversify their energy supplies so that you can never be held hostage to a single supplier," ..."
"... "If we want to have the United States' LNG supplies in Central Europe, we also want to see the United States getting tough on Nord Stream 2, which means getting tough on Russia," ..."
"... "getting tough on Russia." ..."
"... "The draft law makes clear that they're pursuing economic interests and we think that's not acceptable," ..."
"... "Aggressively combining foreign policy issues with American economic interests and saying: 'We want to drive Russian gas out of the European market so we can sell American gas there is definitely not something we can accept.'" ..."
"... "We are determined to maintain open channels of dialogue with Russia," ..."
Mar 27, 2018 | www.rt.com

Once again, the West has tossed out the democratic baby with the bath water, scapegoating Russia for a mysterious crime on UK territory without a shred of evidence. To understand why, just follow the money. Any hope that Western capitals would come to their democratic senses and demand that PM Theresa May provide some proof that Russia was behind an alleged assassination attempt on Sergei Skripal, a former Russian intelligence officer turned British spy, were dashed on Monday. Sixteen EU states fell in lockstep behind the US and UK, taking the dramatic measure of banishing Russian diplomats.

Breaking: US to expel 48 Russian embassy workers in Washington, D.C. and 12 at the Russian mission to the U.N. U.S. says they were intel officers using diplo status as cover. pic.twitter.com/mRuwY8Tes6

-- Patrick Tucker (@DefTechPat) March 26, 2018

Meanwhile, back in the land of the free, Trump enthusiastically joined the inquisition, saying he would expel 60 Russian diplomats 'personae non grata,' and shut down the Seattle consulate. Good to see that the American leader practices cool-headed moderation in times of uncertainty.

Short of an actual military conflict with Russia, it would be hard to imagine the situation getting any worse. Most worrisome is the peddling of pulp-fiction conspiracy theories against Russia, which compels Western officials to compensate for their wild imaginations with hysterical, inflammatory outbursts that border on sheer madness.

How else to explain the comment by UK Defense Secretary Gavin Williamson, who spoke like a kid at the playground when he said Russia "should go away and shut up;" or that of Boris Johnson, the British foreign minister, who had the audacity and historical ignorance to compare Russia's hosting of this year's World Cup to the 1936 Olympics in Nazi Germany.

So, what is motivating self-satisfied Western countries, like the US and Britain, to forward such slanderous claims against Russia without a hint of legal due process? After all, it cannot be denied that Russia would have stood to gain nothing from targeting Skripal.

"[Sergei Skripal] was handed in to Britain as a result of an exchange. So, why should Russia hand in a man that is of any importance or that is of any value? It's unimaginable. If he's handed in – so Russia quits with him. He's of zero value or zero importance," Kremlin spokesperson Dmitry Peskov said in an exclusive interview with RT.

https://www.youtube.com/embed/7ATdRpvQKvI

When we ask the question, 'Cui bono' – who stands to benefit the most from an assassination attempt on a man of absolutely no consequence to Moscow – the most credible answer always comes back to 'Russia's accusers.'

Follow the money

Since Washington has taken by far the severest steps against Russia over the Skripal fallout, it would be fair to ask if the US stands to gain anything from the wave of Russophobia now sweeping the West, which got its start, incidentally, as a direct result of 'Russiagate.'

Against the backdrop of the Skripal scandal are extremely lucrative gas contracts with EU countries that Russia has dutifully fulfilled since the Soviet heydays. Today, Russia supplies about 40 percent of Europe's gas. The US, however, with its fracking-backed liquefied natural gas (LNG) program, is anxious to get a piece of the pie.

In July, Donald Trump paid a visit to Poland, where he pledged to boost exports of LNG to Central Europe, as well as challenge Russia's market on energy supplies.

"America stands ready to help Poland and other European nations diversify their energy supplies so that you can never be held hostage to a single supplier," Trump told reporters after talks with Polish President Andrzej Duda.

The comment was odd since, even at the height of the Cold War, Europe never froze due to its gas being turned off in the middle of the night by Moscow.

Read more © Joshua Roberts Entangling alliances or scoring at home? Why US went out of its way with Russian diplomat expulsions

Marek Matraszek, founder of the lobby firm CEC Government Relations, offered a very disturbing comment about Washington's push to supply LNG to Europe.

"If we want to have the United States' LNG supplies in Central Europe, we also want to see the United States getting tough on Nord Stream 2, which means getting tough on Russia," Matraszek said .

I am very curious to know exactly what Matraszek had in mind when he spoke about "getting tough on Russia." Would he approve of the current bilateral breakdown between the nuclear powers? I certainly hope not.

In light of the massive prospects for gross profit on the European continent, would Western capitals not be tempted – tempted, at the very least – to deny Moscow the benefit of the doubt whenever highly suspicious criminal cases arise, like the present one regarding Sergei Skripal and his daughter Yulia?

In an effort to slander Russia and push it out of lucrative markets, they may be tempted to milk the situation for all its worth – which is exactly what is happening now. To doubt that possibility would require a deep misunderstanding of the geopolitical realities as they have played out over the course of the last decade, complete with a massive propaganda campaign aimed at everything related to Russia – from the Olympic Games to anti-terrorist operations in Syria to criminal cases in foreign lands.

Meanwhile, as the showdown between the US and Russia over EU gas supplies festers, especially in light of Nord Stream 2, the German-Russia venture that would double direct Russia gas supplies, the ongoing US sanction regime against Russia is beginning to look suspect.

Commenting on Trump's passage in August of brand new sanctions against Russia, then German Foreign Minister Sigmar Gabriel was brave enough to mention the elephant in the room.

"The draft law makes clear that they're pursuing economic interests and we think that's not acceptable," he said .

"Aggressively combining foreign policy issues with American economic interests and saying: 'We want to drive Russian gas out of the European market so we can sell American gas there is definitely not something we can accept.'"

Meanwhile, it is not only in the energy sector where the United States - and to a lesser degree the UK - stands to gain from wrecked relations with Russia, but in the defense sector as well.

The UK regularly ranks as Europe's leading weapons exporter, behind the United States globally, which remains the world's leading arms exporter. Much of the expenditure comes from NATO member states, which were just put on notice by Trump to keep their military spending at 2 percent of GDP, at the very same time Washington was going out of its way to portray Russia as a belligerent nation, when it has been the West that has been hell-bent on fomenting regime change around the world. Now that's certainly an interesting sales strategy.

Romanian Prime Minister @VioricaDancila said that the government decisions to purchase #HIMARS missile systems and multirole corvettes were important steps in improving the capability of the Romanian armed forces as a @NATO and EU member #defence pic.twitter.com/EEYk4Sk5MR

-- Radio Romania International (@RRInternational) February 15, 2018

Can this propaganda campaign against Russia work? I believe the answer is no, for many reasons. First, it is not just the Russians who understand that they are being played by major powers in a conspicuous attempt to gain geopolitical and economic advantage.

Thus far, nearly half of the EU's member states have refrained from committing a gesture of "solidarity" with London, deciding not to expel Russian diplomats. Those 'conscientious objectors' are: Austria, Belgium, Bulgaria, Cyprus, Greece, Luxembourg, Malta, Portugal, Slovakia and Slovenia.

"We are determined to maintain open channels of dialogue with Russia," Austrian government spokesperson Peter Launsky-Tieffenthal told RIA Novosti.

In many ways, this represents a victory for Russia – albeit a bittersweet one – that London failed to get so many countries on board its anti-Russia juggernaut.

This needs to be emphasized. The majority of the EU countries did not join in this mass expulsion. As for those that did, expulsions were mostly pro forma, undertaken in order to keep the British happy. Why then the wildly disproportionate response from Trump? https://t.co/4FldvIS80W

-- George Szamuely (@GeorgeSzamuely) March 26, 2018

Second, Russia is actively diversifying its economy away from Western markets in preparation for a worse-case scenario. For example, the "$55bn Power of Siberia pipeline will start carrying gas 3,000km to China next year. The company is also spending $13bn on a pipeline to Turkey," the Financial Times reported.

Finally, as Russia understands that they are up against some very dishonest players, the country has made tremendous inroads to producing many of the things it once depended upon imports to have, and we are not just talking about cheese. The Russian authorities have even prepared a backup plan in the event that Russia is terminated from the SWIFT international payment system. Although, of course, Russia would prefer not to have to take such drastic steps, the unfortunate situation in many Western capitals, where otherwise intelligent people are pointing fingers and hurling unfounded accusations at Russia, without critical evidence or due process – once hallmarks of the Western judicial system – make such steps absolutely vital.

All things considered, Russia will survive this storm, as it has done so many other times in the past against far graver enemies, and stronger than ever.

@Robert_Bridge

The statements, views and opinions expressed in this column are solely those of the author and do not necessarily represent those of RT.

Trends: Facebook West pushing anti-Russia conspiracy theories for achieving political & economic advantage Comparing Russia to Nazi Germany is 'disgusting' – Kremlin on Johnson's 'Hitler' remarks

[Mar 24, 2018] Why the UK, the EU and the US Gang-Up on Russia by James Petras

Highly recommended!
For the greater part of a decade the US, the UK and the EU have been carrying out a campaign to undermine and overthrow the Russian government and in particular to oust President Putin. Fundamental issues are at stake including the real possibility of a nuclear war. "
Why do the Western regimes now feel Russia is a greater threat then in the past? Do they believe Russia is more vulnerable to Western threats or attacks? Why do the Western military leaders seek to undermine Russia's defenses? Do the US economic elites believe it is possible to provoke an economic crisis and the demise of President Putin's government? What is the strategic goal of Western policymakers? Why has the UK regime taken the lead in the anti-Russian crusade via the fake toxin accusations at this time?
Notable quotes:
"... For the greater part of a decade the US, the UK and the EU have been carrying out a campaign to undermine and overthrow the Russian government and in particular to oust President Putin. Fundamental issues are at stake including the real possibility of a nuclear war. ..."
"... First and foremost, during the 1990's the US degraded Russia, reducing it to a vassal state, and imposing itself as a unipolar state. ..."
"... Secondly, Western elites pillaged the Russian economy, seizing and laundering hundreds of billions of dollars. ..."
"... Thirdly, the US seized and took control of the Russian electoral process, and secured the fraudulent "election" of Yeltsin. ..."
"... With the collapse of the Yeltsin regime and the election of President Putin, Russia regained its sovereignty, its economy recovered, its armed forces and scientific institutes were rebuilt and strengthened. Poverty was sharply reduced and Western backed gangster capitalists were constrained, jailed or fled mostly to the UK and the US. ..."
"... As the entire US unipolar fantasy dissolved it provoked deep resentment, animosity and a systematic counter-attack. The US's costly and failed war on terror became a dress rehearsal for the economic and ideological war against the Kremlin ..Russia's historical recovery and defeat of Western rollback intensified the ideological and economic war. ..."
"... Russia is not a threat to the West: it is recovering its sovereignty in order to further a multi-polar world. President Putin is not an "aggressor" but he refuses to allow Russia to return to vassalage. ..."
"... The Western regimes recognize that Russia is a threat to their global dominance; they know that Russia is no threat to invade the EU, North America or their vassals. ..."
"... Western regimes believe they can topple Russia via economic warfare including sanctions. In fact Russia has become more self-reliant and has diversified its trading partners, especially China, and even includes Saudi Arabia and other Western allies. ..."
Mar 20, 2018 | unz.com
Originally from: www.globalresearch.ca Prof. James Petras Global Research, March 21, 2018 Region: Europe , Russia and FSU Theme: History , Intelligence , US NATO War Agenda

Introduction

For the greater part of a decade the US, the UK and the EU have been carrying out a campaign to undermine and overthrow the Russian government and in particular to oust President Putin. Fundamental issues are at stake including the real possibility of a nuclear war.

The most recent western propaganda campaign and one of the most virulent is the charge launched by the UK regime of Prime Minister Theresa May . The Brits have claimed that Russian secret agents conspired to poison a former Russian double-agent and his daughter in England , threatening the sovereignty and safety of the British people. No evidence has ever been presented. Instead the UK expelled Russian diplomats and demands harsher sanctions, to increase tensions. The UK and its US and EU patrons are moving toward a break in relations and a military build-up.

A number of fundamental questions arise regarding the origins and growing intensity of this anti-Russian animus.

Why do the Western regimes now feel Russia is a greater threat then in the past? Do they believe Russia is more vulnerable to Western threats or attacks? Why do the Western military leaders seek to undermine Russia's defenses? Do the US economic elites believe it is possible to provoke an economic crisis and the demise of President Putin's government? What is the strategic goal of Western policymakers? Why has the UK regime taken the lead in the anti-Russian crusade via the fake toxin accusations at this time?

This paper is directed at providing key elements to address these questions.

The Historical Context for Western Aggression

Several fundamental historical factors dating back to the 1990's account for the current surge in Western hostility to Russia.

First and foremost, during the 1990's the US degraded Russia, reducing it to a vassal state, and imposing itself as a unipolar state. Secondly, Western elites pillaged the Russian economy, seizing and laundering hundreds of billions of dollars. Wall Street and City of London banks and overseas tax havens were the main beneficiaries Thirdly, the US seized and took control of the Russian electoral process, and secured the fraudulent "election" of Yeltsin. Fourthly, the West degraded Russia's military and scientific institutions and advanced their armed forces to Russia's borders. Fifthly, the West insured that Russia was unable to support its allies and independent governments throughout Europe, Asia, Africa and Latin America. Russia was unable to aid its allies in the Ukraine, Cuba, North Korea, Libya etc.

With the collapse of the Yeltsin regime and the election of President Putin, Russia regained its sovereignty, its economy recovered, its armed forces and scientific institutes were rebuilt and strengthened. Poverty was sharply reduced and Western backed gangster capitalists were constrained, jailed or fled mostly to the UK and the US.

Russia's historic recovery under President Putin and its gradual international influence shattered US pretense to rule over unipolar world. Russia's recovery and control of its economic resources lessened US dominance, especially of its oil and gas fields.

As Russia consolidated its sovereignty and advanced economically, socially, politically and militarily, the West increased its hostility in an effort to roll-back Russia to the Dark Ages of the 1990's. The US launched numerous coups and military intervention and fraudulent elections to surround and isolate Russia . The Ukraine, Iraq, Syria, Libya, Yemen and Russian allies in Central Asia were targeted. NATO military bases proliferated.

Russia's economy was targeted : sanctions were directed at its imports and exports. President Putin was subject to a virulent Western media propaganda campaign. US NGO's funded opposition parties and politicians.

As the entire US unipolar fantasy dissolved it provoked deep resentment, animosity and a systematic counter-attack. The US's costly and failed war on terror became a dress rehearsal for the economic and ideological war against the Kremlin ..Russia's historical recovery and defeat of Western rollback intensified the ideological and economic war.

The UK poison plot was concocted to heighten economic tensions and prepare the western public for heightened military confrontations.

Russia is not a threat to the West: it is recovering its sovereignty in order to further a multi-polar world. President Putin is not an "aggressor" but he refuses to allow Russia to return to vassalage.

President Putin is immensely popular in Russia and hated by the US precisely because he is the opposition of Yeltsin -- he has created a flourishing economy; he resists sanctions and defends Russia's borders and allies.

Conclusion

In a summary response to the opening questions.

The Western regimes recognize that Russia is a threat to their global dominance; they know that Russia is no threat to invade the EU, North America or their vassals. Western regimes believe they can topple Russia via economic warfare including sanctions. In fact Russia has become more self-reliant and has diversified its trading partners, especially China, and even includes Saudi Arabia and other Western allies.

The Western propaganda campaign has failed to turn Russian voters against Putin. In the March 19, 2018 Presidential election voter participation increased to 67% . .Vladimir Putin secured a record 77% majority. President Putin is politically stronger than ever.

Russia's display of advanced nuclear and other advanced weaponry has had a major deterrent effect especially among US military leaders, making it clear that Russia is not vulnerable to attack.

The UK has attempted to unify and gain importance with the EU and the US via the launch of its anti-Russia toxic conspiracy. Prime Minister May has failed. Brexit will force the UK to break with the EU.

President Trump will not replace the EU as a substitute trading partner. While the EU and Washington may back the UK crusade against Russia they will pursue their own trade agenda; which do not include the UK.

In a word, the UK, the EU and the US are ganging-up on Russia, for diverse historic and contemporary reasons. The UK exploitation of the anti-Russian conspiracy is a temporary ploy to join the gang but will not change its inevitable global decline and the break-up of the UK.

Russia will remain a global power. It will continue under the leadership of President Putin. The Western powers will divide and bugger their neighbors -- and decide it is their better judgment to accept and work within a multi-polar world.

*

Prof. James Petras is a Research Associate of the CRG.

[Mar 22, 2018] I think that in much of the world The World Cup is a bigger deal than the Olympics. That's why Brits want to undermine it with Skripal affair

Notable quotes:
"... I think that in much of the world The World Cup is a bigger deal than the Olympics. I knew some athletes here in Canada who had their athletic careers ended by our boycott of the 1980 Olympics (after years and years of hard work). I'm surprised western intelligence agencies have not done more to undermine Russia's world cup. They may yet. ..."
"... Outside of North America the World Cup is definitely a much bigger event than the Olympics. ..."
"... I just thought we would see the same nonsense we saw to undermine the Sochi Olympics, this just seems much more than just derogatory media coverage, or officials boycotting attending the event. I was interested to see Professor Richard Sakwa, his book on the Ukraine crisis is probably the best out there, interviewed on RT regarding this. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mcKQ-4Qqel0 ..."
Mar 22, 2018 | turcopolier.typepad.com

JamesT , 21 March 2018 at 09:48 PM

LondonBob

I think that in much of the world The World Cup is a bigger deal than the Olympics. I knew some athletes here in Canada who had their athletic careers ended by our boycott of the 1980 Olympics (after years and years of hard work). I'm surprised western intelligence agencies have not done more to undermine Russia's world cup. They may yet.

LondonBob -> JamesT ... , 22 March 2018 at 04:24 AM
Outside of North America the World Cup is definitely a much bigger event than the Olympics. I already have my tickets for England v Panama in Nizhny Novgorod, as well as a second round match in Moscow.

I don't care much for the Olympics, although I do like the Winter Olympics. I just thought we would see the same nonsense we saw to undermine the Sochi Olympics, this just seems much more than just derogatory media coverage, or officials boycotting attending the event. I was interested to see Professor Richard Sakwa, his book on the Ukraine crisis is probably the best out there, interviewed on RT regarding this. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mcKQ-4Qqel0

[Mar 21, 2018] An insane anti-Putin propaganda campaign in the West helped Russian people to learn their lesson: another Yeltsin or Gorbachev in Russia are now highly unlikely. In fact, the West will regret the day Putin is gone.

Mar 21, 2018 | www.unz.com

yurivku , Next New Comment March 21, 2018 at 12:53 pm GMT

@jilles dykstra

" As far as we all know now are quite hard times to Russia and to the world as a whole. "

Why do we have these hard times ?
Could it be globalisation, western greed, and western aggression ?

Well, probably it can be more clear for those who are attacking and humiliating Russia in all directions? The West-ZUS-UK

But I think it's just an agony of Empire seeing the world order is about to change. And yes it's "western greed" which have a "western aggression" as a consequence.

The "globalisation" actually IS that world order which the West trying to establish. Russia in all times in all its internal structure was a subject of annexation and submission. But we never agreed and never will do it, until alive. The West is too stupid to get that simple thing to know and leave us to live as we are about to.

[Mar 21, 2018] The coma patients at the service of Her Majesty

Notable quotes:
"... Well, the party lime is pretty different: "Treat Russia Like the Terrorist It Is. Whether the Skripal poisoning can be conclusively pinned on Moscow is beside the point." https://www.bloomberg.com/view/articles/2018-03-09/u-k-spy-poisoning-treat-russia-like-the-terrorist-it-is ..."
"... The fact that neither Putin personally nor Russia benefits from the death of Skripal is obvious to any sane person. ..."
"... In addition, statements that gas called "Novichok could be made only in Russia is a known lie. This poison was created forty years ago in the USSR, so to have this gas can, at a minimum, all countries of the former Soviet Union and the Warsaw Pact. The inventor of the gas has fled to the US, and the chemical composition of the gas is known and now it can be manufactured it any relatively developed country. ..."
"... It would be possible not to poison Skripal by gas, but simply to strike on the head by the bust of Dzerzhinsky. It would be the same level of evidence, of the guilt of the FSB, the KGB successor of the successor of the VChK. ..."
"... Basically, we have a political elite who needs an enemy to distract their own people from what they are doing and oh, do they miss the Soviet Union. ..."
Mar 21, 2018 | www.theamericanconservative.com


Tiktaalik, , March 20, 2018 at 5:50 am

Well, the party lime is pretty different: "Treat Russia Like the Terrorist It Is. Whether the Skripal poisoning can be conclusively pinned on Moscow is beside the point." https://www.bloomberg.com/view/articles/2018-03-09/u-k-spy-poisoning-treat-russia-like-the-terrorist-it-is
James from Durham ,, March 20, 2018 at 8:13 am
I'm a socialist. I don't understand how a conservative is getting this so right! There is a mad rush to judgment and anyone who wants to ask questions is getting accused of being unpatriotic.
rus_programmer ,, March 20, 2018 at 10:11 am
Quite a sensible article. The fact that neither Putin personally nor Russia benefits from the death of Skripal is obvious to any sane person.

In addition, statements that gas called "Novichok could be made only in Russia is a known lie. This poison was created forty years ago in the USSR, so to have this gas can, at a minimum, all countries of the former Soviet Union and the Warsaw Pact. The inventor of the gas has fled to the US, and the chemical composition of the gas is known and now it can be manufactured it any relatively developed country.

It would be possible not to poison Skripal by gas, but simply to strike on the head by the bust of Dzerzhinsky. It would be the same level of evidence, of the guilt of the FSB, the KGB successor of the successor of the VChK.

Serge ,, March 20, 2018 at 11:36 am
At the end of 1980s there was a project started by KGB supposed (1) to detect possible channels of security leakage, and (2) to begin spreading misinformation to potential adversaries. Different names were used to test different security leaks. The name "NOVICHOK" used to identify misinformation given to one of suspects, Vil Mirzayanov who was not chemist but rather a clerk. Very soon this security leakage was detected, and tons of other misinformation supplied to Mirzayanov, who was immediately secretly discharged from access to any real project. Mirzayanov was allowed to publish this fake info in NYT (around 1992-95?), and then to escape from Russia in 1995.

Since that time NATO has spent about $10 billions to develop protection tools against this fake "NOVICHOK"

P.S. The Russian word NOVICHOK stands for "a newbie"; from Russian grammar point of view, there is no chance such word to be assigned to any chemical weapon. It was assigned to Mirzayanov who was "a newbie" to this sort of projects at that time.

mark_be ,, March 20, 2018 at 12:43 pm
Cui bono: every murder of a Russian dissident/defector/oligarch/critical journalist, cannot possibly have happened on Putin's orders or with his tacit approval, because it reflects badly on Russia.

So, we have two possible explanations: some Western intelligence agency is murdering those people, probably without the knowledge of their own government (you'd have think that someone in elected office would have stopped such a programme by now); or the Russian Putin opposition is killing its own people, both in Russia and abroad. If the goal of such an operation is the destabilization of the Putin regime through Western sanctions, it is obviously not working.

You say cui bono, I say Occam's razor. Putin takes out those who might threaten him, raises his popularity, the sanctions are used to cover up his own disastrous economical policies, and in the end nothing changes.

b. ,, March 20, 2018 at 12:58 pm
We *knew* Iraq had no nukes, and we knew that the Bush administration lied, and we knew that "WMD" is the kind of BS we make up when there are no nukes.

Buchanan is not arguing in good faith. What Maine, Tonkin and WMD are about is *lies*, lies in service of criminal acts of aggression, lies to facilitate a premeditated violation of the Constitution as well as international law.

That is frankly a more important issue than the – justified and necessary – doubts regarding the attempted Skripal assassination and the motives behind it.

This is also true of an ongoing campaign employing drones – some controlled by CIA illegal combatants – and kill teams to implement collective punishment and ideological cleansing by means of sustained assassination – based on "signatures" provided by the likes of Google or Booz Allen. The US has no standing to judge the assassination attempts of others, just as our government can no longer meaningfully speak out on aggressive acts of war, collective punishment, and torture. A house divided cannot stand for anything.

Will Harrington ,, March 20, 2018 at 1:19 pm
Emil Bogdan

You say that the burden of proof is on the accused? That works in many parts of the world, but I hope that we here in the US have had a better standard of Justice. The burden of proof falls upon the accuser, in this case Britain. There is no ther standard that America should accept if we are to remain true to American principals. Not that I expect that our current oligarchy will care about principals.

SteveM ,, March 20, 2018 at 1:24 pm
"Cui bono?"

Exactly. Putin's long term strategy is an integrated Pan-Eurasian economic architecture in which Europe would be a major customer segment. That is why the EAEU was stood up by Russia and the BRI stood up by China. With supporting investment platforms like the AIIB to enable the initiatives.

Given that objective, why would Russia/Putin seek to totally wreck its relationship with Europe? More importantly what would be the motive and objectives for Russia to attack Poland and the Baltic Republics – the fear-monger threats du jour? When an overrun of Poland would create 30+ million subversive malcontents that Russia would have to govern, and when there are only minority ethnic Russian populations in the Baltics?

The driving force behind the illogical and incoherent demonization of Russia is the Washington War Party that froths up the political environment with the militarized fear-mongering. Because as Fran Macadam notes, there's Big Money in it. And the Neocon war-monger mouthpieces need some Big Enemies to keep themselves relevant, busy and living very large on the $200K – $600K salaries they collect at the bought off Think Pimp Tanks.

A crazed U.S. foreign policy that has been completely militarized is a train wreck waiting to happen. And us taxpayers will yet again be stuck with the bills to clean up the wreckage.

Will Harrington ,, March 20, 2018 at 1:25 pm
John S

Sovietologists? Now this, more than anything else, explains the reflexive anti-Russia hysteria. Who cares what historians dealing with the twentieth century Soviet Union think about current events? Historians provide useful insight, yes, but that does not mean they are conversant with current events. What you are doing is throwing in a fear laden buzzword. Basically, we have a political elite who needs an enemy to distract their own people from what they are doing and oh, do they miss the Soviet Union.

ScottA ,, March 20, 2018 at 1:53 pm
Our leaders are enthusiastic about being aggressive with the Russians, but the America Empire has a problem attracting enough volunteers to join the military.

For example, the Air Force has a shortage of 2,000 pilots and the Navy has a shortage of mechanics that they need to work on their on their aircraft.

Minnesota Mary ,, March 20, 2018 at 2:39 pm
The U.S. and Britain showed more respect to Joseph Stalin, the Butcher, than it has shown to Putin. The demonization of Putin in all the mainstream media outlets is the tip-off to me that Putin must be a pretty good guy doing some good things for Russia.

"If the world hates you know that it has hated me first. If the world loves you it is because you belong to the world." -- Jesus Christ

Tiktaalik ,, March 20, 2018 at 3:09 pm
>>Given the poison used it means one to two things -- either it was Russian secret services or the Russians have lost control over their poisons. Either one is a nasty thought.

Why? It was presumably created 40 years ago. Pretty much to time for information to spread around.
E.g., Kim's brother was presumably (again) poisoned by VX. Does it mean that it was MI-6? It's a British invention after all.

In any case, this story stinks, pardon for a word pun. A 'military grade agent' and no casualties. How could it be?

>>Why do it? To prove they can. To prove that no matter where you go they can get you -- that there is no safety.

Safety from what? This guy was non-entity, nobody knew him. More importantly, he has been already punished and pardoned, so double no sense.

>>I am sure Gary Kasparov is feeling a bit worried right now and Bill Browder is thinking of moving somewhere new.

Well, I'd suspect that Rodchenko and Khodorkovskiy are more evident sacrificial targets.

>>You ask Cui bono? Who do you think?

Western secret services, non?

EarlyBird ,, March 20, 2018 at 3:52 pm
Pat asks important questions. Unless we ever see the "evidence" to which Boris Johnson refers, or other direct evidence that this hit (and others) in Britain was directed by the Kremlin, it's worth continuing to ask them.

"Who benefits?" Indeed, it could be rogue Russian agents or Western agents attempting to further drive a wedge between the West and Russia.

But it could also be Putin signalling that the Russia which held onto traitorous spies between 2006 and 2010 is over.
It could be him simply trying to show that he can reach people inside the West, a pure flexing of muscle, a warning to future would-be traitors and Western governments. It could be to make America's allies nervous about Putin's relationship with his American puppet, Trumpolini. It could be just Putin sowing chaos and attempting to create discord among Western governments.

Skepticism about the latest pronouncements is valid, but Occam's Razor still applies. If it growls like a Russian bear and kills like a Russian bear

Light Horse Harry ,, March 20, 2018 at 3:58 pm
Who could be so phillistine as to suggest, on the eve of the World Cup, that Premier Andropov's KGB protege', Major Putin, would one day stoop to whacking a traitorous defector from the Party Line ?

The mind is repelled !

Now pass the polonium popcorn.

Tiktaalik ,, March 20, 2018 at 4:47 pm
>>Skepticism about the latest pronouncements is valid, but Occam's Razor still applies. If it growls like a Russian bear and kills like a Russian bear

Occam's Razor, my backside. Some guys from MI-5 tried to kill him like they killed David Kelly and Gareth Williams before. It's as credible as it gets, exactly the same amount of evidence.

Ken Zaretzke ,, March 20, 2018 at 5:00 pm
"But what is missing here is the Kremlin's motive for the crime."

Whereas rogue agents in the CIA or M16 would have a strong motive, by tarnishing the image of Russia and Putin.

sianka ,, March 20, 2018 at 5:28 pm
About the coma patients at the service of Her Majesty http://www.youtube.com/embed/g3CQ_4KEehw
Kuzmich Mar , , March 20, 2018 at 6:15 pm
Russia is guilty always. Russia is guilty in principle. If Russia is innocent, then it is guilty that she is innocent.

[Mar 19, 2018] That it is just too Wile E. Coyote method of poinsoning

"I'm surprised they didn't happen to "find" the assassin's Russian passport lying on the ground next to the victims!"
Mar 19, 2018 | www.zerohedge.com

Bemused Observer -> DownWithYogaPants Sun, 03/18/2018 - 11:56 Permalink

Seriously...I think these 'conspiracy theorists' have been watching too many Hollywood movies.

This is what I want to SCREAM every time I hear this shit...Why the HELL would Russia, or anyone else, bother to use such a messy, traceable and complicated method to kill this guy? Especially when there are SO MANY WAYS it could have been done that wouldn't have garnered all the attention, and that would have left no traces? They could have sent someone to shove him in front of a train or something, or staged a 'botched robbery'.

Reminds me of the stupid assassination methods the CIA wanted to use on Castro...poisoning his beard? Really? Well, aside from the fact that it is just too 'Wile E. Coyote' to be taken seriously, did anyone ask, if such an assassin could get close enough to poison his beard, why he wouldn't go with a more dependable method?

Snaffew -> Bemused Observer Sun, 03/18/2018 - 16:43 Permalink

exactly why all the fingerprints of this assassination attempt point to the NSA/CIA. Which is more absurd...their methods or the gullible public?

An Shrubbery -> Bemused Observe r Mon, 03/19/2018 - 01:42 Permalink

+1 for "Wile E. Coyote method" lol

Snaffew -> pawn • Sun, 03/18/2018 - 16:41 Permalink

I blame the wildly dumbed down and complicit media here in the US and in our "allies" abroad. They spit out whatever the government feeds to them without a single ounce of effort to validate the stories they frantically preach to the ignorant public. Damn, I can't believe how many times people will be duped into trillion dollar wars and they still are die hard believers in the ethics and truthfulness of the US gov't. Morons---

dussasr -> Kafir Goyim • Sat, 03/17/2018 - 21:13 Permalink

It makes little sense that Russia would assassinate someone using a technique that would immediately implicate them. I'm surprised they didn't happen to "find" the assassin's Russian passport lying on the ground next to the victims! <

0

lakecity55 -> Kafir Goyim Sun, 03/18/2018 - 21:00 Permalink

The only "issue" the Atlanticists can bring up in the "Press" are CWs against the RF and Syria.

It's patently obvious the entire affair is a FF and made up out of a bolt of whole cloth.

The Atlanticists' claims are Pure Bullshit.

((They)) want Russia, and they will kill, lie, cheat and steal to get her back.

WE will pay the price unless they are stopped.

JohannSennefelder -> DaiRR Sun, 03/18/2018 - 07:41 Permalink

I disagree. If a government is going to terminate a spy they don't botch the job by letting him get to a hospital. In Putin's Russia they know how to terminate most efficiently. I may be wrong but this is a pretext for something more aggressive/dangerous.

I got a bad feeling about this situation...

philip88 -> JohannSennefelder Sun, 03/18/2018 - 10:33 Permalink

Me too...

Something big is coming..😱

Griffin -> JohannSennefelder Sun, 03/18/2018 - 13:36 Permalink

It is interesting that the incident took place only 12 km from Porton Down, a government run top secret facility that works on chemicals.

Maybe this was a accident, and the target was supposed to be something that would have had a more powerful impact.

It looks to me that its not entirely impossible that May may end up eating a big slice of humble pi.

lakecity55 -> Griffin Sun, 03/18/2018 - 21:02 Permalink

May is not going to like it when she comes out of her Bunker to find all of the UK a smoking nuclear wasteland.

"Shit! There's nobody left to boss around!!"

bh2 -> JohannSennefelder Sun, 03/18/2018 - 16:08 Permalink

Every war begins with a lie.

PeterLong -> DaiRR Sun, 03/18/2018 - 10:47 Permalink

And the proof that this attack ever happened is?

[Mar 19, 2018] Salisbury Hysteria Exposes the Chauvinism and Hypocrisy of British Elites

Notable quotes:
"... Everything they say is true of brexiters is actually far more true of them ..."
Mar 19, 2018 | russia-insider.com

Salisbury Hysteria Exposes the Chauvinism of British Elites Everything they say is true of brexiters is actually far more true of them

Crypto • 2 days ago ,

Nothing I have ever seen in my life is more ludicrous, more absurd and more unjust than this display in parliament.

1691 Crypto 2 days ago ,

Remember the MH17 tragedy. It was worst. The whole western world was screaming Russia/Putin.

[Mar 18, 2018] After Triumph of neoliberalism the USA gradually and slowly are descending into tribalism due to the loss of jobs, the drug epidemic and sliding] standard of living for majority of population due to wars for the expansion of neoliberal empire and redistribution of wealth up

Neoliberalism as social system tend to self-destruct. Much like Bolshevism (neoliberalism actually can be viewed as Trotskyism for the rich with the same dream of "world revolution" as the central part of the religion and a slightly modified Marxism slogan -- "financial elites of the world unite" ).
Mar 11, 2018 | turcopolier.typepad.com

"This week, Congressional Democrats released a detailed tax hike plan that they promised to implement if given majority control of the House and Senate after the 2018 midterm elections. So much for the crocodile tears about the deficit-- Democrats want to raise taxes not to reduce the debt, but rather to spend that tax hike money on boondoggle projects.

As you might expect, hold onto your wallets ."

-------------------

OK. That will work. (irony) So, they will raise both corporate and personal income taxes if they gain control of the congress. That will work as a political program (irony). The California state government will probably back that. (no irony)

Well, there is always Stormy Daniels to fall back on as an issue. She was interviewed outside a strip joint yesterday where she was to perform. "You call me a whore? she said. I tell you I am a successful whore." I suppose the idea is to alienate Trump's evangelical base from him. Oh, well, this theme rings a bit hollow. Trump's base knew what they were voting for ... pl

https://www.forbes.com/sites/ryanellis/2018/03/09/democrats-release-tax-hike-plan/#45c6c0367b9e

Posted at 04:14 PM in Politics | Permalink



ISL , 10 March 2018 at 04:55 PM

Dear Colonel,

in fairness to our friends the democrats, the Dems. are proposing an infrastructure plan that is woefully inadequate, and propose to rescind the recent tax cuts.

https://www.politico.com/story/2018/03/07/senate-democrats-tax-cuts-infrastructure-392523

Personally, I am just not feeling the electoral excitement.

Of course those suffering TDS (trump derangement syndrome) will applaud undoing Trump agenda, but then again, they were going to vote Democrat anyway and cut a check, which IMO is the real point. Funny how now they want to do infrastructure, but not during the Obama years.

Personally, wrt the tax cuts, I am ambivalent. Anyone who pays anywhere near the official rate needs to hire a good tax accountant. Net effect on businesses that already take all available deductions will be a percent or two on gross. A 2% weaker dollar would have a far bigger benefit for businesses (but worse for the banks).

turcopolier , 10 March 2018 at 05:26 PM
ISL
the only reason the individual tax rate is important is the effect on LLCs and S corps. Nevertheless, the corporate tax rate cut is the more important. pl
VietnamVet , 10 March 2018 at 05:27 PM
Colonel,

Have you seen the movie "Wind River" yet? It is the best depiction I've seen of the USA descending into tribalism due to the loss of jobs, the drug epidemic and environmental exploitation.

NBC News daily has Kumbaya propaganda to facilitate importing of cheap labor and goods. But, what good is a service economy if there is no service? Just like Soviet propaganda, corporate media today is in service of the oligarch owners and sold out party elite. It tries to avoid the truth. Although, NBC did report on the astronomical rise in cost of ambulance service. A couple thousand dollars for mile and half trip to the hospital. They said it was due to the 2008 recession and the cutting of local volunteer emergency services to save tax money.

Rather than tax the wealthy and corporations, the middle class is going into debt to pay for education, medical bills, and $40 Northern Virginia one-way tolls. Federal taxes on the middle class support the endless wars.

I agree the Democrats shot themselves in the foot because they are unconcerned for the bottom 80% except for their identity issues. They serve their paymasters. The recent Italian election documents the complete collapse of left leaning parties that ignored the plight of the workers in the West. To me, to win, the left in America must write off student debt, implement Medicare for All, end the forever wars and tax George Soros, Jeff Bezos, Bill Gates, Warren Buffet, Pierre Omidyar, the Koch Brothers and the Walton Family to pay for it. To work, criminal bankers need to be jailed and corporate boards required to manage for long term profits that benefit society not just quarterly and themselves only.

Eric Newhill , 10 March 2018 at 05:30 PM
Well that settles it. I thought that maybe the Dems were just acting delusional to coddle their base. This settles it. They actually ARE delusional.

So in addition to replacing us with an infinite number of illiterate third worlders, taking our guns and jailing us for using the wrong pronoun out of an ever evolving list of hundreds they are going to take more of our hard earned money. Yeah, how can they not sweep the 2018 elections with a platform like that. Sheesh.

different clue , 10 March 2018 at 05:52 PM
I never did support the Trump tax cuts. I regard them as being mainly mainstream Republican tax cuts. President Trump supports them and signed them for all the economic benefits reasons he cited and cites. But the Republicans' main reason for seeking them remains their long term goal of destroying Social Security and privatizing the Social Security money . . . the money I and everyone else have been pre-paying double for ever since the Great Reagan Rescue of 1983. They sought these tax cuts in order to increase vastly the deficit and the debt. Their expectation is that the next inevitable recession

will make the debt so-nearly-unpayable as to give them another opportunity to accuse Social Security of causing the debt and of being unaffordable.

So I would support cancellation of the Republican tax cuts for that reason. I would be defending my Social Security against longstanding Republican efforts to destroy it and retro-steal all the money I have been paying ( and will keep paying) every since 1983. (Actually, since 1980 when I worked at half the rate of FICA taxation as after 1983). But then, I have said years ago in comments that I would like to see taxes re-raised against the Bush's Base class to recover all the Social Security pre-payment money which was future-looted-from to give the Bush's Base class a tax cut instead. A tax cut which President Obama supported and ratified when he conspired with Boehner and McConnell to make the self-sunsetting Bush Tax cuts into permanent tax cuts. That's why I now call them the Bushobama Tax cuts now.

There is boondoggle and there is needed repair. The "high speed railway" proposed and haltingly begun in California is a boondoggle. Fixing all the rotting and decaying bridges and all the potholes is needed repair. ( Come to Michigan to see some impressive potcraters). The present and future space program is an investment in possible futures and in technological advances. Government spending can be a boondoggle but it doesn't have to be.

At least some of the Democrats have decided to run on something specific instead of vague emotional appeals only. Something specific can either be voted "for" or "against".

(The Democrats should remember that "tax restoration" may not be enough to get all the votes they think they are due. There are enough bitter berners out here who remain convinced that applying political chemotherapy against the malignant metastatic clintonoma and the Yersiniobama pestis plague infection afflicting the Democratic Party is more important right now than "more democrats". There is, and will be, a growing effort to defeat every piece of Clintonite scum and Obamazoid filth which dares to call itself a "Democrat" in every election that one of these things runs in. The Democratic Party has to be made into a New Deal Party again, and that means purging and burning every trace of Clinton and Obama out of the Party. If any DLC/Third Way/Hamilton Project/ Pink Pussy Hat/ Rainbow Oligarchy Democrats are reading this, they should consider themselves warned.)

Karl Kolchak , 10 March 2018 at 06:25 PM
If Trump's evangelical base was willing to ignore the p-grabber tape, I doubt this will do much to change their minds. Don't tell CNN, they were running the story 24/7 even as the Senate, including many Democrats such as the odious Mark Warner, was voting to roll back the fairly toothless restrictions on the big banks passed after the 2008 financial crash.

This is the REAL reason Trump will not be removed even if impeached--he's too valuable to the political class as a never ending media freak show that allows them to get away with whatever they want while the idiot public is distracted.

Jack -> turcopolier ... , 10 March 2018 at 06:25 PM
Exactly, Sir, it is the corporate tax cut that is the big deal because it starts to level the playing field for small businesses. The largest corporations hardly pay any tax anyway because they have the armies of tax lawyers and accountants to leverage all the

[Mar 13, 2018] The CIA Democrats: Part one by Patrick Martin

Brennanization of the Democratic Party
Notable quotes:
"... If the Democrats capture a majority in the House of Representatives on November 6, as widely predicted, candidates drawn from the military-intelligence apparatus will comprise as many as half of the new Democratic members of Congress. They will hold the balance of power in the lower chamber of Congress. ..."
"... Both push and pull are at work here. Democratic Party leaders are actively recruiting candidates with a military or intelligence background for competitive seats where there is the best chance of ousting an incumbent Republican or filling a vacancy, frequently clearing the field for a favored "star" recruit. ..."
"... The Democratic leaders are promoting CIA agents and Iraq and Afghanistan war veterans. At the same time, such people are choosing the Democratic Party as their preferred political vehicle. ..."
Mar 07, 2018 | www.wsws.org

Introduction

An extraordinary number of former intelligence and military operatives from the CIA, Pentagon, National Security Council and State Department are seeking nomination as Democratic candidates for Congress in the 2018 midterm elections. The potential influx of military-intelligence personnel into the legislature has no precedent in US political history.

If the Democrats capture a majority in the House of Representatives on November 6, as widely predicted, candidates drawn from the military-intelligence apparatus will comprise as many as half of the new Democratic members of Congress. They will hold the balance of power in the lower chamber of Congress.

Both push and pull are at work here. Democratic Party leaders are actively recruiting candidates with a military or intelligence background for competitive seats where there is the best chance of ousting an incumbent Republican or filling a vacancy, frequently clearing the field for a favored "star" recruit.

A case in point is Elissa Slotkin, a former CIA operative with three tours in Iraq, who worked as Iraq director for the National Security Council in the Obama White House and as a top aide to John Negroponte, the first director of national intelligence. After her deep involvement in US war crimes in Iraq, Slotkin moved to the Pentagon, where, as a principal deputy assistant secretary of defense for international security affairs, her areas of responsibility included drone warfare, "homeland defense" and cyber warfare.

The Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee (DCCC) has designated Slotkin as one of its top candidates, part of the so-called "Red to Blue" program targeting the most vulnerable Republican-held seats -- in this case, the Eighth Congressional District of Michigan, which includes Lansing and Brighton. The House seat for the district is now held by two-term Republican Representative Mike Bishop.

The Democratic leaders are promoting CIA agents and Iraq and Afghanistan war veterans. At the same time, such people are choosing the Democratic Party as their preferred political vehicle. There are far more former spies and soldiers seeking the nomination of the Democratic Party than of the Republican Party. There are so many that there is a subset of Democratic primary campaigns that, with a nod to Mad magazine, one might call "spy vs. spy."

[Mar 13, 2018] The CIA takeover of the Democratic Party by Patrick Martin

Highly recommended!
Notable quotes:
"... If on November 6 the Democratic Party makes the net gain of 24 seats needed to win control of the House of Representatives, former CIA agents, military commanders, and State Department officials will provide the margin of victory and hold the balance of power in Congress. ..."
"... Since its establishment in 1947 -- under the administration of Democratic President Harry Truman -- the CIA has been legally barred from carrying out within the United States the activities which were its mission overseas: spying, infiltration, political provocation, assassination. These prohibitions were given official lip service but ignored in practice. ..."
"... The Church Committee in particular featured the exposure of CIA assassination plots against foreign leaders like Fidel Castro, Patrice Lumumba in the Congo, General Rene Schneider in Chile, and many others. More horrors were uncovered: MK-Ultra, in which the CIA secretly subjected unwitting victims to experimentation with drugs like LSD; ..."
"... Operation Mockingbird, in which the CIA recruited journalists to plant stories and smear opponents; Operation Chaos, an effort to spy on the antiwar movement and sow disruption; Operation Shamrock, under which the telecommunications companies shared traffic with the NSA for more than a quarter century. ..."
"... The Church and Pike committee exposures, despite their limitations, had a devastating political effect. The CIA and its allied intelligence organizations in the Pentagon and NSA became political lepers, reviled as the enemies of democratic rights. The CIA in particular was widely viewed as "Murder Incorporated." ..."
"... The last 15 years have seen a massive expansion of the CIA and other intelligence agencies, backed by an avalanche of media propaganda, with endless television programs and movies glorifying American spies and assassins ..."
"... The media campaign alleging Russian intervention in the 2016 US elections has been based entirely on handouts from the CIA, NSA and FBI, transmitted by reporters who are either unwitting stooges or conscious agents of the military-intelligence apparatus. This has been accompanied by the recruitment of a cadre of top CIA and military officials to serve as highly paid "experts" and "analysts" for the television networks . ..."
"... This process was well under way in the administration of Barack Obama, which endorsed and expanded the various operations of the intelligence agencies abroad and within the United States. Obama's endorsed successor, Hillary Clinton, ran openly as the chosen candidate of the Pentagon and CIA, touting her toughness as a future commander-in-chief and pledging to escalate the confrontation with Russia, both in Syria and Ukraine. ..."
"... The CIA has spearheaded the anti-Russia campaign against Trump in large part because of resentment over the disruption of its operations in Syria, and it has successfully used the campaign to force a shift in the policy of the Trump administration on that score. ..."
"... The 2018 election campaign marks a new stage: for the first time, military-intelligence operatives are moving in large numbers to take over a political party and seize a major role in Congress. The dozens of CIA and military veterans running in the Democratic Party primaries are "former" agents of the military-intelligence apparatus. This "retired" status is, however, purely nominal. Joining the CIA or the Army Rangers or the Navy SEALs is like joining the Mafia: no one ever actually leaves; they just move on to new assignments. ..."
Mar 13, 2018 | www.wsws.org

In a three-part series published last week, the World Socialist Web Site documented an unprecedented influx of intelligence and military operatives into the Democratic Party. More than 50 such military-intelligence candidates are seeking the Democratic nomination in the 102 districts identified by the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee as its targets for 2018. These include both vacant seats and those with Republican incumbents considered vulnerable in the event of a significant swing to the Democrats.

If on November 6 the Democratic Party makes the net gain of 24 seats needed to win control of the House of Representatives, former CIA agents, military commanders, and State Department officials will provide the margin of victory and hold the balance of power in Congress. The presence of so many representatives of the military-intelligence apparatus in the legislature is a situation without precedent in the history of the United States.

Since its establishment in 1947 -- under the administration of Democratic President Harry Truman -- the CIA has been legally barred from carrying out within the United States the activities which were its mission overseas: spying, infiltration, political provocation, assassination. These prohibitions were given official lip service but ignored in practice.

In the wake of the Watergate crisis and the forced resignation of President Richard Nixon, reporter Seymour Hersh published the first devastating exposure of the CIA domestic spying, in an investigative report for the New York Times on December 22, 1974. This report triggered the establishment of the Rockefeller Commission, a White House effort at damage control, and Senate and House select committees, named after their chairmen, Senator Frank Church and Representative Otis Pike, which conducted hearings and made serious attempts to investigate and expose the crimes of the CIA, FBI and National Security Agency.

The Church Committee in particular featured the exposure of CIA assassination plots against foreign leaders like Fidel Castro, Patrice Lumumba in the Congo, General Rene Schneider in Chile, and many others. More horrors were uncovered: MK-Ultra, in which the CIA secretly subjected unwitting victims to experimentation with drugs like LSD;

Operation Mockingbird, in which the CIA recruited journalists to plant stories and smear opponents; Operation Chaos, an effort to spy on the antiwar movement and sow disruption; Operation Shamrock, under which the telecommunications companies shared traffic with the NSA for more than a quarter century.

The Church and Pike committee exposures, despite their limitations, had a devastating political effect. The CIA and its allied intelligence organizations in the Pentagon and NSA became political lepers, reviled as the enemies of democratic rights. The CIA in particular was widely viewed as "Murder Incorporated."

In that period, it would have been unthinkable either for dozens of "former" military-intelligence operatives to participate openly in electoral politics, or for them to be welcomed and even recruited by the two corporate-controlled parties. The Democrats and Republicans sought to distance themselves, at least for public relations purposes, from the spy apparatus, while the CIA publicly declared that it would no longer recruit or pay American journalists to publish material originating in Langley, Virginia. Even in the 1980s, the Iran-Contra scandal involved the exposure of the illegal operations of the Reagan administration's CIA director, William Casey.

How times have changed. One of the main functions of the "war on terror," launched in the wake of the September 11, 2001 attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon, has been to rehabilitate the US spy apparatus and give it a public relations makeover as the supposed protector of the American people against terrorism.

This meant disregarding the well-known connections between Osama bin Laden and other Al Qaeda leaders and the CIA, which recruited them for the anti-Soviet guerrilla war in Afghanistan, waged from 1979 to 1989, as well as the still unexplained role of the US intelligence agencies in facilitating the 9/11 attacks themselves.

The last 15 years have seen a massive expansion of the CIA and other intelligence agencies, backed by an avalanche of media propaganda, with endless television programs and movies glorifying American spies and assassins ( 24 , Homeland , Zero Dark Thirty , etc.)

The American media has been directly recruited to this effort. Judith Miller of the New York Times , with her reports on "weapons of mass destruction" in Iraq, is only the most notorious of the stable of "plugged-in" intelligence-connected journalists at the Times , the Washington Post , and the major television networks. More recently, the Times has installed as its editorial page editor James Bennet, brother of a Democratic senator and son of the former administrator of the Agency for International Development, which has been accused of working as a front for the operations of the Central Intelligence Agency.

The media campaign alleging Russian intervention in the 2016 US elections has been based entirely on handouts from the CIA, NSA and FBI, transmitted by reporters who are either unwitting stooges or conscious agents of the military-intelligence apparatus. This has been accompanied by the recruitment of a cadre of top CIA and military officials to serve as highly paid "experts" and "analysts" for the television networks .

In centering its opposition to Trump on the bogus allegations of Russian interference, while essentially ignoring Trump's attacks on immigrants and democratic rights, his alignment with ultra-right and white supremacist groups, his attacks on social programs like Medicaid and food stamps, and his militarism and threats of nuclear war, the Democratic Party has embraced the agenda of the military-intelligence apparatus and sought to become its main political voice.

This process was well under way in the administration of Barack Obama, which endorsed and expanded the various operations of the intelligence agencies abroad and within the United States. Obama's endorsed successor, Hillary Clinton, ran openly as the chosen candidate of the Pentagon and CIA, touting her toughness as a future commander-in-chief and pledging to escalate the confrontation with Russia, both in Syria and Ukraine.

The CIA has spearheaded the anti-Russia campaign against Trump in large part because of resentment over the disruption of its operations in Syria, and it has successfully used the campaign to force a shift in the policy of the Trump administration on that score. A chorus of media backers -- Nicholas Kristof and Roger Cohen of the New York Times , the entire editorial board of the Washington Post , most of the television networks -- are part of the campaign to pollute public opinion and whip up support on alleged "human rights" grounds for an expansion of the US war in Syria.

The 2018 election campaign marks a new stage: for the first time, military-intelligence operatives are moving in large numbers to take over a political party and seize a major role in Congress. The dozens of CIA and military veterans running in the Democratic Party primaries are "former" agents of the military-intelligence apparatus. This "retired" status is, however, purely nominal. Joining the CIA or the Army Rangers or the Navy SEALs is like joining the Mafia: no one ever actually leaves; they just move on to new assignments.

The CIA operation in 2018 is unlike its overseas activities in one major respect: it is not covert. On the contrary, the military-intelligence operatives running in the Democratic primaries boast of their careers as spies and special ops warriors. Those with combat experience invariably feature photographs of themselves in desert fatigues or other uniforms on their websites. And they are welcomed and given preferred positions, with Democratic Party officials frequently clearing the field for their candidacies.

The working class is confronted with an extraordinary political situation. On the one hand, the Republican Trump administration has more military generals in top posts than any other previous government. On the other hand, the Democratic Party has opened its doors to a "friendly takeover" by the intelligence agencies.

The incredible power of the military-intelligence agencies over the entire government is an expression of the breakdown of American democracy. The central cause of this breakdown is the extreme concentration of wealth in the hands of a tiny elite, whose interests the state apparatus and its "bodies of armed men" serve. Confronted by an angry and hostile working class, the ruling class is resorting to ever more overt forms of authoritarian rule.

Millions of working people want to fight the Trump administration and its ultra-right policies. But it is impossible to carry out this fight through the "axis of evil" that connects the Democratic Party, the bulk of the corporate media, and the CIA. The influx of military-intelligence candidates puts paid to the longstanding myth, peddled by the trade unions and pseudo-left groups, that the Democrats represent a "lesser evil." On the contrary, working people must confront the fact that within the framework of the corporate-controlled two-party system, they face two equally reactionary evils.

Patrick Martin

The author also recommends:

Palace coup or class struggle: The political crisis in Washington and the strategy of the working class

[Mar 12, 2018] Here's a real lefty, not like the fake ones who own the Democratic party today

Mar 12, 2018 | www.moonofalabama.org

ben , Mar 11, 2018 4:05:16 PM | 2

Here's a real lefty, not like the fake ones who own the Democratic party today. The Jimmy Dore show. Scroll down to the March 9 show.

https://jimmydorecomedy.com/home/

[Mar 12, 2018] Why vote for a fake Republican when you can vote for a real one: Meet the Democrats' 'Dirty Dozen' Working to Gut Financial Reforms

Notable quotes:
"... By Marshall Auerback is a market analyst and commentator. Originally published at Alternet ..."
"... This act of regulatory vandalism highlights everything that is corrupt about our political system. ..."
Mar 12, 2018 | www.nakedcapitalism.com

Posted on March 10, 2018 by Yves Smith Yves here. As depressing and predictable as it is to see Democrats yet again prostituting themselves to financiers, payback may finally be coming. From Lambert in Water Cooler yesterday :

Senate: Poll: Five Senate Dems would lose to GOP challenger if elections held today" [ The Hill ]. "New polls published Thursday morning in Axios show Sens. Claire McCaskill (D-Mo.), Jon Tester (D-Mont.), Joe Manchin (D-W.Va.), Joe Donnelly (D-Ind.) and Heidi Heitkamp (D-N.D.) would all lose reelection to GOP challengers if voters were heading to the polls this week." Blue Dogs all. Why vote for a fake Republican when you can vote for a real one?

So these Blue Dogs who are gutting the already underwhelming Dodd Frank may not be with us much longer, at least politically. And even though the party is remarkably insistent on adhering to a strategy of corporate toadying that has led it to hemorrhage seats at all levels of government, if these seats all go red, it might be a message even the Democrats might not be able to ignore.

By Marshall Auerback is a market analyst and commentator. Originally published at Alternet

This act of regulatory vandalism highlights everything that is corrupt about our political system.

As if to maximize the possibility of another major financial crisis, the Trump administration and the GOP have recently been busy undercutting the limited safeguards established a decade ago via Dodd-Frank. The latest example of this stealth attack on Wall Street reform is the Economic Growth, Regulatory Relief, and Consumer Protection Act, appropriately sponsored by Republican Senator Mike Crapo of Idaho, chairman of the Senate Banking Committee. Appropriate, because this is literally a "crapo" bill. It provides a few "technical tweaks" to Dodd-Frank in the same way in which protection payouts to organized crime provide businesses with "insurance" against property damage. In reality, it is an act of regulatory vandalism, which highlights everything that is corrupt about our political system.

We have grown to expect no less from the GOP, whose sole r aison d'etre these days seems to be filling the trough from which America's fat cats can perpetually gorge themselves. What is truly disturbing, however, is that the Republican effort is being given bipartisan cover by more than a dozen Democratic senators: Doug Jones (Ala.), Joe Donnelly (Ind.), Heidi Heitkamp (N.D.), Jon Tester (Mont.), Mark Warner and Tim Kaine (both from Va.), Claire McCaskill (Mo.), Joe Manchin (W.Va.), Gary Peters (Mich.), Michael Bennet (Colo.), Chris Coons (Del.), and Tom Carper of Delaware. To this esteemed group, we should also add Senator Angus King (ME), an Independent who regularly caucuses with the Democrats. So, in reality, it's a filibuster-proof "Baker's Dirty Dozen." Digging into the details, perhaps this is what Senator Mitch McConnell had in mind when he predicted more bipartisanship in Congress this year . In co-sponsoring this bill, the 13 senators are providing cover for the GOP when the inevitable fallout comes, dissipating the Democrats' political capital with the electorate in the process.

Yes, we get it: some of these senator incumbents are in red states that voted heavily for Donald Trump in the last election. And the latest polls suggest many are vulnerable in this year's elections. But the last time we checked, there didn't seem to be an overwhelming wave of populist protest demanding regulatory relief for banks. All 50 states -- red and blue -- suffered from the last financial crisis, and it's hard to believe voters in Montana, West Virginia, North Dakota, Indiana or Missouri would be more likely to support Senators Tester, Manchin, Heitkamp, Donnelly or McCaskill because they backed a bank deregulation bill (which in reality goes well beyond helping small community banks). Nor do the 2018 races factor as far as Senators Warner, Coons, or Bennet are concerned, given that none are up for re-election this year.

No, the more likely answer is money, plain and simple. The numbers aren't in for 2017, but an analysis of the Federal Election Commission data from the 2016 election appears to explain what is driving this newfound solicitousness toward the banks. The Center for Responsive Politics (CRP) points out that "nine of the twelve Democrats supporting the deregulatory measure count the financial industry as either their biggest or second-biggest donor." (At least now we have a better understanding as to why Hillary Clinton's " responsibility gene " induced her to select running mate Tim Kaine, who received "large contributions from Big Law partners that represent Wall Street," as opposed to a genuine finance reformer, such as Senator Elizabeth Warren. Senator Warren is vigorously opposing the new bill.)

We also know ( courtesy of the CRP ) that Mark Warner's last campaign in 2014:

"included among his 20 largest donors the mega Wall Street banks Goldman Sachs and JPMorgan Chase. Goldman's employees and PACs gave Warner's campaign $71,600 while JPMorgan Chase gave the Warner campaign committees $50,566 Senator Heidi Heitkamp is also up for reelection this year and her number one contributor at present is employees and/or PACs of Goldman Sachs which have contributed $79,500 thus far."

Naturally, all of the senators claim their motives are pure. With no hint of irony, a spokesman for Tim Kaine suggested that , "Campaign contributions do not influence Senator Kaine's policy positions." Likewise, an aide for Mark Warner vigorously contested the idea that campaign donations from Wall Street ever influenced the Virginia senator's decision-making on policy matters. Sure, and it was shocking to find out that gambling took place in Rick's Café.

It is true, as Senator Jon Tester (another co-sponsor) notes , that the proposed changes introduced in the Crapo bill (notably the increase in the asset size from $50 billion to $250 billion of those banks that are considered "systemically important" and therefore subject to greater oversight and tighter rules) do not affect the likes of Wall Street banks such as Citigroup, JP MorganChase, Bank of America, Goldman Sachs and Morgan Stanley, all of which are still covered by the most stringent oversight provisions of Dodd-Frank. But the increased asset threshold does exempt the U.S. bank holding companies of systemically significant foreign banks: Deutsche Bank, UBS and Credit Suisse, all of whom were implicated in multiple violations of both American and international banking laws in the aftermath of the 2008 crisis.

Deutsche Bank alone has paid billions of dollars for its role in perpetuating mortgage fraud, money-laundering and interest rate manipulation (the LIBOR scandal), which ideally should invite more regulatory scrutiny, not less. Instead, a new law ostensibly crafted to provide a few "technical fixes" for Dodd-Frank is now reducing the regulatory oversight of a bank that has been cited in an IMF report as one of Germany's "global systemically important financial institutions." Translating the couched-IMF-speak, the report suggests that Deutsche Bank on its own has the potential to set off a new global contagion, given the scale of its derivatives exposure. Not only too big to fail, but evidently too big to regulate properly either, aided and abetted by members of a party who claim to be appalled at the level of corruption in the Trump administration.

Another side-effect of raising the regulatory threshold to $250 billion in assets is that it diminishes the chance of obtaining an early warning detection signal from somewhat smaller financial institutions. As the experience of Lehman Brothers or Bear Stearns illustrated, smaller problems that remain hidden in the shadows can ultimately metastasize if left alone, and become much bigger -- and more systemically dangerous -- later.

So when Senator Kaine nobly suggests that he is merely providing relief for "small community banks and credit unions" in his home state, or Jon Tester argues that he is only helping local banks suffering from Dodd-Frank's regulatory overkill, both are being extraordinarily disingenuous. The reality is that increasing the oversight threshold by 500 percent does not just help a few "small community banks and credit unions" crawl out from a thicket of onerous and costly regulation. Even former Fed Chairman Paul Volcker, who favored some regulatory relief for community banks, felt that $250 billion threshold was excessive ly lax.

In fact, ( per the Americans for Financial Reform ), the increase "removes the most severe mandate for 25 of the 38 largest banks," which together "account for over $3.5 trillion in banking assets, more than one-sixth of the U.S. total." Additionally, as Pat Garofalo writes : "The bill also includes an exemption from capital standards -- essentially the amount of money that banks need to have on hand in case things go south -- that benefits some big financial firms, and even more are lobbying to be included." In other words, this isn't just George Bailey's friendly neighborhood bank that is getting some regulatory relief here.

All of this newfound regulatory laxity comes at a time when many of the largest Wall Street banks have again resurrected the same practices that almost destroyed them a decade ago. Bank credit analyst Chris Whalen observes : "The leader of this effort is none other than Citigroup (NYSE:C), which has surpassed JP MorganChase (NYSE:JPM) to become the largest derivatives shop in the world. Citi has embraced the most notorious product of the roaring 2000s, the synthetic collateralized debt obligation or 'CDO' security, a product that fraudulently leverages the real world and literally caused the bank to fail a decade ago."

Another example: Trump and his henchman, Mick Mulvaney, have also joined the big banks in attacking the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, which by virtue of the Crapo act, will be blocked "from collecting key data showing when and where families of color are being overcharged for home loans or steered into predatory products."

Let's be honest here: even in its original form, Dodd-Frank was the bare minimum the government could have done in the wake of the 2008 disaster. But lobbyists, paid-for politicians and co-opted bank-friendly regulators have been busy "applying technical fixes" to the bill virtually from the moment it was passed a decade ago. The upshot is that the much-trumpeted Wall Street reform is a joke when compared to the comprehensive legislation passed in the aftermath of the Great Depression (which set the stage for decades of relative financial stability). Under Dodd, the banks are purportedly subject to "meaningful stress tests" ( in the words of Federal Reserve Chair Jerome Powell ), but the tests are neither particularly stressful, nor do they adequately reflect today's twin dangers of off-balance sheet leverage and the concentration of big banks' on-balance sheet assets in relatively low-return loans.

What should have been done after the global financial crisis? Professors Eric Tymoigne and Randall Wray proposed the following :

"Any of the 'too big to fail' financial institutions that needed funding should have been required to submit to Fed oversight. Top management should have been required to proffer resignations as a condition of lending (with the Fed or Treasury holding the letters until they could decide which should be accepted -- this is how Jessie Jones resolved the bank crisis in the 1930s). Short-term lending against the best collateral should have been provided, at penalty rates. A comprehensive 'cease and desist' order should have been enforced to stop all trading, all lending, all asset sales, and all bonus payments until an assessment of bank solvency could have been completed. The FDIC should have been called-in (in the case of institutions with insured deposits), but in any case, the critically undercapitalized institutions should have been dissolved according to existing law: at the least cost to the Treasury and to avoid increasing concentration in the financial sector."

A number of conclusions can be drawn from this whole sordid episode. An obvious one is that our model of campaign finance is completely broken. While it is encouraging to see some Democratic politicians increasingly adopting the Sanders model of fundraising, swearing off large corporate donations , not enough are doing so. Democrats are united in their concern pertaining to foreign threats that pose risks to the integrity of U.S. elections, but the vigorous opposition to Vladimir Putin and the Russians isn't extended to the domestic oligarchs destroying American democracy (and the economy) from within.

The whole history behind Senator Crapo's bill shows how quickly bank lobbyists can routinely exploit their financial muscle to turn a seemingly innocuous bill into something which pokes yet more holes into the Swiss Cheese-like rules already in place for Dodd. The Baker's Dirty Dozen have accepted donations from Wall Street that not only constrain their ability to implement genuine reforms in finance (and other areas) but also discourage the mobilization of voters, who see this legislative horror show, and consequently opt out of showing up to vote at elections because they know that the system is rigged and dominated by corporate cash (making their votes irrelevant).

Ironically, no less a figure than Donald Trump exploited that voter cynicism in 2016. In striking contrast to every other Republican presidential nominee since 1936, he attacked globalization, free trade, international financiers, and Wall Street (and made effective mockery of Hillary Clinton's ties to Goldman Sachs) and thereby mobilized blue-collar voters in marginal Rust Belt states, giving him his path to the presidency. Of course, we now know that this was all bait-and-switch politics, likely facilitated by forces outside the U.S., along with large corporation donations from domestic elites. We've probably reached the endgame as far as this " investment approach to politics " as it disintegrates into a cesspool of corruption and further financial fragility. It may take another crash before this problem is truly fixed.

In the meantime, this bipartisan subversion of Wall Street reform not only risks making the next crisis at least as bad as 2008, but also reinforces the notion that both parties are equally corrupt, catalyzing the collapse of the American political order . In a further sick twist of fate, the twin corrosive forces of "golden rule politics" (i.e., he who has the gold rules) and a rapidly deflating "bubble-ized" economy could all come to a head under the watch of Donald the Unready. But he won't own this disaster alone, thanks to the help of compromised Wall Street Democrats.

  1. Jen

    Senators Jeanne Shaheen and Maggie Hassan from my deep purple state of NH both, voted to allow the bill to proceed. And of course my esteemed congress critter, Annie Kuster, did her bit in congress. Only 968 days until I can exact my retribution on Shaheen at the polls, first and foremost for her vote in favor of fast track, but damned if she doesn't give me another good reason on almost a daily basis.

[Mar 11, 2018] Reality Check: The Guardian Restarts Push for Regime Change in Russia by Kit

Highly recommended!
Notable quotes:
"... This,,,"Russia appears lost, a global menace, a moral vacuum, a far greater threat than it ever was during the cold war." Should be changed to "The Guardian appears lost, a global menace, a moral vacuum, a far greater threat than it ever was during the cold war." ..."
"... The Guardian has consistently propagandised for regime changes inspired by Washington NeoCons, those of Libya, Syria, Ukraine and is ramping up their propaganda machine toward North Korea, Venezuela and now Russia itself having promoted destabilisation on its borders in Ukraine. ..."
"... On top of what I said yesterday, if Russian oligarchs do pull all their money out of Britain, the British economy would crash, it being highly dependent on the services sector (constituting 80% of Britain's GDP in 2016 according to Wikipedia) and the financial services industry in particular. So if all those Russian billions swirling through Britain's financial system are "dodgy", that's because the system itself encouraged those inflows. ..."
"... "Poor little Britain" which actually spends on par with Russia in terms of its military budget, despite the fact that a) it's a much smaller country to defend and is surrounded by water, and b) it's part of NATO with the US as its staunch defender so it really doesn't need a standalone military anyway. ..."
"... From what's emerging now, it seems there simply were no assassins wandering round Salisbury. Instead, it appears Mr Skripal for some reason has a house full of nerve gas, or enough of it at least to take out himself, his daughter and a policeman who inspected the premises. ..."
"... There is one key element that proves that the Russians didn't do it: The Russians aren't so clumsy as to poison over a dozen other people at the same time. ..."
"... The whole piece is an emotionally charged rant, bordering on hysteria, based on a transparent tissue of lies, distortions and absolutely stunning hypocrisy; and this coming from the 'liberal' 'left of centre' Guardian! ..."
Mar 11, 2018 | off-guardian.org

Mark Rice-Oxley, Guardian columnist and the first in line to fight in WWIII.

The alleged poisoning of ex-MI6 agent Sergei Skripal has caused the Russophobic MSM to go into overdrive. Nowhere is the desperation with which the Skripal case has been seized more obvious than the Guardian. Luke Harding is spluttering incoherently about a weapons lab that might not even exist anymore . Simon Jenkins gamely takes up his position as the only rational person left at the Guardian, before being heckled in the comments and dismissed as a contrarian by Michael White on twitter. More and more the media are becoming a home for dangerous, aggressive, confrontational rhetoric that has no place in sensible, adult newspapers.

For example, Mark Rice-Oxley's column in today's Guardian:

Oh, Russia! Even before we point fingers over poison and speculate about secret agents and spy swaps and pub food in Salisbury, one thing has become clear: Russia appears lost, a global menace, a moral vacuum, a far greater threat than it ever was during the cold war.

Read this. It's from a respected "unbiased", liberal news outlet. It is the worst, most partisan political language I have ever heard, more heated and emotionally charged than even the most fraught moments of the Cold War. It is dangerous to the whole planet, and has no place in our media.

If everything he said in the following article were true, if he had nothing but noble intentions and right on his side, this would still be needlessly polarizing and war-like language.

To make it worse, everything he proceeds to say is a complete lie.

Usually we would entitle these pieces "fact checks", but this goes beyond that. This? This is a reality check.

Its agents pop over for murder and shopping

FALSE: There's no proof any of this ever happened. There has been no trial in the Litvinenko case. The "public inquiry" was a farce, with no cross-examination of witnesses, evidence given in secret and anonymous witnesses. All of which contravene British law regarding a fair trial.

even while its crooks use Britain as a 24/7 laundromat for their ill-gotten billions, stolen from compatriots.

TRUE sort of: Russian billionaires do come to London, Paris, and Switzerland to launder their (stolen) money. Rice-Oxley is too busy with his 2 minutes of hate to interrogate this issue. The reason oligarchs launder their money here is that WE let them. Oligarchs have been fleeing Russia for over a decade. Why? Because, in Russia, Putin's government has jailed billionaires for tax evasion and embezzling, stripped them of illegally acquired assets and demanded they pay their taxes. That's why you have wanted criminals like Sergei Pugachev doing interviews with Luke Harding, complaining he's down to his "last 270 million" .

When was the last time a British billionaire was prosecuted for financial crimes? Mega-Corporations owe literally billions in tax , and our government lets them get away with it.

Its digital natives use their skills not for solving Russia's own considerable internal problems but to subvert the prosperous adversaries that it secretly envies.

FALSE: Russiagate is a farce, anyone with an open-mind can see that . The reference to Russians envying the west is childish and insulting. The 13, just thirteen, Russians who were indicted by Mueller have no connection to the Russian government, a nd allegedly campaigned for many candidates , and both for and against Trump. They are a PR firm, nothing more.

It bought a World Cup,

FALSE: The World Cup bids are voted on, and after years and years of investigation the US/UK teams have found so little evidence of corruption in the Russia bid that they simply stopped talking about it. If the FBI had found even the slightest hint of financial malpractice, would we ever have stopped hearing about it?

invaded two neighbours

False: A European Union investigation found that Georgia was to blame for the start of the (very brief, very humiliating) Russo-Georgian war . It lasted a week. That a week-long conflict started by the other side is evidence of "global threat" in a world where Iraq, Afghanistan and Libya have happened is beyond hypocritical it is delusional.

Regarding the second "neighbour": Ukraine. Ukraine and Russia are not at war. Ukraine has claimed to have been "invaded" by Russia many times but has never declared war. Why? Because they rely on Russian gas to live, and because they know that if Russia were to ever REALLY invade, the war would last only just a big longer than the Georgian one. The "anti-terrorist operation" in Ukraine was started by the coup government in 2014. Since that time over 10,000 people have died. The vast majority killed by the governments mercenaries and far-right militias many of whom espouse outright fascism .

bombed children to save a butcher in the Middle East.

MISLEADING: The statement is trying to paint Russia/Assad as deliberately targeting children, which is clearly untrue. Russia is operating in Syria in full compliance with international law. Unlike literally everybody else bar Iran. When Russia entered the conflict, at the invitation of the legitimate Syrian government, Jihadists were winning the war. ISIS had huge swathes of territory, al-Qaeda affiliates had strongholds in all of Syria's major cities. Syria was on the brink of collapse. Rice-Oxley is unclear whether or not he thinks this is a good thing.

Today, ISIS is obliterated, Aleppo is free and the war is almost over. Apparently Syria becoming another Libya is preferable to a secular government winning a war against terrorists and US-backed mercenaries.

And now it wants to start a new nuclear arms race.

FALSE: America started the arms race when they pulled out of the anti-ballistic missile treaty. Putin warned at the time it was a dangerous move . America then moved their AEGIS "defense shield" into Eastern Europe . Giving them the possibility of first-strike without retaliation. This is an untennable position for any country. Putin warned, at the time, that Russia would have to respond. They have responded. Mr Rice-Oxley should take this up with Bush and Cheney if he has a problem with it.

And before the whataboutists say, "America does some of that stuff too", that may be true, but just because the US is occasionally awful it doesn't mean that Russia isn't.

MISLEADING: America doesn't do "some of that stuff". No, America aren't "occasionally awful". They do ALL of that stuff, and have been the biggest destructive force on the planet for over 70 years. Since Putin came to power America has carried out aggressive military operations against Pakistan, Libya, Somalia, Afghanistan, Iraq, Yemen, Lebanon and Syria. They have sanctioned and threatened and carried out coups against North Korea, Ukraine, Iran, Honduras, Venezuela and Cuba. All that time, the US has also claimed the right to extradite and torture foreign nationals with impunity. The war crimes of American forces and agencies are beyond measure and count.

We are so used to American crimes we just don't see them anymore. Imagine Putin, at one his epic four-hour Q&A sessions, off-handedly admitting to torturing people in illegal prison camps . Would we ever hear the end of it?

Even if you cede the utterly false claim that Russia has "invaded two neighbours", the scale of destruction just does not compare.

Invert the scale of destruction and casualties of Georgia and Iraq. Imagine Putin's government had killed 500,000 people in Georgia alone, whilst routinely condemning the US for a week-long war in Iraq that killed less than 600 people. Imagine Russia kidnapped foreign nationals and tortured them, whilst lambasting America's human rights record.

The double-think employed here is literally insane.

Note to Rice-Oxley and his peers, pointing out your near-delusional hypocrisy is not "whataboutism". It's a standard rhetorical appeal to fairness. If you believe the world shouldn't be fair, fine, but don't expect other people not to point out your double standards.

As for poor little Britain, it seems to take this brazen bullying like a whipping boy in the playground who has wet himself. Boycott the World Cup? That'll teach them!

FALSE: Rice-Oxley is trying to paint a picture of false weakness in order to promote calls for action. Britain has been anything but cooperative with Russia. British forces operate illegally in Syria , they arm and train rebels. They refused to let Russian authorities see the evidence in the Litvinenko case, and refused to let Russian lawyers cross-examine witnesses. Britain's attitude to Russia has been needlessly, provocatively antagonistic for years.

Russians have complained that the portrayal of their nation in dramas such as McMafia is cartoonish and unhelpful, a lazy smear casting an entire nation as a ludicrous two-dimensional pantomime villain with a pocketful of poisonous potions .Of course, the vast majority of Russians are indeed misrepresented by such portrayals, because they are largely innocent in these antics.

TRUE: Russians do complain about this, which is entirely justifiable. The western representation of Russians is ignorant and racist almost without exception. It is an effort, just like Rice-Oxley's column, to demonize an entire people and whip up hatred of Russia so that people will support US-UK warmongering.

Most ordinary Russians are in fact also victims of the power system in their country, which requires ideas such as individual comfort, aspiration, dignity, prosperity and hope to be subjugated to the wanton reflexes of the state

FALSE: Putin's government has decreased poverty by over 66% in 17 years . They have increased life-expectancy, decreased crime, and increased public health. Pensions, social security and infrastructure have all been rebuilt. These are not controversial or debated claims. The Guardian published them itself just a few years ago. That is hardly a state where hope and aspiration are put aside.

Why is Russian power like this: cynical, destructive, zero-sum, determined to bring everything down to a base level where everyone thinks the worst of each other and behaves accordingly?

MISLEADING FALLACY: This is simply projection. There is no logical basis for this statement. He is simply employing the old rhetorical trick of asking WHY something exists, as a way of establishing its existence. This allows the (dishonest) author to sell his own agenda as if it solves a riddle. Before you can explain something, you need to establish an explanandum something which requires explaining. This is the basic logical process that our dear author is attempting to circumvent. We don't NEED to explain why Russian power is like this, because he hasn't yet established that it is .

I think there are two reasons. The most powerful political idea in Russia is restoration. A decade of humiliation – economic, social and geopolitical – that followed its rebirth in 1991 became the defining narrative of the new nation.

MISLEADING LANGUAGE: Describing the absolute destruction caused by the fall of the USSR as "rebirth" is an absurd joke. People sold their medals, furniture and keepsakes for food, people froze to death in the streets.

At times, even the continued existence of the Russian Federation appeared under threat.

TRUE: This is true. Russia was in danger of Balkanisation. The possibility of dozens of anarchic microstates, many with access to nuclear weapons, was very real. Most rational people would consider this a bad thing. The achievement of Putin's government in pulling Russia back from the brink should be applauded. Especially when compared with our Western governments who can barely even maintain the functional social security states created by their predecessors. Compare the NHS now with the NHS in 2000, compare Russia's health service now to 17 years ago. Who do you think is really in trouble?

The second reason is that the parlous internal state of Russia – absurdist justice, a threadbare social safety net, a pyramid society in which a very few get very rich and the rest languish – creates moral ambivalence.

PROJECTION: he actually makes this statement without even a hint of irony. The Tory government has killed people by slashing their benefits, and homeless people froze to death during the recent blizzards. The overall trend of British social structure has been down, for decades. Poverty is increasing all the time , food banks are opening and people are increasingly desperate. We are trending down. 20%, one in five British people, now live in poverty .

In that same time, as stated above, Russia's poverty has gone down and down. 13% of Russians live in poverty, almost half the UK rate. In 2014, before we sanctioned Russia, it was only 10%. Even the briefest research would show this. Columnists like Rice-Oxley go out of their way to avoid inconvenient facts.

What is to be done? I wouldn't respond with empty threats, Boris Johnson. No one cares.

Here we come to the centre of the shrubbery maze, up until now the column was just build up. Establishing a "problem" so he can pitch us a "solution".

There are only two weaknesses in this bully's defences. The first is his money. Britain needs to do something about the dodgy Russian billions swilling through its financial system. Make it really hard for Kremlin-connected money to buy football clubs or businesses or establish dodgy limited partnerships; stop oligarchs from raising capital on the London stock exchange. Don't bother with sanctions. Just say: "No thanks, we don't want your business."

FALSE: This shows not even the most basic understanding of the way money works. Money being made in Russia and spent in London is bad fo Russia. Sending billionaires back to Russia would inject money INTO the Russian economy. Either Rice-Oxley is actually a moron, or he is being deliberately dishonest.

What he REALLY means is that we should put pressure on the oligarchs, not to the hurt the Russian economy, but in the hopes the oligarchs will turn on Putin and remove him by undemocratic means.

He is pushing for backdoor regime change. And if you think I'm reading too much into this, then here

The second is public opinion. The imminent presidential election is a foregone conclusion, but the mood in Russia can turn suddenly, as we saw in 1991, 1993 and 2011-2012.

Notice how quickly he dismisses the democratic will of the Russian people. Poor, stupid, "envious" Russians aren't equipped to make their own decisions. We need to step in. "Public opinion" turning means a colour revolution. It means US backed regime change in a nuclear armed super-power. Backed by the cyberwarriors paid to spread Western propaganda online.

Maybe it's time to try some new digital hearts-and-minds operation. In the internet age, Russians have already shown how public opinion can be manipulated. Perhaps our own secret digital marvels can embark on the kind of information counter-offensive to win over the many millions of Russians who share our values. Perhaps they already are.

The hypocrisy is mind-blowing, when I read this paragraph I was dumb-founded. Speechless. For months we've been hearing about how terrible Russia is for allegedly interfering in the American election. Damaging democracy with reporting true news out of context and some well placed memes.

Our response? Our defense of our "values"? Use the armies of online propagandists our governments employ – their existence was reported in the Guardian – in order to undermine, or undo the democratic will of the Russian people. Rice-Oxley is positing this with a straight face.

Russia is such a destabilising threat to "our democratic values", such a moral vacuum, that we must use subterfuge to undermine their elections and remove their popular head of state.

Rice-Oxley wants to push and prod and provoke and antagonise a nuclear armed power that, at worst, is guilty of nothing but playing our game by our rules and winning. He wants to build a case for war with Russia, and he's doing it on bedrock of cynical lies.

It's all incredibly dangerous. Hopefully they'll realise that before it's too late. For all our sakes.


vexarb says March 11, 2018

Meanwhile, back in the real world, Putin's 10 year plan for the future of Russia. Putin is a builder, like Peter the Great. He is a seeker after excellence, like Catherine the Great. If his 10 year plan can achieve the half of what he set out in his recent speech, the name Putin will go down in history with the same sobriquet.

The most important part of Putin's March 1st speech:

https://thesaker.is/the-most-important-part-of-putins-march-1st-speech/

And on the village level, because that's where most of the real work of the world is done, a snippet BTL from Auslander who lives in the Crimea: "the first implications of anti corruption efforts are obvious in our little village. We'll see how it pans out but everyone can, and should, assist in this task. The proof will be in the pudding when The West starts screaming about certain kind, gentle and innocent 'businessmen' who end up counting trees [in Siberia?] for a decade or three."

Jay Q says March 10, 2018
Take a look at this wretched piece in the Guardian:

https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2018/mar/10/sergei-skripal-case-proved-charge-putin-attempted-murder

I wonder how much longer the general readership over there will cotton on to the pro-war and propaganda agenda of the Guardian and leave it en masse? It's as dishonest as The Sun.

M. says March 10, 2018
"Poor little Britain", with half the population, a much smaller territory ,and being part of the largest military alliance in the world, spends only 10 billions less than Russia in "defense". One of those "defense" strategies included in the budget, one that all those commentators vilifying Russia conveniently ignore, is to blow up weddings, funerals and entire villages with missiles fired from drones. No trial, no public kill list, no record of people killed, no accountability. That is sanctioned, extra-judicial murder of suspects and everyone around them. And these progressive commentators, eager to spread prosperity by any mean, seem to be ok with it.

Update: as I was writing this I noticed that The Guardian has a piece by (of all people!), Simon Jenkins, which, yes, takes for granted that the assassination attempt was carried out by the Russians, but asks if there is a moral difference between that and killing suspects with drone strikes. For that, he has been labeled an useful idiot and "an apologist for attempted mass murder on British soil". Highly amusing if you ask me, but also a terrifying example of how straying if only a little bit from the official line ("yes, the Russians tried to kill this guy, they are the worst, but maybe we should have a look at ourselves and our (kind of) inappropriate tendency to murder everyone we want") has to be punished. There are no ifs or buts while at the two minutes of hate. Now even the pieces that are there to give a semblance of balance have to be torn apart by those liberal, prosperity loving persons that can´t seem to be able to condemn the murder of children at will. Now it is time to express hatred towards Goldstein, I mean, of course, Putin and everything Russia.

Greg Bacon says March 10, 2018
This,,,"Russia appears lost, a global menace, a moral vacuum, a far greater threat than it ever was during the cold war." Should be changed to "The Guardian appears lost, a global menace, a moral vacuum, a far greater threat than it ever was during the cold war."

All suffering from PTDS AKA Putin-Trump Derangement Syndrome.

stevehayes13 says March 10, 2018
The Russophobes over at the Guardian (and the rest of the corporate media) would be well advised to review the trial of Julius Streicher at the Nuremberg Tribunal.
Sheila Coombes says March 10, 2018
The Guardian has consistently propagandised for regime changes inspired by Washington NeoCons, those of Libya, Syria, Ukraine and is ramping up their propaganda machine toward North Korea, Venezuela and now Russia itself having promoted destabilisation on its borders in Ukraine.

I find it the ultimate paradox that a publication purporting to be 'liberal' acts so enthusiastically for deadly regime changes from this once Trotskyist but now extreme Right Wing group. There is nothing 'liberal', 'humanitarian', or moral about promotion of deadly regime changes that have destroyed previously peaceful nations and murdered hundreds of thousands in the process. Guardian for the geopolitical goals of the self-declared 'exceptional' Empire, the new 'master race' that of the US.

Big B says March 10, 2018
One final observation on the Skripal case (for now): this stuff is so toxic. We don't know what the stuff is: nevertheless, we know it is so toxic, can only be made by a state, and needs careful expert handling. We know this because every paper and TV channel has by now emphasised that this stuff is so toxic, etc. If we missed the "nerve agents and what they do to you" coverage: we can ascertain for ourselves from the men in the hazmat suits, the this stuff must be so toxic. The Army have now been deployed: on hand after completing the largest CW exercise ever held, 'Toxic Dagger'; they are now employing their specialist skills to carry out "Sensitive Site Operations" because this stuff is you get it by now. In another piece of pure theater: police in hazmat suits were examining the grave of Alexander and Liudmila Skripal because even after a year or more buried underground, you can't be too careful, because this stuff is A woman from the office next to Zizzi was taken ill (maybe she had the risotto con pesce) because even after a week, and next door, traces of this stuff can still be

11 (or 16) people were hospitalised from the effects of 'this stuff': the first attending officer, Nick Bailey, is only just out of ICU and lucky to be alive. The Skripal's are not so lucky: and on "palliative care" according to H de Bretton-Gordon. Yet the eye-witness calling himself 'Jamie Paine' was close enough to get coughed on; and the unnamed passing doctor and nurse that attended the Skripals at the scene, clearing their airways, are all fine (despite being hospitalised). Yet PC Bailey nearly died? Funny that?

When first you practice to deceive: someone in the propaganda department must have noticed this glaring inconsistency. Enter, stage right, former Met Chief Ian (now Lord) Blair (guess who was leading the Met when Litvinenko was poisoned?): to clarify that PC Bailey was contaminated when he was the first officer to enter the Skripal's home – not attend them in Salisbury. This allowed the Torygraph and Fox to speculate that Yulia brought a contaminated present for her father (which she kept in a drawer for a week, because this stuff is so toxic?). The Torygraph's previous spin: that Skripal was poisoned for his contributions to the Pissgate dossier were torpedoed by Orbis (Steele's company). Speaking on Radio 4: after pushing the Buzzfeed "14 other deaths" dodgy dossier; Blair said "So there maybe some clues floating around in here." Yes, clues that you are lying? This is pure theater: only it is more Morecambe and Wise than Shakespeare.

https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2018/03/09/russian-spy-may-have-poisoned-home-police-believe/

DomesticExtremist says March 10, 2018
Theatre indeed.

Check out the report from C4News (mute the sound).

Two guys plodding around in fluorescent breather suits, another couple with gas masks, but behind them firemen in normal uniform and no gas masks and the reporter 20 feet in front, in civvies wih no protective gear at all.

Virulent nerve agent threat? Theatre, and not very convincing at that.

BigB says March 10, 2018
Another day, another story: now the BBC, Torygraph (contradicting its own article above), Wiltshire Police, and Nick Bailey himself all confirmed that he became ill after attending the Skripals. So now we know they are lying: the house story concocted by Blair was a complete fabrication. The "nerve agent" appears to be only selectively toxic!
http://www.salisburyjournal.co.uk/news/journalnewsindex/16078868.Police_officer_in_hospital_over_nerve_agent_attack_releases_first_statement/
https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2018/03/08/russian-spy-poisoning-police-officer-struck-rare-nerve-agent/
flaxgirl says March 10, 2018
It just seems like the so very patronizing nonsense you'd see in a right-wing publication.
Edwige says March 10, 2018
Or the tune you'd hear played on the "mighty wurlitzer".
BigB says March 10, 2018
Flaxgirl: a bit OT, but not too much as this event does not seem to have too much basis in reality: on the question of fabrication the UK Home Office held an event this week – Security and Policing 2018 – where the "Live Demo Area" was sponsored by Crisis Cast. I though you might interested? Are they providing critical incident training: or the critical incidents themselves is a legitimate question after the events in Salisbury?

https://www.securityandpolicing.co.uk/security-policing-live/demo/

As featured on UK Column News (from 22:52.)
https://www.ukcolumn.org/ukcolumn-news/uk-column-news-6th-march-2018

Francis Lee says March 10, 2018
I suppose by now we should be used to the nauseating, self-righteous bluster dished out on a daily basis by the Anglo-Zionist media. The two minutes hate by the flabby 'left' liberals who now have apparently joined forces with the demented US neo-cons in openly baying for a war against Russia. How, exactly did these people expect Russia to react to the abrogation of the ABM agreement, marching NATO right up to Russia's doorstep, staging coups in the Ukraine and Georgia, having the US sixth fleet swanning around in the Black Sea? Of course, Russia reacted as any other self-respecting state would react to such blatant provocations. And this includes the US during the Cuba crisis and its self-proclaimed right to intervene in its sphere of influence – Latin America – and for that matter anywhere else on the planet. And it does so A L'outrance.

But I was foregetting, the Anglo-Zionist axis has a divine mission mandated by the deity to reconfigure the world and bring democracy and freedom to those "Lesser breeds without the Law" (Kipling). Of course, this updated version of 'taking up the white man's burden' by the 'exceptional people' may involve mass murder, mayhem, destruction and chaos, unfortunately necessary in the short(ish) run. But these benighted peoples should realise it is for their own good, and if this means starving to death 500,000 Iraqi children through sanctions, well, it was 'worth it' according to the lovely Madeline Albright. This is the language and methodology of a totalitarian imperialism. As someone has remarked the Anglo-zionist empire is not on the wrong side of history, it is the wrong side of history.

The arrogance, ignorance and crass venality of these people is manifest to the point of parody.

Jen says March 10, 2018
I agree with Mark Rice-Oxley that Russian oligarchs should pull their money out of Britain and return it to Russia to invest in businesses there. That would be the ethical thing for them to do, to fulfill their proper tax obligations and stop using Britain as a tax haven.

I hear that Russia has had another bumper wheat harvest and is now poised to take over from Australia as the major wheat exporter to Egypt and Indonesia, the world's biggest buyers of wheat. So if Russian oligarchs are wondering where to put their money in, wheat production, research into improving wheat yields and the conditions wheat is grown in are just a few areas they can invest in.

Be careful what you wish for, Mr Rice-Oxley – your wish might come true bigger than you realise!

Jen says March 11, 2018
On top of what I said yesterday, if Russian oligarchs do pull all their money out of Britain, the British economy would crash, it being highly dependent on the services sector (constituting 80% of Britain's GDP in 2016 according to Wikipedia) and the financial services industry in particular. So if all those Russian billions swirling through Britain's financial system are "dodgy", that's because the system itself encouraged those inflows.

Who's really "dodgy", Mr Rice-Oxley?

David C. Lee (@worldblee) says March 10, 2018
"Poor little Britain" which actually spends on par with Russia in terms of its military budget, despite the fact that a) it's a much smaller country to defend and is surrounded by water, and b) it's part of NATO with the US as its staunch defender so it really doesn't need a standalone military anyway.
Emily Durron says March 9, 2018
The Guardian are scum. Lying, deceiving, warmongering, hating scum. I would love to parachute them all into East Ghouta.
Fair dinkum says March 9, 2018
"It's them, over there, they are evil. We must stop them. They are coming for us, they will take our children and steal our i phones !!! Arrgh!!!" "I'll have another strong short black thanks"
bevin says March 9, 2018
Their world is falling apart- in Korea and the Middle East the Empire is on the verge of eviction. All the certitudes of yesteryear are dissolving. Even the Turks, who, famously, held the line in Korea when the PLA attacked and the US Eighth Army fled south, are now on the other side. The same Turks who hosted US nuclear armed strategic missiles so openly that the USSR sent missiles of its own to Cuba.
As to the UK, the economy is contracting and the economic infrastructure is cracking up- living standards are plummeting and the only recourse of those responsible for the mess-the officers on the bridge- is propaganda. Like the Empire the British Establishment has been living on the fruits of its own propaganda for so long that, when it is exposed as merely empty bullying, there is nothing left but to resort to more lies in the hope that they will obscure raw and looming reality.

In The Guardian newsroom the water is three feet deep and rising inexorably, the ship is sinking and all hands are required to bail or the screens will go black. There is no time to wait for developments, for investigations to be completed, for evidence- every ounce of strength must be thrown into the defiance of nature, the shocking nakedness of reality.

There is something very significant about the way that simultaneous attacks of impotent russophobic dementia are eating away the brains of the rulers on both sides of the Atlantic.

The game, which has been going the same way for about 500 years, is up. The maritime empire is becoming marginal and the force that it has used, throughout these centuries, no longer overwhelms. The cruisers and carriers no longer work except to intimidate those not worth frightening.

There is only one thing left for the Empire and its hundreds of thousands of apparatchiki-from cops to pundits, from Professors to jailers- either they adjust to a new dispensation because the Times are Changing or they blow themselves and the whole planet up.

Thomas Peterson says March 9, 2018
From what's emerging now, it seems there simply were no assassins wandering round Salisbury. Instead, it appears Mr Skripal for some reason has a house full of nerve gas, or enough of it at least to take out himself, his daughter and a policeman who inspected the premises.
Thomas Prentice says March 9, 2018
Cleary the Guardian was swallowed up by England's fascist regime controlled by the City of London when it surrendered its hard drives to the regime for examination and/or destruction in the wake of the Snowden revelations.

The Guardian ownerships also sold their souls -- although the Guardian had already been in decline before they nabbed Glenn Greenwald. When he left, the Guardian lost ALL presumptive credibility.

Now The Guardian is just an organ of regime propaganda like the BBC (thank GOd for OffGuardian) and here is the island nation AGAIN asserting its dominance over the whole world, but this time on behalf of his brawnier brother, the EUSE, aka Exceptional US Empire.

One wonders how much longer the Russians will put up with this now that it is CLEAR that -- for the first time ever -- the Russians have complete military and nuclear superiority over "The West."

I'll bet Putin won't invade Ukraine, Germany, France, Brussels and England from the North and from the sea in the wintertime.

The Big Problem Is YThat Americans are afraid -- frightened -- but they are NOT afraid or frightened of a particular tbhing -- it is a generic fright. So they are no longer afraid of nuclear war. Trotsky said A'meria was the strongest nation but also the most terrified' and nothing has changed except military and nuclear superiority along with economic clout has shifted to Russia and China. Were Americans afraid of nuclear war -- or say, of an invasion from Saskatchewan or Tamaulipas -- there might be hope.

But somewhere along the time beginning with Clinton, Americans didn't worry their pretty little heads about nuclear war or American wars on everybody anywhere any longer so long as it didn't disturb their creature comforts and shopping and lattes by coming to the homeland. The Nuclear Freeze movement was, after all, a direct response to Reagan's "evil empire" military buildup in the 1980s and then voila he and Gorbachev negotiated away a whole class of nuclear weapoms and Old Bush promised NAto wouldn;t expand. Hope. Then that sneaky little bastard Clinton started expanding Nato on behalf of the Pentagon / CKIA / NSA / miklitary /congressional industyrial complex.

None of this suggests tht it will end pretty.

vierotchka says March 9, 2018

Maybe it's time to try some new digital hearts-and-minds operation. In the internet age, Russians have already shown how public opinion can be manipulated. Perhaps our own secret digital marvels can embark on the kind of information counter-offensive to win over the many millions of Russians who share our values. Perhaps they already are.

He really is taking Russians for idiots and fools!

vierotchka says March 9, 2018
There is one key element that proves that the Russians didn't do it: The Russians aren't so clumsy as to poison over a dozen other people at the same time.
MichaelK says March 9, 2018
The whole piece is an emotionally charged rant, bordering on hysteria, based on a transparent tissue of lies, distortions and absolutely stunning hypocrisy; and this coming from the 'liberal' 'left of centre' Guardian!

It's rather scary. The Guardian screaming for a crusade aimed at toppling the Russian system and replacing it with something else, something closer to 'our values.' The moralizing is shocking and grotesque. I really wish the ground would just open up and swallow the Guardian whole. We'd be far better off with out it.

[Mar 11, 2018] I often think that, a the machinery of surveillance and repression becomes so well oiled and refined, the ruling oligarchs will soon stop even paying lip service to 'American workers', or the "American middle class" and go full authoritarian

Highly recommended!
Are powerful intelligence agencies compatible even with limited neoliberal democracy, or democracy for top 10 or 1%?
Notable quotes:
"... I recall during the George II administration someone in congress advocating for he return of debtor's prisons during the 'debat' over ending access to bankruptcy ..."
"... Soros, like the Koch brothers, heads an organization. He has lots of "people" who do what he demands of them. ..."
"... Let's give these guys (and gals, too, let's not forget the Pritzkers and DeVoses and the Walton Family, just among us Norte Americanos) full credit for all the hard work they are putting in, and money too, of course, to buy a world the way they want it -- one which us mopes have only slave roles to play... ..."
Mar 11, 2018 | turcopolier.typepad.com

Generalfeldmarschall von Hindenburg -> Harry... 10 March 2018 at 06:25 PM

You have a good point, but I often think that, a the machinery of surveillance and repression becomes so well oiled and refined, the ruling oligarchs will soon stop even paying lip service to 'American workers', or the "American middle class" and go full authoritarian. Karl Rove's dream to return the economy to the late 19th Century standard.

The Clintonoid project seems set on taking it to the late 16th century. Probably with a return of chattel slavery. I recall during the George II administration someone in congress advocating for he return of debtor's prisons during the 'debat' over ending access to bankruptcy

JTMcPhee -> to steve... 11 March 2018 at 12:56 PM
Soros, like the Koch brothers, heads an organization. He has lots of "people" who do what he demands of them.

Do you really contend that Soros and the Koch brothers, and people like Adelson, aren't busily "undermining American democracy," whatever that is, via their organizations (like ALEC and such) in favor of their oligarchic kleptocratic interests, and going at it 24/7?

The phrase "reductio ad absurdam" comes to mind, for some reason...

Let's give these guys (and gals, too, let's not forget the Pritzkers and DeVoses and the Walton Family, just among us Norte Americanos) full credit for all the hard work they are putting in, and money too, of course, to buy a world the way they want it -- one which us mopes have only slave roles to play...

[Mar 11, 2018] It looks like the USA descending into tribalism due to the loss of jobs, the drug epidemic and environmental exploitation

Loss of legitimacy of neoliberal elite reminds loss of legitimacy of Nomenklatura in the USSR.
This descent "into tribalism due to the loss of jobs, the drug epidemic and environmental exploitation " also reminds epidemic of alcoholism due to lack of persepdtives both in job environment and housing crisis, where young families did not have a space to live in the USSR.
The logical end on the US empire might well be the USSR style crisis. which might eventually lead to the disintegration of the country.
Notable quotes:
"... NBC News daily has Kumbaya propaganda to facilitate importing of cheap labor and goods. But, what good is a service economy if there is no service? Just like Soviet propaganda, corporate media today is in service of the oligarch owners and sold out party elite. It tries to avoid the truth. Although, NBC did report on the astronomical rise in cost of ambulance service. A couple thousand dollars for mile and half trip to the hospital. They said it was due to the 2008 recession and the cutting of local volunteer emergency services to save tax money. ..."
"... I agree the Democrats shot themselves in the foot because they are unconcerned for the bottom 80% except for their identity issues. They serve their paymasters. ..."
"... The recent Italian election documents the complete collapse of left leaning parties that ignored the plight of the workers in the West. To me, to win, the left in America must write off student debt, implement Medicare for All, end the forever wars and tax George Soros, Jeff Bezos, Bill Gates, Warren Buffet, Pierre Omidyar, the Koch Brothers and the Walton Family to pay for it. To work, criminal bankers need to be jailed and corporate boards required to manage for long term profits that benefit society not just quarterly and themselves only. ..."
Mar 10, 2018 | turcopolier.typepad.com

VietnamVet 10 March 2018 at 05:27 PM

Colonel,

Have you seen the movie "Wind River" yet? It is the best depiction I've seen of the USA descending into tribalism due to the loss of jobs, the drug epidemic and environmental exploitation.

NBC News daily has Kumbaya propaganda to facilitate importing of cheap labor and goods. But, what good is a service economy if there is no service? Just like Soviet propaganda, corporate media today is in service of the oligarch owners and sold out party elite. It tries to avoid the truth. Although, NBC did report on the astronomical rise in cost of ambulance service. A couple thousand dollars for mile and half trip to the hospital. They said it was due to the 2008 recession and the cutting of local volunteer emergency services to save tax money.

Rather than tax the wealthy and corporations, the middle class is going into debt to pay for education, medical bills, and $40 Northern Virginia one-way tolls. Federal taxes on the middle class support the endless wars.

I agree the Democrats shot themselves in the foot because they are unconcerned for the bottom 80% except for their identity issues. They serve their paymasters.

The recent Italian election documents the complete collapse of left leaning parties that ignored the plight of the workers in the West. To me, to win, the left in America must write off student debt, implement Medicare for All, end the forever wars and tax George Soros, Jeff Bezos, Bill Gates, Warren Buffet, Pierre Omidyar, the Koch Brothers and the Walton Family to pay for it. To work, criminal bankers need to be jailed and corporate boards required to manage for long term profits that benefit society not just quarterly and themselves only.

[Mar 08, 2018] Deep state vs "surface state" struggle: the deep state is winning

Mar 08, 2018 | turcopolier.typepad.com

likbez -> Dave... 08 March 2018 at 11:44 PM

Dave,

Is it so difficult to understand that there are strong incentives to create the "Russia Threat" to hide the crisis of neoliberalism in the USA. The current can of political worms and infighting in Washington, DC between POTUS and intelligence agencies factions supporting anti-trump color revolution clearly demonstrate that this crisis is systemic in nature. In this sense, we can talk about the transformation of the US political system into something new.

One feature of this new system is that the US foreign policy now is influenced, if not controlled by intelligence agencies. The latter also proved to be capable of acting as the kingmakers in the US Presidential elections (this time with side effects: derailing Sanders eventually led to the election of Trump; that's why efforts to depose Trump commenced immediately.)

A large part of the US elite is willing to create the situation of balancing on the edge of nuclear war because it allows them to swipe the dirt under the carpet and unite the nation on bogus premises, suppressing the crisis of confidence in the neoliberal elite. Neo-McCarthyism witch hunt serves exactly this purpose.

Also now it is clear that the intelligence agencies and Pentagon, play active, and maybe even decisive part in determining the US foreign policy, US population and elected POTUS be damned.

Secretary of Defense Ash Carter and his staff showed this new arrangement in Syria in July 2017. And the fact that he was not fired on the spot might well signify the change in political power between the "deep state" and the "surface state". With the latter one step closer to being just a Potemkin Village.

Sid Finster said in reply to Dave... , 08 March 2018 at 05:09 PM
So now we are supposed to believe unquestioningly the word of torturers, perjurers and entrapment artists, all talking about alleged evidence that we are not allowed to see?

Did you learn nothing from the "Iraqi WMD" fiasco or the "ZOMG! Assad gassed his own peoples ZOMG!" debacle?

Funny how in each of these instances, the intelligence community's lies just happened to coincide with the agenda of empire.

Flavius said in reply to LeaNder... , 08 March 2018 at 01:54 PM
It will be interesting to see why the interviewing FBI Agents to whom Flynn has admitted to the Mueller Op telling a lie, or lies, did not avail Flynn the opportunity of the 'lie circumstantial." From what I think I know about the case, the answers to the questions put to Flynn were already known to the Agents from wire overhears; and their substance did not constitute a crime in any case. Why would not the Agents interviewing Flynn have said "If you're telling me this, we have reason to think that you're mistaken?" If I'm correct in my understanding, in my opinion, the Agents conducted themselves in a very chickenshit fashion and I would suspect an Agenda was in play.

Making a more general observation regarding the Mueller Op, it seems to me that not the least reprehensible effect of its existence is that de facto it has usurped the authority of the White House and the State Department to conduct Foreign Policy vis a vis Russia. For example, I doubt very much whether Mueller cleared his ridiculous indictment relating to the Russian troll farm, a requirement that at one time would have been SOP for any FBI Office or USAtty Office bringing an indictment of this kind. And even if Mueller did, what would, what could the WH or State response have been given the mishapen political climate and the track record of outrageous leaking that so far have gone on without consequence to the leaker.

So the net effect is that Mueller's office is conducting our Russian foreign policy. Authority without either responsibility or expertise is not a desirable thing when it comes to forging correct relations with a nuclear power.

[Mar 08, 2018] Kleptocracy the most typical form of corruption under neoliberalism, where the government exists to increase the personal wealth and political power of its officials and the financial oligarchy at the expense of the wider population, now even without pretense of honest service

Notable quotes:
"... he Dems disgust me with their neo-McCarthyism and the Repubs disgust me because of the way they are playing out their hand right now as well. Games within corrupt games, and yet normal behavior especially in waning empires (or other types of polities, including powerful int'l corporations). ..."
"... Chapter 14 of Guns, Germs and Steel is titled "From Egalitarianism to Kleptocracy" and it used to be available online but my old link is dead and I couldn't find a new one. But a basic definition should suffice: "Kleptocracy, alternatively cleptocracy or kleptarchy, is a form of political and government corruption where the government exists to increase the personal wealth and political power of its officials and the ruling class at the expense of the wider population, often without pretense of honest service." I have no idea how one turns this around and I doubt it's even possible. ..."
"... The Real Reason Establishment Frauds Hate Trump and Obsess About Russia https://libertyblitzkrieg.com/2018/02/20/the-real-reason-establishment-frauds-hate-trump-and-obsess-about-russia/ ..."
"... Blaming Russia for all the nation's problems serves several key purposes for various defenders of the status quo. For discredited neocons and neoliberals who never met a failed war based on lies they didn't support, it provides an opportunity to rehabilitate their torched reputations by masquerading as fierce patriots against the latest existential enemy. Similarly, for those who lived in denial about who Obama really was for eight years, latching on to the Russia narrative allows them to reassure themselves that everything really was fine before Trump and Russia came along and ruined the party. ..."
Mar 01, 2018 | turcopolier.typepad.com

Valissa -> jsn... , 01 March 2018 at 07:44 PM

jsn @16 & 40, in complete agreement with you. Great comments! T he Dems disgust me with their neo-McCarthyism and the Repubs disgust me because of the way they are playing out their hand right now as well. Games within corrupt games, and yet normal behavior especially in waning empires (or other types of polities, including powerful int'l corporations).

Chapter 14 of Guns, Germs and Steel is titled "From Egalitarianism to Kleptocracy" and it used to be available online but my old link is dead and I couldn't find a new one. But a basic definition should suffice: "Kleptocracy, alternatively cleptocracy or kleptarchy, is a form of political and government corruption where the government exists to increase the personal wealth and political power of its officials and the ruling class at the expense of the wider population, often without pretense of honest service." I have no idea how one turns this around and I doubt it's even possible.

Back when I used to subscribe to STRATFOR, founder George Friedman always made a point of evaluating the elites of whatever country he was analyzing and how they operated amongst themselves and relative to the people and how effective they were or were not in governing a country. But he never did that for the US. I would have paid extra for that report! But of course he could not stay in business if he did such a thing as those people are his clients.

I think Mike Krieger over at Liberty Blitzkrieg nails it from another perspective with this post:

The Real Reason Establishment Frauds Hate Trump and Obsess About Russia https://libertyblitzkrieg.com/2018/02/20/the-real-reason-establishment-frauds-hate-trump-and-obsess-about-russia/

Blaming Russia for all the nation's problems serves several key purposes for various defenders of the status quo. For discredited neocons and neoliberals who never met a failed war based on lies they didn't support, it provides an opportunity to rehabilitate their torched reputations by masquerading as fierce patriots against the latest existential enemy. Similarly, for those who lived in denial about who Obama really was for eight years, latching on to the Russia narrative allows them to reassure themselves that everything really was fine before Trump and Russia came along and ruined the party.

By throwing every problem in Putin's lap, the entrenched bipartisan status quo can tell themselves (and everybody else) that it wasn't really them and their policies that voters rejected in 2016, rather, the American public was tricked by cunning, nefarious Russians. Ridiculous for sure, but never underestimate the instinctive human desire to deny accountability for one's own failures. It's always easier to blame than to accept responsibility.

That said, there's a much bigger game afoot beyond the motivations of individuals looking to save face. The main reason much of the highest echelons of American power are united against Trump has nothing to do with his actual policies. Instead, they're terrified that -- unlike Obama -- he's a really bad salesman for empire. This sort of Presidential instability threatens the continuance of their well oiled and exceedingly corrupt gravy train. Hillary Clinton was a sure thing, Donald Trump remains an unpredictable wildcard.

... Obama said all the right things while methodically doing the bidding of oligarchy. He captured the imagination of millions, if not billions, around the world with his soaring rhetoric, yet rarely skipped a beat when it came to the advancement of imperial policies. He made bailing out Wall Street, droning civilians and cracking down on journalists seem progressive. He said one thing, did another, and people ate it up. This is an extraordinarily valuable quality when it comes to a vicious and unelected deep state that wants to keep a corrupt empire together.

Trump has the exact opposite effect. Sure, he also frequently says one thing and then does another, but he doesn't provide the same feel good quality to empire that Obama did. He's simply not the warm and fuzzy salesman for oligarchy and empire Obama was, thus his inability to sugarcoat state-sanctioned murder forces a lot of people to confront the uncomfortable hypocrisies in our society that many would prefer not to admit.

------------

I can't stand Kushner's smirky face and got a good chuckle from this prince's fall as I am not a fan of his passion for Israel. But I don't think he's a stupid idiot either. He's probably very smart in business, but he seems to have no feel for politics. Trump is much better at it than Kushner. Of course they are going after Kushner as a way to attack and disadvantage Trump. Politics is a form of warfare after all.

My take is that Trump survives but mostly contained by the Borg

[Mar 07, 2018] Putin Says US Political System Eating Itself Up, Explains Preparation For Nuclear War

There is a Russian term for the political condition into which the USA political establishment has arrived: The USA became "nedogovorosposobniy" -- a derogatory term for people who are iether mentally incapacitated or are such crooks that nobody can't be rely on signed by them treaties and who can break any promises given and signed in writing with ease.
After painful months of negotiation with the US, Sergei Lavrov regretfully announced that the Americans were such. There are rules, and the Americans do not know how to observe them. There are boundaries, but no-one has taught them to the Americans. In this sense, the Russians, the Chinese, and the Iranians are grown-ups. It is possible to do business with them without risking the survival of the species.'
That's a sign of a "failed state"
Notable quotes:
"... He described the Western sanctions over Crimea and the insurgency in eastern Ukraine as part of "illegitimate and unfair" efforts to contain Russia, adding that "we will win in the long run." He added that "those who serve us with poison will eventually swallow it and poison themselves." ..."
Mar 07, 2018 | www.zerohedge.com

Putin then ... vented his frustration with the U.S. political system saying " it has demonstrated its inefficiency and has been eating itself up."

" It's quite difficult to interact with such a system, because it's unpredictable ," Putin said.

Russian hopes for a detente and better ties with Washington have been dashed by the ongoing congressional and FBI investigations into allegations of collusion between Trump's campaign and Russia. Speaking about the bitter tensions in Russia-West relations, Putin said they have been rooted in Western efforts to contain and weaken Russia.

"We are a great power, and no one likes competition," he said.

Turning his attention to a particularly sensitive topic, Putin said he was dismayed by what he described as the U.S. role in the ouster of Ukraine's Russia-friendly president in February 2014 amid massive protests.

Putin charged that the U.S. had asked Russia to help persuade then-President Viktor Yanukovych not to use force against protesters and then "rudely and blatantly" cheated Russia, sponsoring what he called a "coup. " Russia responded by rushing through a referendum in Ukraine's Crimean Peninsula, whose result was an overwhelming majority voting to join Russia.

" Few expected us to act so quickly and so resolutely, not to say daringly ," Putin said.

He described the Western sanctions over Crimea and the insurgency in eastern Ukraine as part of "illegitimate and unfair" efforts to contain Russia, adding that "we will win in the long run." He added that "those who serve us with poison will eventually swallow it and poison themselves."

Responding to a question about Russia's growing global leverage, Putin responded: "If we play strongly with weak cards, it means the others are just poor players, they aren't as strong as it seemed, they must be lacking something."

* * *

Finally, Putin, who presented a sweeping array of new Russian nuclear weapons last week , voiced hope that nuclear weapons will never be used -- but warned that Russia will retaliate in kind if it comes under a nuclear attack.

"The decision to use nuclear weapons can only be made if our early warning system not only detects a missile launch but clearly forecasts its flight path and the time when warheads reach the Russian territory," he said. "If someone makes a decision to destroy Russia, then we have a legitimate right to respond."

He concluded ominously: "Yes, it will mean a global catastrophe for mankind, for the entire world. But as a citizen of Russia and the head of Russian state I would ask: What is such a world for, if there were no Russia?" Tags War Conflict Politics

Comments Vote up! 66 Vote down! 7

Shitonya Serfs Wed, 03/07/2018 - 12:23 Permalink

Aim for CA, DC, and NYC, Putin...don't forget Seattle

Cry Baby Moe -> Shitonya Serfs Wed, 03/07/2018 - 12:26 Permalink

"Yes, it will mean a global catastrophe for mankind, for the entire world. But as a citizen of Russia and the head of Russian state I would ask: What is such a world for, if there were no Russia?"

peace in the world? Happiness for all?

y3maxx -> Cry Baby Moe Wed, 03/07/2018 - 12:28 Permalink

Absolutely true....Trump is a balanced man compared to the unbalanced Deep State and Congress.

BullyBearish -> y3maxx Wed, 03/07/2018 - 12:30 Permalink

"...would you want to live in a world without classic coke?"

skbull44 -> BullyBearish Wed, 03/07/2018 - 12:31 Permalink

Making the MIC great again!!

https://olduvai.ca

ThanksChump -> skbull44 Wed, 03/07/2018 - 12:38 Permalink

Many Americans are angry that Soviet socialists threw their communist comrades out. Putin, a better capitalist than most US presidents in recent decades, hates communists as much as everyone else does.

Go live in Best Korea, Communist scum.

Luc X. Ifer -> ThanksChump Wed, 03/07/2018 - 13:51 Permalink

Well. It was obvious for some time that a corrupt gov will lead unfortunately to capitalism going rogue and eating itself up. Don't get me wrong, is not the capitalism failure is the failure of the ones who supposedly had to ensure the existence of a true free but balanced market, and that's the gov, so as in the former Soviet bloc this proves again that too big and powerful gov naturally evolves into an oligarchy which drives the system to self cannibalize.

silver140 -> Luc X. Ifer Wed, 03/07/2018 - 14:36 Permalink

The US doesn't have a corrupt government, it has corporate fascist rulers who have puppets posing as politicians who pretend to be in a government.

samsara -> skbull44 Wed, 03/07/2018 - 12:58 Permalink

Ah, Www.dieoff.com

Remember it?

scaleindependent -> samsara Wed, 03/07/2018 - 14:27 Permalink

Never heard of it. Thanks

[Mar 01, 2018] Putin The Man Who Stopped Washington s Regime Change Rampage by Mike Whitney

What Washington really haptes about Putin is that he has refused to comply with their diktats and has openly rejected their model of a "unipolar" world order.
Notable quotes:
"... The attacks on Putin began sometime in 2006 during Putin's second term when it became apparent that Russia was going to resist the looting and exploitation the US requires of its vassal states. ..."
"... That's right, Russia was thrown under the bus because they wanted to control their own oil and their own destiny. ..."
"... John Edwards and Jack Kemp were appointed to lead a CFR task force which concocted the absurd pretext that that Putin was "rolling back democracy" in Russia. ..."
"... What Washington really despises about Putin is that he has refused to comply with their diktats and has openly rejected their model of a "unipolar" world order. ..."
"... Despite Russia's efforts to assist the US in its War On Terror, Washington has continued to regard Putin as an emerging rival that would eventually have to be confronted. The conflict in Ukraine added more gas to the fire by pitting the two superpowers against each other in a hot war that remains unresolved to this day. ..."
"... But Syria was the straw that broke the camel's back. Russia's intervention in the Syrian War in September 2015 proved to be the turning point in the 7 year-long conflagration. By rolling back the CIA-trained militants, Putin bloodied Washington's nose and forced the Pentagon to adopt a backup plan that relied heavily on Kurdish proxies east of the Euphrates. ..."
"... The Syria humiliation precipitated the Russia-gate Information Operation (IO) which is the propaganda component of the current war on Russia. The scandal has been an effective way to poison public perceptions and to make it look like the perpetrator of aggression is really the victim. ..."
"... Putin clearly blames the United States for the rise of ISIS and the surge in global terrorism. He also condemns Washington's strategy to use terrorist organizations to achieve its own narrow strategic objectives. (regime change) More important, he uses his platform at the United Nations to explain why he has deployed the Russian Air-force to bases in Syria where it will it will be used to conduct a war against Washington's jihadist proxies on the ground. ..."
"... The only place where people have a negative view of Putin is in the United States (14 percent) and EU (28 percent), the two locations where he is relentlessly savaged by the media and excoriated by the political class. ..."
"... The problem is that the propaganda power structure behind the yankee imperium is probably too powerful for rationality to triumph, so we are in for serious trouble. ..."
"... After having spent 36 years in the West and having seen Westerners vote for the likes of Blair, Sarkozy or Macron, I have a very low opinion of Western intelligence, and Western moral relativism and indifference with regards to the crimes their elected leaders committed abroad. ..."
"... China is a rival but an odd kind of rival. Let's not forget that the US, over the last 30 whatever years has enthusiastically facilitated China's rise. China has become the world's factory because the US and other countries Co's want CHEAP labour. ..."
"... American liberals support lifting living standards and ending poverty? You mean, the same American liberals who support 'free' trade and importing unlimited amounts of scab labor? You must have us confused with some other country, Mike. ..."
"... not like he had a choice. dc was about to have it's hands on his throat and he finally reacted. That was ukraine. syria was him trying to protect another one of his naval bases. the bear simply reacted to attempts at cutting off it's legs. ..."
"... Putin inherited a broken Russia in 2000. A Russia on the verge of collapse due to misrule of drunkard Yeltsin and body blows administered by US/NATO. A broken down military; economy in shambles; demographic collapse. During his presidency US/EU/NATO engineered a collapse of oil prices and assaults on ruble: what exactly was Putin supposed to non-passively do to counter the collapse of world oil prices, for example? ..."
"... Putin was wise enough and cautious enough not to go head-to-head with US/NATO until his military and economy were in good enough shape to do and make a difference, as in Syria for example. It would have been very bad for Russia to act prematurely and get bled dry, which warmongering US Neocons were hoping for. ..."
"... Obviously Putin knows the strengths and weaknesses of Russia better than any of us here. He is butting heads with the combined military industrial might of US+EU: that block has a lot of human resources, wealth, worldwide financial and political influence. Also Putin has to – has to – improve the living standards of citizens of RF, so he cannot afford to get into an expensive arms race with the West. Putin is doing very well with what he has, as far as human and military-industrial resources Russia has. ..."
"... When asked by a Germany-based academic where Russia had most seriously gone wrong in the past decade and a half, Putin said he had too readily laid his trust in the West, which he then accused of having abused its relationship with Moscow to further its own interests." ..."
"... America is in a very ugly spot and getting worse everyday. Living here I can sense it. Americans are going crazy. Pathetic how they are trying and build hate for Russia/Putin mainly because America got triple fucked across the ME and especially in Syria. Very sad. ..."
"... America's greatest historical truth: in foreign policy the USA just cannot learn from experience. We keep making the same mistakes. Stupid, idiotic, nation building b/s. ..."
"... In my opinion, the USA, until now, could afford to conduct foreign policy for internal reasons ..."
"... The reason why the US empire will follow the British empire into the graveyard is because they are based on the same model – trying to prevent others from becoming equal to them instead of trying to get better than the competitors. ..."
"... GB was preoccupied with preventing Germany from surpassing them – and guess what? They succeeded. And where is the British empire now? ..."
"... US is on a similar path of self-destruction. First they made China an economic superpower and now they want to contain them militarily. Good luck with that. ..."
"... The money that the US spent on military misadventures – they could have bribed with far lesser amount of money the various "dictatorships" that they were so democratically inclined to topple – and would have achieved better results. Instead of using those money to make US better – for their citizens, they are trying to prevent the world from catching up with them – British style. ..."
Feb 28, 2018 | www.unz.com

"It is essential to provide conditions for creative labor and economic growth at a pace that would put an end to the division of the world into permanent winners and permanent losers. The rules of the game should give the developing economies at least a chance to catch up with those we know as developed economies. We should work to level out the pace of economic development, and brace up backward countries and regions so as to make the fruit of economic growth and technological progress accessible to all. Particularly, this would help to put an end to poverty, one of the worst contemporary problems." Vladimir Putin, President Russian Federation, Meeting of the Valdai International Discussion Club

Putin wants to end poverty? Putin wants to stimulate economic growth in developing countries? Putin wants to change the system that divides the world into "permanent winners and losers"? But, how can that be, after all, Putin is bad, Putin is a "KGB thug", Putin is the "new Hitler"?

American liberals would be surprised to know that Putin actually supports many of the same social issues that they support. For example, the Russian President is not only committed to lifting living standards and ending poverty, he's also a big believer in universal healthcare which is free under the current Russian Constitution. Naturally, the Russian system has its shortcomings, but there has been significant progress under Putin who has dramatically increased the budget, improved treatment and widened accessibility. Putin believes that healthcare should be a universal human right. Here's what he said at the annual meeting of the Valdai International Discussion Club:

"Another priority is global healthcare . All people in the world, not only the elite, should have the right to healthy, long and full lives. This is a noble goal. In short, we should build the foundation for the future world today by investing in all priority areas of human development." (Vladimir Putin, President Russian Federation, Meeting of the Valdai International Discussion Club)

How many "liberal" politicians in the US would support a recommendation like Putin's? Not very many. The Democrats are much more partial to market-based reforms like Obamacare that guarantee an ever-increasing slice of the pie goes to the giant HMOs and the voracious pharmaceutical companies. The Dems no longer make any attempt to promote universal healthcare as a basic human right. They've simply thrown in the towel and moved on to other issues.

Many Americans would find Putin's views on climate change equally surprising. Here's another clip from the Valdai speech:

"Ladies and gentlemen, one more issue that shall affect the future of the entire humankind is climate change. I suggest that we take a broader look at the issue .What we need is an essentially different approach, one that would involve introducing new, groundbreaking, nature-like technologies that would not damage the environment, but rather work in harmony with it, enabling us to restore the balance between the biosphere and technology upset by human activities.

It is indeed a challenge of global proportions. And I am confident that humanity does have the necessary intellectual capacity to respond to it. We need to join our efforts, primarily engaging countries that possess strong research and development capabilities, and have made significant advances in fundamental research. We propose convening a special forum under the auspices of the UN to comprehensively address issues related to the depletion of natural resources, habitat destruction, and climate change. Russia is willing to co-sponsor such a forum .." Valdai)

Most people would never suspect that Putin supports a global effort to address climate change. And, how would they know, after all, bits of information like that– that help to soften Putin's image and make him seem like a rational human being– are scrubbed from the media's coverage in order to cast him in the worst possible light. The media doesn't want people to know that Putin is a reflective and modest man who has worked tirelessly to make Russia and the world a better place. No, they want them to believe that he's is a scheming tyrannical despot who's obsessive hatred for America poses a very real threat to US national security. But it's not true.

Putin is not the ghoulish caricature the media makes him out to be nor does he hate America, that's just more propaganda from the corporate echo-chamber. The truth is Putin has been good for Russia, good for regional stability, and good for global security. He pulled the Russian Federation back from the brink of annihilation in 2000, and has had the country moving in a positive direction ever since. His impact on the Russian economy has been particularly impressive. According to Wikipedia:

"Between 2000 and 2012 Russia's energy exports fueled a rapid growth in living standards, with real disposable income rising by 160%. In dollar-denominated terms this amounted to a more than sevenfold increase in disposable incomes since 2000. In the same period, unemployment and poverty more than halved and Russians' self-assessed life satisfaction also rose significantly."

Inequality is a problem in Russia just like it is in the US, but the vast majority of working people have benefited greatly from Putin's reforms and a system of distribution that –judging by steady uptick in disposable incomes – is significantly superior to that in the United States where wages have flatlined for over 2 decades and where virtually all of the nation's wealth trickles upward to the parasitic 1 percent.

Since Putin took office in 2000, workers have seen across-the-board increase in wages, benefits, healthcare and pensions. Poverty and unemployment have been reduced by more than half while foreign investment has experienced steady growth. Onerous IMF loans have been repaid in full, capital flight has all-but ceased, hundreds in billions in reserves have been accumulated, personal and corporate taxes have been slashed, and technology has experienced an unprecedented renaissance. The notorious Russian oligarchs still have a stranglehold on many privately-owned industries, but their grip has begun to loosen and the "kleptocracy has begun to fade."

Things are far from perfect, but the Russian economy has flourished under Putin and, generally speaking, the people are appreciative. This helps to explain why Putin's public approval ratings are typically in the stratosphere. (70 to 80 percent) Simply put: Putin the most popular Russian president of all time. And his popularity is not limited to Russia either, in fact, he typically ranks at the top of most global leadership polls such as the recent Gallup International End of Year Survey (EoY) where Putin came in third (43 percent positive rating) behind Germany's Angela Merkel (49 percent) and French President Emmanuel Macron. (45 percent) According to Gallup: "Putin has gone from one in three (33 percent) viewing him favourably to 43 percent, a significant increase over two years."

The only place where people have a negative view of Putin is in the United States (14 percent) and EU (28 percent), the two locations where he is relentlessly savaged by the media and excoriated by the political class. This should come as no surprise to Americans who know that the chances of stumbling across an article that treats Putin with even minimal objectivity is about as likely as finding a copper coin at the bottom of the Pacific Ocean. The consensus view of the western media is that Putin is a maniacal autocrat who kills journalists and political opponents (no proof), who meddles in US elections to "sow discord" and destroy our precious democracy (no proof), and who is conducting a secret and sinister cyberwar against the United States. (no proof). It's a pathetic litany of libels and fabrications, but its impact on the brainwashed American people has been quite impressive as Gallup's results indicate. Bottom line: Propaganda works.

The attacks on Putin began sometime in 2006 during Putin's second term when it became apparent that Russia was going to resist the looting and exploitation the US requires of its vassal states. This is when the powerful Council on Foreign Relations funded a report titled "Russia's Wrong Direction" that suggested that Russia's increasingly independent foreign policy and insistence that it control its own vast oil and natural gas resources meant that "the very idea of a 'strategic partnership' no longer seems realistic." That's right, Russia was thrown under the bus because they wanted to control their own oil and their own destiny.

John Edwards and Jack Kemp were appointed to lead a CFR task force which concocted the absurd pretext that that Putin was "rolling back democracy" in Russia. They claimed that the government had become increasingly authoritarian and that the society was growing less "open and pluralistic". Kemp and Edwards provided the ideological foundation upon which the entire public relations campaign against Putin has been built. Twelve years later, the same charges are still being leveled at Putin along with the additional allegations that he meddled in the 2016 presidential elections.

Needless to say, none of the nation's newspapers, magazines or broadcast media ever publish anything that deviates even slightly from the prevailing, propagandistic narrative about Putin. One can only assume that the MSM's views on Putin are either universally accepted by all 325 million Americans or that the so-called "free press" is a wretched farce that conceals an authoritarian corporate machine that censors all opinions that don't promote their own malign political agenda.

What Washington really despises about Putin is that he has refused to comply with their diktats and has openly rejected their model of a "unipolar" world order. As he said at the annual Security Conference at Munich in 2007:

"The unipolar world refers to a world in which there is one master, one sovereign; one center of authority, one center of force, one center of decision-making. At the end of the day this is pernicious not only for all those within this system, but also for the sovereign itself because it destroys itself from within."

Despite Russia's efforts to assist the US in its War On Terror, Washington has continued to regard Putin as an emerging rival that would eventually have to be confronted. The conflict in Ukraine added more gas to the fire by pitting the two superpowers against each other in a hot war that remains unresolved to this day.

But Syria was the straw that broke the camel's back. Russia's intervention in the Syrian War in September 2015 proved to be the turning point in the 7 year-long conflagration. By rolling back the CIA-trained militants, Putin bloodied Washington's nose and forced the Pentagon to adopt a backup plan that relied heavily on Kurdish proxies east of the Euphrates. At present, US Special Forces and their allies are clinging to a strip of arid wasteland in the Syrian outback hoping that the Pentagon brass can settle on a forward-operating strategy that reverses their fortunes or brings the war to a swift end.

The Syria humiliation precipitated the Russia-gate Information Operation (IO) which is the propaganda component of the current war on Russia. The scandal has been an effective way to poison public perceptions and to make it look like the perpetrator of aggression is really the victim. More important, failure in Syria has led to a reevaluation of how Washington conducts its wars abroad. The War on Terror pretext has been jettisoned for a more direct approach laid out in the Trump administration's National Defense Strategy. The focus going forward will be on "Great Power Competition", that is, the US is subordinating its covert proxy operations to more flagrant displays of military force particularly in regards to the "growing threat from revisionist powers", Russia and China. In short, the gloves are coming off and Washington is ramping up for a land war.

Putin has become an obstacle to Washington's imperial ambitions which is why he's has been elevated to Public Enemy Number 1. It has nothing to do with the fictitious meddling in the 2016 elections or the nonsensical "rolling back democracy" in Russia. It's all about power. In the United States the group with the tightest grip on power is the foreign policy establishment. These are the towering mandarins who dictate the policy, tailor the politics to fit their strategic vision, and dispatch their lackeys in the media to shape the narrative. These are the people who decided that Putin must be demonized to pave the way for more foreign interventions, more regime change wars, more bloody aggression against sovereign states.

Putin has repeatedly warned Washington that Russia would not stand by while the US destroyed one country after the other in its lust for global domination. He reiterated his claim that Washington's "uncontained hyper-use of force" was creating "new centers of tension", exacerbating regional conflicts, undermining international relations, and "plunging the world into an abyss of permanent conflicts." He has pointed out how the US routinely displayed its contempt for international law and "overstepped its national borders in every way." As a result of Washington's aggressive behavior, public confidence in international law and global security has steadily eroded and "No one feels safe. I want to emphasize this," Putin thundered in Munich. "No one feels safe."

On September 28, 2015 Putin finally threw down the gauntlet in a speech he delivered at the 70th session of the UN General Assembly in New York. After reiterating his commitment to international law, the UN, and state sovereignty, he provided a brief but disturbing account of recent events in the Middle East, all of which have gotten significantly worse due to Washington's use of force. Here's Putin:

"Just look at the situation in the Middle East and Northern Africa Instead of bringing about reforms, aggressive intervention destroyed government institutions and the local way of life. Instead of democracy and progress, there is now violence, poverty, social disasters and total disregard for human rights, including even the right to life

The power vacuum in some countries in the Middle East and Northern Africa obviously resulted in the emergence of areas of anarchy, which were quickly filled with extremists and terrorists. The so-called Islamic State has tens of thousands of militants fighting for it, including former Iraqi soldiers who were left on the street after the 2003 invasion. Many recruits come from Libya whose statehood was destroyed as a result of a gross violation of UN Security Council Resolution 1973 ."

US interventions have decimated Iraq, Libya, Syria and beyond. Over a million people have been killed while tens of millions have been forced to flee their homes and their countries. The refugee spillover has added to social tensions across the EU where anti-immigrant sentiment has precipitated the explosive growth in right wing groups and political organizations. From Northern Africa, across the Middle East, and into Central Asia, global security has steadily deteriorated under Washington's ruthless stewardship. Here's more from Putin:

"The Islamic State itself did not come out of nowhere. It was initially developed as a weapon against undesirable secular regimes. Having established control over parts of Syria and Iraq, Islamic State now aggressively expands into other regions .It is irresponsible to manipulate extremist groups and use them to achieve your political goals, hoping that later you'll find a way to get rid of them or somehow eliminate them ."

Putin clearly blames the United States for the rise of ISIS and the surge in global terrorism. He also condemns Washington's strategy to use terrorist organizations to achieve its own narrow strategic objectives. (regime change) More important, he uses his platform at the United Nations to explain why he has deployed the Russian Air-force to bases in Syria where it will it will be used to conduct a war against Washington's jihadist proxies on the ground.

Putin: "We can no longer tolerate the current state of affairs in the world."

Less than 48 hours after these words were uttered, Russian warplanes began pounding militant targets in Syria.

Putin again: "Dear colleagues, relying on international law, we must join efforts to address the problems that all of us are facing, and create a genuinely broad international coalition against terrorism .Russia is confident of the United Nations' enormous potential, which should help us avoid a new confrontation and embrace a strategy of cooperation. Hand in hand with other nations, we will consistently work to strengthen the UN's central, coordinating role. I am convinced that by working together, we will make the world stable and safe, and provide an enabling environment for the development of all nations and peoples."

So, here's the question: Is Putin "evil" for opposing Washington's regime change wars, for stopping the spread of terrorism, and for rejecting the idea that one unipolar world power should rule the world? Is that why he's evil, because he won't click his heels and do as he's told by the global hegemon?

We should all be so evil.


Renoman , February 28, 2018 at 10:32 am GMT

Leader of the free World.
Robert Magill , February 28, 2018 at 11:00 am GMT
The dumbest thing about the US focus on Russia and Putin is that it leaves China, our actual rival, free to continue its march to overwhelming mastery of the entire Eastern Hemisphere. Without firing a shot or wasting a bullet China has moved into a position of influence the US has dreamed of for a century.

The next war, if it comes, will be over something like Cobalt. The future lies in big and plentiful electric batteries and China and Russia between them control almost 50% of the known supply of Cobalt, while the US has none. Stand by and wait, folks.

https://robertmagill.wordpress.com/2015/01/11/mr-bernays-to-dr-goebbels-to-s-h-i-t-3/

macilrae , February 28, 2018 at 2:11 pm GMT

The only place where people have a negative view of Putin is in the United States (14 percent) and EU (28 percent), the two locations where he is relentlessly savaged by the media and excoriated by the political class.

I would be staggered is only 14 percent of Americans had a negative view of Putin – almost everybody I have spoken to has completely swallowed the media line. In Europe UK in particular has been brainwashed against him – southern Europe far less so. The 28 percent is more realistic.

Harold Smith , February 28, 2018 at 2:41 pm GMT
@Robert Magill

Is China trying to trash our constitution? Is China invading other countries, killing people with missiles and bombs all over the world, staging "color revolutions" and subverting legitimate governments in the "West"? Is China patrolling the Gulf of Mexico and putting missiles in Mexico and Canada? China hasn't done anything bad to me or to anyone I know, so please explain how China is "our" "rival"?

exiled off mainstreet , February 28, 2018 at 3:37 pm GMT
This is a great article. The problem is that the propaganda power structure behind the yankee imperium is probably too powerful for rationality to triumph, so we are in for serious trouble.
Tailgunner Joes talking liver , February 28, 2018 at 3:50 pm GMT
Magisterial article.

There's a simple reason why Putin is talking sense. He's doing nothing more than stating customary international law. Those economic quotes have been set out in a series of UN resolutions including A/RES/41/128 on the right to development. This is the acquis of the civilized world. No country in the world opposes it – except the USA. The US votes alone against it every time it comes up, even though customary international law is US federal and state common law under the Supreme Court decision, The Paquete Habana.

Mr. Whitney has accepted the official framing that it's all about Putin. That clever decision makes his article more provocative. Calm appraisal of the current official foreign devil is inherently inflammatory. However, this has nothing to do with Putin. Rigid legalist that he is, his hands are tied. Russia has ratified the ICESCR.

Russia has ratified the ICESCR. The USA has not. Here are some of the rights Russians have that you do not:

http://www.ohchr.org/EN/ProfessionalInterest/Pages/CESCR.aspx

OHCHR has a convenient compilation showing how each government meets its legal obligations and commitments. The synoptic heatmap below shows the US deep down in the shithole with Wahhabi headchoppers and neocolonial African presidents-for-life.

http://www.ohchr.org/EN/Issues/Indicators/Pages/HRIndicatorsIndex.aspx

The exhaustively documented fact here is, the Russian state meets world standards. The US government does not. The Russian government respects, protects, and fulfils human rights. The US government fights tooth and nail to keep them out of your reach, and negates your incomplete half-assed constitutional rights with statist red tape. Russians get a better deal than you do. Merely by reciting the law as he does, Putin would win a fair election here with Roosevelt-scale majorities, again and again. That's why he drives the US government up the wall.

Beckow , February 28, 2018 at 4:23 pm GMT
Where is it the propaganda campaign going? We have seen this before as preparation for a war or a regime change. In Russia both are unlikely to succeed. That leaves an ever increasing propaganda bombast in the West, people brainwashed to the point where outright racism against anything 'Russian' will become widespread. Then what? Move movies with white Russian villains, as if that is what threatens West the most?

Russia can neither be isolated, nor 'collapsed' economically, nor ignored. It is too resource rich and powerful. Russia could possibly be checked in a second tier conflict (Syria?), but that would be of minimal consequence. Ukraine could be escalated, but there Russia has an enormous local logistics advantage, it would be a disaster for Kiev. And Russia is on friendly terms with China, its only potential military threat on land.

Propaganda by itself does nothing, it is only means to an end. West is in no position to go beyond propaganda, so we might experience a bizarre example of a mindless propaganda that goes on and on. As with all propaganda the main target is the domestic population – in other words it is the common people in the West who are being propagandised and in effect made more stupid, less capable of making rational decisions.

Even a slight u-turn is at this point unthinkable, almost all elites have too visibly engaged in the evil-Russia talk, how could they let go of it? We are stuck, we might get saved by an unrelated 'big event' somewhere else. If not, this could just be fatal, after all this belligerent talk we could perish because somebody dared to call Clinton a satan on Facebook. And they didn't use their real name – the horror .

dearieme , February 28, 2018 at 5:08 pm GMT
My own view is that Putin is probably as trustworthy and honest as any other ex-KGB man. On the other hand he does come across as intelligent, cautious, and calm. Especially when compared to the crook Hillary or the oaf Trump.
Si1ver1ock , February 28, 2018 at 5:34 pm GMT
@Tailgunner Joes talking liver

Great comment. I tried to follow the links but got an error:

The connection has timed out

The server at http://www.ohchr.org is taking too long to respond.

The site could be temporarily unavailable or too busy. Try again in a few moments.
If you are unable to load any pages, check your computer's network connection.
If your computer or network is protected by a firewall or proxy, make sure that Firefox is permitted to access the Web.

This is starting to bother me. Stuff is disappearing from the web. Look at the link below to an Al Jazeera documentary which has disappeared from YouTube and the web.

Attempting to play the video gives a message:

This video is unavailable.

https://www.aljazeera.com/programmes/peopleandpower/2010/03/201031761541794128.html

Si1ver1ock , February 28, 2018 at 5:38 pm GMT
Nowadays being Pro Truth now makes you Anti American.

Sad.

and

Edie P , February 28, 2018 at 8:36 pm GMT
Si1ver1ock, interesting problems you're having. I had no problem with the links, but then the magic of Tor means I'm reaching them from the Netherlands. State censorship is harder when you can access suppressed URLs from a couple dozen different countries.

( https://www.torproject.org/download/download-easy.html.en )

anonymous Disclaimer , February 28, 2018 at 11:50 pm GMT
@Robert Magill

Please do respond, and in good faith, to the reply of commenter Harold Smith. I share his apparent concern that you may be conflating the interests of the American people with the imperial ambitions of their Uncle Sam.

Robert Magill , March 1, 2018 at 1:19 am GMT
@Harold Smith

Harold Smith,

I feel we have a problem with the term 'rival' here. All the negatives you describe represent a rivalry that I in no way imply in my statements. Rivalry can be strictly limited to trade and business and not in the war-making processes you are citing. I tried to point out that we as a nation miss the mark in constantly demonizing Russia, who is certainly no rival in trade and business, while China certainly is.
Our zealous attacking of rivals has a long history and is not easily abandoned. However, I am afraid our national focus in this unproductive way will cause us as a people to not be aware of where our serious competition is actually coming from and be able to deal with it in a timely fashion.

Robert Magill , March 1, 2018 at 1:20 am GMT
@anonymous

See my reply to Harold Smith.

Harold Smith , March 1, 2018 at 2:52 am GMT
@Robert Magill

"I feel we have a problem with the term 'rival' here. All the negatives you describe represent a rivalry that I in no way imply in my statements. Rivalry can be strictly limited to trade and business and not in the war-making processes you are citing."

In your original comment you said:

"The dumbest thing about the US focus on Russia and Putin is that it leaves China, our actual rival, free to continue its march to overwhelming mastery of the entire Eastern Hemisphere. Without firing a shot or wasting a bullet China has moved into a position of influence the US has dreamed of for a century."

Since a big part of the U.S. "focus" on Russia is military encirclement, confrontation by proxy, the threat of direct conflict even nuclear war, etc., this statement clearly suggests a "military solution" to "contain" an economically "rising" China, IMO. (After all, when the only tool the U.S. "government" has is a hammer, everything looks like a nail).

But so what if China has some kind of "mastery" of the Eastern hemisphere? To the extent that's true, at least they didn't do it by way of lawless imperial treachery.

The U.S. is losing influence all over the world because it's making itself hated; it's imposing itself everywhere and squandering everything of value on the hopeless pursuit of world domination and control.

"I tried to point out that we as a nation miss the mark in constantly demonizing Russia, who is certainly no rival in trade and business, while China certainly is."

The thing is "we" don't demonize Russia "as a nation"; rather, it's done by the Satanic ruling class that hates Russia – not for any rational reason, but for the same reason that Cain hated Abel: because "evil" hates a "good" example.

"Our zealous attacking of rivals has a long history and is not easily abandoned."

Unless you're going change the definition of "rival" again, I should point out that the U.S. "government" doesn't generally attack "rivals" but deems any country that asserts its sovereign independence and refuses to take orders an "enemy", subject to economic, political and military attack.

"However, I am afraid our national focus in this unproductive way will cause us as a people to not be aware of where our serious competition is actually coming from and be able to deal with it in a timely fashion."

You seem to be conflating "us as a people" with the U.S. "government" which has by now lost even the pretense of moral and constitutional legitimacy, and thus has nothing remotely to do with what's in the best interests of "us as a people".

Ilyana_Rozumova , March 1, 2018 at 5:34 am GMT
@Harold Smith

Here is the explanation. China is economic rival to US. That is not only inconvenient, rival, it is the most efficient and most dangerous rival, because who is wining the economic competition is pushing out the opponent from world markets.

LarryS , March 1, 2018 at 5:51 am GMT
@Harold Smith

Somebody wants white Christians to kill each other. Again.

Vojkan , March 1, 2018 at 6:52 am GMT
That people in the West believe the lies that TPTB concoct for their consumption, I can conceive, though only after a convoluted intellectual effort, for given all the now exposed deceit, one is left in wonder as to why the masses still believe proven liars.

After having spent 36 years in the West and having seen Westerners vote for the likes of Blair, Sarkozy or Macron, I have a very low opinion of Western intelligence, and Western moral relativism and indifference with regards to the crimes their elected leaders committed abroad.

Still, I can't figure out if TPTB believe their own narrative. It takes a very peculiar mindset to be able to live in permanent lies. Contrary to truth which can exist per se and is therefore essentially cost-free, lies demand permanent maintenance and have high maintenance cost.
So, TPTB of the West are either delusional in thinking they can maintain their lies ad vitam aeternam, or they are mythomaniacs. Either way, just think what happens when lies cannot be maintained any more and the liars don't want to relinquish power.

Bear in mind that lying being effectively irrational, they cannot be considered as rational actors. Prepare your shelters folks.

Ludwig Watzal , Website March 1, 2018 at 8:02 am GMT
Very seldom, I've read such a realistic article on President Putin and his policy. I've been following not only his administration but also that of the US Empire, and I'm always flabbergasted about the US elites demonization of this leader. He belongs to the few leaders who got their act together compared to the political exorcists in Washington. The real thugs and psychopaths are the members of the American political elite and their cheerleaders in the fawning US mainstream media. Following their analysis, I often think they stem from lunatics who are coming from outer space.
animalogic , March 1, 2018 at 9:05 am GMT
@Robert Magill

Yes, China is a rival but an odd kind of rival. Let's not forget that the US, over the last 30 whatever years has enthusiastically facilitated China's rise. China has become the world's factory because the US and other countries Co's want CHEAP labour.
So -- Dr Frankenstein is now scared of his own monster. Oh the irony !

Truthmatters , March 1, 2018 at 9:41 am GMT
In the last two weeks a virtual book burning has begun on YouTube. Scores of independent truth seeking channels have been deleted. Some were pretty amateur and sensationalist, many were good, top notch investigative fact checking in nature. Many had large numbers of subscribers, a few had 100,000s subscribers.

Common denominator seemed to question official mainstream media narrative on mass shootings, 9/11, war on terror, human sex trafficking, Clinton Foundation corruption, and even UFO coverups. One channel was a woman skilled at body language commenting on videos of people like John Podesta being interviewed as to whether he was lying.

None of these channels advocated violence, quite the contrary. Most couched opinion alongside probable facts by asking deductive and inductive questions. The YouTube virtual book burning appears to have gathered pace in last week.

So much for free speech in the fake but very slickly fake Western democracies. Where the geopolitical narrative is uniformly uniform.

Seamus Padraig , March 1, 2018 at 9:43 am GMT

American liberals would be surprised to know that Putin actually supports many of the same social issues that they support. For example, the Russian President is not only committed to lifting living standards and ending poverty, he's also a big believer in universal healthcare which is free under the current Russian Constitution.

American liberals support lifting living standards and ending poverty? You mean, the same American liberals who support 'free' trade and importing unlimited amounts of scab labor? You must have us confused with some other country, Mike.

"I suggest that we take a broader look at the issue .What we need is an essentially different approach, one that would involve introducing new, groundbreaking, nature-like technologies that would not damage the environment, but rather work in harmony with it "

I note that he says nothing about 'cap and trade,' or any other Western bankster-scam. I have nothing against renewable energy–whether or not global warming is real.

PiltdownMan , March 1, 2018 at 11:01 am GMT
For the West, the demonization of Vladimir Putin is not a policy; it is an alibi for the absence of one. -- Henry Kissinger in 2014.
Swan Knight , Website March 1, 2018 at 11:18 am GMT
Vladimir Putin is the World's greatest leader since Robert E Lee
Astuteobservor II , March 1, 2018 at 12:50 pm GMT
not like he had a choice. dc was about to have it's hands on his throat and he finally reacted. That was ukraine. syria was him trying to protect another one of his naval bases. the bear simply reacted to attempts at cutting off it's legs.

that is actually very, very passive.

Robert Magill , March 1, 2018 at 1:49 pm GMT
@ animalogic

"China has become the world's factory because the US and other countries Co's want CHEAP labour. "

We all know the drill here. China makes stuff cheap so that WalMart can undercut competitors and grow rich. Therefore, alas, what can be done? Except that WalMart has over four hundred stores IN CHINA and plans to build forty more! So what's our excuse now for not being able to compete?

Avery , March 1, 2018 at 2:18 pm GMT
@Harold Smith

{Russia had not been so passive over the years,}

Putin inherited a broken Russia in 2000. A Russia on the verge of collapse due to misrule of drunkard Yeltsin and body blows administered by US/NATO. A broken down military; economy in shambles; demographic collapse. During his presidency US/EU/NATO engineered a collapse of oil prices and assaults on ruble: what exactly was Putin supposed to non-passively do to counter the collapse of world oil prices, for example?

Putin was wise enough and cautious enough not to go head-to-head with US/NATO until his military and economy were in good enough shape to do and make a difference, as in Syria for example. It would have been very bad for Russia to act prematurely and get bled dry, which warmongering US Neocons were hoping for.

Obviously Putin knows the strengths and weaknesses of Russia better than any of us here. He is butting heads with the combined military industrial might of US+EU: that block has a lot of human resources, wealth, worldwide financial and political influence. Also Putin has to – has to – improve the living standards of citizens of RF, so he cannot afford to get into an expensive arms race with the West. Putin is doing very well with what he has, as far as human and military-industrial resources Russia has.

TailgunnerJoes Talking Liver , March 1, 2018 at 2:33 pm GMT
Alden, sounds like you stopped with the maps and didn't read any of the underlying documents because of the preconceptions you wear on your sleeve: "idealistic pie in the sky by and by UN treaties impossible to effect." Those preconceptions happen to coincide with the residual message of one persistent strand of US statist propaganda.

Have you ever read, in any US institution or medium, criticism as comprehensive and incisive as this?

http://www.ohchr.org/EN/Countries/LACRegion/Pages/USIndex.aspx

IGs can't do this. Courts can't begin to do this. Congress wouldn't dare do this. Media would never do it if they could. The recommendations are legally binding and the US government knows it. Each review is videoed. You haven't lived until you've seen State and Justice bureaucrats crawling and sniveling and tying themselves in logical knots, making fools of themselves in the most public forum in the world. You get to watch the US regime bleeding influence and standing and 'soft power.' It's public disgrace in front of the 96% of the world outside the US iron curtain. You may not want to watch impartial legal experts make a laughingstock of the USG, but everybody else in the world watches with amusement, so you might as well know.

Treaty body review has driven more reforms than Congress ever did. You know perfectly well how bad your government sucks, what a useless parasite it is. The treaty bodies and charter bodies give you more say than either state-controlled political party. Face it, human rights review is all you got. When your government sucks, you go over its head to the world.

Harold Smith , March 1, 2018 at 4:11 pm GMT
@Avery

"During a policy talk at the Valdai Discussion Club, the Russian leader spoke on a number of issues, especially criticizing U.S. foreign policy moves across the globe and lauding Russia's increasingly relevant role as a world power. When asked by a Germany-based academic where Russia had most seriously gone wrong in the past decade and a half, Putin said he had too readily laid his trust in the West, which he then accused of having abused its relationship with Moscow to further its own interests."

http://www.newsweek.com/russia-putin-reveal-biggiest-mistake-trusting-west-688998

Well maybe you can make Vladimir Putin feel better about this. You can tell him that blindly trusting the corrupt "West" (in the face of shamelessly obvious provocations) was actually not a mistake at all, since Russia couldn't have done a single thing about it anyway, right?

EugeneGur , March 1, 2018 at 4:40 pm GMT
@Quartermaster

Putin has drubbed Russia's economy.

This is a ridiculous statement. When Putin came aboard, there was no Russian economy to speak of. Now it's grown strong enough to withstand the events in Ukraine, sanctions and what not and even derive benefits from these challenges. I am not saying everything's coming up roses but it could hardly be expected considering the deep hole Russia dug itself into in the 1990s.

the entire region is upset with Putin's behavior as they have seen Putin's behavior in Crimea and the Donbas.

The entire region, it you mean our Eastern European neighbors, can like it or lump it. They, Poland in particular, participated very willingly and actively in the coup in Ukraine. Crimea and Donbass are direct, and perfectly predictable, consequences of that coup. If they forgot the law of physics that every action has a reaction, this is just as good a reminder as any.

the thing is, because of the recent study by J. Leroy Hulsey, Putin could still do it, but I predict that he unfortunately will do nothing of the kind.

EugeneGur , March 1, 2018 at 4:57 pm GMT
@Harold Smith

blindly trusting the corrupt "West" (in the face of shamelessly obvious provocations) was actually not a mistake at all, since Russia couldn't have done a single thing about it anyway, right?

Actually, it could've done a lot. Right at the beginning, Russia could've refused to trust in the word of the West's leaders about the NATO expansion and demand guarantees. A formal treaty plus a couple of remaining military bases, say, in Poland and East Germany, would've sufficed. This likely would've saved Yugoslavia as well.

Russia could've refrained from stopping the development of many weapon system and from destroying others. It could've also kept its own industry (civil aviation comes to mind) instead of relying on cooperation with the West. It could've refrained from allowing the US troops to use the Russia territory to move supplies to Afghanistan. Even recently it did occur to someone exceedingly smart to order aircraft carriers in France – speaking about trust! I do hope they learned their lesson, finally.

jilles dykstra , March 1, 2018 at 5:43 pm GMT
@Avery

In my opinion Putin is the man who saves us from a worldwide USA yoke

windwaves , March 1, 2018 at 6:07 pm GMT
Great Article.

America is in a very ugly spot and getting worse everyday. Living here I can sense it. Americans are going crazy. Pathetic how they are trying and build hate for Russia/Putin mainly because America got triple fucked across the ME and especially in Syria. Very sad.

America's greatest historical truth: in foreign policy the USA just cannot learn from experience. We keep making the same mistakes. Stupid, idiotic, nation building b/s. Come on dudes !

This is just a phase, we will turn it around and make America great again ( as opposed to israel which was never great anyway). It is just a question of how long it will take.

It will start the day when we'll tell that terrorist, shit-hole country called israel to go the hell, fight your own wars, pay for your own wars.

When Ukies attack , March 1, 2018 at 6:25 pm GMT
@EugeneGur

GDP per capita tripled on Putin's watch. That's one reason why he has public approval numbers that US politicians couldn't dream of.

jilles dykstra , March 1, 2018 at 6:58 pm GMT
@windwaves

In my opinion, the USA, until now, could afford to conduct foreign policy for internal reasons. Because of this the Sept 11 shock, while in reality it meant very little, as USA citizens working in the Netherlands soon afterwards said 'we have 30.000 traffic deaths each year'.

edNels , March 1, 2018 at 7:46 pm GMT
@Harold Smith

Good comeback there that was one of the best ones in a while!

I'm sorry, but no we're not. I hate to be the bearer of bad news, but we here in the "West" are living under a Satanic judeo-communist dictatorship, bent on world domination and control at any cost.

The difference between corporate state, and totalitarian state like old Soviet system is getting blurier all the time. Like planned economies of command systems, now they just create money for the cronies, who might as well be commies, and they don't give a care about what's true or honest, they lie and that's, like you mentioned, (Satanic), the truth isn't in 'em.

FB , March 1, 2018 at 8:01 pm GMT
@Seamus Padraig

' I note that he says nothing about 'cap and trade,' or any other Western bankster-scam. I have nothing against renewable energy–whether or not global warming is real '

Good comment however the environment is about more than just 'global warming' which may or may not be man-caused there is no scientific certainty but certainly what looks like a concerted push by certain quarters

But there is also habitat loss the toxins introduced through pollution industrial farming and the problems it causes with erosion, bad food etc

Putin's comments and Mike's citation of them reflect a thoughtful and realistic approach to at least start looking at these problems

Anon Disclaimer , March 1, 2018 at 8:15 pm GMT
Anon from TN
The author is painting Putin as larger-than-life figure, which he isn't. Just like the Soviet Union was not defeated by the US, but actually collapsed due to internal problems, regime change rampage is over largely because the United States pushed their luck and overextended themselves, and not just thanks to Putin. Throughout history, all dominant empires lose their grip and eventually crumble (remember Roman or British), and now it's the turn of the US Empire. Fortunately or unfortunately, the next will be the Chinese Empire, not Russian. (PS. Muslims missed the train. Again)
The Alarmist , March 1, 2018 at 10:57 pm GMT
@Harold Smith

It's not like he used the term 'enemy,' which too many unfortunately resort to in these discussions. During Cold War 1.0, a lot of us referred to the Sovs as the 'Adversary' because it was a less loaded term than enemy, though many equate the two. Are the Chinese rivals? Sure. Are they adversaries? You bet, especially when we keep stepping into their back yard. Are they enemies? The will be if we keep stepping into their back yard and telling them how to behave with their next door neighbours. All of this applies to Russia as well.

Cyrano , March 1, 2018 at 11:15 pm GMT
The reason why the US empire will follow the British empire into the graveyard is because they are based on the same model – trying to prevent others from becoming equal to them instead of trying to get better than the competitors.

GB was preoccupied with preventing Germany from surpassing them – and guess what? They succeeded. And where is the British empire now?

From an empire on which the sun never sets, pretty soon they'll be a country where the sun never rises – thanks to their stupid immigration policies and preoccupations with Russia (still!), like they (the British) are still even a factor in the global power games.

US is on a similar path of self-destruction. First they made China an economic superpower and now they want to contain them militarily. Good luck with that.

The money that the US spent on military misadventures – they could have bribed with far lesser amount of money the various "dictatorships" that they were so democratically inclined to topple – and would have achieved better results. Instead of using those money to make US better – for their citizens, they are trying to prevent the world from catching up with them – British style.

If anything the British military record was at least better than US's, at least they used to win wars – they pretty much went down undefeated – but they did went down and US military doesn't have the same success rate and even if they did, they will not accomplish holding the world back – same as Britain didn't.

renfro , March 1, 2018 at 11:26 pm GMT

American liberals would be surprised to know that Putin actually supports many of the same social issues that they support. For example, the Russian President is not only committed to lifting living standards and ending poverty, he's also a big believer in universal healthcare which is free under the current Russian Constitution

I do not see anything 'liberal' in Putin's ideas, certainly not as in the liberal agendas in the US.

I see him advocating Balance . creating a better order for the needs of populations and interactions between nations . therefore preserving nations, people and earth. Balance is not rocket science .nature is the ultimate example of balance, when it is tampered with all species eventually suffer.

Florin , March 2, 2018 at 12:06 am GMT
The neocons were/are Zionist in essence and mainly Jewish in thought leadership – this is inarguable. Also inarguable, though I am not aware of very many well-written essays on the topic, is that under Yeltsin, brought to power in no small part by US meddling, there was a fire sale of Russian assets – something arranged very largely by Jewish economists and Jewish bureaucrats. And the new 'oligarchs?' Why 6 of 7 of the most enriches were Jews in a nation <3% Jewish.

Ukraine was largely a coup by Nuland, Pyatt, Feltman ato help Jewish oligarchs in Ukraine who suddenly found themselves in the very top of the new govt. Jewish names pop up inordinately as to authors and editors of unhinged Russophobic articles. At what point do we say that the mideast wars are driven by Jews, so, disproportionately (maybe even mainly as to the media) is the aggression and disinfo on Russia.

The Jewish Problem is to be taken seriously. We need to find a way to discuss it, rescued from Zionists and bona fide Judeophobes. Our lives may well depend on it.

[Feb 24, 2018] The Mueller Indictments The Day the Music Died by Daniel Lazare

The size of funds that Democrats and Republicans operated were in billions. And , IRA staffers purchased just $100,000 worth of Facebook ads, 56% of which ran after Election Day. So only $44K was spent during election campaign.
There author is wrong about color revolution against Trump. It is progressing.
One interesting side effect will be ruthless suppression of the US influence in Russian elections. Bismark famously remarked that "the Russians are slow to saddle up, but ride fast." Here media dogs also are off leash and there will be innocent victims, blamed in treason and other nefarious activities just to voicing dissent. Russiagate discredited neoliberal fifth column in Russia, making them all "enemies of the people".
Notable quotes:
"... After nine months of labor, Special Prosecutor Robert Mueller thus brought forth a mouse. Even if all the charges are true – something we'll probably never know since it's unlikely that any of the accused will be brought to trial -- the indictment tells us virtually nothing that's new. ..."
"... Yes, they persuaded someone in Florida to dress up as Hillary Clinton in a prison uniform and stand inside a cage mounted on a flatbed truck. And, yes, they also got another "real U.S. person," as the indictment terms it, to stand in front of the White House with a sign saying, "Happy 55th Birthday Dear Boss," a tribute, apparently, to IRA founder Yevgeniy Prigozhin, the convicted robber turned caterer whose birthday was three days away. Instead of a super-sophisticated spying operation, the indictment depicts a bumbling freelance operation that is still giving Putin heartburn months after the fact. ..."
"... Not that this has stopped the media from whipping itself into a frenzy. "Russia is at war with our democracy," screamed a headline in the Washington Post. "Trump is ignoring the worst attack on America since 9/11," blared another. " Russia is engaged in a virtual war against the United States through 21st-century tools of disinformation and propaganda," declared the New York Times, while Daily Beast columnist Jonathan Alter tweeted that the IRA's activities amounted to nothing less than a "tech Pearl Harbor." ..."
"... This makes the Dems seem crass, unscrupulous, and none too democratic. But then Mudde gave the knife a twist. The real trouble with the strategy, he said, is that it isn't working: ..."
"... No collusion means no impeachment and hence no anti-Trump "color revolution" of the sort that was so effective in Georgia or the Ukraine. Moreover, while 53 percent of Americans believe that investigating Russiagate should be a top or at least an important priority according to a recent poll , figures for a half-dozen other issues ranging from Medicare and Social Security reform to tax policy, healthcare, infrastructure, and immigration are actually a good deal higher – 67 percent, 72 percent, or even more. ..."
"... " the Russia-Trump collusion story might be the talk of the town in Washington, but this is not the case in much of the rest of the country." Out in flyover country, rather, Americans can't figure out why the political elite is more concerned with a nonexistent scandal than with things that really count, i.e. de-industrialization, infrastructure decay, the opioid epidemic, and school shootings. As society disintegrates, the only thing Democrats have accomplished with all their blathering about Russkis under the bed is to demonstrate just how cut off from the real world they are. ..."
"... But Russiagate is not just about regime change, but other things as well. One is repression. Where once Democrats would have laughed off Russian trolls and the like, they're now obsessed with making a mountain out of a molehill in order to enforce mainstream opinion and marginalize ideas and opinions suspected of being un-American and hence pro-Russian. If the RT (Russia Today) news network is now suspect -- the Times described it not long ago as "the slickly produced heart of a broad, often covert disinformation campaign designed to sow doubt about democratic institutions and destabilize the West" – then why not the BBC or Agence France-Presse? How long until foreign books are banned or foreign musicians? ..."
"... "I'm actually surprised I haven't been indicted," tweets Bloomberg columnist Leonid Bershidsky. "I'm Russian, I was in the U.S. in 2016 and I published columns critical of both Clinton and Trump w/o registering as a foreign agent." When the Times complains that Facebook "still sees itself as the bank that got robbed, rather than the architect who designed a bank with no safes, and no alarms or locks on the doors, and then acted surprised when burglars struck," then it's clear that the goal is to force Facebook to rein in its activities or stand by and watch as others do so instead. ..."
"... But Russiagate is about something else as well: war. As National Security Adviser H.R. McMaster warns that the "time is now" to act against Iran, the New York Times slams Trump for not imposing sanctions on Moscow, and a spooky "Nuclear Posture Review" suggests that the US might someday respond to a cyber attack with atomic weapons, it's plain that Washington is itching for a showdown that will somehow undo the mistakes of the previous administration. The more Trump drags his feet, the more Democrats conclude that a war drive is the best way to bring him to his knees. ..."
"... Thus, low-grade political interference is elevated into a casus belli while Vladimir Putin is portrayed as a supernatural villain straight out of Harry Potter. But where does it stop? Libya has been set back decades, Syria, the subject of yet another US regime-change effort, has been all but destroyed, while Yemen – which America helps Saudi Arabia bomb virtually around the clock – is now a disaster area with some 9,000 people killed, 50,000 injured, a million-plus cholera cases, and more than half of all hospitals and clinics destroyed. ..."
"... The more Democrats pound the war drums, the more death and destruction will ensue. The process is well underway in Syria, the victim of Israeli bombings and a US-Turkish invasion, and it will undoubtedly spread as Dems turn up the heat. If the pathetic pseudo-scandal known as Russiagate really is collapsing under its own weight, then it's not a moment too soon. ..."
"... The Frozen Republic: How the Constitution Is Paralyzing Democracy ..."
"... A minor quibble was how at the end the author kept referring to how the "U.S" or "Washington" were the forces for the regime changes or flat-out destruction of nations Israel wants destroyed. The crappy little pesthole has been the barely-concealed mastermind of all the "Wars For Israel" which have turned the US of A into a bankrupt laughingstock. ..."
"... As ludicrous as Russiagate became, it was no joke, and became a real amplifier of the threat of nuclear war, and the relentlessly increasing militarization of America. Without the enthusiastic help of the corporate media, the whole phony narrative would never have got off the ground. Of course the criminals we call the intelligence community did all they could to give it legs, as well. We can only pray that it fades away now, and is not replaced with something else like a shooting war. But that hope is fading now on several fronts ..."
"... That was NOT to remove Trump, which was always a long shot and would only produce Pence and angry motivated Trump voters in the next election. ..."
"... The Trump derangement syndrome had a calculated purpose to keep donors giving after they were outraged by the waste of their donations. They'd been acting like a donor-strike was in progress. This cured that. ..."
"... This fed off the Stages of Grief reactions of those who'd so confidently expected a Hillary win. That helped do it, but was not the real motive. Those who initiated and shaped it were more directed, and aimed at the money. That is why the more likely things to blame, like Comey, were set aside in favor of the easy target of a foreign enemy which was familiar from recent Cold War. ..."
"... Having only as reference my own personal take on our news media the infamous MSM, is that these journalistic bandits are only in the game of twisting the news for the ratings, and to promote their own opportunistic careers. The corporate owned media has replaced responsible reporting with salaisuus promotions of often tragic events in a way that tends to in my eyes be a mere exploitation of these tragedies, as we viewers become glued to our TV screens. ..."
Feb 24, 2018 | consortiumnews.com

Fads and scandals often follow a set trajectory. They grow big, bigger, and then, finally, too big, at which point they topple over and collapse under the weight of their own internal contradictions. This was the fate of the "Me too" campaign, which started out as an exposé of serial abuser Harvey Weinstein but then went too far when Babe.net published a story about one woman's bad date with comedian Aziz Ansari. Suddenly, it became clear that different types of behavior were being lumped together in a dangerous way, and a once-explosive movement began to fizzle.

So, too, with Russiagate. After dominating the news for more than a year, the scandal may have at last reached a tipping point with last week's indictment of thirteen Russian individuals and three Russian corporations on charges of illegal interference in the 2016 presidential campaign. But the indictment landed with a decided thud for three reasons:

It failed to connect the Internet Research Agency (IRA), the alleged St. Petersburg troll factory accused of political meddling, with Vladimir Putin, the all-purpose evil-doer who the corporate media say is out to destroy American democracy. It similarly failed to establish a connection with the Trump campaign and indeed went out of its way to describe contacts with the Russians as "unwitting." It described the meddling itself as even more inept and amateurish than many had suspected.

After nine months of labor, Special Prosecutor Robert Mueller thus brought forth a mouse. Even if all the charges are true – something we'll probably never know since it's unlikely that any of the accused will be brought to trial -- the indictment tells us virtually nothing that's new.

Yes, IRA staffers purchased $100,000 worth of Facebook ads, 56 percent of which ran after Election Day. Yes, they persuaded someone in Florida to dress up as Hillary Clinton in a prison uniform and stand inside a cage mounted on a flatbed truck. And, yes, they also got another "real U.S. person," as the indictment terms it, to stand in front of the White House with a sign saying, "Happy 55th Birthday Dear Boss," a tribute, apparently, to IRA founder Yevgeniy Prigozhin, the convicted robber turned caterer whose birthday was three days away. Instead of a super-sophisticated spying operation, the indictment depicts a bumbling freelance operation that is still giving Putin heartburn months after the fact.

Not that this has stopped the media from whipping itself into a frenzy. "Russia is at war with our democracy," screamed a headline in the Washington Post. "Trump is ignoring the worst attack on America since 9/11," blared another. " Russia is engaged in a virtual war against the United States through 21st-century tools of disinformation and propaganda," declared the New York Times, while Daily Beast columnist Jonathan Alter tweeted that the IRA's activities amounted to nothing less than a "tech Pearl Harbor."

All of which merely demonstrates, in proper backhanded fashion, how grievously Mueller has fallen short. Proof that the scandal had at last overstayed its welcome came five days later when the Guardian, a website that had previously flogged Russiagate even more vigorously than the Post, the Times, or CNN, published a news analysis by Cas Mudde, an associate professor at the University of Georgia, admitting that it was all a farce – and a particularly self-defeating one at that.

Mudde's article made short work of hollow pieties about a neutral and objective investigation. Rather than an effort to get at the truth, Russiagate was a thinly-veiled effort at regime change. "[I]n the end," he wrote, "the only question everyone really seems to care about is whether Donald Trump was involved – and can therefore be impeached for treason.

With last week's indictment, the article went on, "Democratic party leaders once again reassured their followers that this was the next logical step in the inevitable downfall of Trump." The more Democrats play the Russiagate card, in other words, the nearer they will come to their goal of riding the Orange-Haired One out of town on a rail.

This makes the Dems seem crass, unscrupulous, and none too democratic. But then Mudde gave the knife a twist. The real trouble with the strategy, he said, is that it isn't working:

"While there is no doubt that the Trump camp was, and still is, filled with amoral and fraudulent people, and was very happy to take the Russians help during the elections, even encouraging it on the campaign, I do not think Mueller will be able to find conclusive evidence that Donald Trump himself colluded with Putin's Russia to win the elections. And that is the only thing that will lead to his impeachment as the Republican party is not risking political suicide for anything less."

Other Objectives of "Russiagate"

No collusion means no impeachment and hence no anti-Trump "color revolution" of the sort that was so effective in Georgia or the Ukraine. Moreover, while 53 percent of Americans believe that investigating Russiagate should be a top or at least an important priority according to a recent poll , figures for a half-dozen other issues ranging from Medicare and Social Security reform to tax policy, healthcare, infrastructure, and immigration are actually a good deal higher – 67 percent, 72 percent, or even more.

Summed up Mudde: " the Russia-Trump collusion story might be the talk of the town in Washington, but this is not the case in much of the rest of the country." Out in flyover country, rather, Americans can't figure out why the political elite is more concerned with a nonexistent scandal than with things that really count, i.e. de-industrialization, infrastructure decay, the opioid epidemic, and school shootings. As society disintegrates, the only thing Democrats have accomplished with all their blathering about Russkis under the bed is to demonstrate just how cut off from the real world they are.

But Russiagate is not just about regime change, but other things as well. One is repression. Where once Democrats would have laughed off Russian trolls and the like, they're now obsessed with making a mountain out of a molehill in order to enforce mainstream opinion and marginalize ideas and opinions suspected of being un-American and hence pro-Russian. If the RT (Russia Today) news network is now suspect -- the Times described it not long ago as "the slickly produced heart of a broad, often covert disinformation campaign designed to sow doubt about democratic institutions and destabilize the West" – then why not the BBC or Agence France-Presse? How long until foreign books are banned or foreign musicians?

"I'm actually surprised I haven't been indicted," tweets Bloomberg columnist Leonid Bershidsky. "I'm Russian, I was in the U.S. in 2016 and I published columns critical of both Clinton and Trump w/o registering as a foreign agent." When the Times complains that Facebook "still sees itself as the bank that got robbed, rather than the architect who designed a bank with no safes, and no alarms or locks on the doors, and then acted surprised when burglars struck," then it's clear that the goal is to force Facebook to rein in its activities or stand by and watch as others do so instead.

Add to this the classic moral panic promoted by #MeToo – to believe charges of sexual harassment and assault without first demanding evidence "is to disbelieve, and deny due process to, the accused," notes Judith Levine in the Boston Review – and it's clear that a powerful wave of cultural conservatism is crashing down on the United States, much of it originating in a classic neoliberal-Hillaryite milieu. Formerly the liberal alternative, the Democratic Party is now passing the Republicans on the right.

But Russiagate is about something else as well: war. As National Security Adviser H.R. McMaster warns that the "time is now" to act against Iran, the New York Times slams Trump for not imposing sanctions on Moscow, and a spooky "Nuclear Posture Review" suggests that the US might someday respond to a cyber attack with atomic weapons, it's plain that Washington is itching for a showdown that will somehow undo the mistakes of the previous administration. The more Trump drags his feet, the more Democrats conclude that a war drive is the best way to bring him to his knees.

Thus, low-grade political interference is elevated into a casus belli while Vladimir Putin is portrayed as a supernatural villain straight out of Harry Potter. But where does it stop? Libya has been set back decades, Syria, the subject of yet another US regime-change effort, has been all but destroyed, while Yemen – which America helps Saudi Arabia bomb virtually around the clock – is now a disaster area with some 9,000 people killed, 50,000 injured, a million-plus cholera cases, and more than half of all hospitals and clinics destroyed.

The more Democrats pound the war drums, the more death and destruction will ensue. The process is well underway in Syria, the victim of Israeli bombings and a US-Turkish invasion, and it will undoubtedly spread as Dems turn up the heat. If the pathetic pseudo-scandal known as Russiagate really is collapsing under its own weight, then it's not a moment too soon.

Daniel Lazare is the author of several books including The Frozen Republic: How the Constitution Is Paralyzing Democracy (Harcourt Brace).


Zachary Smith , February 24, 2018 at 1:25 pm

First thing I checked before reading this was to check for instances of misuse of the term "liberal". When I found none at all, the piece suddenly looked very promising. And it was a fine essay!

A minor quibble was how at the end the author kept referring to how the "U.S" or "Washington" were the forces for the regime changes or flat-out destruction of nations Israel wants destroyed. The crappy little pesthole has been the barely-concealed mastermind of all the "Wars For Israel" which have turned the US of A into a bankrupt laughingstock.

With that small objection on record, I will declare this was great.

BobH , February 24, 2018 at 2:05 pm

Zachary, I wouldn't get too hung up on words like "liberal" which have been used and abused to become almost meaningless but yes, "the Democratic Party is now passing the Republicans on the right." Somehow I think they believe they can pick up enough "moderate" Republicans in the midterms to make up for the "angry white males"(& intellectuals) they lost in the last election the same losing strategy.

mike k , February 24, 2018 at 1:41 pm

As ludicrous as Russiagate became, it was no joke, and became a real amplifier of the threat of nuclear war, and the relentlessly increasing militarization of America. Without the enthusiastic help of the corporate media, the whole phony narrative would never have got off the ground. Of course the criminals we call the intelligence community did all they could to give it legs, as well. We can only pray that it fades away now, and is not replaced with something else like a shooting war. But that hope is fading now on several fronts

Mark Thomason , February 24, 2018 at 1:41 pm

From its first moment, this was a Team Hillary exercise, decided on by her in the days right after the election and promoted through her media contracts that had been an extension of her campaign.

Why? At first they seemed to imagine it possible to reverse the election outcome.

Then it shifted to Trump hate. Why?

That was NOT to remove Trump, which was always a long shot and would only produce Pence and angry motivated Trump voters in the next election.

The Trump derangement syndrome had a calculated purpose to keep donors giving after they were outraged by the waste of their donations. They'd been acting like a donor-strike was in progress. This cured that.

This fed off the Stages of Grief reactions of those who'd so confidently expected a Hillary win. That helped do it, but was not the real motive. Those who initiated and shaped it were more directed, and aimed at the money. That is why the more likely things to blame, like Comey, were set aside in favor of the easy target of a foreign enemy which was familiar from recent Cold War.

It was completely cynical, guided by the same greed that had produced the candidacy of Hillary and run it the whole time, doing fund raising in friendly places instead of campaigning in swing states.

JDQ , February 24, 2018 at 2:00 pm

..please do read this. It gives Liberals more a bashing than Conservatives

Joe Tedesky , February 24, 2018 at 2:40 pm

Having only as reference my own personal take on our news media the infamous MSM, is that these journalistic bandits are only in the game of twisting the news for the ratings, and to promote their own opportunistic careers. The corporate owned media has replaced responsible reporting with salaisuus promotions of often tragic events in a way that tends to in my eyes be a mere exploitation of these tragedies, as we viewers become glued to our TV screens.

This is the way the MSM sell too many needless pharmaceutical products, and their drugs are products, to insurance ad's and somehow make commercial space for the MIC defense contractors. This is how the MSM makes real money, as they forfeited our learning of anything worthwhile, as to pave the way for more exploitation of our country's struggles with everything and anything, but all forfeited simply to make the MSM more money.

It goes without saying that we the American public aren't necessarily as fooled, and tricked, as our masters would like to believe we are. So to explain away the Empire's failings certain forces from within our nation's Beltway are hard at work trying to blame all of their misgivings on another, and that another is Vladimir Putin and his American engineered misunderstood Russians. For this reason our MSM hardly ever put the real Putin on our television screens. No never, these American media producers always when describing Putin, use a prop, or a slimy squinty eyed shirtless Russian stereotype instead. For our MSM ever to air a speech of Putin, or do as Oliver Stone did, is beyond question, so don't wait up kids to see ever steady Vladimir on our American TV sets because it just isn't going to happen.

So now our MSM is exploiting the Florida mass shooting, and it is with their slants and predisposed opinions where I lose faith in anything our media does. Even as terrible as this Florida school shooting was, our MSM must politicize and adhere left right slants to this story as in their daff journalistic heads this is what they must do. Like I said this is my opinion taken from my own experiences, so take my comment for what it is, and not from any references I happened upon.

[Feb 20, 2018] Russophobia is a futile bid to conceal US, European demise by Finian Cunningham

Highly recommended!
This is an old method to unite the nation against external enemy. Carnage (with so much oil and gas) needs to be destroyed. And it's working only partially with the major divisions between Trump and Hillary supporters remaining open and unaffected by Russiagate witch hunt.
Notable quotes:
"... It is an age-old statecraft technique to seek unity within a state by depicting an external enemy or threat. Russia is the bête noire again, as it was during the Cold War years as part of the Soviet Union. ..."
"... Russophobia -- "blame it all on Russia" -- is a short-term, futile ploy to stave off the day of reckoning when furious and informed Western citizens will demand democratic restitution for their legitimate grievances. ..."
"... The dominant "official" narrative, from the US to Europe, is that "malicious" Russia is "sowing division;""eroding democratic institutions;" and "undermining public trust" in systems of governance, credibility of established political parties, and the news media. ..."
"... A particularly instructive presentation of this trope was given in a recent commentary by Texan Republican Representative Will Hurd. In his piece headlined, "Russia is our adversary" , he claims: "Russia is eroding our democracy by exploiting the nation's divisions. To save it, Americans need to begin working together." ..."
"... He contends: "When the public loses trust in the media, the Russians are winning. When the press is hyper-critical of Congress the Russians are winning. When Congress and the general public disagree the Russians are winning. When there is friction between Congress and the executive branch [the president] resulting in further erosion of trust in our democratic institutions, the Russians are winning." ..."
"... The endless, criminal wars that the US and its European NATO allies have been waging across the planet over the past two decades is one cogent reason why the public has lost faith in grandiose official claims about respecting democracy and international law. ..."
"... The US and European media have shown reprehensible dereliction of duty to inform the public accurately about their governments' warmongering intrigues. Take the example of Syria. When does the average Western citizen ever read in the corporate Western media about how the US and its NATO allies have covertly ransacked that country through weaponizing terrorist proxies? ..."
"... The destabilizing impact on societies from oppressive economic conditions is a far more plausible cause for grievance than outlandish claims made by the political class about alleged "Russian interference". ..."
"... Finian Cunningham (born 1963) has written extensively on international affairs, with articles published in several languages. Originally from Belfast, Northern Ireland, he is a Master's graduate in Agricultural Chemistry and worked as a scientific editor for the Royal Society of Chemistry, Cambridge, England, before pursuing a career in newspaper journalism. For over 20 years he worked as an editor and writer in major news media organizations, including The Mirror, Irish Times and Independent. Now a freelance journalist based in East Africa, his columns appear on RT, Sputnik, Strategic Culture Foundation and Press TV. ..."
Feb 20, 2018 | www.rt.com

Russophobia - "blame it all on Russia" - is a short-term, futile ploy to stave off the day of reckoning when furious and informed Western citizens will demand democratic restitution for their legitimate grievances

It is an age-old statecraft technique to seek unity within a state by depicting an external enemy or threat. Russia is the bête noire again, as it was during the Cold War years as part of the Soviet Union.

But the truth is Western states are challenged by internal problems. Ironically, by denying their own internal democratic challenges, Western authorities are only hastening their institutional demise.

Russophobia -- "blame it all on Russia" -- is a short-term, futile ploy to stave off the day of reckoning when furious and informed Western citizens will demand democratic restitution for their legitimate grievances.

The dominant "official" narrative, from the US to Europe, is that "malicious" Russia is "sowing division;""eroding democratic institutions;" and "undermining public trust" in systems of governance, credibility of established political parties, and the news media.

This narrative has shifted up a gear since the election of Donald Trump to the White House in 2016, with accusations that the Kremlin somehow ran "influence operations" to help get him into office. This outlandish yarn defies common sense. It is also running out of thread to keep spinning.

Paradoxically, even though President Trump has rightly rebuffed such dubious claims of "Russiagate" interference as "fake news", he has at other times undermined himself by subscribing to the notion that Moscow is projecting a campaign of "subversion against the US and its European allies." See for example the National Security Strategy he signed off in December.

Pathetically, it's become indoctrinated belief among the Western political class that "devious Russians" are out to "collapse" Western democracies by "weaponizing disinformation" and spreading "fake news" through Russia-based news outlets like RT and Sputnik.

Totalitarian-like, there seems no room for intelligent dissent among political or media figures.

British Prime Minister Theresa May has chimed in to accuse Moscow of "sowing division;" Dutch state intelligence claim Russia destabilized the US presidential election; the European Union commissioner for security, Sir Julian King, casually lampoons Russian news media as "Kremlin-orchestrated disinformation" to destabilize the 28-nation bloc; CIA chief Mike Pompeo recently warned that Russia is stepping up its efforts to tarnish the Congressional mid-term elections later this year.

On and on goes the narrative that Western states are essentially victims of a nefarious Russian assault to bring about collapse.

A particularly instructive presentation of this trope was given in a recent commentary by Texan Republican Representative Will Hurd. In his piece headlined, "Russia is our adversary" , he claims: "Russia is eroding our democracy by exploiting the nation's divisions. To save it, Americans need to begin working together."

Congressman Hurd asserts: "Russia has one simple goal: to erode trust in our democratic institutions It has weaponized disinformation to achieve this goal for decades in Eastern and Central Europe; in 2016, Western Europe and America were aggressively targeted as well."

Lamentably, all these claims above are made with scant, or no, verifiable evidence. It is simply a Big Lie technique of relentless repetition transforming itself into "fact" .

It's instructive to follow Congressman Hurd's thought-process a bit further.

He contends: "When the public loses trust in the media, the Russians are winning. When the press is hyper-critical of Congress the Russians are winning. When Congress and the general public disagree the Russians are winning. When there is friction between Congress and the executive branch [the president] resulting in further erosion of trust in our democratic institutions, the Russians are winning."

As a putative solution, Representative Hurd calls for "a national counter-disinformation strategy" against Russian "influence operations" , adding, "Americans must stop contributing to a corrosive political environment".

The latter is a chilling advocacy of uniformity tantamount to a police state whereby any dissent or criticism is a "thought-crime."

It is, however, such anti-democratic and paranoid thinking by Western politicians -- aided and abetted by dutiful media -- that is killing democracy from within, not some supposed foreign enemy.

There is evidently a foreboding sense of demise in authority and legitimacy among Western states, even if the real cause for the demise is ignored or denied. Systems of governance, politicians of all stripes, and institutions like the established media and intelligence services are increasingly held in contempt and distrust by the public.

Whose fault is that loss of political and moral authority? Western governments and institutions need to take a look in the mirror.

The endless, criminal wars that the US and its European NATO allies have been waging across the planet over the past two decades is one cogent reason why the public has lost faith in grandiose official claims about respecting democracy and international law.

The US and European media have shown reprehensible dereliction of duty to inform the public accurately about their governments' warmongering intrigues. Take the example of Syria. When does the average Western citizen ever read in the corporate Western media about how the US and its NATO allies have covertly ransacked that country through weaponizing terrorist proxies?

How then can properly informed citizens be expected to have respect for such criminal government policies and the complicit news media covering up for their crimes?

Western public disaffection with governments, politicians and media surely stems also from the grotesque gulf in social inequality and poverty among citizens from slavish adherence to economic policies that enrich the wealthy while consigning the vast majority to unrelenting austerity.

The destabilizing impact on societies from oppressive economic conditions is a far more plausible cause for grievance than outlandish claims made by the political class about alleged "Russian interference".

Yet the Western media indulge this fantastical "Russiagate" escapism instead of campaigning on real social problems facing ordinary citizens. No wonder such media are then viewed with disdain and distrust. Adding insult to injury, these media want the public to believe Russia is the enemy?

Instead of acknowledging and addressing real threats to citizens: economic insecurity, eroding education and health services, lost career opportunities for future generations, the looming dangers of ecological adversity, wars prompted by Western governments trashing international and diplomacy, and so on -- the Western public is insultingly plied with corny tales of Russia's "malign influence" and "assault on democracy."

Just think of the disproportionate amount of media attention and public resources wasted on the Russiagate scandal over the past year. And now gradually emerging is the real scandal that the American FBI probably colluded with the Obama administration to corrupt the democratic process against Trump.

Again, is there any wonder the public has sheer contempt and distrust for "authorities" that have been lying through their teeth and playing them for fools?

The collapsing state of Western democracies has got nothing to do with Russia. The Russophobia of blaming Russia for the demise of Western institutions is an attempt at scapegoating for the very real problems facing governments and institutions like the news media. Those problems are inherent and wholly owned by these governments owing to chronic anti-democratic functioning, as well as systematic violation of international law in their pursuit of criminal wars and other subterfuges for regime-change objectives.

Finian Cunningham (born 1963) has written extensively on international affairs, with articles published in several languages. Originally from Belfast, Northern Ireland, he is a Master's graduate in Agricultural Chemistry and worked as a scientific editor for the Royal Society of Chemistry, Cambridge, England, before pursuing a career in newspaper journalism. For over 20 years he worked as an editor and writer in major news media organizations, including The Mirror, Irish Times and Independent. Now a freelance journalist based in East Africa, his columns appear on RT, Sputnik, Strategic Culture Foundation and Press TV.

[Feb 19, 2018] The Free Market Threat to Democracy by John Weeks

Notable quotes:
"... In addition, financial capital leads to inequality, and that inequality, as you've seen in the United States and in Europe and many other places, it increases. And suddenly, not suddenly, but bit by bit, people begin to realize that they aren't getting their share and that means that the government, to protect capitalism, must use force to maintain the order of financial capital. And I think Trump is the fulfillment of that, and I think there are other examples too which I can go into. So, basically, my argument is that with the rise of finance and its unproductive activities, you've got the decline in living standards of the vast majority, and in order to maintain order in such a system where people no longer think that they're sort of getting their share, and so justice doesn't become, a just distribution doesn't become the reason why people support this system, increasingly it has to be done through force. ..."
"... I think that as The Real News has pointed out, that many of Trump's policies appear just to be more extreme versions of things that George Bush did, and in some cases not that much different from what Barack Obama did. ..."
"... The difference with Trump is, he has complete contempt for all of those constraints. That is, he is an authoritarian. I don't think he's a fascist, not yet, but he is an authoritarian. He does not accept that there are constraints which he should respect. There are constraints which bother him, and he wants to get rid of them, and he actually takes steps to do so. ..."
"... Erdoğan so infamously said? "Democracy is like a train. You take it to where you want to go and then you get off." No. Progressive view is that democracy is what it's all about. Democracy is the way that we build the present and we build a future. ..."
"... I think that the struggle in the United States is extremely difficult because of the role of the big money and the media, which you know more about than I do. But it is a struggle which we have to keep at, and we have to be optimistic about it. It's a good bit easier over here, but as we saw, and you reported, during the last presidential election, a progressive came very close to being President of the United States. That, I don't think was a one-off event, not to be repeated. I think it lays the basis for hope in the future. ..."
"... The democratic nation-state basically operates like a criminal cartel, forcing honest citizens to surrender large portions of their wealth to pay for stuff like roads and hospitals and schools. ..."
"... Any hierarchic system will be exploited by intelligent sociopaths. Systems will not save us. ..."
"... What I gleaned from my quick Wikiread was the apparent pattern of economic inequality causing the masses to huddle in fear & loathing to one corner – desperation, and then some clever autocrat subverts the energy from their F&L into political power by demonizing various minorities and other non-causal perps. ..."
"... Like nearly every past fascism emergence in history, US Trumpismo is capitalizing on inequality, and fear & loathing (his capital if you will) to seize power. That brings us to Today – to Trump, and an era (brief I hope) of US flirtation with fascism. Thank God Trump is crippled by a narcissism that fuels F&L within his own regime. Otherwise, I might be joining a survivalist group or something. :-) ..."
Feb 17, 2018 | www.nakedcapitalism.com

Yves here. This Real News Network interview with professor emeritus John Weeks discussed how economic ideology has weakened or eliminated public accountability of institutions like the Fed and promote neo[neo]liberal policies that undermine democracy.

https://www.youtube.com/embed/o9bXo1f5r0I

SHARMINI PERIES: It's The Real News Network. I'm Sharmini Peries coming to you from Baltimore. The concept of the [neo]liberal democracy is generally based on capitalistic markets along with respect for individual freedoms and human rights and equality in the face of the law. The rise of financial capital and its efforts to deregulate financial markets, however, raises the question whether [neo]liberal democracy is a sustainable form of government. Sooner or later, democratic institutions make way for the interests of large capital to supersede.

Political economist John Weeks recently gave this year's David Gordon Memorial Lecture at the meeting of the American Economic Association in Philadelphia where he addressed these issues with a talk titled, Free Markets and the Decline of Democracy. Joining us now is John Weeks. He joins us from London to discuss the issues raised in his lecture. You can find a link to this lecture just below the player, and John is, as you know, Professor Emeritus of the University of London School of Oriental and African Studies and author of Economics of the 1%: How Mainstream Economics Serves the Rich, Obscures Reality and Distorts Policy. John, good to have you back on The Real News.

JOHN WEEKS: Thank you very much for having me.

SHARMINI PERIES: John, let me start with your talk. Your talk describes a struggle between efforts to create a democratic control over the economy and the interest of capital, which seeks to subjugate government to the interest, its own interest. In your assessment, it looks like this is a losing battle for democracy. Explain this further.

JOHN WEEKS: Yeah, so I think that Marx in Capital, in the first volume of Capital, refers to a concept called bourgeois right, by which he meant that, you said it in the introduction, that in a capitalist society there is a form of equality that mimics the relationship of exchange. Every commodity looks equal in exchange and there is a system of ownership that you might say is the shadow of that. I think more important, in the early stages of development of capitalism, of development of factories, that those institutions or those factories prompted the growth of trade unions and workers' struggles in general. Those workers' struggles were key to the development, or further development of democracy, freedom of speech, a whole range of rights, the right to vote.

However, with the development of finance capital, you've got quite a different dynamic within the capitalist system. Let me say, I don't want to romanticize the early period of capitalism, but you did have struggles, mass struggles for rights. Finance capital produces nothing productive, it doesn't do anything productive. So, what finance capital does basically is it redistributes the income, the wealth, the, what Marx would call the surplus value, from other sectors of society to itself. And it employs relatively few people, so that dynamic of the capital, industrial capital, generating its antithesis So, that a labor movement doesn't occur under financial capital.

In addition, financial capital leads to inequality, and that inequality, as you've seen in the United States and in Europe and many other places, it increases. And suddenly, not suddenly, but bit by bit, people begin to realize that they aren't getting their share and that means that the government, to protect capitalism, must use force to maintain the order of financial capital. And I think Trump is the fulfillment of that, and I think there are other examples too which I can go into. So, basically, my argument is that with the rise of finance and its unproductive activities, you've got the decline in living standards of the vast majority, and in order to maintain order in such a system where people no longer think that they're sort of getting their share, and so justice doesn't become, a just distribution doesn't become the reason why people support this system, increasingly it has to be done through force.

SHARMINI PERIES: All right, John. Before we get further into the relationship between neo[neo]liberalism and democracy, give us a brief summary of what you mean by neo[neo]liberalism. You say that it's not really about deregulation, as most people usually conceive of it. If that's not what it's about, what is it, then?

JOHN WEEKS: I think that if you think about the movements in the United States, and as much as I can, I will take examples from the United States because most of your listeners will be familiar with those, beginning in the early part of the twentieth century, in the United States you have reform movements, the breaking up of the large monopolies, tobacco monopoly, a whole range of Standard Oil, all of that. And then of course under Roosevelt you began to get the regulation of capital in the interests of the majority, much of that driven by Roosevelt's trade union support. So, that was moving from a system where capital was relatively unregulated to where it was being regulated in the interests of the vast majority. I also would say, though, I won't go into detail, to a certain extent it was regulated in the interest of capital itself to moderate competition and therefore, I'd say, ensure a relatively tranquil market environment.

Neo[neo]liberalism involves not the deregulation of the capitalist system, but the reregulation of it in the interest of capital. So, it involves moving from a system in which capital is regulated in the interests of stability and the many to regulation in a way that enhances capital. These regulations, to get specific about them, restrictions on trade unions, as you, on Real News, a number of people have talked about this. The United States now have many restrictions on the organizing of trade unions which were not present 50 or 60 years ago, making it harder to have a mass movement of labor against capital, restrictions on the right to demonstrate, a whole range of things. Then within capital itself, the regulations on the movement of capital that facilitate speculation in international markets. We have a capitalism in which the form of regulation is shifted from the regulation of capital in the interest of labor to regulation of capital in the interest of capital.

SHARMINI PERIES: John, give us a brief summary of the ways in which neo[neo]liberalism undermines democracy.

JOHN WEEKS: Well, I think that there are many examples, but I'm going to focus on economic policy. For an obvious case is the role of the Central Bank, in the case of the United States' Federal Reserve System, in which reducing its accountability to the public, one way you can do that is by assigning goals to it, such as fighting inflation, which then override other goals. Originally, the Federal Reserve System, its charter, or I'll say its terms of reference, if you want me to use that phrase, included full employment and a stable economy. Those have been overridden in more recent legislation, which puts a great emphasis on the control of inflation. Control of inflation basically means maintaining an economy at a relatively high level of unemployment or part-time employment, or flexible employment, where people have relatively few rights at work. And that the Central Bank becomes a vehicle for enforcing a neo[neo]liberal economic policy.

Second of all, probably most of your viewers will not remember the days when we had fixed exchange rates. We had a world of fixed exchange rates in those days that represented the policy, which government could use to affect its trade and also affect its domestic policy. There have been deregulation of that. We now have floating exchange rates. That takes away a tool, an instrument of economic policy. And in fiscal policy, there the, here it's more ideology than laws, though there are also laws. There's a law requiring that the government balance its budget, but more important than that, the introduction into the public consciousness, I'd say grinding into the public consciousness, the idea that deficits are a bad thing, government debt is a bad thing, and that's a completely neo[neo]liberal ideology.

In summary, one way that the democracy has been undermined is to take away economic policy from the public realm and move it to the realm of experts. So, we have certain allegedly expert guidelines that we have to follow. Inflation should be low. We should not run deficits. The national debt should be small. These are things that are just made up ideologically. There is no technical basis to them. And so, in doing that, you might say, the term I like to use is, you decommission the democratic process and economic policy.

SHARMINI PERIES: John, speaking of ideology, in your talk you refer to the challenge that fascism posed or poses to neo[neo]liberal democracies. Now, it is interesting when you take Europe into consideration and National Socialist in Germany, for example, appeal mostly to the working class, as does contemporary far-right leaders in Poland and Hungary, that they support more explicit neo[neo]liberal agendas. Why would people support a neo[neo]liberal agenda that exasperate inequalities and harm public services that they depend on, including jobs?

JOHN WEEKS: I think that to a great extent it is country-specific, but I can make generalizations. First of all, I'm talking about Europe, because you raised a case in some European countries, and then I'll make some comments about the United States and Trump, if you want me to. I think in Europe, a combination of three things resulted in the rise of fascism and authoritarian movements which are verging on fascism. One is that the European integration project, which let me say that I have supported, and I would still prefer Britain not to leave the European Union, but nevertheless, the European Union integration project has been a project run by elites.

It has not been a bottom-up process. It has been a process very much run by elite politicians, in which they get together in closed door, and they make policies which they subsequently announce, and many of the decisions they come to being extremely, the meaning of them being extremely opaque. So, therefore, you have the development in Europe of the European Union which, not from the bottom up, but very much from the top down. You might suggest from the top, but I'm not sure how much goes down. That's one.
The second key factor, I would say, for about 20 years in European integration, it was relatively benign elitism because it was social democratic, it had the support of the working class, or the trade unions, at any rate. Then, increasingly, it began to become neo[neo]liberal. So, you have an elite project which was turning into a neo[neo]liberal project. Specifically, what I mean by neo[neo]liberal is where they're generating flexibility rules for the labor market, austerity policies, bank, balanced budgets, low inflation, the things I was talking about before.

Then the third element, toxic, the most toxic of them, but the other, they're volatile, is the legacy of fascism in Europe. Every European country, with the exception of Britain, had a substantial fascist movement in the 1920s and 1930s. I can go into why Britain didn't sometime. It had to do with the particular class struggle of the, I mean, class structure of Britain. Poland, ironically enough, though, is one of them. It was overrun by the Nazis, and occupied, and incorporated into the German Reich. Ironically, it had a very right-wing government with a lot of sympathies towards fascism when it was invaded in the late summer of 1939.

France had a strong fascist movement. Of course, Italy had a fascist government, and Hungary, where now you have a right-wing government, a very strong fascist movement. The incorporation of these countries into the Soviet sphere of influence, or the empire, as it were, did not destroy that fascism. It certainly suppressed it, but it didn't destroy it. So, as soon as the European project began to transform into a neo[neo]liberal project, and that gathered strength in the early 1990s, I mean, the neo[neo]liberal aspect of the European Union gathered strength in the early 1990s, exactly when you were getting the "liberation" of many countries from Soviet rule. And so, when you put those together, it led to, It was a rise of fascism waiting to happen and now it is happening.

SHARMINI PERIES: John, earlier, you said you'll factor in Trump. How does Trump fit into this phenomena?

JOHN WEEKS: I think that as The Real News has pointed out, that many of Trump's policies appear just to be more extreme versions of things that George Bush did, and in some cases not that much different from what Barack Obama did. Now, though I wouldn't go too deeply into that, I think that that is the most serious offenses by Obama that have been carried on by Trump have to do with the use of drones and the military. But at any rate, but there's a big difference from Trump. For the most part, the previous Republican presidents, and Democratic presidents, accepted the framework of, the formal framework of [neo]liberal democracy in the United States. That is, formally accepted the constraints imposed by the Constitution.

Now, of course, they probably didn't do it out of the goodness of their heart. They did it because they saw that the things that they wanted to achieve, the neo[neo]liberal goals that they wanted to achieve were perfectly consistent with the Constitution's framework and guarantees of rights and so on, that most of those rights are guaranteed in a way that's so weak that you didn't have to repeal the first 10 Amendments of the Constitution in order to have repressive policies.

The difference with Trump is, he has complete contempt for all of those constraints. That is, he is an authoritarian. I don't think he's a fascist, not yet, but he is an authoritarian. He does not accept that there are constraints which he should respect. There are constraints which bother him, and he wants to get rid of them, and he actually takes steps to do so. What you have in Trump, I think, is a sea change. You have a, we've had right-wing presidents before, certainly. What the difference with Trump is, he is a right-wing president that sees no reason to respect the institutions of democratic government, or even, you might say, the institution of representative government. I won't even use a term as strong as "democratic." That lays the basis for an explicitly authoritarian United States, and I'd say that we're beginning to see the vehicle by which this will occur, the restriction on voting rights. Of course, that was going on before Trump, it does in a more aggressive way. I think the, soon, we will have a Supreme Court that will be quite lenient with his tendency towards authoritarian rule.

SHARMINI PERIES: All right, John. Let's end this segment with what can be done. I mean, what must be done to prevent neo[neo]liberal interests from undermining democracy? And who do you believe is leading the struggle for democracy now, and what is the right strategy that people should be fighting for?

JOHN WEEKS: Well, one thing, I think, where I'd begin is that I think progressives, as The Real News represents, and Bernie Sanders, and all the people that support him, and Jeremy Corbyn over here, I'll come back to talk about a bit about Jeremy. We must be explicit that we view democracy, by which we mean the participation of people at the grassroots, their participation in the government, we view that as a goal. It's not merely a technique, or a tool which, what was it that Erdoğan so infamously said? "Democracy is like a train. You take it to where you want to go and then you get off." No. Progressive view is that democracy is what it's all about. Democracy is the way that we build the present and we build a future.

I'm quite fortunate in that I live in perhaps the only large country in the world where there's imminent possibility of a progressive, left-wing, anti-authoritarian government. I think that is the monumental importance of Jeremy Corbyn and his second-in-command, John McDonnell, and others like Emily Thornberry, who is the Foreign Secretary. These people are committed to democracy. In the United States, Bernie Sanders is committed to a democracy, and a lot of other people are too, Elizabeth Warren. So, I think that the struggle in the United States is extremely difficult because of the role of the big money and the media, which you know more about than I do. But it is a struggle which we have to keep at, and we have to be optimistic about it. It's a good bit easier over here, but as we saw, and you reported, during the last presidential election, a progressive came very close to being President of the United States. That, I don't think was a one-off event, not to be repeated. I think it lays the basis for hope in the future.

... ... ...


JTMcPhee , February 17, 2018 at 9:35 am

"Informed speculation" with lots of footnotes and offshoots in this Reddit skein: https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/1llyf7/about_how_much_in_todays_money_was_30_pieces_of/

"A lot of money" in those days- Some say JI "bought land" with the shekels. An early form of asset swap? A precursor to current financialist activities?

WobblyTelomeres , February 17, 2018 at 10:44 am

Good article. If it were any bleaker, I'd suspect Chris Hedges having a hand in writing it.

The democratic nation-state basically operates like a criminal cartel, forcing honest citizens to surrender large portions of their wealth to pay for stuff like roads and hospitals and schools.

There it is, the Gorgon Thiel, surrounded by terror and rout.

James T. Cricket , February 18, 2018 at 3:46 am

I suppose you've read this.

https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2016/10/10/sam-altmans-manifest-destiny

Here's a quote:

"Altman felt that OpenAI's mission was to babysit its wunderkind until it was ready to be adopted by the world. He'd been reading James Madison's notes on the Constitutional Convention for guidance in managing the transition. 'We're planning a way to allow wide swaths of the world to elect representatives to a new governance board,' he said."

I was having trouble choosing which of the passages in this article to provide a mad quote from. Some other choices were
Altman's going to work with the Department of Defense, then help defend the world from them.
Or:
OpenAI's going to take over from humans, but don't worry because they're going to make it (somehow) so OpenAI can only terminate bad people. Before releasing it to the world.
Or:
Altman says 'add a 0 to whatever you're doing but never more than that.'

But if this sort of wisdom (somehow) doesn't work out well for everybody and the world collapses, he's flying with Peter Thiel in the private jet to the New Zealand's south island to wait out the Zombie Apocalypse on a converted sheep farm. (Before returning to the Valley work with more startups?)

These are your new leaders, people

David , February 17, 2018 at 7:56 am

I think it's revealing that the only type of democracy discussed, in spite of the title, is "[neo]liberal democracy", which the host describes as "based on capitalistic markets along with respect for individual freedoms and human rights and equality in the face of the law."

I've always argued that [neo]liberal democracy is a contradiction in terms, and you can see why from that quotation. [neo]liberalism (leaving aside special uses of the term in the US) is about individuals exercising their personal economic freedom and personal autonomy as much as they can, with as little control by government as possible.

But given massive imbalances in economic power, the influence of media-backed single issue campaigns and the growth of professional political parties, policy is decided by the interventions of powerful and well-organised groups, without ordinary people being consulted. At the end, Weeks does start to talk of grassroots participation, but seems to have no more in mind than a campaign to get people to vote for Sanders in 2020, which hardly addresses the problem. The answer, if there is one, is a system of direct democracy, involving referendums and popular assemblies chosen at random.

This has been much talked about, but since you would have the entire political class against you, it's not going to happen. In the meantime, we are stuck with [neo]liberal democracy, whose contradictions, I'm afraid are becoming ever more obvious.

JTMcPhee , February 17, 2018 at 8:45 am

"Contradictions?" One question for me at least would be whether the features and motions of the current regime are best characterized as "contradictions." If so, to what? And implicit in the use of the word is some kind of resolution, via actual class conflict or something, leading to "better" or at least "different." All I see from my front porch is more of the same, and worse. "The Matrix" in that myth gave some comforting illusions to the mopery. I think the political economy/collapsed planet portrayed in "Soylent Green" is a lot closer to the likely endpoints.

At least in the movie fable, the C-Suite-er of the Soylent Corp. as the lede in the film, was sickened of what he was helping to maintain, and bethought himself to blow his tiny little personal whistle that nobody would really hear, and got axed for his disloyalty to the ruling collective. I doubt the ranks of corporatists of MonsantoDuPont and LockheedMartin and the rest include any significant numbers of folks sickened by "the contradictions" that get them their perks and bennies and power (as long as they color inside the lines.)

Eustache De Saint Pierre , February 17, 2018 at 9:33 am

I hope I am way off the mark, but within that genre & in terms of where we could be heading, the film " Snowpiercer " sums it up best for me- a dystopian world society illustrated through the passengers on one long train.

Michael C , February 17, 2018 at 8:46 am

Thanks for the Real News Network for covering issues that never see the light of day on the corporate media and never mentioned by the Rachel Maddow's of the "news" shows.

torff , February 17, 2018 at 10:02 am

Can we please put a moratorium on the term "free market"? It's a nonsense term.

Yves Smith Post author , February 17, 2018 at 6:59 pm

Yes, I wrote about that at length in ECONNED. I kept the RNN headline, which used it, but should have put "free market" in quotes.

Katz , February 18, 2018 at 11:09 am

I actually like the term and find it useful, insofar as it describes an ideology -- as oposed a real political-economic arrangement. The presence of "free markets" may not be a characteristic of the neo[neo]liberal phase, but the belief in them sure is.

(Which is not to say there aren't people who don't believe in free markets but do invoke them rhetorically for other ends. That's a feature of many if not most successful ideologies.)

Jim Haygood , February 17, 2018 at 10:59 am

' Originally, the Federal Reserve charter included full employment and a stable economy. Those have been overridden in more recent legislation, which puts a great emphasis on the control of inflation.

Eh, this is fractured history. The Fed was set up in 1913 as a lender of last resort -- a discounter of government and private bills.

In late 1978 Jimmy Carter signed the Humphrey Hawkins Act instructing the Fed to pursue three goals: stable prices, maximum employment, and moderate long-term interest rates, though the latter is rarely mentioned now and the Fed is widely viewed as having a dual mandate.

The Fed's two percent inflation target it simply adopted at its own initiative -- it's not enshrined in no Perpetual Inflation Act.

' We had a world of fixed exchange rates which government could use to affect its trade and also affect its domestic policy. We now have floating exchange rates. That takes away a tool. '

LOL! This is totally inverted and flat wrong. The Bretton Woods fixed exchange rate system prevented radical monetary experiments such as QE which would have broken the peg. Nixon unilaterally suspended fixed exchange rates in 1971 because he was unwilling to take the political hit of formally devaluing the dollar (or even more unlikely, sweating out Vietnam War inflation with falling prices to maintain the peg).

Floating rates are a new and potentially lethal monetary tool which have produced a number of sad examples of "governments gone wild" with radical monetary experiments and currency swings. Bad boys Japan & Switzerland come readily to mind.

To render history accurately requires getting hands dirty with dusty old books. Icky, I know. :-(

RBHoughton , February 17, 2018 at 6:24 pm

Yes but globalisation meant that all central banks and finance ministers had to act concertedly as in G-20 and similar meetings. While we may talk of floating exchange rates, each country fixes its interest rate to maintain parity with the others. Isn't that so?

Yves Smith Post author , February 17, 2018 at 7:00 pm

Ahem, you skip over that the full employment goal was added to the Fed mandate in 1946, long before the inflation goal was added.

The Rev Kev , February 17, 2018 at 7:29 pm

I think that the key piece of info is that the Federal Reserve was created on December 23rd, 1913. That sounds like that it was slipped in the legislative back door when everybody was going away for the Christmas holidays.

Steven Greenberg , February 17, 2018 at 11:26 am

===== quote =====
Second of all, probably most of your viewers will not remember the days when we had fixed exchange rates. We had a world of fixed exchange rates in those days that represented the policy, which government could use to affect its trade and also affect its domestic policy. There have been deregulation of that. We now have floating exchange rates. That takes away a tool, an instrument of economic policy. And in fiscal policy, there the, here it's more ideology than laws, though there are also laws. There's a law requiring that the government balance its budget, but more important than that, the introduction into the public consciousness, I'd say grinding into the public consciousness, the idea that deficits are a bad thing, government debt is a bad thing, and that's a completely neo[neo]liberal ideology.
===== /quote =====

This makes absolutely no sense and seems to have the case exactly backward. Our federal government has no rule that the budget must be balanced. Fixed exchange rates were not a tool that could be used to affect trade and domestic policy in a good way.

Lee Robertson , February 17, 2018 at 11:42 am

Any hierarchic system will be exploited by intelligent sociopaths. Systems will not save us.

Susan the other , February 17, 2018 at 1:29 pm

I enjoyed John Weeks' point of view. He's the first person I've read who refers to the usefulness of a fixed exchange rate. Useful for a sovereign government with a social spending agenda. We have always been a sovereign government with a military agenda which is at odds with a social agenda.

Guns and butter are a dangerous combination if you are dedicated to at least maintaining the illusion of a "strong dollar." That's basically what Nixon finessed. John Conally told him not to worry, we could go off the gold standard and it wasn't our problem since we were the reserve currency – it was everybody else's problem and we promptly exported our inflation all around the world. And now it has come home to roost because it was fudging and it couldn't last forever.

Much better to concede to some fix for the currency and maintain the sovereign power to devalue the dollar as necessary to maintain proper social spending. I don't understand why sovereign governments cannot see that a deficit is just the mirror image of a healthy social economy (Stephanie Kelton).

And to that end "fix" an exchange rate that maintains a reasonable purchasing power of the currency by pegging it to the long term health of the economy. What we do now is peg the dollar to a "basket of goods and services"- Ben Bernanke. That "basket" is effectively "the market" and has very little to do with good social policy.

There's no reason we can't dispense with the market and simply fiat the value of our currency based on the social return estimated for our social investments. Etc. Keeping the dollar stubbornly strong is just tyranny favoring those few who benefit from extreme inequality.

ebbflows , February 17, 2018 at 4:19 pm

Bancor. Then some got delusions of grandeur.

albert , February 17, 2018 at 2:23 pm

" Democracy is not under stress – it's under aggressive attack, as unconstrained financial greed overrides public accountability ."

I request a lessatorium* on the term 'democracy', because there aren't any democracies. Rather than redefine the term, why not use a more accurate one, like 'plutocracy', or 'corporatocracy'.
-- -- -- -
* It's like a moratorium, you just do less of it.

Paul Cardan , February 17, 2018 at 2:37 pm

What is this democracy of which you speak?

Tomonthebeach , February 17, 2018 at 4:30 pm

I had not given much thought to "Fascist" until the term was challenged as a synonym for "bully." So, I started reading Wikipedia's take on Fascismo. What I discovered was the foremost, my USA education did not teach jack s -- about Fascism – and I went to elite high school in libr'l Chicago.

Is Fascism right or left? Does it matter? What goes around comes around.

What I gleaned from my quick Wikiread was the apparent pattern of economic inequality causing the masses to huddle in fear & loathing to one corner – desperation, and then some clever autocrat subverts the energy from their F&L into political power by demonizing various minorities and other non-causal perps.

Like nearly every past fascism emergence in history, US Trumpismo is capitalizing on inequality, and fear & loathing (his capital if you will) to seize power. That brings us to Today – to Trump, and an era (brief I hope) of US flirtation with fascism. Thank God Trump is crippled by a narcissism that fuels F&L within his own regime. Otherwise, I might be joining a survivalist group or something. :-)

Synoia , February 17, 2018 at 6:32 pm

Left and right are more line circle that a line.

I view the extreme left and extreme right, meeting somewhere, hidden, at the back of a circle.

c_heale , February 17, 2018 at 7:29 pm

I always believed this too!

+1

flora , February 17, 2018 at 8:01 pm

Neoliberalism involves not the deregulation of the capitalist system, but the reregulation of it in the interest of capital. So, it involves moving from a system in which capital is regulated in the interests of stability and the many to regulation in a way that enhances capital.

Prominent politicians in the US and UK have spent their entire political careers representing neoliberalism's agenda at the expense of representing the voters' issues. The voters are tired of the conservative and [neo]liberal political establishments' focus on neoliberal policy. This is also true in Germany as well France and Italy. The West's current political establishments see the way forward as "staying the neoliberal course." Voters are saying "change course." See:

'German Politics Enters an Era of Instability' – Der Speigel

http://www.spiegel.de/international/germany/german-political-landscape-crumbling-as-merkel-coalition-forms-a-1193947.html

[Feb 19, 2018] Russian Meddling Was a Drop in an Ocean of American-made Discord by AMANDA TAUB and MAX FISHER

Highly recommended!
Very weak analysis The authors completely missed the point. Susceptibility to rumors (now called "fake new" which more correctly should be called "improvised news") and high level of distrust to "official MSM" (of which popularity of alternative news site is only tip of the iceberg) is a sign of the crisis and tearing down of the the social fabric that hold the so social groups together. This first of all demonstrated with the de-legitimization of the neoliberal elite.
As such attempt to patch this discord and unite the US society of fake premises of Russiagate and anti-Russian hysteria look very problematic. The effect might be quite opposite as the story with Steele dossier, which really undermined credibility of Justice Department and destroyed the credibility o FBI can teach us.
In this case claims that "The claim that, for example, Mrs. Clinton's victory might aid Satan " are just s a sign of rejection of neoliberalism by voters. Nothing more nothing less.
Notable quotes:
"... It has infected the American political system, weakening the body politic and leaving it vulnerable to manipulation. Russian misinformation seems to have exacerbated the symptoms, but laced throughout the indictment are reminders that the underlying disease, arguably far more damaging, is all American-made. ..."
"... A recent study found that the people most likely to consume fake news were already hyperpartisan and close followers of politics, and that false stories were only a small fraction of their media consumption. ..."
Feb 18, 2018 | www.nytimes.com

That these efforts might have actually made a difference, or at least were intended to, highlights a force that was already destabilizing American democracy far more than any Russian-made fake news post: partisan polarization.

"Partisanship can even alter memory, implicit evaluation, and even perceptual judgment," the political scientists Jay J. Van Bavel and Andrea Pereira wrote in a recent paper . "The human attraction to fake and untrustworthy news" -- a danger cited by political scientists far more frequently than orchestrated meddling -- "poses a serious problem for healthy democratic functioning."

It has infected the American political system, weakening the body politic and leaving it vulnerable to manipulation. Russian misinformation seems to have exacerbated the symptoms, but laced throughout the indictment are reminders that the underlying disease, arguably far more damaging, is all American-made.

... ... ...

A recent study found that the people most likely to consume fake news were already hyperpartisan and close followers of politics, and that false stories were only a small fraction of their media consumption.

Americans, it said, sought out stories that reflected their already-formed partisan view of reality. This suggests that these Russians efforts are indicators -- not drivers -- of how widely Americans had polarized.

That distinction matters for how the indictment is read: Though Americans have seen it as highlighting a foreign threat, it also illustrates the perhaps graver threats from within.

An Especially Toxic Form of Partisanship

... ... ...

"Compromise is the core of democracy," she said. "It's the only way we can govern." But, she said, "when you make people feel threatened, nobody compromises with evil."

The claim that, for example, Mrs. Clinton's victory might aid Satan is in many ways just a faint echo of the partisan anger and fear already dominating American politics.

Those emotions undermine a key norm that all sides are served by honoring democratic processes; instead, they justify, or even seem to mandate, extreme steps against the other side.

Advertisement Continue reading the main story

In taking this approach, the Russians were merely riding a trend that has been building for decades. Since the 1980s , surveys have found that Republicans and Democrats' feelings toward the opposing party have been growing more and more negative. Voters are animated more by distrust of the other side than support for their own.

This highlights a problem that Lilliana Mason, a University of Maryland political scientist, said had left American democracy dangerously vulnerable. But it's a problem driven primarily by American politicians and media outlets, which have far louder megaphones than any Russian-made Facebook posts.

"Compromise is the core of democracy," she said. "It's the only way we can govern." But, she said, "when you make people feel threatened, nobody compromises with evil."

The claim that, for example, Mrs. Clinton's victory might aid Satan is in many ways just a faint echo of the partisan anger and fear already dominating American politics.

Those emotions undermine a key norm that all sides are served by honoring democratic processes; instead, they justify, or even seem to mandate, extreme steps against the other side.

[Feb 17, 2018] Russia condemned and defined as the enemy of America with laughably little evidence (effing Facebook posts being about the extent of it) .... not a word about JEWISH MONEY controlling the entire political system in the USA. When Netanyahu gets 29 standing ovations from Congress should that not have triggered an FBI Investigation

Taking oil price to 30th or 40th is a strategic goal of the USA in relation to Russia. Listen at 3:30.
Notable quotes:
"... Appeasing interview with a shockingly cheap incompetent former CIA head Woolsey. If this man seriously represents the intellectual level of the CIA, then the USA will implode even faster than in ten years. ..."
"... You are exactly right. U$ politicians are uninformed, stupid, detached from reality, selfish and they think like schoolyard kids do. ..."
"... They are the product of the US society as a whole. ..."
"... Craig Murray nailed this issue stone dead for all time a few years ago, when he wrote:"[neo]liberal interventionism, the theory that bombing brown people is good for them". ..."
"... In the former The Ukraine, the Jewish Quisling oligarch dictator, Poroshenko, has been appointing foreigners to positions of power (SackOfShvilli is but one). He supported this by stating: "Ukrainians are too corrupt to rule themselves." When will we in America hear such a statement from our leaders to justify the appointment of Jews and paid Judaeophiles to all positions of power? ..."
"... I'm just waiting for Yevgeny Prigozhin to hold a press conference in Russia to claim that Hillary Clinton paid him to run the Internet Research Agency to besmirch her opponent- watch the fireworks :) It's all a hall of mirrors. ..."
"... The Internet Research Agency couldn't have possibly been more ineffective, which points to it's main purpose being to besmirch Trump (more more likely it was just an unimportant hobby of Prigozhin). ..."
"... Sure the United States has, they have been doing it since 1953 with the overthrow of Iran, to as recently as 2012 Russian Election, 2014 Ukraine Election, the UK referendum on 23 June 2016 on Brexit and currently trying to overthrow it this year. These are just a few and there is a very long list of other countries also. The United States in now in Russia and Hungry today meddling it their elections. Got to get the right people in office so they will cow-tow to the United States. ..."
"... What an admission! trump doesn't want more drilling for oil to Americans to use. It is for export and for foreign interference ..."
"... and if the price of oil would go down to 30/40$ that would make a unhappy input and so would be the saudis and you fracking industry would go down the toilet and thy will drag the banks with them. What a moron. And US oil companies would like that alot too ..."
Feb 17, 2018 | theduran.com

Gano1 , February 17, 2018 10:31 AM

The USA has lost all morality, they are so hypocritical it is risible.

Patricia Dolan , February 17, 2018 10:25 AM

What Russian expansionism??? Look at the US expansionism..........get a grip!

Ann Johns Patricia Dolan , February 17, 2018 2:51 PM

Another tiresome, butthurt yank/wank? Between the new One Belt, One Road Chinese initiative, the Russians taking control of ME oil production and the fact that america has NO answers to help it's declining empire, it would seem to the non-partisan observer that america is well and truly f***ed. You must be talking about their debt expansionism, $20 TRILLION and rising by the second.

Vera Gottlieb Patricia Dolan , February 17, 2018 2:29 PM

US expansionism...really? Where? 😜

Mario8282 Vera Gottlieb , February 17, 2018 2:58 PM

Syria? Libya? Yemen? Africa, Afgh...

Vera Gottlieb Mario8282 , February 17, 2018 3:00 PM

And you left out Latin America...

Mario8282 Vera Gottlieb , February 17, 2018 3:05 PM

This is why I left with the dots... The list would end up with America itself (an endless spree of false flags and deception schemes).

Patricia Dolan Mario8282 , February 17, 2018 6:11 PM

Thank you Mario......let's not forget Ukraine, Kosovo, Bosnia, the entirety of eastern Europe, the entirety of northern Africa, Rwanda, the Congo, Venezuela, Chili, Guatemala, Panama, Jeeeeeeeze etc......

Patricia Dolan Vera Gottlieb , February 17, 2018 6:07 PM

get a grip......and turn your TV off!

Terry Ross Patricia Dolan , February 17, 2018 6:08 PM

'twas sarcasm Patricia.

Patricia Dolan Terry Ross , February 17, 2018 6:18 PM

I guess the WINKS need to be LARGER!!!! LOL

ThereisaGod , February 17, 2018 10:05 AM

Russia condemned and defined as the enemy of America with laughably little evidence (effing Facebook posts being about the extent of it) .... not a word about JEWISH MONEY controlling the entire political system in the USA. When Netanyahu gets 29 standing ovations from Congress should that not have triggered an FBI "Investigation"? Nah ... nothing happening there. It is breathtaking that THIS is the Alice-In-Wonderland world we inhabit.

Ton Jacobs, Human Guardians , February 17, 2018 10:02 AM

Appeasing interview with a shockingly cheap incompetent former CIA head Woolsey. If this man seriously represents the intellectual level of the CIA, then the USA will implode even faster than in ten years.

christianblood Ton Jacobs, Human Guardians , February 17, 2018 12:32 PM

(...If this man seriously represents the intellectual level of the CIA, then the USA will implode even faster than in ten years...)

You are exactly right. U$ politicians are uninformed, stupid, detached from reality, selfish and they think like schoolyard kids do.

Jesse Marioneaux christianblood , February 17, 2018 12:43 PM

They are the product of the US society as a whole.

christianblood Jesse Marioneaux , February 17, 2018 12:57 PM

They indeed are! U$A! U$A! U$A!

tom , February 17, 2018 11:14 AM

Craig Murray nailed this issue stone dead for all time a few years ago, when he wrote:"[neo]liberal interventionism, the theory that bombing brown people is good for them".

journey80 , February 17, 2018 12:37 PM

Yeah, that's hilarious. Join the murdering creep in a giggle, Laura, that's cute. Here's a global criminal who should have been hung years ago for crimes against humanity. No one in their right mind would treat this creep with anything but contempt and horror, let alone find him funny.

Franz Kafka , February 17, 2018 12:17 PM

In the former The Ukraine, the Jewish Quisling oligarch dictator, Poroshenko, has been appointing foreigners to positions of power (SackOfShvilli is but one). He supported this by stating: "Ukrainians are too corrupt to rule themselves." When will we in America hear such a statement from our leaders to justify the appointment of Jews and paid Judaeophiles to all positions of power?

journey80 Franz Kafka , February 17, 2018 12:34 PM

We don't need to hear it, we're living it.

Franz Kafka journey80 , February 17, 2018 3:33 PM

My profound and sincere condolences. You are getting the 'Democracy Treatment' by the West. I hope some of you survive to tell the tale and take revenge.

Franz Kafka , February 17, 2018 12:09 PM

Are those ears or bat-wings? WOW! Yet another Jewe, pretending not be be. I guess he would say that the USA murdered all the Indians and enslaved Africans 'for their own good' as well.
Talmudo-Satanism is the pernicious underlying ideology of the people who have taken over, not just the USA, but, lets face it, the entire West.

Vera Gottlieb , February 17, 2018 2:28 PM

What a bunch of ingrates we are...not appreciating all that the CIA is doing for us. We must thank them instead of complaining.

Trauma2000 , February 17, 2018 5:30 PM

Lets not forget that the U.$.A. meddled in Australia's election of the Whitlam Government. (And several governments there after as soon as they realised they could get away with it an nothing would happen to them). The United States are a bunch of sick puppies; really sick puppies the way they have treated Australia.

So much for being allies. With allies like the United States you don't need enemies (Unless the U.$. doctors them up for you to force you to pay them more money for weapons and protection).

And it makes me sick that so many 'naive' people around the world keep falling for the SH*T that comes out of their mouths.

When dealing with the United States there are a few rules to follow. (Apologies to the innocent Americans out there but 'they' allow their government to do some unspeakable horrors to the world.)

And that goes for the entire planet no matter who the United States is speaking to.

End of story.

Shue Trauma2000 , February 17, 2018 5:51 PM

Worst part is the our Gov can't think ahead, if they keep antagonising China on behalf of the Seppo's China will eventually pull their mineral imports and our economy will crash overnight.

HappyCynic , February 17, 2018 4:31 PM

Yes, nobody doubts that the US interferes with elections in other countries - we're the good guys, so this is ok :)

I'm just waiting for Yevgeny Prigozhin to hold a press conference in Russia to claim that Hillary Clinton paid him to run the Internet Research Agency to besmirch her opponent- watch the fireworks :) It's all a hall of mirrors.

The Internet Research Agency couldn't have possibly been more ineffective, which points to it's main purpose being to besmirch Trump (more more likely it was just an unimportant hobby of Prigozhin).

John R Balch Jr , February 17, 2018 6:31 PM

Sure the United States has, they have been doing it since 1953 with the overthrow of Iran, to as recently as 2012 Russian Election, 2014 Ukraine Election, the UK referendum on 23 June 2016 on Brexit and currently trying to overthrow it this year. These are just a few and there is a very long list of other countries also. The United States in now in Russia and Hungry today meddling it their elections. Got to get the right people in office so they will cow-tow to the United States.

Graeme Pedersen , February 17, 2018 6:11 PM

I believe john Key was sent from the U$A (Merrill Lynch) to ruin our economy in New Zealand as well.

janbn , February 17, 2018 5:37 PM

What an admission! trump doesn't want more drilling for oil to Americans to use. It is for export and for foreign interference.

Aidi Deduction , February 17, 2018 4:51 PM

Frederick the Great concluded that to allow governments to be dominated by the majority would be disastrous: "A democracy, to survive, must be, like other governments a minority persuading a majority to let itself be led by a minority."

General Kreeg , February 17, 2018 4:13 PM

Russian Trolls are all of a sudden the Russian Gov't.

fredd , February 17, 2018 3:18 PM

and if the price of oil would go down to 30/40$ that would make a unhappy input and so would be the saudis and you fracking industry would go down the toilet and thy will drag the banks with them. What a moron. And US oil companies would like that alot too

Mario8282 , February 17, 2018 2:56 PM

...and the US bombed half of the world's countries for their own good too. US made Libya a slave market for humanity's good as well. Oboomer even got the Nobel Peace Prize for it.

K Walker , February 17, 2018 2:55 PM

I would be greatly relieved if the USA government merely tweeted instead of invading and indulging in regime change.

Kevin S , February 17, 2018 12:55 PM

Talk about the pinnacle of hypocrisy!

[Feb 17, 2018] Delegitimization of ruling elite is an approriate word for the current crisis

Notable quotes:
"... This rings true as well; "The implications for the future of the American republic were terrifying, Tesich concluded. His words are haunting to read today: We are rapidly becoming prototypes of a people that totalitarian monsters could only drool about in their dreams. All the dictators up to now have had to work hard at suppressing the truth. We, by our actions, are saying that this is no longer necessary, that we have acquired a spiritual mechanism that can denude truth of any significance. In a very fundamental way we, as a free people, have freely decided that we want to live in some post-truth world." ..."
"... This also applies to the UK. What goodwill, mythology ("worldliness, pragmatism") etc. that was attached by continentals to the UK has been "exploded". ..."
"... Lately, I've detected a certain sense of malaise among my fellow citizens. In my opinion, it's long been apparent that this won't end well. All of these factors points to a day of reckoning that is rapidly approaching. Perhaps the prevalence of school shootings is acting as the proverbial canary in the coal mine? ..."
"... Don't think that the elite have not noticed the way things are moving. In my own line of work I interact with the 1% on a regular basis. I can tell you that even though they are doing better that ever, there is a sense of discreet terror. It's obvious when they discuss all the ways that they're trying to replicating their own advantages in the education of their little darlings. ..."
"... I think it's dawning on us that we're not re-experiencing the moment before the election of Franklin Roosevelt, and the beginning of the New Deal, we're actually just now realizing the necessity of the daunting task of organizing, which makes our times resemble 1890 more than 1935. ..."
"... Even if it takes half as much time to defeat the Robber Barons this go-round, many of us will not see anything resembling ' victory ' in our lifetimes, so we have to make adjustments in our expectations, and accept the monumental nature of the tasks ahead. ..."
"... I think delegitimization is upon us. General malaise is nearly to the point of a general strike. The house of cards is in a slow motion but certain wind storm. Those thousand dollar checks at Wal-Mart payday will vanish overnight while the wealthy reap tax benefits for years on end. We are down to the twenty seven percent (Dems) waging false battles with the twenty six percent (Reps). Only the 47 percent rest of us will grow in numbers from here on out. ..."
"... The Anglo-American countries can not be anything but in a class of their own. They include the mother country with former colonies, some especially successful, and rule the world by virtue of language, wealth and, often necessarily, violence, almost always gratuitous. ..."
"... Violence has an effect on peoples lives at both the giving and receiving ends. ..."
"... Image you are in Baghdad on the glorious, glittering night of Shock and Awe to get a feel for things. That happened when the US was supposedly great. ..."
"... Intelligence makes us pessimists, and our will makes us optimists. ..."
"... But Trump is not the problem here, only the Front Man for something larger. Even during the early oughts one could perceive a fundamental societal drift, empowered by a 'conservative' (read: fascist) willingness to do whatever was necessary in pursuit of their particular vision. It is not a vision of returning disempowered white folks to some rosy past that never existed; I sense a more feudal vision, with princes and lords in gated communities, with peasants conned into doing their bidding, every day being fleeced even further. ..."
"... The angst feels not like the angst of an impending, singular catastrophe, but rather the angst of decline. There's a late empire feel to the current mood: leaders without agency, more interested in their own, internal sense of normalcy and maintaining their perches, perches that increasingly feel pointless as they're all just listless figureheads doing what the Magister Militum tells them to do. ..."
"... The military feels all-encompassing yet simultaneously incapable of exercising its will in the theater of war, so dispersed and aimless, as the missions are no longer about winning wars but about resume building ..."
"... Civililizations don't collapse like falling off a table. They stress resources of materials and people and such stresses build and build. This has serious psychological impacts. ..."
"... The moderate catastrophic disasters like Trumps election cause much bigger disruptions to the civilizational equilibrium, but only for a time. We all know deep inside that what comes next in Brexit or say Trumps removal will actually be worse than what we have now. ..."
"... For me the frame changed with the restart of the Cold War. I remember "Duck and Cover, McCarthyism, John Birchers, and Who Lost China". It has all come back. The Democrats are idiots for scapegoating Russia. President Donald Trump is incompetent. ..."
"... Jones Marathon ..."
Feb 17, 2018 | www.nakedcapitalism.com

HopeLB , February 16, 2018 at 8:43 am

All of the warnings, predictions, knowledge, tech advances and humor of sci-fi, real science, history, and literature alike has boiled down to this? This low quality "news" that reports on the latest predictable, preventable outrage/injustice when it not intentionally turning up the hysteria/fear tuner? It's like living in a simulation of a society ruled by the insane and hearing about its unwinding day after day.

This rings true as well; "The implications for the future of the American republic were terrifying, Tesich concluded. His words are haunting to read today: We are rapidly becoming prototypes of a people that totalitarian monsters could only drool about in their dreams. All the dictators up to now have had to work hard at suppressing the truth. We, by our actions, are saying that this is no longer necessary, that we have acquired a spiritual mechanism that can denude truth of any significance. In a very fundamental way we, as a free people, have freely decided that we want to live in some post-truth world."

https://www.thenation.com/article/post-truth-and-its-consequences-what-a-25-year-old-essay-tells-us-about-the-current-moment/

Yeat's captures the inexorable feel of our times perfectly;

William Butler Yeats (1865-1939)

THE SECOND COMING

Turning and turning in the widening gyre
The falcon cannot hear the falconer;
Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold;
Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world,
The blood-dimmed tide is loosed, and everywhere
The ceremony of innocence is drowned;
The best lack all conviction, while the worst
Are full of passionate intensity.

Surely some revelation is at hand;
Surely the Second Coming is at hand.
The Second Coming! Hardly are those words out
When a vast image out of Spiritus Mundi
Troubles my sight: a waste of desert sand;
A shape with lion body and the head of a man,
A gaze blank and pitiless as the sun,
Is moving its slow thighs, while all about it
Wind shadows of the indignant desert birds.

The darkness drops again but now I know
That twenty centuries of stony sleep
Were vexed to nightmare by a rocking cradle,
And what rough beast, its hour come round at last,
Slouches towards Bethlehem to be born?

Colonel Smithers , February 16, 2018 at 9:04 am

Thank you.

This also applies to the UK. What goodwill, mythology ("worldliness, pragmatism") etc. that was attached by continentals to the UK has been "exploded".

This makes me wonder whether the US will exist in its current form. Is it desirable? Genuine questions from someone who visits annually, including "fly over", and enjoys doing so. I don't see the UK existing as currently constituted much beyond the next decade.

camelotkidd , February 16, 2018 at 8:42 am

Lately, I've detected a certain sense of malaise among my fellow citizens. In my opinion, it's long been apparent that this won't end well. All of these factors points to a day of reckoning that is rapidly approaching. Perhaps the prevalence of school shootings is acting as the proverbial canary in the coal mine?

Don't think that the elite have not noticed the way things are moving. In my own line of work I interact with the 1% on a regular basis. I can tell you that even though they are doing better that ever, there is a sense of discreet terror. It's obvious when they discuss all the ways that they're trying to replicating their own advantages in the education of their little darlings.

Watt4Bob , February 16, 2018 at 8:45 am

I'm starting to think that what we are experiencing is the realization that we've spent way too much time expecting that explaining our selves, our diverse grievances, and our political insights would naturally result in growing an irresistible movement that would wash over, and cleanse our politics of the filth that is the status quo.

It is sobering to realize that it took almost four decades for the original Progressive Era organizers to bring about even the possibility of change.

I think it's dawning on us that we're not re-experiencing the moment before the election of Franklin Roosevelt, and the beginning of the New Deal, we're actually just now realizing the necessity of the daunting task of organizing, which makes our times resemble 1890 more than 1935.

Government by the people, and for the people has been drowned in the bath-tub, and the murderers have not only taken the reigns of power, but have convinced half the population that their murderous act represents a political correction that will return America to greatness.

It remains to be seen whether we will find it in our hearts to embrace both the hard, and un-glamorous work of relieving the pain inflicted by the regime that has engulfed us, and the necessity of embracing as brothers and sisters those who haven't yet realized that it is the rich and powerful who are the problem, and not all the other poor and oppressed.

The difficulty of affecting political change might be explained the way Black-Smiths describe their problem;

Life so short the craft so long to learn.

Even if it takes half as much time to defeat the Robber Barons this go-round, many of us will not see anything resembling ' victory ' in our lifetimes, so we have to make adjustments in our expectations, and accept the monumental nature of the tasks ahead.

Eureka Springs , February 16, 2018 at 10:32 am

"that this nation, under God, shall have a new birth of freedom -- and that government of the people, by the people, for the people, shall not perish from the earth."

A nice excerpt from the non-binding Gettysburg address. Too bad he was referring to a system of governance which never existed.

In a conversation with several friends yesterday.. all of us found among our greatest despairs the behavior of our long time friends who are Democrats. Much more pig-headed and determined to stay that way than Republicans ever were during the Bush Jr. years. Pretending we live in some sort of system (much less a party) which could or would possibly represent. Seemingly incapable of listening, blinded by delusion and propaganda demanding anyone in their presence double down on what's failed so many of us for far longer than we have lived.

All of us men in our fifties. Hard working. None of us had kids of our own, but several are in relationships with women who did. None of us have anything close to high living standards. Barely getting by now with great uncertainty ahead. Hell, we all own our homes outright, drive ten to twenty year old cars, buy most clothes second hand, grow much of our own food, cut our own firewood, several live off the grid entirely. Only one has access to health care and that's because he's on disability due to spinal injury on the job and an inherited heart condition. He's also the only one who might be able to get by in 'retirement' years on what he will receive. Every one of the rest of us realized if we lose our current jobs we would be hard pressed to replace them at half the income we have now.

I went to orientation for jury duty this week. Out of a hundred and fifty people I was the only man wearing a button down shirt and a sport coat. The only man who removed his hat in the courtroom. And I felt like a freak. It was all I could do to not ask the judge about jury nullification. The only reason I held back is because I knew every citizen in the joint just wanted out of there.

I think delegitimization is upon us. General malaise is nearly to the point of a general strike. The house of cards is in a slow motion but certain wind storm. Those thousand dollar checks at Wal-Mart payday will vanish overnight while the wealthy reap tax benefits for years on end. We are down to the twenty seven percent (Dems) waging false battles with the twenty six percent (Reps). Only the 47 percent rest of us will grow in numbers from here on out.

Watt4Bob , February 16, 2018 at 11:20 am

Only the 47 percent rest of us will grow in numbers from here on out.

So there is our hope. Personally, I suspect that Trump's working-class supporters will join us sooner than the deluded, diehard Clintonista faction of the democratic base. And let's hope the false battles don't turn into real battles. It's obvious there are some who would love to have us throwing rocks at each other, or worse.

juliania , February 16, 2018 at 12:58 pm

Yes, indeed, you have it. Delegitimization is the appropriate word. My thought on seeing the headline that 17 died in the Florida school shooting was how many months to go before the school year ends. I won't read anything about the shooter, or the deaths, or the bravery and self sacrifice. There have been too many; there will be far too many more.

It is an end-of-Vietnam moment. It is a moment for poems such as the above mentioned, and for me T.S.Eliot's 'Four Quartets'.

Petter , February 16, 2018 at 8:45 am

Book: The Administration of Fear – Paul Virilio. From the back cover: We are facing the emergence of a real, collective madness reinforced by the synchronization of emotions: the sudden globalization of affects in real time that hits all of humanity at the same time, and in the name of Progress. Emergency exit: we have entered a time of general panic.
-- --

suffer , February 16, 2018 at 8:46 am

what is your suffering of choice?

http://mentalfloss.com/article/58230/how-tell-whether-youve-got-angst-ennui-or-weltschmerz

Colonel Smithers , February 16, 2018 at 8:51 am

Thank you to Yves and the NC community.

Perhaps because I live in the UK, I echo particularly what Clive, Windsock and Plutonium Kun say.

Having spent much of the winter in Belgium, Mauritius, Spain and France, so none Anglo-Saxon, it was a relief to get away from the UK in the same way as JLS felt. Although these countries have their issues, I did notice their MSM appear not as venal as the UK and US MSM and seem more focused on local bread and butter. Brexit and Trump were mentioned very briefly, the latter nothing as hysterical and diversionary as in the UK and US. There were little identity politics on parade. Locals don't seem as worn out, in all respects, as one observes in Blighty.

With regard to PK's reference about Pearl Harbour, I know some well informed remainers who want a hard Brexit just for the relief that it will bring. Others, not necessarily remainers, have no idea what's going on and think Trump is a bigger threat. I must confess to, often, sharing what the former think, if only to bring the neo-liberal house down once and for all.

All this makes me think whether anglo-saxon countries are in a class of their own and how, after Brexit, the EU27 will evolve, shorn of the UK. This is not to say that the UK (the neo-liberal bit) is the only rotten apple in the EU.

If it was not for this site and community, I know of no other place where I would get a better source of news, insight and sanity. I know a dozen journalists, mainly in London, well and echo what Norello said.

Quentin , February 16, 2018 at 11:43 am

The Anglo-American countries can not be anything but in a class of their own. They include the mother country with former colonies, some especially successful, and rule the world by virtue of language, wealth and, often necessarily, violence, almost always gratuitous.

Violence has an effect on peoples lives at both the giving and receiving ends. What was this school shooting? The 13th or something since the beginning of the year. War. Nuclear war. A fear of war is the undertone which has been droning (!) on long before Donald Trump took power. Image you are in Baghdad on the glorious, glittering night of Shock and Awe to get a feel for things. That happened when the US was supposedly great.

LizinOregon , February 16, 2018 at 11:33 pm

Is pretending all is well a rational defense against the overwhelming feeling that there is nothing an individual can do to deflect the trajectory we are on? And the emotional energy it takes to keep up that pretense is exhausting.

Jane , February 16, 2018 at 9:30 am

I understand she's eager to leave but where to?! Isnt everywhere infected with this angst?

Yves Smith Post author , February 16, 2018 at 12:13 pm

She spends a lot of time in Asia .

Steve , February 16, 2018 at 9:37 am

I think for myself and others that the complete hopelessness of our situation is starting to take more of a toll. The amount of personal and social capital used to finally get some sanity back in government after Bush and the disastrous wasted opportunity of Obama that led to Trump is overwhelming. The complete loss of fairness is everywhere and my pet one this week is how Experian after losing over 200 million personal financial records is now advertising during the Olympics as the personal security service experts instead of being prosecuted out of business.

DJG , February 16, 2018 at 9:52 am

Yesterday was peculiar, Yves Smith. You should have sent me an e-mail! My colleagues were having meltdowns (overtired, I think). My computers were glitchy. The WWW seemed to switch on and off all day long. I am of a mind that it has to due with the false spring: We had a thaw in Chicago.

Like Lambert, and I won't speak for Lambert, who can speak for himself, I am guardedly optimistic: I have attended Our Revolution meetings here in Chicago as well as community meetings. There are many hardworking and savvy people out there. Yet I also believe that we are seeing the collapse of the old order without knowing what will arise anew. And as always, I am not one who believes that we should advocate more suffering so that people "learn their lesson." There is already too much suffering in the world–witness the endless U.S. sponsored wars in the Middle East. (The great un-covered story of our time: The horrors of the U.S.-Israeli-Saudi sponsored massacres from Algeria to Pakistan.)

I tend to think that the Anglo-American world is having a well-deserved nervous breakdown.

I note on my FB page that a "regular Democrat" is calling for war by invoking Orwell. When someone has reached that point of rottenness, not even knowing that Orwell was almost by nature anti-war, the rot can only continue its collapse.

So I offer Antonio Gramsci, who in spite of everything, used to write witty letters from prison. >>

My state of mind brings together these two sentiments and surpasses them: I am pessimistic because of intelligence, but a willed optimist. I think, in every circumstance, of the worst scenario so I can marshal all of my reserves of will and be ready to overcome the obstacle. I never allow myself illusions, and I have never had disappointments. I am always specially armed with endless patience, not passive or inert, but patience animated by perseverance.
–Antonio Gramsci, letter to his brother Gennaro, December 1929. Translation DJG.

Every collapse brings intellectual and moral disorder in its wake. So we must foster people who are sober, have patience, who do not despair when faced with the worst horrors yet who do not become elated over every stupid misstep. Intelligence makes us pessimists, and our will makes us optimists.
–Antonio Gramsci, first Prison Notebook, 1929-1930. Translation DJG.

So: Commenting groundlings and comrades, we must be alert, somewhat severe in our judgments of people and of the news, and yet open to a revolution that includes bread and roses.

Eclair , February 16, 2018 at 11:52 am

Nice find, DJG: "Our intelligence makes us pessimists, and our will makes us optimists."

Too big for a bumper sticker . but good for a bedside table or the bathroom mirror. To remind us that, for the realists, being optimistic takes an effort of will, a determined reach every single morning to find just one small thing that will keep us going for that day and give us hope for the future. It could be a rosy sunrise, or the imminent arrival of a grandchild, or a packet of seeds ready to be sown. Or meeting a good friend for coffee, or mastering a new dance step or a difficult passage on the fiddle.

Not denial of the world's shameful faults and of our increasingly precarious position within it, but a refusal to allow them to grind us down completely.

Left in Wisconsin , February 16, 2018 at 2:34 pm

Intelligence makes us pessimists, and our will makes us optimists.

My favorite quote. What else is there?

And if you want to know who the enemy is, it is all those whose cure for what ails us is either "Just going on living your life (i.e. shopping)" or "just vote". I view the current period of disquiet and all of us wondering what we can and should do, and who will be alongside us, or opposed to us, when we do.

Lambert Strether , February 16, 2018 at 5:22 pm

> Pessimism of the the intellect, optimism of the will

I think -- call me Pollyanna if you wish -- that optimism of the intellect is warranted as well. My only concern is that collapse will come (or be induced) when "the good guys,"* let us say, are still to weak to take advantage of the moment. That's why I keep saying that gridlock is our friend.

* Who in the nature of the case have been unaccustomed to wielding real power.

Eclair , February 16, 2018 at 6:08 pm

I have been fortunate, in the past decade, to have 'hung out' with lots of 20-somethings (and a few older beings) who have been passionately optimistic about what they can accomplish against the forces of darkness. From the environmentalists who are fighting the corporations who would build pipelines and LNG terminals to activists building tiny houses for the homeless and working with the city to find land to place them on, and those who happily get arrested for sleeping under a blanket, in protest against 'urban camping' bans, to a woman who for the last five years has served Friday night meals for all, on sidewalks in front of businesses supporting the urban camping ban.

And, I have been constantly in awe of those who, in the face of centuries of being relocated, dispossessed, despised and massacred, will not give up on protecting their lands and their way of life. These Lakota and Kiowa and Dineh people are truly optimistic that they will prevail. Or, perhaps fatalistic is a better description; hey know they may die trying.

The Rev Kev , February 16, 2018 at 9:57 am

Looks like this article has a lot of legs on it but will wait to read more commentator's thoughts and ideas before doing so myself. Too much to take in. In the meantime. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9WatQeG5fMU

R , February 16, 2018 at 10:19 am

As a New Zealander living in the USA for around 7 years now (but routinely spending Christmas months back in NZ, and often multi month stints remote working in Europe) the 'tension' just living in the USA – NYC / LA is through the roof.

I can remember being in Vienna some time after trump won, a few days shy of returning to the US and wondering what the hell I was thinking – and that's related to people / media's reaction to trump just as much as trump being in charge.

It's hard to put your finger on exactly what it is – partly just the 'big metropolis' thing.. but there's also something else nasty in the air.

Similar (but amplified) feeling at work last week at the office as one quarter of the company were sacked on a days notice – a downsizing at a start up that supposedly has 'great culture'.

It's that nasty squeeze of fast capitalism I believe that has a grip on everyone's psyche – elevated fear levels, etc.

Re-read Ames' 'going postal' a few weeks back, which covers brilliantly the vicious cultural turn under Reagan.

Ps – Naked Capitalism has become my 'News refuge' having dropped off social media entirely, and wanting to avoid the general insanity of the news cycle but not disengage, thank you!

tegnost , February 16, 2018 at 10:22 am

It's not so much the presence of angst that I see, among my working brethren we're pretty numb to the current hopeless future and tend to focus instead on the present for efficiencies sake, for if one thinks too much about the hopeless future it's hard to get up and get going on fighting back the tide and muddling through the hopeless present that will be more hopeless if you don't do anything. (as an aside my opinion is that this psychology has much to do with the current homeless crisis it takes confidence to try and those who can delude themselves into doing so seem to be a little better off) But now the angst is in the the 10%er's in my acquaintance, who claim to be really worried about nuclear war. Not surprisingly they're mostly informed by npr, which as far as I can see makes people really stupid. The trump as crazy fascist narrative has them in it's clutches so much so that his weekend I had to give the "don't be too pessimistic b/c if the world doesn't end you will be unprepared for it, and if it ends who cares?" speech normally reserved for youngsters who see no point in trying due to end of the world thinking (as anecdote since when I was in college in the early '80's I was pretty certain there would be a nuclear war and made different choices than the best ones,, anyone remember the star wars missile defense system?). That said I think the "we're all gonna die" theme is just more bs sour grapes and more proof that the residence of hopelessness is actually the democrat partisans who refuse to live in the present, so denial is where they are at. But isn't that the thing about angst, it doesn't have to be real to effect one's life negatively, and I'm hearing it from people who I think should know better, but I read nc daily and live out in the woods (highly recommended, almost as good as being in another country as the rural areas of the US are actually another country) and npr was so unhinged this weekend that I felt that even the reporters were having a hard time mustering the outrage. As Hope said commenting on the uber series
"What a pleasure it is to read a genuine (and all too rare) piece of financial analysis."
I couldn't agree more, and I might send it on to a 10%er, but they seem kind of fragile lately and I don't know if they could handle "uber is a failing enterprise", they might not get out of bed

tegnost , February 16, 2018 at 1:31 pm

oops sorry that was hana not hope

Travis Bickle , February 16, 2018 at 10:22 am

Don't know if I'm any more sensitive than you guys, and I'm certainly not that good at articulating what's going in with something this subtle.

I will say that when the dogs stop barking its time to start getting REALLY worried. What we may now be hearing, or not hearing, may be a sign of fatigue, but more depressingly, impending resignation. EVERY day for the past year there's been yet another affront, and the opposition has been ineffective in any meaningful sense. Trump has apparently learned that the way to parry any thrust is to counter with something even more outrageous, literally in a matter of minutes. The initiative he is thus able to maintain is scary, and something I see no way to surmount.

But Trump is not the problem here, only the Front Man for something larger. Even during the early oughts one could perceive a fundamental societal drift, empowered by a 'conservative' (read: fascist) willingness to do whatever was necessary in pursuit of their particular vision. It is not a vision of returning disempowered white folks to some rosy past that never existed; I sense a more feudal vision, with princes and lords in gated communities, with peasants conned into doing their bidding, every day being fleeced even further.

Hence, having the means, though by no means being rich, I began my move off-shore over ten years ago. I now have 3 passports and permanent residency on as many continents. What Jerri-Lynn senses is very, very real, as I learned in the US over Xmas past in a series of vignettes I'll spare anyone reading this. I was sharing my experiences there to a local student recently (here in South America) who had once lived in the US and who continues to be enamored of the now frayed, and largely repudiated, American Dream. As I explained to him, it's not a pretty picture, and hardly one to succumb to.

My sense is that the media has succeeded in instilling into the North American zeitgeist a sense of the US being At War against the rest of the world, not unlike that of the mentality of Israel, which has a far more real situation to contend with. The tragedy, in the case of the US, is that it really, really does not have to be like this. This is a hole we have begun digging ourselves into only recently, as opposed to Israel, which at this point can hardly see the light of day.

At some point this mentality becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy, and while the US could easily turn itself around, the momentum is strong and decidedly in the other direction. The vision of the fascists and the imperatives of the media pretty much guarantee the US, and by extension the world, is on a collision course with negative time and space.

Left in Wisconsin , February 16, 2018 at 2:37 pm

Everything holds until it doesn't.

Lambert Strether , February 16, 2018 at 5:30 pm

Herbert Stein disagrees with Godot's Vladimir: ""If something cannot go on forever, it will stop."

Andrew Watts , February 16, 2018 at 10:33 am

I'm probably the last person able to comment on this topic having spent the last three months ignoring the news and not even reading Naked Capitalism daily. I was never bothered by the big stories like the drama over North Korea which I thought of as nothing more than a psy-op incidentally aimed at the American populace. Nor did I find Liberal Hezbollah (The Resistance) or #Metoo to be anything more than a joke. I kinda suspected that American culture would be plagued by another round of hysterical superstition driven by Calvinist social-jihadism.

If there seems to be a lack of consequential events it's because history doesn't move as swiftly as we might want. It doesn't mean that we aren't moving towards more worldview shattering events which will challenge the ability of our body politic to react to them. The United States continues to collapse driven by external and internal factors. The lack of clarity and unity of action will eventually usher in the end of the empire aboard. The inability of our ruling class to respond to Trump's election in such a manner which would constructively restore faith in our institutions will only accelerate the process at home. There isn't a lack of stories which serve as a useful guide through history. The story about American troops being ambushed and dying in Niger was significant.

A few years before the Islamic State steamrolled through Iraq and Syria it was mostly unnoticed that the French were contending with rebels marauding through their African protection racket in Mali and the Central African Republic. The fact that the US is having to prop up the French and that the chaos has been migrating southward is significant especially given the economic factors at stake. Another story I found interesting was a recent DW article about the woeful state of readiness of the German military given it is assuming leadership of a prominent position in NATO. It notably reveals that in the aftermath of the 2008 economic crisis and euro crisis the Germans, but probably the European countries as a whole, have been strip-mining their military budgets which is something that America did during the Great Depression. I'm sure there is even more stories out there that are little pieces of a much larger puzzle but to be honest I've mostly spent my downtime playing video games.

Don't judge me.

Andrew Watts , February 16, 2018 at 9:16 pm

True enough. It shouldn't go unnoticed that Obama was calling for NATO nations to increase their military spending 'til they reach 2% of their GDP. The Germans wouldn't theoretically have any trouble meeting under normal circumstances. It's also a far cry from what Germany spent on the eve of both World Wars.

kareninca , February 16, 2018 at 8:58 pm

"Basically everything and anything anti-Republican & anti-Trump that gets published on Facebook gets re-posted on our church Facebook page."

Hmmm. Are you losing parishioners as a result? Or gaining them? It doesn't seem to me like what people would be looking for in a faith community – an overload of politics – but what do I know.

Oh, I see that you've already sort of answered that question.

CalypsoFacto , February 16, 2018 at 4:19 pm

the tendency to excessive rage when identity is questioned is a feature of narcissism. excessive, misplaced, out of proportion rage (at being denied what was expected, at being wrong, at being seen as incompetent, whatever conflicts with the rager's identity) is what this sounds like to me. which is I guess another form of not thinking enough, unfortunately narcissism isn't curable.

in fact so much of this thread makes me feel like we're all suffering a bit as grey rocks in a narcissistic abuse scenario. the narcissism is at the individual level and at the societal level; we're all just trying to keep our heads down and avoid the maelstrom, which keeps increasing in intensity to get our attention back.

freedeomny , February 16, 2018 at 11:36 am

What I have noticed is: a sense of powerlessness and not being able to control basic aspects of your life .that at any moment things could spiral widely out of control; people have become more enraged, meaner and feel they don't even have to be polite anymore (my friends and I have noticed this even with drivers); people who normally would be considered comfortable are feeling more and more financially insecure. Almost everyone I know feels this tension and is trying to figure out what they need to do to survive – I know several who are exploring becoming expats. I think we are rapidly moving towards a breaking point .

windsock , February 16, 2018 at 11:37 am

https://www.standard.co.uk/comment/comment/cheer-up-the-apocalypse-isn-t-coming-and-life-s-getting-better-a3768606.html

PKMKII , February 16, 2018 at 11:58 am

The angst feels not like the angst of an impending, singular catastrophe, but rather the angst of decline. There's a late empire feel to the current mood: leaders without agency, more interested in their own, internal sense of normalcy and maintaining their perches, perches that increasingly feel pointless as they're all just listless figureheads doing what the Magister Militum tells them to do.

The military feels all-encompassing yet simultaneously incapable of exercising its will in the theater of war, so dispersed and aimless, as the missions are no longer about winning wars but about resume building. Same for the security agencies, whose invasive practices feel less like a preparation for a 1984-style security state, and more a cover for their own incompetence and inability to do proper legwork, as these mass shootings seem to inevitably come with the revelation about how authorities were alerted prior to the fact of the shooter's warning signs and did no follow up. Meanwhile, standards of living decline for the vast majority of Americans, the sense of national unity is eroding as regional and rural/urban identities are superseding that of country. Not to mention the slow simmer that is global warming and climate change.

So yeah, nothing that translates to a flashy headline or all-at-once collapse, but definitely an angst of a slow slide down, with too much resistance to the change needed to reverse it.

polecat , February 16, 2018 at 2:53 pm

My feeling is that the U$A, along with various sovereign entities around much the planet will, within a decade or so, cease to exist in their current form. When people coalesce and societies reform, is when one gets/is forced .. to choose their 'new' afilliation(s) !

It will be facinating to behold, if one is alive to partake in it ! As for positive, or negative outcomes who knows ?

Wyoming , February 16, 2018 at 12:01 pm

Yves

I believe that what is happening is that slowly but surely the numbers of people who are subconsciously reacting to the ongoing collapse of civilization are growing. They are uneasy, anxious, deflated, waiting for Godot, in depression and so on.

Civililizations don't collapse like falling off a table. They stress resources of materials and people and such stresses build and build. This has serious psychological impacts. Numbness to new is bad news. Or what used to be bad news has to be Trumped by exceedingly bad news before folks can rise to deal with them, but for a shorter time than they had the ability they used to. As the number of people grows who have reached their capacity to tolerate the stress we will find more and more of them just shut down as their subconscious tells them there is no point in caring anymore as things are just going to get worse.

We all see things getting worse.

So we have little collapses on a regular basis which hardly ruffle anyone's feathers anymore. The moderate catastrophic disasters like Trumps election cause much bigger disruptions to the civilizational equilibrium, but only for a time. We all know deep inside that what comes next in Brexit or say Trumps removal will actually be worse than what we have now. And we know that such will be the trend for the duration. Each time we seem to overcome a disaster we will be presented with another building disaster. A worse one. As we continue to stair step down the long slope that our civilization climbed during the renaissance and the enlightenment. Trump and Brexit are medium steps down.

The Black Swan is out there somewhere watching us. The big step down. We can feel it coming and we cannot stop it. We know that what seems bad now is going to be a lot worse in the future. We know this and it makes us helpless.

Skip above has the word on this.

"The centre does not hold, mere anarchy is loosed upon the world".

Oregoncharles , February 16, 2018 at 2:04 pm

"The Second Coming," 1919: http://www.potw.org/archive/potw351.html

akaPaul LaFargue , February 16, 2018 at 12:13 pm

The Worst Well-Being Year on Record for the U.S. – Gallup

"Americans' well-being took a big hit nationally in 2017, according to the Gallup-Sharecare Well-Being Index, which recorded declines in 21 states. Why did well-being drop, and where were the declines most pronounced?"

OK- no endorsement from me re the validity of this Index, BUT the podcast raises an important point vis a vis 2009 downturn in their Index.

https://www.spreaker.com/user/gallupstrengthscenter/the-worst-well-being-year-on-record-for-

Loneprotester , February 16, 2018 at 12:20 pm

I think what we have here is a Mexican standoff the likes of which has perhaps never been seen. I am 51 years old. For most of my life there has been a polite changing of the guards to no great effect every four years. Trump rode into Washington on a bridge burning mission and all that has changed. Or were the bridges burned upon his approach, after which he was framed for the crime? This is the essence of the problem we face as a country, and the world watching on with bated breath.

I still do not know what is "true" about any of this "Russiagate" contretemps. Perhaps none of it. Perhaps all of it. I suspect both parties and candidates were hand fed dubious information then tried to hide the wrappers from the "authorities" who (naturally) were only interested in how any of it impacted them personally and institutionally, and so on and so forth, etc. etc.

But where does that get us a nation? If you are a child and you walk into your parent's bedroom to find your mother screwing the gardener you may be upset. But then if you run down the hall to your brother's room to tell him and find your father en flagrante with the nanny, well where do you go from there?

We have to find a way to deescalate with each other as Americans. I find myself repeatedly smiling blankly in conversations with family, friends, and strangers who will all equally complain vociferously about someone who is definitely destroying the planet/country/children. But that only gets you so far. If you do not engage after a few minutes you are viewed with great suspicion. And then only the strongest bonds of love can save you from being cast aside or worse.

Deescalate now. I'm gonna put it on a tshirt.

By the way, reading a lot of Jung right now. Anyone else?

Blitz , February 16, 2018 at 12:31 pm

For the better part of the last 45 years I have traveled the world, worked with individuals in different cultures, walked among and shared bread and stories with many people in their living quarters and the news of today is not so much (occasionally) about the depth of love that exists around the world but only about the evils we are told about in pages of the WaPo, NYTimes and even the WST. So sad because there is so much good to view but good rarely delivers headlines and headlines sell news and make journalists.

The news is slow because the liberal media just can't dig out that one great story or smokin' gun that brings down Trump & Co. This whole story is stale and at the point of "who cares" ..well, the liberals seem to be the only interested parties. I am not a Republican or Conservative or aligned with any party but an American who looks for the best talent of any party to represent us .citizens of the U.S.A. I laugh at the whole 'Russian Thing' . like this is NEW news when it's as old as the Roman Empire. There are many of us true Americans that if our democracy was every challenged, threatened or in trouble would rise up against any threat–and more than likely not with guns but with our minds, our knowledge and our ability to talk calmly and rationally rather than shout threats on Twitter.

The media needs to get over itself and quit trying to be the type of police we all despise .manipulated headlines are part of the problem with the 'stillness' today. If you can't dig up any worthy headlines that will sell the news, then go home and close the cover of your computer and find someone to hug ..God knows we can all use an extra level of love in today's seemingly gloomy lack of news world.

Wyoming , February 16, 2018 at 6:31 pm

Well put.

Clif , February 16, 2018 at 1:30 pm

a pretty good question in the face of all the noise.

i believe it is in response to the saturated level of cognitive dissonance. an inverse reaction to the lack of transparency and unresponsiveness of both commercial and governmental activities.

the sensitivity of untoward persuasion on social media an indication of the fallibility of the centralized narrative?

Jeremy Grimm , February 16, 2018 at 2:06 pm

I have felt an eery disquiet for the last several years, more or less since the year I retired. I think retirement finally offered me the time I needed to see and think about the world. For the last few years I have felt a strong need to move away to higher ground and a smaller community further out from the cities. Churchill's book title "Gathering Storm" seems apt, but war seems only one of the many possible storms gathering and I think one of the least likely at present although the actions and qualities of those who rule us make even nuclear war seem possible. And I take little comfort from learning how close we came to nuclear war in the past and how the unstable mechanisms guiding us toward this brink remain in place with new embellishments for greater instability.

The economy is ambling a drunkard's walk climbing a knife's edge. The Corporations remain hard at work consolidating and building greater monopoly power, dismantling what remains of our domestic jobs and industry, and building ever more fragile supply chains. The government is busy dismantling the safety net, deconstructing health care, public education and science, bolstering the wealth of the wealthy, and stoking foreign wars while a tiff between factions within those who rule us fosters a new cold war and an arms build-up including building a new nuclear arsenal. In another direction Climate Disruption shows signs of accelerating while the new weather patterns already threaten random flooding and random destruction of cities. It already destroyed entire islands in the Caribbean. The government has proven its inability and unwillingness to do anything to prepare for the pending disasters or help the areas struck down in the seasons past. The year of Peak Oil is already in our past and there is nothing to fill its place. The world populations continue to grow exponentially. Climate Disruption promises to reduce food production and move the sources for fresh water and the worlds aquifers are drying up. It's as if a whole flock of black swans is looking for places to land.

I quit watching tv, listening to the radio, and reading newspapers long ago. The news desert isn't new or peculiar to this moment. I haven't seen much of interest in the news from any source since the election. The noise of social media and celebrity news does seem turned up higher recently, although I base this judgment on occasional peeks at magazines or snatches of NPR. After the last election I gave up on the possibility that we still had a democracy in this country. Over the last several years I've had some expensive and unpleasant dealings with local government, the schools, law enforcement, the courts, and government agencies in helping one and then the other of my children through difficulties which confirmed in the particular all my worst beliefs about the decay of our government and legal systems. In short my personal anxiety has been at a high level for some time now and I can't say its peaked lately. I don't get out and around enough to get a good sense of how others feel and certainly can't judge whether this moment is a moment of peaking anxiety. When I've been in the City and nearby cities I've long had a feeling of passing through a valley between mountains of very dry tender. I hold my head low and walk quickly to my destinations. Every so often I warn my children to move out, but they don't listen.

VietnamVet , February 16, 2018 at 10:11 pm

This is an excellent post and valid observations. Things don't seem right. I blame old age and being awaken by F-16s on combat patrols out of Andrews. For me the frame changed with the restart of the Cold War. I remember "Duck and Cover, McCarthyism, John Birchers, and Who Lost China". It has all come back. The Democrats are idiots for scapegoating Russia. President Donald Trump is incompetent. Scott Pruitt must fly first class because he cannot sit next to riff-raft like me who worked at his Agency for 37 years and hear that he has sold out the earth for short term gain and profit. America is at war, inside and out, with no way of winning.

The Rev Kev , February 16, 2018 at 10:15 pm

I am going to try to see if I can make sense of what has been happening the past few years but I could easily be as wrong as the next person but will try nonetheless. In reading the comments I can see the tension seeping through so to try to come to terms with it I will use the US as my focus though I could just as easily be talking about any other western country like the UK, Germany, Australia, France, etc. The US though is at the forefront of these changes so should be mentioned first.

The American people are now in what the military call a fire-sac and the door has been slammed shut behind them. What is more, I think they realize it. A few threads need mentioning here. A study that came out last year showed that what Americans wanted their government to do never becomes a consideration unless it aligned what some upper echelon also wanted. People want a military pull-back but are ignored and now find that American troops are digging into Syria and are scattered in places like Africa with the military wanting to go head-to-head with North Korea, Russia, China and a host of other nations. It has become blatantly obvious too that their vaunted free media has become little more than Pravda on the Potomac and in fact has aligning with the wealthy against the interests of the American people. The media is even helping bring in censorship as they know that their position is untenable. The entire political establishment is now recognized as a rigged deck with radical neoliberal politicians in charge and at the last election the best candidates that they could find out of 330 million Americans were Donald Trump and Hillary Clinton. The massive industry that built America has been mostly disassembled and shipped overseas and without the wealth and skills that it generated, infrastructure has been left to rack and ruin when it should be a core government function. Climate change cannot be ignored anymore and is starting to bite. Even the Pentagon is realising that some of its vaunted bases will be underwater in decades. I am sure other commentators can list yet more trends here but you get the picture.

OK, so there are massive problems but they can be faced and taken on but here is the kicker. The political establishment in your country does not want anything to change but to keep doing what is generated these problems. There is too much money at stake to change for them. In fact, one of the two presidential candidates in 2016 was specifically chosen to keep things going they way that they are. So where does that leave the American people? British officers have always been taught that when their men were complaining and bitching, that that was how it was but when the men were very quiet, that was the time to watch them carefully. I think something similar is at work here. It has not yet coalesced but what I think we are seeing is the beginnings of a phase shift in America. The unexpected election of Trump was a precursor but as nothing changed after he was elected the pressure is still building.

Now here is the part where I kick over everybody's tea wagon. In looking for a root cause to how all these challenges are being pushed down the road to an even worse conclusion, I am going to have to say that the problem lies in the fact that representative democracy no longer works. In fact, the representatives in the form of Senators, Reps, Judges and even the President have been almost totally dislocated from the will of the people. The connection is mostly not there anymore. It is this disconnection that is frustrating change and is thus building up pressure. I am all for democracy but the democracy we have is not the only form there is of democracy. There are others.
What this means is that somehow this is going to have to be changed and if not done peacefully, then I suspect that it will be done in some other way. That lull in the news may represent a general milling around if you will until some unknown catalyst appears to give the beginnings of a push in another direction. How it will work out in practice I do not know but if a mass of independents were elected in your mid-terms then that may be a good sign of change coming. If both parties clamp down and continue to keep all others out and continue with neoliberal policies, well, game on.

Erling , February 16, 2018 at 10:28 pm

We have for the last generation or two, (maybe three?) been relentlessly conditioned (name your puppet-master of choice) to equate happiness and contentment with the never ending pursuit of keeping up with the Joneses. The competitive underpinnings encouraging our participation in this futile contest fit well with our innate drives for "success". The race was over-subscribed by throngs of enthusiastic participants yearning for glory.

For decades many of us did well. We ran strong and felt rewarded with the material enhancements to our lives, which encouraged many of us to run faster, even if that motivation was rooted more in the fear of being passed by Ron and Nancy Jones than it was for improving our chances of ending up on the podium.

Even though we never seemed to catch or pass Ron or Nancy, surely they must have been out there ahead in the haze somewhere? After all, this was the race that we so eagerly had trained for. Plus, life was going well while we chased, so we figured it was a fruitful one to be a part of. All the effort and toil would be worth it in the end.

The slow arc of realization and barely perceptible sense over time (coupled with the self delusion that comes with resisting acceptance) that we have been duped that this Jones Marathon has actually been taking place on a treadmill which gradually (hardly noticeable, but cumulatively significant) has been ratcheted up in both speed and incline, has now hit home. We have been running for years, but going nowhere. We can't find the stop button, and don't even want to think what will happen to us if we were to slow down or stop running! Problem is not only are we are growing physically weary, we are dejected and defeated in spirit knowing that all our efforts have yielded little other than illusionary gains.

[Feb 17, 2018] Neo-McCarthyite Hysteria at US Senate Intelligence Committee Hearing Global Research - Centre for Research on Globalization

Notable quotes:
"... The concern of the American ruling class is not Russian or Chinese "subversion," but the growth of social opposition within the United States. The narrative of "Russian meddling" has been used to justify a systematic campaign to censor the Internet and suppress free speech. ..."
"... World Socialist Web Site ..."
Feb 17, 2018 | www.globalresearch.ca

The concern of the American ruling class is not Russian or Chinese "subversion," but the growth of social opposition within the United States. The narrative of "Russian meddling" has been used to justify a systematic campaign to censor the Internet and suppress free speech.

Senator Mark Warner

The performance of Senator Mark Warner , the ranking Democrat on the committee, was particularly obscene. Warner, whose net worth is estimated at $257 million, appeared to be doing his best impersonation of Senator Joe McCarthy . He declared that foreign subversion works together with, and is largely indistinguishable from, "threats to our institutions from right here at home."

Alluding to the publication of the so-called Nunes memo, which documented the fraudulent character of the Democratic-led investigation of White House "collusion" with Russia, Warner noted,

"There have been some, aided and abetted by Russian Internet bots and trolls, who have attacked the basic integrity of the FBI and the Justice Department."

Responding to questioning from Warner, FBI Director Christopher Wray praised the US intelligence agencies' greater "engagement" and "partnership" with the private sector, concluding,

"We can't fully police social media, so we have to work with them so that they can police themselves."

Wray was referring to the sweeping measures taken by social media companies, working directly with the US intelligence agencies, to implement a regime of censorship, including through the hiring of tens of thousands of "content reviewers," many with intelligence backgrounds, to flag, report and delete content.

The assault on democratic rights is increasingly connected to preparations for a major war, which will further exacerbate social tensions within the United States. Coats prefaced his remarks by declaring that "the risk of inter-state conflict, including among great powers, is higher than at any time since the end of the Cold War."

As the hearing was taking place, multiple news outlets were reporting that potentially hundreds of Russian military contractors had been killed in a recent US air strike in Syria. This came just weeks after the publication of the Pentagon's National Defense Strategy, which declared,

"Inter-state strategic competition, not terrorism, is now the primary concern in US national security."

However, the implications of this great-power conflict are not simply external to the US "homeland." The document argues that "the homeland is no longer a sanctuary," and that "America is a target," for "political and information subversion" on the part of "revisionist powers" such as Russia and China.

Since "America's military has no preordained right to victory on the battlefield," the only way the US can prevail in this conflict is through the "seamless integration of multiple elements of national power," including "information, economics, finance, intelligence, law enforcement and military."

In other words, America's supremacy in the new world of great-power conflict requires the subordination of every aspect of life to the requirements of war. In this totalitarian nightmare, already far advanced, the police, the military and the intelligence agencies unite with media and technology companies to form a single seamless unit, whose combined power is marshaled to manipulate public opinion and suppress political dissent.

The dictatorial character of the measures being prepared was underscored by an exchange between Wray and Republican Senator Marco Rubio , who asked whether Chinese students were serving as spies for Beijing.

"What is the counterintelligence risk posed to US national security from Chinese students, particularly those in advanced programs in the sciences and mathematics?" asked Rubio.

Wray responded that

"the use of nontraditional collectors, especially in the academic setting, whether it's professors, scientists, students, we see in almost every field office that the FBI has around the country, not just in major cities, small ones as well, basically every discipline."

This campaign, with racist overtones, recalls the official rationale -- defense of "national security" -- used to justify the internment of some 120,000 people of Japanese ancestry during the Second World War.

In its open letter calling for a coalition of socialist, antiwar and progressive websites against Internet censorship, the World Socialist Web Site noted that

"the ruling class has identified the Internet as a mortal threat to its monopolization of information and its ability to promote propaganda to wage war and legitimize the obscene concentration of wealth and extreme social inequality."

It is this mortal threat -- and fear of the growth of class conflict -- that motivate the lies and hypocrisy on display at the Senate Intelligence Committee hearing.

The original source of this article is World Socialist Web Site Copyright © Andre Damon , World Socialist Web Site , 2018

[Feb 16, 2018] The Pathetic Inadequacy of the Trump Opposition The American Conservative by Paul Brian

Notable quotes:
"... Dancing With The Stars ..."
"... The Washington Post. ..."
"... Paul Brian is a freelance journalist. He has reported for BBC, Reuters, and Foreign Policy, and contributed to the Week, The Federalist, and others. He covered the fledgling U.S. alt-right at a 2014 conference in Hungary as well as the 2015 New Hampshire primary, and also made a documentary about his time living in the Republic of Georgia in 2012. You can follow him on Twitter @paulrbrian or visit his website www.paulrbrian.com . ..."
Feb 16, 2018 | www.theamericanconservative.com

The hawks and internationalists who set our house on fire don't now deserve the contract to rebuild it.

While it may have significant popular support, much of the anti-Trump "Resistance" suffers from a severe weakness of message. Part of the problem is with who the Resistance's leading messengers are: discredited neoconservative poltroons like former president George W. Bush, unwatchable alleged celebrities like Chelsea Handler, and establishment Republicans who routinely slash and burn the middle class like Senator Jeff Flake. Furthermore, what exactly is the Resistance's overriding message? Invariably their sermonizing revolves around vague bromides about "tolerance," diversity, unrestricted free trade, and multilateralism. They routinely push a supposed former status quo that was in fact anything but a status quo. The leaders of the Resistance have in their arsenal nothing but buzzwords and a desire to feel self-satisfied and turn back to imagined pre-Trump normality. A president like Donald Trump is only possible in a country with opposition voices of such subterranean caliber.

Remember when Trump steamrolled a crowded field of Republicans in one of the greatest electoral upsets in American history? Surely many of us also recall the troupes of smug celebrities and Bushes and Obamas who lined up to take potshots at Trump over his unacceptably cruel utterances that upset their noble moral sensibilities? How did that work out for them? They lost. The more that opposition to Trump in office takes the same form as opposition to him on the campaign trail, the more hypocritical and counterproductive it becomes. Further, the resistance to Trump's policies is coming just at the moment when principled opposition most needs to up its game and help turn back the hands of the Doomsday Clock. It's social conservatives who are also opposed to war and exploitation of the working class who have the best moral bona fides to effectively oppose Trump, which is why morally phrased attacks on Trump from the corporate and socially liberal wings of the left, as well as the free market and interventionist conservative establishment, have failed and will continue to fail. Any real alternative is going to have to come from regular folks with hearts and morals who aren't stained by decades of failure and hypocrisy.

A majority of Democrats now have favorable views of George W. Bush, and that's no coincidence. Like the supposedly reasonable anti-Trump voices on their side, Bush pops up like a dutiful marionette to condemn white supremacy and "nativism," and to reminisce about the good old days when he was in charge. Bush also lectures about how Russia is ruining everything by meddling in elections and destabilizing the world. But how convincing is it really to hear about multilateralism and respect for human rights from Bush, who launched an unnecessary war on Iraq that killed hundreds of thousands of civilians and left thousands of American servicemen and women dead and wounded? How convincing is it when former secretary of state Madeleine Albright, who famously remarked that an estimated half a million Iraqis dead from our 1990s sanctions was "worth it," haughtily claims that she's "offended" by Trump's travel ban ? "Offended" -- is that so, Madame Secretary? I have a feeling millions of Muslims in the Middle East may have also been "offended" when people like you helped inflame their region and turned it into an endless back-and-forth firestorm of conflict between U.S.-backed dictators and brutal jihadists, with everyone else caught in between.

Maybe instead of being offended that not everyone can come to America, people like Albright, Kerry, and Bush shouldn't have contributed to the conditions that wrecked those people's homes in the first place? Maybe the U.S. government should think more closely about providing military aid to 73 percent of the world's dictatorships? Sorry, do excuse the crazy talk. Clearly all the ruthless maneuvering by the U.S. and NATO is just being done out of a selfless desire to spread democratic values by raining down LGBT-friendly munitions on beleaguered populations worldwide. Another congressman just gave a speech about brave democratic principles so we can all relax.

Generally, U.S. leaders like to team up with dictators before turning on them when they become inconvenient or start to upset full-spectrum dominance. Nobody have should been surprised to see John Kerry fraternizing in a friendly manner with Syrian butcher Bashar al-Assad and then moralistically threatening him with war several years later, or Donald Rumsfeld grinning with Saddam Hussein as they cooperated militarily before Rumsfeld did an about-face on the naïve dictator based on false premises after 9/11. Here's former president Barack Obama shaking Moammar Gaddafi's hand in 2009 . I wonder what became of Mr. Gaddafi?

It's beyond parody to hear someone like Bush sternly opine that there's "pretty clear evidence" Russia meddled in the 2016 election. Even if that were deeply significant in the way some argue, Bush should be the last person anyone is hearing from about it. It's all good, though: remember when Bush laughed about how there hadn't been weapons of mass destruction in Iraq at the White House Correspondents Dinner in 2004? It's all just a joke; don't you get it? (Maybe Saddam Hussein had already used all the chemical weapons the U.S. helped him get during the 1980s on Iran in the Iran-Iraq War, which killed over one million people by the time the coalition of the willing came knocking in 2003). That's the kind of thing people like Bush like to indirectly joke about in the company of self-satisfied press ghouls at celebratory dinners. However, when the mean man Mr. Trump pals around with Russian baddie Vladimir Putin, mistreats women, or spews out unkind rhetoric about "shitholes," it's far from a joke: it's time to get out your two-eared pink hat and hit the streets chanting in righteous outrage.

To be fair, Trump is worthy of opposition. An ignorant, reactive egotist who needs to have his unfounded suppositions and inaccuracies constantly validated by a sycophantic staff of people who'd be rejected even for a reality show version of the White House, he really is an unstable excuse for a leader and an inveterate misogynist and all the other things. Trump isn't exactly Bible Belt material despite his stamp of approval from Jerry Falwell Jr. and crew; in fact he hasn't even succeeded in getting rid of the Johnson Amendment and allowing churches to get more involved in politics, one of his few concrete promises to Christian conservatives. He's also a big red button of a disaster in almost every other area as commander-in-chief.

Trump's first military action as president reportedly killed numerous innocent women and children (some unnamed U.S. officials claim some of the women were militants) as well as a Navy SEAL. Helicopter gunships strafed a Yemeni village for over an hour in what Trump called a "highly successful" operation against al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula (AQAP). A senior military official felt differently, saying that "almost everything went wrong." The raid even killed eight-year-old American girl Nawar al-Awlaki, daughter of previously killed extremist leader Anwar al-Awlaki, whose other innocent child, 16-year-old Abdulrahman al-Awlaki, was also droned while eating outdoors at a restaurant in 2010 (with several friends and his 17-year-old cousin). The Obama administration dismissed Abdulrahman's death at the time as no big deal .

The list goes on with the Trump administration, a hollow outfit of Goldman Sachs operatives and detached industry and financier billionaires helping out their hedge fund friends and throwing a small table scrap to the peasants every now and then. As deformed babies are born in Flint, Michigan , Ivanka grandstands about paid parental leave . Meanwhile, Trump and Co. work to expand the war in Afghanistan and Syria. It's a sad state of affairs.

So who are the right voices to oppose the mango man-child and his cadre of doddering dullards? Not degenerate celebrities, dirty politicians of the past, or special interest groups that try to fit everyone into a narrow electoral box so mainline Democrats can pass their own version of corporate welfare and run wars with more sensitive rhetoric and politically correct messaging. Instead, the effective dissidents of the future will be people of various beliefs, but especially the pro-family and faith-driven, who are just as opposed to what came before Trump as they are to him. The future of a meaningful political alternative to the underlying liberalism, materialism, and me-first individualism on the left and right will revolve around traditionalists and pro-family conservative individuals who define their own destinies instead of letting themselves be engineered into destinies manufactured by multinational corporations and boardroom gremlins with diversity outreach strategies. It's possible, for example, to be socially conservative, pro-worker, pro-environment, and anti-war. In fact, that is the norm in most countries that exist outside the false political paradigm pushed in America.

If enough suburbanite centrists who take a break from Dancing With The Stars are convinced that Trump is bad because George W. Bush and Madeleine Albright say so, it shows that these people have learned absolutely nothing from Trump or the process that led to him. These kind of resistors are the people nodding their heads emphatically as they read Eliot Cohen talk about why he and his friends can't stomach the evil stench of Trump or Robert Kagan whine about fascism in The Washington Post. Here's a warning to good people who may not have been following politics closely prior to Trump: don't get taken in by these charlatans. Don't listen to those who burned your town down as they pitch you the contract to rebuild it. You can oppose both the leaders of the "Resistance" and Trump. In fact, it is your moral duty to do so. This is the End of the End of History As We Know It, but there isn't going to be an REM song or Will Smith punching an alien in the face to help everyone through it.

Here's a thought for those finding themselves enthusiastic about the Resistance and horrified by Trump: maybe, just maybe , the water was already starting to boil before you cried out in pain and alarm.

Paul Brian is a freelance journalist. He has reported for BBC, Reuters, and Foreign Policy, and contributed to the Week, The Federalist, and others. He covered the fledgling U.S. alt-right at a 2014 conference in Hungary as well as the 2015 New Hampshire primary, and also made a documentary about his time living in the Republic of Georgia in 2012. You can follow him on Twitter @paulrbrian or visit his website www.paulrbrian.com .


Fran Macadam February 16, 2018 at 1:14 pm

Trump is definitely a castor oil antidote. But if not him, then them.
Frank , says: February 16, 2018 at 1:19 pm
Now this is TAC material!
Kent , says: February 16, 2018 at 1:48 pm
"The future of a meaningful political alternative to the underlying liberalism, materialism, and me-first individualism on the left and right will revolve around traditionalists and pro-family conservative individuals who define their own destinies instead of letting themselves be engineered into destinies manufactured by multinational corporations and boardroom gremlins with diversity outreach strategies."

They will have to lose their faith in "Free Market God" first. I don't believe that will happen.

Aaron Paolozzi , says: February 16, 2018 at 2:56 pm
I enjoyed the heat. The comments made are on point, and this is pretty much what my standard response to reactionary trump dissidents are. Trump is terrible, but so is what came before him, he is just easier to dislike.

Keep it coming.

One Guy , says: February 16, 2018 at 3:16 pm
Even with inadequate opposition, Trump has managed to be the most unpopular president after one year, ever. I'm guessing this speaks to his unique talent of messing things up.
RVA , says: February 16, 2018 at 4:11 pm
Wow! Paul! Babylon burning. Preach it, brother! Takes me back to my teenage years, Ramparts 1968, as another corrupt infrastructure caught fire and burned down. TAC is amazing, the only place to find this in true form.

Either we are history remembering fossils soon gone, or the next financial crash – now inevitable with passage of tax reform (redo of 2001- the rich got their money out, now full speed off the cliff), will bring down this whole mass of absolute corruption. What do you think will happen when Trump is faced with a true crisis? They're selling off the floorboards. What can remain standing?

And elsewhere in the world, who, in their right mind, would help us? Good riddance to truly dangerous pathology. The world would truly become safer with the USA decommissioned, and then restored, through honest travail, to humility, and humanity.

You are right. Be with small town, front porch, family and neighborhood goodness, and dodge the crashing embers.

The Flying Burrito Brothers: 'On the thirty-first floor a gold plated door
Won't keep out the Lord's burning rain '

God Bless.

Donald , says: February 16, 2018 at 5:50 pm
I agree with Frank. This was great.

The depressing thing to me is how hard it is to get people to see this. You have people who still think Trump is doing a great job and on the other side people who admire the warmongering Resistance and think Hillary's vast experience in foreign policy was one of her strengths, rather than one of the main reasons to be disgusted by her. Between the two categories I think you have the majority of American voters.

[Feb 11, 2018] How Russiagate fiasco destroys Kremlin moderates, accelerating danger for a hot war

Highly recommended!
Notable quotes:
"... The pro-Hillary warmongering media, the ones that pushed for war in Iraq and elsewhere, through big lies and false evidence, are the vanguard of this ugly machine that supports the most terrible Trump administration bills, yet, this machine can't stop accusing him for 'colluding' with Russia that 'interfered' in the 2016 US election. Of course, no evidence presented for such an accusation and no one really can explain what that 'interference' means. ..."
"... They're accusing the President of the United States of being a Russian agent, this has never happened in American history. However much you may loathe Trump, this is a whole new realm of defamation. For a number of years, there's been a steady degradation of American political culture and discourse, generally. There was a time when I hoped or thought that it would be the Democratic Party that would push against that degradation ..."
"... Now, however, though I'm kind of only nominally, a Democrat, it's the Democratic Party that's degrading our political culture and our discourse. So, this is MSNBC, which purports to be not only the network of the Democratic Party, but the network of the progressive wing of the Democratic Party, is now actually because this guy was a semi-anchor was asking the question to an American senator, " Do you think that Representative Nunes, because he wants the memo released, has been compromised by the Kremlin? " ..."
"... And by the way, if people will say, " Well, it's a weak capitulation of McCarthyism, " I say no, it's much more than that because McCarthy was obsessed with Communist. That was a much narrower concept than being obsessed with anybody who might be under Russian influence of any kind. The so-called affinity for Russia. Well, I have a profound affinity for Russian culture and for Russian history. I study it all the time. This is something new. And so, when you accuse a Republican or any Congressman of being a Kremlin agent, this has become a commonplace. We are degraded. ..."
"... We are building up our military presence there, so the Russians are counter-building up, though within their territory. That means the chances of hot war are now much greater than they were before. ..."
"... Every time Trump has tried with Putin to reach a cooperative arrangement, for example, on fighting terrorism in Syria, which is a necessary purpose, literally, the New York Times and the others call him treasonous. Whereas, in the old days, the old Cold War, we had a robust discussion. There is none here. We have no alert system that's warning the American people and its representatives how dangerous this is. And as we mentioned before, it's not only Nunes, it's a lot of people who are being called Kremlin agents because they want to digress from the basic narrative. ..."
"... Meanwhile, people in Moscow who formed their political establishment, who surround Putin and the Kremlin, I mean, the big brains who are formed policy tankers, and who have always tended to be kind of pro-American, and very moderate, have simply come to the conclusion that war is coming. ..."
"... The Democrats couldn't had downgrade their party further. This disgusting spectacle would make FDR totally ashamed of what this party has become. Not only they are voting for every pro-plutocracy GOP bill under Trump administration, but they have become champions in bringing back a much worse and unpredictable Cold War that is dangerously escalating tension with Russia. ..."
Feb 06, 2018 | failedevolution.blogspot.gr

How Russiagate fiasco destroys Kremlin moderates, accelerating danger for a hot war with Russia globinfo freexchange

Corporate Democrats can't stop pushing for war through the Russiagate fiasco.

The party has been completely taken over by the neocon/neoliberal establishment and has nothing to do with the Left. The pro-Hillary warmongering media, the ones that pushed for war in Iraq and elsewhere, through big lies and false evidence, are the vanguard of this ugly machine that supports the most terrible Trump administration bills, yet, this machine can't stop accusing him for 'colluding' with Russia that 'interfered' in the 2016 US election. Of course, no evidence presented for such an accusation and no one really can explain what that 'interference' means.

But things are probably much worse, because this completely absurd persistence on Russiagate fiasco that feeds an evident anti-Russian hysteria, destroys all the influence of the Kremlin moderates who struggle to keep open channels between Russia and the United States.

Stephen Cohen, professor emeritus of Russian studies, history, and politics at NY University and Princeton University, explained to Aaron Maté and the Real News the terrible consequences:

They're accusing the President of the United States of being a Russian agent, this has never happened in American history. However much you may loathe Trump, this is a whole new realm of defamation. For a number of years, there's been a steady degradation of American political culture and discourse, generally. There was a time when I hoped or thought that it would be the Democratic Party that would push against that degradation.

Now, however, though I'm kind of only nominally, a Democrat, it's the Democratic Party that's degrading our political culture and our discourse. So, this is MSNBC, which purports to be not only the network of the Democratic Party, but the network of the progressive wing of the Democratic Party, is now actually because this guy was a semi-anchor was asking the question to an American senator, " Do you think that Representative Nunes, because he wants the memo released, has been compromised by the Kremlin? "

I think all of us need to focus on what's happened in this country when in the very mainstream, at the highest, most influential levels of the political establishment, this kind of discourse is no longer considered an exception. It is the norm. We hear it daily from MSNBC and CNN, from the New York Times and the Washington Post, that people who doubt the narrative of what's loosely called Russiagate are somehow acting on behalf of or under the spell of the Kremlin, that we aren't Americans any longer. And by the way, if people will say, " Well, it's a weak capitulation of McCarthyism, " I say no, it's much more than that because McCarthy was obsessed with Communist. That was a much narrower concept than being obsessed with anybody who might be under Russian influence of any kind. The so-called affinity for Russia. Well, I have a profound affinity for Russian culture and for Russian history. I study it all the time. This is something new. And so, when you accuse a Republican or any Congressman of being a Kremlin agent, this has become a commonplace. We are degraded.

The new Cold War is unfolding not far away from Russia, like the last in Berlin, but on Russia's borders in the Baltic and in Ukraine. We are building up our military presence there, so the Russians are counter-building up, though within their territory. That means the chances of hot war are now much greater than they were before. Meanwhile, not only do we not have a discussion of these real dangers in the United States but anyone who wants to incite a discussion, including the President of the United States, is called treasonous. Every time Trump has tried with Putin to reach a cooperative arrangement, for example, on fighting terrorism in Syria, which is a necessary purpose, literally, the New York Times and the others call him treasonous. Whereas, in the old days, the old Cold War, we had a robust discussion. There is none here. We have no alert system that's warning the American people and its representatives how dangerous this is. And as we mentioned before, it's not only Nunes, it's a lot of people who are being called Kremlin agents because they want to digress from the basic narrative.

Meanwhile, people in Moscow who formed their political establishment, who surround Putin and the Kremlin, I mean, the big brains who are formed policy tankers, and who have always tended to be kind of pro-American, and very moderate, have simply come to the conclusion that war is coming. They can't think of a single thing to tell the Kremlin to offset hawkish views in the Kremlin. Every day, there's something new. And these were the people in Moscow who are daytime peacekeeping interlockers. They have been destroyed by Russiagate. Their influence as Russia is zilch. And the McCarthyites in Russia, they have various terms, now called the pro-American lobby in Russia 'fifth columnists'. This is the damage that's been done. There's never been anything like this in my lifetime.

https://www.youtube.com/embed/CpVBA4OIfb8

The Democrats couldn't had downgrade their party further. This disgusting spectacle would make FDR totally ashamed of what this party has become. Not only they are voting for every pro-plutocracy GOP bill under Trump administration, but they have become champions in bringing back a much worse and unpredictable Cold War that is dangerously escalating tension with Russia.

And, unfortunately, even the most progressives of the Democrats are adopting the Russiagate bogus, like Bernie Sanders, because they know that if they don't obey to the narratives, the DNC establishment will crush them politically in no time.

[Feb 11, 2018] Clinton Democrats (aka

Highly recommended!
Notable quotes:
"... The DP is a neoliberal party which has been able to distinguish itself from Republicans by campaigning like progressives, but governing as neoliberals. ..."
"... Trump ran his campaign as a populist who would "drain the swamp." He opposed trade deals, and corporations relocating their factories outside the US. The Clinton campaign ran mostly negative personal attacks at Trump's failed marriages, his university, business bankruptcies, abuse of women, and his Russian connection. ..."
"... The DP has a real problem, how can they continue to be a neoliberal party, and cooperate with the RP, while pretending to support progressive causes when more and more people realize the charade and are demanding real progressive change? ..."
Feb 11, 2018 | www.thenation.com

Victor Sciamarelli says: February 10, 2018 at 2:35 pm

An interesting article especially the conclusion under "Top Priorities" where it states, "It is here that Russiagate performs a critical function for Trump's political foes. Far beyond Israelgate, Russiagate allows them [democrats] to oppose Trump while obscuring key areas where they either share his priorities or have no viable alternative."

This is important and I largely agree, but the observation could have gone further. The DP is a neoliberal party which has been able to distinguish itself from Republicans by campaigning like progressives, but governing as neoliberals.

Trump ran his campaign as a populist who would "drain the swamp." He opposed trade deals, and corporations relocating their factories outside the US. The Clinton campaign ran mostly negative personal attacks at Trump's failed marriages, his university, business bankruptcies, abuse of women, and his Russian connection. Jill Stein was attacked and brought before the Senate Intelligence Committee because the dossier claimed, falsely, that she accepted payment from Russia to attend a RT event in Moscow. And we all know what happened to the Sanders' campaign.

None of this would matter because Clinton was expected to win. Trump is a hypocrite and a fake populist but the populist message resonated with voters. Bernie Sanders, the real deal populist, remains the most popular politician in America and he is the most popular democratic politician among Republican voters.

The recent FISA reauthorization bill passed with 65 House Democrats who joined Trump and the Republicans. In 2002 the DP controlled the Senate, but 29 Dems joined Republicans to pass the Iraq War Resolution along with 82 House Dems. And was the Republican regime change in Iraq better than the Democratic regime change in Libya? And recall that Hugo Chavez, who was democratically elected, governed constitutionally, and complied with international law, and if he ever crossed a line it was trivial compared to the lines Bush crossed, was labeled a dictator and attacked much like Putin is today.

The DP has a real problem, how can they continue to be a neoliberal party, and cooperate with the RP, while pretending to support progressive causes when more and more people realize the charade and are demanding real progressive change?

Maintaining a neoliberal course on behalf of elite interests is more important than winning elections. Thus, while Trump is investigated, the DP and supportive media are preparing to demonize progressives and any alternative voices as nothing more than Russian puppets.

[Feb 03, 2018] Memo: Democrats Made Up Evidence Enabled Eavesdropping On Trump Campaign

It was not only that Steele memo enabled eavesdropping. More troubling fact that FBI considered both Trump and Sanders as insurgents and was adamant to squash them and ensure Hillary victory. In other word it tried to play the role of kingmaker.
Notable quotes:
"... The former British spy Steele had been hired by the Democratic Party via Fusion GPS to dig up dirt about Donald Trump. He came back with a package of "reports" which alleged that Trump was "colluding" with Russia or even a puppet of Putin. The content of the reports is hilarious and so obviously made up that one wonders how anyone could have treated it seriously. ..."
"... Getting a FISA warrant on Carter Page meant that all his communication with the Trump campaign was effectively under surveillance of the Obama administration. While Page was no longer an official member of the campaign at the time of the warrant it is likely that he had kept contact. All internal communication that Page had access to was thereby also accessible for at least some people who tried to prevent a Trump election victory. ..."
"... One may (like me) dislike Trump and the Republican party and all they stand for. But this looks like an extremely dirty play by the Democrats and by the Obama administration far outside of any decency and fairness. The Steele dossier is obviously made up partisan nonsense. To the use it for such a FISA warrant was against the most basic rules of a democratic system. It probably broke several laws. ..."
Feb 03, 2018 | www.moonofalabama.org

Over the last month political enemies of U.S. President Trump and the FBI and Justice Department have desperately tried to prevent the publishing of a memo written by the Republican controlled House Intelligence Committee.

The memo (pdf) describes parts of the process that let to court sanctioned spying on the Trump campaign. The key points of the memo that was just published:

* The Steele dossier formed an essential part of the initial and all three renewal FISA applications against Carter Page.

* Andrew McCabe confirmed that no FISA warrant would have been sought from the FISA Court without the Steele dossier information.

* The political origins of the Steele dossier were known to senior DOJ and FBI officials, but excluded from the FISA applications.

* DOJ official Bruce Ohr met with Steele beginning in the summer of 2016 and relayed to DOJ information about Steele's bias. Steele told Ohr that he, Steele, was desperate that Donald Trump not get elected president and was passionate about him not becoming president.

If the above memo proves to be correct one can conclude that a Democratic front organization created "evidence" that was then used by the FBI and the Obama Justice Department to get FISA warrants to spy on someone with intimate contacts into the Trump campaign.

The Democrats as well as the FBI have done their utmost to keep this secret.

Carter Page was a relative low ranking volunteer advisor of the Trump campaign with some business contacts to Russia. He had officially left the campaign shortly before the above FISA warrant was requested.

Andrew McCabe was an FBI assistant director. A few month earlier his wife ran for a Virginia State Senate seat with the help of $700,000 she had received from Clinton allies.

The wife of DOJ official Bruce Ohr worked for Fusion GPS, the outlet hired by the Democrats to find Trump dirt. Fusion GPS hired the former British agent Steele.

The former British spy Steele had been hired by the Democratic Party via Fusion GPS to dig up dirt about Donald Trump. He came back with a package of "reports" which alleged that Trump was "colluding" with Russia or even a puppet of Putin. The content of the reports is hilarious and so obviously made up that one wonders how anyone could have treated it seriously.

Getting a FISA warrant on Carter Page meant that all his communication with the Trump campaign was effectively under surveillance of the Obama administration. While Page was no longer an official member of the campaign at the time of the warrant it is likely that he had kept contact. All internal communication that Page had access to was thereby also accessible for at least some people who tried to prevent a Trump election victory.

One must wonder if the FISA warrant and eavesdropping on Page was the only one related to the Trump campaign.

One may (like me) dislike Trump and the Republican party and all they stand for. But this looks like an extremely dirty play by the Democrats and by the Obama administration far outside of any decency and fairness. The Steele dossier is obviously made up partisan nonsense. To the use it for such a FISA warrant was against the most basic rules of a democratic system. It probably broke several laws.

There are still many questions: What was, exactly, the result of the surveillance of Carter Page and the Trump campaign? Who was getting these results - officially and unofficially? How were they used?

I am pretty sure now that more heads of those involved will role. Some of the people who arranged the scheme, and some of those who tried to cover it up, may go to jail.

If Trump and the Republicans play this right they have practically won the next elections.

[Feb 01, 2018] The Loser Dems by Mike Whitney

Notable quotes:
"... Trumps victory was a defeat for the corrupt political duopoly. The Uniparty. Trump is not our savior. But he is a foot in the door. Welcome aboard Mike. ..."
"... The Democrats are now the party of the Wall Street bankers. Congrats to the Clintons and the Gores, because this was their dream when they started the Democratic Leadership Council back in the '80′s. ..."
"... The Democrat campaigns before the Clintons struck were very different. The Chamber of Commerce Republican campaigns always had more money. The Democrats weren't broke, but they always had less. But they always had grassroots efforts going door to door. ..."
"... Looking backwards, its obvious why the Clintons didn't like this. Campaigns that had less money meant less money going into their pockets and into the consultants pockets. ..."
"... If you love bankers and nuclear war, then be a proud Democrat. If not, run like heck and get away from the party of bankers and nuclear war. ..."
Feb 01, 2018 | www.unz.com

The Democrats don't seem to understand that the Russia investigation has made Trump stronger not weaker. They don't see that their evidence-free probe has strengthened Trump's base and convinced his supporters that their leader is being unfairly attacked. (According to a January Quinnipiac survey, a full eighty-three percent of Republicans believe the current investigation is "a witch hunt". The data suggests that Russia-gate has rallied Trump's backers to his defense.) Dems don't grasp that, in the last 12 months, Trump has pushed through a massive tax bill followed by immigration reform that has broadened his support and silenced his GOP critics. When Trump took office, McConnell, Ryan and Graham were all on opposite sides of the political divide. Now Trump has them eating out of his hand. He took a fractious, splintered party and forced them to fall in line. Trump has succeeded in unifying his base while the collusion fiasco has had no noticeable impact at all. None.

As for the Dems, well, the Dems still refuse to pay attention to their own polling data that says that rank-and-file members want less emphasis on Russia and more emphasis on jobs, college tuition, health care, and entitlements. The tone-deaf Dems completely ignore that message choosing instead to pursue a counterproductive probe that has yet to produce a scintilla of hard evidence and that has helped to underscore the fact that the Dems have no platform, no vision for the future, and no solutions for the problems facing ordinary working class people.

Let me be completely honest: I don't give a flying fig about Russia, Russia hacking, Russia meddling, Russia collusion or any other screwball thing related to Russia. What I do care about is what's going on in this country. I do care that the man who ran on a campaign of "non-intervention" is currently building military bases in East Syria, stirring up trouble in the South China Sea, supporting counterinsurgency operations across Africa, facing off with Turkey, providing bombs for the ongoing genocide in Yemen, threatening North Korea with total annihilation, and pledging to build a new regime of "usable" nuclear weapons. That's what worries me, not Russia. But what worries me even more is that, just when we need a strong, highly-principled, credible opposition party to fight the good fight for wages, the environment, social services, education, infrastructure, civil liberties, and peace– the Democrats have turned into jello, a wobbly, gelatinous mass of ingratiating losers. What's that all about?

The Dems are a party without a leader and without a message. They keep carping about Russia and Trump because they have no convictions, no beliefs, and no fire in the belly. It's a party of empty suits and phony flannel-mouth politicos. The only thing they're good at is losing, which is an art they appear to have perfected. The problem is, that the rest of us are sick of the party's sad-sack song-and-dance, sick of the excuses, sick of the buck passing, and sick of losing. We want candidates who actually stand for something, who actually believe in something, and who'll actually fight for something.

Two weeks ago, the Dems shut down the government to see if they could force Trump into bending on the DACA issue. In less than 72 hours, they checked the polls, ran up the white flag, and caved in. I cannot remember a more flagrant display of political cowardice in my lifetime. Personally, I'd rather be on the side of someone who believes in something (even if he's wrong!), than on the side of someone who believes in nothing at all. Democrat leaders believe in nothing, which is why they are not worthy of our support. Here's how the World Socialist Web Site summed up the DACA cave in:

"The US Senate and House of Representatives voted Monday to approve a short-term budget resolution, putting an end to the partial shutdown of the federal government that began midnight Friday night. The deal leaves 800,000 DACA recipients without protection in what amounts to a total capitulation by Democrats to Trump and the Republicans ..

In the annals of cowardly capitulations, there are few spectacles that can match Monday's collapse by the Democratic Party, which abandoned its blockade against the budget resolution less than 72 hours after it began. Senate Minority Leader Charles Schumer announced the decision in a brief, nearly blubbering speech on the Senate floor, which combined phony invective directed against Trump with a complete surrender to the bigot-in-chief in the White House .

The surrender was not Schumer's individual decision, but the action of the entire Democratic caucus, which had no stomach for any serious fight .." ("Federal shutdown ends as Democrats cave in to Trump", World Socialist Web Site)

No stomach. No guts. No spine. Admit it: The entire Democratic party leadership isn't worth the powder to blow it to hell. It would be better for everyone if someone just put them out of their misery.

The Dems think the midterms are going to be a landslide-blowout. But don't count on it. It's going to take more than Russia-gate and a few glitzy photos with ME TOO celebrity-victims to get disillusioned liberals back to the polls. It's going to take a "message", a vision, a progressive way out of the dark, Trumpian fog we're all stuck in. Unfortunately, the Dems have no such vision, and they're too busy chasing fictitious Russian trolls on FaceBook to give it a second thought.

ORDER IT NOW

Look: I worked in the Democratic party at the local level. I know that the people at the grassroots level are sincere, principled people that are truly committed to making the country a better place for everyone. I know that! But there comes a time when you have to accept the reality the party's leaders believe in nothing, that they are joined at the hip with arms dealers, the neocons, the Intel agencies, Wall Street and the rest of the vermin who control this country.

I'm sorry to be the bearer of bad news, but that's the truth.

It's time to pull up our big boy pants and face the facts: The Democratic party is NOT a suitable vehicle for the progressive agenda. It just isn't. We need to cut our losses and move on.


exiled off mainstreet , January 31, 2018 at 7:44 pm GMT

This is something that has to be said and is the salient fact of the political reality today. Once the FBI Rosenstein, Comey and Mueller et al are exposed as is likely, it will be back to the drawing board, and Trump's sellouts to the deep state on Syria, the Ukraine, Korea and elsewhere are fundamentally dangerous.
Miro23 , February 1, 2018 at 7:58 am GMT

Look: I worked in the Democratic party at the local level. I know that the people at the grassroots level are sincere, principled people that are truly committed to making the country a better place for everyone. I know that! But there comes a time when you have to accept the reality the party's leaders believe in nothing, that they are joined at the hip with arms dealers, the Neo-cons, the Intel agencies, Wall Street and the rest of the vermin who control this country.

Yes, it degrades as you go up the structure. Senate Democratic Party leader, dual Israeli/US citizen Charles "Chuck" Schumer was elected unanimously in 2017, while openly declaring that he's the Nº1 defender of Israel. You can't say the he believes in nothing – it's just that the interests of the United States are secondary those of Israel, whatever happens. And apart from the current leaders, that also seems to apply in the past, to a host of other dual Israeli/US citizens holding top US government positions, for example:

MEexpert , February 1, 2018 at 8:26 am GMT

Look: I worked in the Democratic party at the local level.

I know that the people at the grassroots level are sincere, principled people that are truly committed to making the country a better place for everyone.

Every politician that gets elected is committed to making the country a better place for everyone. But once elected, the tune changes, when they get indoctrinated by the AIPAC and get a tour of Israel.

I know that! But there comes a time when you have to accept the reality the party's leaders believe in nothing, that they are joined at the hip with arms dealers, the neocons, the Intel agencies, Wall Street and the rest of the vermin who control this country.

End of story.

Seamus Padraig , February 1, 2018 at 10:04 am GMT

The Dems are a party without a leader and without a message. They keep carping about Russia and Trump because they have no convictions, no beliefs

Of course the Dems have a core belief: they are unshakably certain of their own moral superiority.

Admit it: The entire Democratic party leadership isn't worth the powder to blow it to hell.

Oh yes they are! Though admittedly, that's all they're worth.

WorkingClass , February 1, 2018 at 11:06 am GMT
I was a union man back when labor was part of the Dem coalition. I voted for the Dems because the union said I should. I became neither Dem nor union man when Clinton sent my job to Mexico. What took you so long Mike? Didn't you see what they did to Nader? Kucinich?

Sarah Palin said we have two parties. Pick one. Is that why you stuck with the Dems? Loathing for the GOP? Fear of the political wilderness?

I used to hang out at firedoglake. Now I'm at Unz Review. One of the commenters here spoke for me when he said, paraphrasing, I'm with the Alt Right because there is no Alt Left.

Trumps victory was a defeat for the corrupt political duopoly. The Uniparty. Trump is not our savior. But he is a foot in the door. Welcome aboard Mike.

Bobbie , February 1, 2018 at 3:07 pm GMT
The Democrats are now the party of the Wall Street bankers. Congrats to the Clintons and the Gores, because this was their dream when they started the Democratic Leadership Council back in the '80′s.

The Democrat campaigns before the Clintons struck were very different. The Chamber of Commerce Republican campaigns always had more money. The Democrats weren't broke, but they always had less. But they always had grassroots efforts going door to door.

Looking backwards, its obvious why the Clintons didn't like this. Campaigns that had less money meant less money going into their pockets and into the consultants pockets.

What the Democratic voters want, "jobs, college tuition, health care, and entitlements", is obviously the exact opposite of what the Wall Street bankers and the other big money behind the modern Democrats want. And in today's Democrat Party, the Big Money controls everything. Anyone paying attention to what few primary challenges occur in the party already knew this. And by now its public record and should be well known that the creature of the Wall Street banks (aka Hillary) helped make sure the Bernie-Hillary race was rigged towards the favorite candidate of the bankers.

Since the same forces are blocking any 'reform' within the party, its going to stay this way. If anything, the party of the bankers is making sure that none of the Bernie people have any positions of power within the party. And there is no sign that the next Presidential nomination contest won't be as rigged, fake and corrupt as the last one. There is also no sign of a wave of primary challenges to the banker-favorite Democrat incumbents in the primaries that will be occuring within the coming months.

So, the drive to nuclear war suits the bankers. It makes sure the focus is off any policies the bankers oppose, which is anything that helps anyone except the bankers. The same bankers are invested in the nuke and defense industries that seem intent on driving the world towards a nuclear holocaust.

If you love bankers and nuclear war, then be a proud Democrat. If not, run like heck and get away from the party of bankers and nuclear war.

nebulafox , February 1, 2018 at 3:20 pm GMT
You can have a functional welfare state. You can have mass immigration.

You can't have both. Or, ordinarily you can't, not in a fiscally feasible way, as much of Europe has found out the hard way over the past decade. America's long-time status as the world's reserve currency let us get away with things that other countries couldn't for a few decades, but time is running out on that status.

(And even still-immigration levels in the 1970s, 1980s, and 1990s were much, much less than the torrent flood we've experienced in the 21st Century. America had a population of "only" around 225 million in 1979, for comparison. The growth of over *100 million* we've had since then is nearly all immigration fueled. I don't think people contemplate what 100 million people means.)

Johann , February 1, 2018 at 3:57 pm GMT
@Dutch Boy

In 1972 the democrats ran McGovern on a platform of the three As : acid, abortion, and amnesty. Richard Nixon went on to win forty nine states out of fifty, an unprecedented rout. Today fifty years later the Democrats are still running on the three As: Acid(legalization of drugs), abortion ( total non restriction of all abortions and government funded Planned Parenthood) and Amnesty( complete removal of any border control and the importation of any of the seven billion people who live on planet earth). I would also add that today they have added transgenderism and the idea that there is no difference between male and female and the widespread belief that all science is created by the DNC and its famous "the science is settled" dictum. If the Americans vote this absurd party into power then they deserve the grim future that they will surely reap.

bluedog , February 1, 2018 at 4:06 pm GMT
@Nancy Pelosi's Latina Maid

Well we are shit for after all this country and its voters really don't care how many are slaughtered in our name, as long as it dosen't disturb Monday night football, Bob Dole referred to the working class as "Joe six pack" and that term still applies long after Dole left office.. Hell as far as a solution go no farther than the post on here, and just how many agree/dis-agree with each other for its called divide and conquer and they are very good at the game, in fact its the only game in town

[Jan 27, 2018] Ukraine, Syria, Russiagate, the Media, and the Risk of Nuclear War by Robert Roth

Notable quotes:
"... London Review of Books, ..."
"... at a speed that far exceeds an Internet capability for a remote hack ..."
"... Return to Moscow ..."
"... The demonization of Russian President Vladimir Putin and Russia is where the neocons and the liberal interventionists most significantly come together. The U.S. media's approach to Russia is now virtually 100 percent propaganda. For instance, the full story of the infamous Magnitsky case cannot be told in the West, nor can the objective reality of the Ukrane coup in 2014 . The American people and the West in general are carefully shielded from hearing the "other side of the story." Indeed to even suggest that there is another side to the story makes you a "Putin apologist" or "Kremlin stooge." ..."
Jan 27, 2018 | www.unz.com

The claim of Russian meddling in the US election has brought US-Russia relations to what may be an all-time low, substantially contributing to the near-universal demonization of Russian president Vladimir Putin and of Russia itself in virtually all major media, with little or no discussion of the supposed evidence for the claim. A stellar exception is the London Review of Books, which published a critically important essay by Rutgers University professor Jackson Lears in the January 4, 2018 issue. Titled "What We Don't Talk about When We Talk about Russian Hacking," the article is an excellent overview and analysis of many of the issues the title suggests.

The claim of Russian meddling in the election remains to this day evidence-free, although you would never know that from the treatment of the topic in the mainstream media. As Professor Lears observes:

Like any orthodoxy worth its salt, the religion of the Russian hack depends not on evidence but on ex cathedra pronouncements on the part of authoritative institutions and their overlords. Its scriptural foundation is a confused and largely fact-free 'assessment' produced last January by a small number of 'hand-picked' analysts – as James Clapper, the director of National Intelligence, described them – from the CIA, the FBI and the NSA. The claims of the last were made with only 'moderate' confidence. The label Intelligence Community Assessment creates a misleading impression of unanimity, given that only three of the 16 US intelligence agencies contributed to the report. And indeed the assessment itself contained this crucial admission: 'Judgments are not intended to imply that we have proof that shows something to be a fact. Assessments are based on collected information, which is often incomplete or fragmentary, as well as logic, argumentation and precedents.' Yet the assessment has passed into the media imagination as if it were unassailable fact, allowing journalists to assume what has yet to be proved. In doing so they serve as mouthpieces for the intelligence agencies, or at least for those 'hand-picked' analysts.

But although Professor Lears refers to the reports of Veteran Intelligence Professionals for Sanity in his discussion of "Russian hacking," it seems clear there must have been a leak, not a hack, because "the DNC data was copied onto a storage device at a speed that far exceeds an Internet capability for a remote hack ." ("Was the 'Russian Hack' An Inside Job?", July 25, 2017, https://www.counterpunch.org/2017/07/25/was-the-russian-hack-an-inside-job/ .)

In any case, definitive claims about who was responsible (assuming, purely arguendo , it was a hack) face the fact that, according to Ray McGovern and William S. Binney, two members of VIPS,

On March 31, 2017, WikiLeaks released original CIA documents [the "Vault 7" trove of CIA documents ] -- ignored by mainstream media -- showing that the agency had created a program allowing it to break into computers and servers and make it look like others did it by leaving telltale signs like Cyrillic markings, for example. ("Trumped-up Claims Against Trump," May 17, 2017, http://www.baltimoresun.com/news/opinion/oped/bs-ed-trump-russia-phony-20170517-story.html ).

McGovern was a CIA analyst for 27 years; Binney worked for NSA for 36 years, was the agency's technical director of world military and geopolitical analysis and reporting, and created many of the collection systems still used by NSA.

In other words, as Russian president Vladimir Putin has explained,

today's technology is such that the final address can be masked and camouflaged to an extent that no one will be able to understand the origin of that address. And, vice versa, it is possible to set up any entity or any individual [so] that everyone will think that they are the exact source of that attack. (Valdimir Putin's televised interview on NBC (June 4, 2017), by NBC News' Megyn Kelly, text published on the website of the President of Russia, June 5, 2017.) [9]

Demonization of Putin and Russia

The demonization of Russian president Vladimir Putin and Russia itself is just part, albeit the most dangerous part, of a disinformation campaign flowing from the mainstream media. I don't propose to present a full treatment of the subject here. But in broad outline, it's my understanding that when the Cold War ended in 1991, Russian president Boris Yeltsin accepted the advice of Western neoliberal planners and dismantled much of the Russian "safety net," with the result that the Russian economy tanked and millions of people faced terrific hardship.

Vladimir Putin has been attempting to repair that situation, and his initial success is part of the reason for his popularity in Russia. That understanding comes from a number of articles I've read over the years, but primarily from Tony Kevin's book Return to Moscow , mentioned above. I'm hardly an expert on internal Russian politics. But I've read many of the extensive public statements Mr. Putin has made since 2007, and with my primary concern being his role in international relations and with respect to the control of Russia's nuclear arsenal, he strikes me as a statesman. [10] . Yet as investigative journalist Robert Parry observes,

The demonization of Russian President Vladimir Putin and Russia is where the neocons and the liberal interventionists most significantly come together. The U.S. media's approach to Russia is now virtually 100 percent propaganda. For instance, the full story of the infamous Magnitsky case cannot be told in the West, nor can the objective reality of the Ukrane coup in 2014 . The American people and the West in general are carefully shielded from hearing the "other side of the story." Indeed to even suggest that there is another side to the story makes you a "Putin apologist" or "Kremlin stooge."

Western journalists now apparently see it as their patriotic duty to hide key facts that otherwise would undermine the demonizing of Putin and Russia. Ironically, many "liberals" who cut their teeth on skepticism about the Cold War and the bogus justifications for the Vietnam War now insist that we must all accept whatever the U.S. intelligence community feeds us, even if we're told to accept the assertions on faith. [11] .

One result is a needless heightening of the dangers and risks outlined in this article.

[Jan 27, 2018] Mainstream Media and Imperial Power

Highly recommended!
Notable quotes:
"... In my experience as a journalist, the public have always been ahead of the media. And yet, in many news outlets there has always been a kind of veiled contempt for the public. You find young journalists affecting a false cynicism that they think ordains them as journalists. The cynicism is not about the people at the top, it's about the people at the bottom, the people that Hillary Clinton dismissed as "irredeemable." ..."
"... CNN and NBC and the rest of the networks have been the voices of power and have been the source of distorted news for such a long time. They are not circling the wagons because the wagons are on the wrong side. These people in the mainstream have been an extension of the power that has corrupted so much of our body politic. They have been the sources of so many myths. ..."
"... Media in the West is now an extension of imperial power. It is no longer a loose extension, it is a direct extension. Whether or not it has fallen out with Donald Trump is completely irrelevant. It is lined up with all the forces that want to get rid of Donald Trump. He is not the one they want in the White House, they wanted Hillary Clinton, who is safer and more reliable. ..."
"... I have found that those who voted for Clinton are very quick to swallow what mainstream media has to say, and those that voted for Trump, at this moment, hold the media in contempt, however they also very willingly accept Trump's policies and his lies ..."
"... I would like to add, that In the US most of Americans are usually ignorant of politics and government. Many believe that their votes are unlikely to change the outcome of an election and don't see the point in learning much about the subject. So we have a country of people with little political knowledge and little ability to objectively evaluate what they do know. ..."
Jan 27, 2018 | consortiumnews.com

Randy Credico: A lot of mainstream journalists complain when Trump refers to them as the enemy of the people, but they have shown themselves to be very unwilling to circle the wagons around Assange. What is the upshot for journalists of Assange being taken down?

John Pilger: Trump knows which nerves to touch. His campaign against the mainstream media may even help to get him re-elected, because most people don't trust the mainstream media anymore.

In my experience as a journalist, the public have always been ahead of the media. And yet, in many news outlets there has always been a kind of veiled contempt for the public. You find young journalists affecting a false cynicism that they think ordains them as journalists. The cynicism is not about the people at the top, it's about the people at the bottom, the people that Hillary Clinton dismissed as "irredeemable."

CNN and NBC and the rest of the networks have been the voices of power and have been the source of distorted news for such a long time. They are not circling the wagons because the wagons are on the wrong side. These people in the mainstream have been an extension of the power that has corrupted so much of our body politic. They have been the sources of so many myths.

This latest film about The Post neglects to mention that The Washington Post was a passionate supporter of the Vietnam War before it decided to have a moral crisis about whether to publish the Pentagon Papers. Today, The Washington Post has a $600 million deal with the CIA to supply them with information.

Media in the West is now an extension of imperial power. It is no longer a loose extension, it is a direct extension. Whether or not it has fallen out with Donald Trump is completely irrelevant. It is lined up with all the forces that want to get rid of Donald Trump. He is not the one they want in the White House, they wanted Hillary Clinton, who is safer and more reliable.

Dennis J Bernstein is a host of "Flashpoints" on the Pacifica radio network and the author of Special Ed: Voices from a Hidden Classroom . You can access the audio archives at www.flashpoints.net .


Annie , January 24, 2018 at 3:29 pm

I've always liked Mr. Pilger, and Mr. Parry, of course, and Hedges and so on However in this statement made by Mr. Pilger, "Trump knows which nerves to touch. His campaign against the mainstream media may even help to get him re-elected, because most people don't trust the mainstream media anymore." I would really disagree based on my own personal experiences. I have found that those who voted for Clinton are very quick to swallow what mainstream media has to say, and those that voted for Trump, at this moment, hold the media in contempt, however they also very willingly accept Trump's policies and his lies, like his climate change denial and his position on Iran. It's more about taking sides then it is in being interested in the truth.

Annie , January 24, 2018 at 4:33 pm

I would like to add, that In the US most of Americans are usually ignorant of politics and government. Many believe that their votes are unlikely to change the outcome of an election and don't see the point in learning much about the subject. So we have a country of people with little political knowledge and little ability to objectively evaluate what they do know.

Joe Tedesky , January 24, 2018 at 6:28 pm

You got that right Annie. In fact I know people who voted for Hillary, and they wake up every morning to turn on MSNBC or CNN only to hear what Trump tweeted, because they like getting pissed off at Trump, and get even more self induced angry when they don't hear his impeachment being shouted out on the screen.

I forgive a lot of these types who don't get into the news, because it just isn't their thing I guess, but I get even madder that we don't have a diversified media enough to give people the complete story. I mean a brilliant media loud enough, and objective enough, to reach the mass uncaring community. We have talked about this before, about the MSM's omission of the news, as to opposed just lying they do that too, as you know Annie, and it's a crime against a free press society. In fact, I not being a lawyer, would not be surprised that this defect in our news is not Constitutional.

Although, less and less people are watching the news, because they know it's phony, have you noticed how political our Late Night Talk Show Host have become? Hmmm boy, sometimes you have to give it to the Deep State because they sure know how to cover the market of dupes. To bad the CIA isn't selling solar panels, or something beneficial like that, which could help our ailing world.

We are living in a Matrix of left vs right, liberal vs conservative, all of us are on the divide, and that's the way it suppose to be. You know I don't mean that, but that's what the Deep State has done to us, for a lack of a better description of their evil unleashed upon the planet.

I like reading your thoughts, because you go kind of deep, and you come up with angles not thought of, well at least not by me so forgive me if I reply to often. Joe

Annie , January 24, 2018 at 10:18 pm

I know I keep referring to Facebook, but it really allows you to see how polarized people have become. Facebook posts political non issues, but nonetheless they will elicit comments that are downright hateful. Divide and conquer is something I often think when I view these comments. I rarely watch TV, but enough to see how TV Talk Show hosts have gotten into the act, and Trump supplies them with an endless source of material, not that their discussing core issues either.

I don't remember whether I mentioned this before in a recent article on this site, but when a cousin posts a response to a comment I made about our militarism and how many millions have died as a result that all countries do sneaky and underhanded things, I can only think people don't want to hear the truth either, and that's why most are so vulnerable to our propaganda, which is we are the exceptional nation that can do no wrong. Those who are affluent want to maintain the status quo, and those that live pay check to pay check are vulnerable to Trump's lies, and the lies of the Republican party whose interest lie with the top 1 percent.

Kiza , January 25, 2018 at 12:36 am

Talking about lies you mention only Trump and the Republicans Annie. Is this because the Democrats are such party of criminals that you consider them worth mentioning only in the crime chronic not in the context of lies?

About that "Climate Change" religion of yours: how much does it make sense that people around US are freezing but TPTB still want to tax fossil fuels, the only one thing which can keep people warm? Does that not look to your left-wing mind as taking from the poor to give to the Green & Connected ? Will a wind-turbine or a solar-panel keep you warm on a -50 degree day? I am yet to live to see one green-scheme which is not for the benefit of the Green & Connected, whilst this constant braying about global warming renamed into climate change is simply as annoying as the crimes of the Israelis hidden by the media (Did you see that photo of a 3-year old Palestinian child whose brain was splattered out by an Israeli sniper's bullet? She must have been throwing stones or slapping Israeli soldiers, right?).

I am not a US voter and I do not care either way which color gang is running your horrible country, because it always turns out the same. But the blatant criminality of your Demoncrats is only surpassed by their humanitarian sleaze – they always bomb, kill and rape for the good of humanity or for the greenery or for some other touchy-feelly bull like that, which the left-wing stupidos can swallow.

Annie , January 25, 2018 at 2:15 am

Oh, Kiza, are you one of those people that patrol the internet for people who dare mention climate change? I have no intentions of changing your mind on the subject, even though my background is in environmental science with a Masters degree in the subject. I am not a registered democrat, but an independent and didn't vote for Clinton, or Trump. I'm too much of a liberal. I'm very aware of the many faults of the democratic party, and you're right about them. They abandoned their working class base decades ago and they pretty much shun liberals within their own party, and pander to the top 10 percent in this country. Yes, both parties proclaim their allegiance to their voting base, but both parties are lying, since in my opinion their base is the corporate world and that world pretty much controls their agenda, and both parties have embraced the neocons that push for war.

P. S. However being fair, the Republican base is the top 1 percent in this country.

Kiza , January 25, 2018 at 6:46 am

Hello again Annie, thank you for your response. I must admit that your mention of climate change triggered an unhappy reaction in me, otherwise I do think that our views are not far from each other. Thank you for not trying to change my mind on climate change because you would not have succeeded no matter what your qualifications are. My life experience simply says – always follow the money and when I do I see a climate mafia similar to the MIC mafia. I did think that the very cold weather that gripped US would reduce the climate propaganda, but nothing can keep the climate mafia down any more – the high ranked need to pay for their yachts and private jets and the low ranks have to pay of their house mortgages. But I will never understand why the US lefties are so dumb – to be so easily taken to imperial wars and so easily convinced to tax the 99% for the benefit of 1% yet again. Where do you think the nasty fossil fuel producers will find the money to pay for the taxes to be or already imposed? Will they sacrifice their profits or pay the green taxes from higher prices?

Other than this, I honestly cannot see any difference between the so called Democrats and the so called Republicans (you say that the Republicans are for the 1%). Both have been scrapping the bottom of the same barrel for their candidates, thus the elections are always a contest between two disasters.

Sam F , January 25, 2018 at 7:02 am

Good that you both see the bipartisan corruption and can table background issues.

Joe Tedesky , January 25, 2018 at 9:09 am

Yeah Sam I was impressed by their conversation as well. Joe

Bob Van Noy , January 25, 2018 at 11:05 am

I agree, an excellent thread plus a civil disagreement. In my experience, only at CN. Thanks to all of you.

Realist , January 25, 2018 at 1:04 pm

I am with you, Annie, when you state that "They [the Democrats] abandoned their working class base decades ago and they pretty much shun liberals within their own party, and pander to the top 10 percent in this country." And yet they are so glibly characterised as "liberal" by nearly everyone in the media (and, of course, by the Republicans). Even the Nate Silver group, whom I used to think was objective is propagating the drivel that Democrats have become inexorably more liberal–and to the extreme–in their latest soireé analysing the two parties:

https://fivethirtyeight.com/features/is-the-democratic-party-getting-more-extreme/

In reality, the Dems are only "liberal" in contrast to the hard right shift of the Republicans over the past 50-60 years. And what was "extreme" for both parties is being sold to the public as moderate and conventional by the corporate media. It's almost funny seeing so much public policy being knee-jerk condemned as "leftist" when the American left became extinct decades ago.

Virginia , January 25, 2018 at 12:16 pm

Annie, it's not just the Democrats who are bought and paid for.

Annie , January 25, 2018 at 2:54 pm

Virginia, I didn't say that only the democrats were bought and paid for, but said, " yes, both parties proclaim their allegiance to their voting base, but both parties are lying, since in my opinion their base is the corporate world and that world pretty much controls their agenda, and both parties have embraced the neocons that push for war." I also mentioned that the republicans pander to the top 1 percent in this country.

Virginia , January 25, 2018 at 3:04 pm

And my reply was meant to say,

It's not just the Democrats who pander to the 1% who have bought and paid for them!

NeoCons and NeoLiberals -- same thing!

Otherwise, yep!

[Jan 23, 2018] FBI Says It has lost five months of text messages between Peter Strzok And Lisa Page - Jay Sekulow - YouTube

Notable quotes:
"... If the FBI keeps losing stuff they need to hire a security guard to keep it safe. Come on! Start charging these people with treason and this will stop!! ..."
"... I wonder what their plan is when they really have to arrest someone? lol It ain't gonna happen. Theatric, scripted politics. It's like a bad reality show. Compare criminal politics to the sitcom Gilligan's Island. They never get rescued, and criminal politicians never see jail time.  ..."
Jan 23, 2018 | www.youtube.com

Michelle The Security Guard , 17 minutes ago (edited)

If the FBI keeps losing stuff they need to hire a security guard to keep it safe. Come on! Start charging these people with treason and this will stop!!

THERE ARE NO TEXTS MISSING!

DETECTIVES GET SEARCH WARRANTS FOR TEXT MESSAGES ALL THE TIME! WHY ARE THESE PEOPLE ANY DIFFERENT!

mrmavaw70 , 1 hour ago

I wonder what their plan is when they really have to arrest someone? lol It ain't gonna happen. Theatric, scripted politics. It's like a bad reality show. Compare criminal politics to the sitcom Gilligan's Island. They never get rescued, and criminal politicians never see jail time. 

[Jan 22, 2018] US Intelligence Could Well Have Wiretapped Trump by Ron Paul

Notable quotes:
"... Unable to come to terms with losing the 2016 election, Democrats are still pushing the 'Russiagate' probe and blocking the release of a memo describing surveillance abuses by the FBI, former Congressman Ron Paul told RT. ..."
"... I don't think anybody is seeking justice or seeking truth as much as they're seeking to get political advantage ..."
"... "I would be surprised if they haven't spied on him. They spy on everybody else. And they have spied on other members of the executive branch and other presidents." ..."
"... "The other day when they voted to get FISA even more power to spy on American people, the president couldn't be influenced by the fact that they used it against him. And I believe they did, and he believes that." ..."
"... "I've always maintained that government ought to be open and the people ought to have their privacy. But right now the people have no privacy and all our government does is work on secrecy and then it becomes competitive between the two parties, who get stuck with the worst deal by arguing, who's guilty of some crime," the politician explained. ..."
"... Paul also blasted the infamous 'Russian Dossier' compiled by former British spy Christopher Steele, and which the Democrats used in their attack on Trump, saying it ..."
"... "has no legitimacy being revealing [in terms of] of Trump being associated with Russia. From the people I know The story has been all made up, essentially." ..."
"... "I'm no fan of Trump. I'm not a supporter of his, but I think that has been carried way overboard. I think the Democrats can't stand the fact that they've lost the election, and they can't stand the fact that Trump is a little bit more independent minded than they like," he said. ..."
Jan 20, 2018 | www.informationclearinghouse.info

Unable to come to terms with losing the 2016 election, Democrats are still pushing the 'Russiagate' probe and blocking the release of a memo describing surveillance abuses by the FBI, former Congressman Ron Paul told RT.

A top-secret intelligence memo, believed to reveal political bias at the highest levels of the FBI and the DOJ towards President Trump, may well be as significant as the Republicans say, Ron Paul told RT. But, he added, "there's still to many unknowns, especially, from my view point."

"Trump connection to the Russians, I think, has been way overblown, and I'd like to just get to the bottom of this the new information that's coming out, maybe this will reveal things and help us out," he said.

"Right now it's just a political fight," the former US Congressman said. "I think they're dealing with things a lot less important than the issue they ought to be talking about Right now, I don't think anybody is seeking justice or seeking truth as much as they're seeking to get political advantage."

Trump's claims that he was wiretapped by US intelligence agencies on the orders of the Obama administration may well turn out to be true, Paul said.

"I would be surprised if they haven't spied on him. They spy on everybody else. And they have spied on other members of the executive branch and other presidents."

However, he criticized Trump for doing nothing to prevent the Senate from voting in the expansion of warrantless surveillance of US citizens under the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA) earlier this week.

"The other day when they voted to get FISA even more power to spy on American people, the president couldn't be influenced by the fact that they used it against him. And I believe they did, and he believes that."

"I've always maintained that government ought to be open and the people ought to have their privacy. But right now the people have no privacy and all our government does is work on secrecy and then it becomes competitive between the two parties, who get stuck with the worst deal by arguing, who's guilty of some crime," the politician explained.

The fact that Democrats on the relevant committees have all voted against releasing the memo "might mean that Trump is probably right; there's probably a lot of stuff there that would exonerate him from any accusation they've been making," he said.

Paul also blasted the infamous 'Russian Dossier' compiled by former British spy Christopher Steele, and which the Democrats used in their attack on Trump, saying it

"has no legitimacy being revealing [in terms of] of Trump being associated with Russia. From the people I know The story has been all made up, essentially."

"I'm no fan of Trump. I'm not a supporter of his, but I think that has been carried way overboard. I think the Democrats can't stand the fact that they've lost the election, and they can't stand the fact that Trump is a little bit more independent minded than they like," he said.

This article was originally published by RT -

[Jan 22, 2018] Trump Jr. on FISA memo Media, Democrats working together to deceive Americans

Jan 22, 2018 | www.washingtonexaminer.com

Donald Trump Jr. called for the release of a memo that allegedly contains information about Obama administration surveillance abuses and suggested that Democrats are complicit with the media in misleading the public.

"It's the double standard that the people are fed by the Democrats in complicity with the media, that's why neither have any trust from the American people anymore," Trump said on Fox News Friday.

[Jan 20, 2018] What Is The Democratic Party ? by Lambert Strether

Highly recommended!
"Institutionally, the Democratic Party Is Not Democratic"
Very apt characterization "the Democratic Party is nothing more than a layer of indirection between the donor class and the Democratic consultants and the campaigns they run;" ... " after all, the Democratic Party -- in its current incarnation -- has important roles to play in not expanding its "own" electorate through voter registration, in the care and feeding of the intelligence community, in warmongering, in the continual buffing and polishing of neoliberal ideology, and in general keeping the Overton Window firmly nailed in place against policies that would convey universal concrete material benefits, especially to the working class"
Notable quotes:
"... That said, the revivification of the DNC lawsuit serves as a story hook for me to try to advance the story on the nature of political parties as such, the Democratic Party as an institution, and the function that the Democratic Party serves. I will meander through those three topics, then, and conclude. ..."
"... What sort of legal entity is ..."
"... Political parties were purely private organizations from the 1790s until the Civil War. Thus, "it was no more illegal to commit fraud in the party caucus or primary than it would be to do so in the election of officers of a drinking club." However, due to the efforts of Robert La Follette and the Progressives, states began to treat political parties as "public agencies" during the early 1890s and 1900s; by the 1920s "most states had adopted a succession of mandatory statutes regulating every major aspect of the parties' structures and operations. ..."
"... While 1787 delegates disagreed on when corruption might occur, they brought a general shared understanding of what political corruption meant. To the delegates, political corruption referred to self-serving use of public power for private ends, including, without limitation, bribery, public decisions to serve private wealth made because of dependent relationships, public decisions to serve executive power made because of dependent relationships, and use by public officials of their positions of power to become wealthy. ..."
"... Two features of the definitional framework of corruption at the time deserve special attention, because they are not frequently articulated by all modern academics or judges. The first feature is that corruption was defined in terms of an attitude toward public service, not in relation to a set of criminal laws. The second feature is that citizenship was understood to be a public office. The delegates believed that non-elected citizens wielding or attempting to influence public power can be corrupt and that elite corruption is a serious threat to a polity. ..."
"... You can see how a political party -- a strange, amphibious creature, public one moment, private the next -- is virtually optimized to create a phishing equilibrium for corruption. However, I didn't really answer my question, did I? I still don't know what sort of legal entity the Democratic Party is. However, I can say what the Democratic Party is not ..."
"... So the purpose of superdelegates is to veto a popular choice, if they decide the popular choice "can't govern." But this is circular. Do you think for a moment that the Clintonites would have tried to make sure President Sanders couldn't have governed? You bet they would have, and from Day One. ..."
"... More importantly, you can bet that the number of superdelegates retained is enough for the superdelegates, as a class, to maintain their death grip on the party. ..."
"... could have voluntarily decided that, Look, we're gonna go into back rooms like they used to and smoke cigars and pick the candidate that way. ..."
"... That's exactly ..."
"... Functionally, the Democratic Party Is a Money Trough for Self-Dealing Consultants. Here once again is Nomiki Konst's amazing video, before the DNC: https://www.youtube.com/embed/EAvblBnXV-w Those millions! That's real money! ..."
"... Today, it is openly acknowledged by many members that the DNC and the Clinton campaign were running an operation together. In fact, it doesn't take much research beyond FEC filings to see that six of the top major consulting firms had simultaneous contracts with the DNC and HRC  --  collectively earning over $335 million since 2015 [this figure balloons in Konst's video because she got a look at the actual budget]. (This does not include SuperPACs.) ..."
"... One firm, GMMB earned $236.3 million from HFA and $5.3 from the DNC in 2016. Joel Benenson, a pollster and strategist who frequents cable news, collected $4.1m from HFA while simultaneously earning $3.3 million from the DNC. Perkins Coie law firm collected $3.8 million from the DNC, $481,979 from the Convention fund and $1.8 million from HFA in 2016. ..."
"... It gets worse. Not only do the DNC's favored consultants pick sides in the primaries, they serve on the DNC boards so they can give themselves donor money. ..."
"... These campaign consultants make a lot more money off of TV and mail than they do off of field efforts. Field efforts are long-term, labor-intensive, high overhead expenditures that do not have big margins from which the consultants can draw their payouts. They also don't allow the consultants to make money off of multiple campaigns all in the same cycle, while media and mail campaigns can be done from their DC office for dozens of clients all at the same time. They get paid whether campaigns win or lose, so effectiveness is irrelevant to them. ..."
"... the Democratic Party is nothing more than a layer of indirection between the donor class and the Democratic consultants and the campaigns they run; ..."
"... the Democratic Party -- in its current incarnation -- has important roles to play in not expanding its "own" electorate through voter registration, in the care and feeding of the intelligence community, in warmongering, in the continual buffing and polishing of neoliberal ideology, and in general keeping the Overton Window firmly nailed in place against policies that would convey universal concrete material benefits, especially to the working class. ..."
"... the bottom line is that if Democratic Party controls ballot access for the forseeable future, they have to be gone through ..."
"... In retrospect, despite Sanders evident appeal and the power of his list, I think it would have been best if their faction's pushback had been much stronger ..."
Jan 15, 2018 | www.nakedcapitalism.com

An alert reader who is a representative of the class that's suing the DNC Services Corporation for fraud in the 2016 Democratic primary -- WILDING et al. v. DNC SERVICES CORPORATION et al., a.k.a. the "DNC lawsuit" -- threw some interesting mail over the transom; it's from Elizabeth Beck of Beck & Lee, the firm that brought the case on behalf of the (putatively) defrauded class (and hence their lawyer). Beck's letter reads in relevant part:

... ... ...

[Jan 14, 2018] How The Social Order Crumbles

Social order crumbles then the elite became detached from common people and distrusted by them, as the US neoliberal elite now is. Trump elections were mostly semi-conscious protest against the neoliberal elite which was symbolized by Hillary candidacy.
The problem with the article is that the author mixed liberalism and neoliberalism: Liberalism and neoliberalism are opposite. Neoliberalism has nothing to do with Christianity. It is, in essence, a Satan-worshiping cult ("greed is good"). The fact that it is dominant in the USA and Western Europe suggests that we can talk about persecution of Christians under neoliberalism.
That's why neoliberal elite resorted to Russophobia -- to rally the nation against the flag and to hash the distrust with anti-Russian hysteria.
Notable quotes:
"... It has been observed many times that liberalism is mostly a secularized version of Christianity; there's a lot of truth to that. ..."
"... Why Liberalism Failed ..."
Jan 14, 2018 | www.theamericanconservative.com

I disagree. The problems in liberalism didn't show up until now because most people in liberal democratic countries took the Judeo-Christian moral framework for granted. If the human rights (for example) that liberalism enshrines are something real, then they have to be grounded in something transcendent. It has been observed many times that liberalism is mostly a secularized version of Christianity; there's a lot of truth to that.

As I read Why Liberalism Failed , I take Deneen as saying that liberalism had to fail because at its core it stands for liberating the individual from an unchosen obligation. Ultimately, it forms consumers, not citizens.

I don't see Deneen airbrushing the good parts of liberalism from history, but rather honing his critique on what he believes are its structural flaws that make it unsustainable. His critique is strong, certainly, and I think dead-on, in that he sees that liberalism cannot generate within itself the virtues it needs to survive.

Deneen's critique is also matter-of-fact. Free markets are a core part of the liberal democratic model, but given the globalized nature of the economy, and rapid technological changes, we have to face the possibility that liberalism as we have understood it is inadequate to provide for the good of workers left behind by these changes.

If we have neglected the moral order embedded within liberalism itself, on what basis can we regain it? I keep going back to Adams's line about our Constitution is only good for a "moral and religious people," because self-government by the people can only work for people who possess the virtues to govern their own passions. This says to me that to perceive and to achieve the virtues embedded within liberalism, one has to be oriented towards a sense that there really are moral and religious truths beyond ourselves that bind our conduct.

Liberalism has degenerated into Justice Anthony Kennedy's famous line:

At the heart of liberty is the right to define one's own concept of existence, of meaning, of the universe, and of the mystery of human life.

I think most Americans today would not get what the problem is with that definition. You can't support a governing order based on something that weak. That, I believe, is Patrick Deneen's overall point.

E.J. Worthing January 12, 2018 at 7:08 pm

"If prudence and temperance are synonyms for modesty and self-restraint – the rising generation of Americans has utterly abandoned these values."

They are not synonyms. Prudence is appropriate concern for the future. It has nothing to so with modesty. Temperance has to do with appropriate self-restraint. It is not temperate to constrain oneself in a way that causes oneself senseless suffering. That is what some conservatives are asking people who don't fit into traditional gender categories to do.

Feel better, Rod!

Dale McNamee , says: January 12, 2018 at 9:05 pm
John Adams' quote says it all !

We are no longer a moral and religious people

To paraphrase C.S. Lewis comment in his "Abolition of Man" essay : "We ridicule morality and religion and we are surprised what takes its place "

Abelard Lindsey , says: January 12, 2018 at 11:33 am
I believe Brooks is more correct than Deneen. Robert Heinlein always made the point that liberty was not compatible with ignorance and ineptitude. Rather, liberty and self-ownership requires a certain level of competence. Competent people are capable of self-rule. Incompetent people are not. The problem with Deneen's ideas is that they force the competent people to surrender a certain measure of liberty and self-ownership in order to "accommodate" and "fit in" with the less competent, and that is a trade off that people like myself will never accept in a million years. In other words, Deneen does not speak for competent individuals such as myself. Hence, his ideas could never work for the likes of myself.

I believe the only solution, and a partial one at that (there is no such thing as a perfect solution as perfection does not exist in nature) is radical decentralization on a global scale. I call this the "thousand state sovereignty" model or the "21st century Westphalis". Some might even call it the "Snow Crash" scenario. This is where conventional nation-states and institutions fade away and new ones based more on networks of individual with common interests, objectives, and character traits form. The more competent members of the human race, who have no need to give up classical liberalism and individual self-ownership are able to form their own societies politically and culturally autonomous from the rest of the human species. Other factions of humanity can do the same thing. Call it "GTOW" on a global scale. Hence, the nation-state will decline in relative importance and the city-state will come back into vogue.

I believe this is the ONLY pathway forward to a better world for everyone. It does have the advantage of being a "positive-sum" solution, as most everyone gets what they want. Positive-sum solutions are always superior to zero-sum solutions, which are really negative-sum solutions.

Erik , says: January 12, 2018 at 11:40 am
Even John Locke, who is basically the father of liberalism, said that the state "need not tolerate" atheism because a state cannot rely on enforcement mechanisms alone to ensure proper civic behavior. A citizen must have a healthy fear of some form of divine retribution as guarantor of his behavior. It's possible, of course, to develop some form of morality based in natural reason that can ensure proper behavior, but I think Locke was onto something in his exhortation that the law alone is not enough.
E.J. Worthing , says: January 12, 2018 at 12:00 pm
Based on Brooks's summary, Deenen appears to believe that people in ancient Greece, ancient Rome, and medieval times were more virtuous than people are in contemporary America.

That is not a reasonable thing to think. Maybe people in contemporary America have different vices than people did in past societies. But vice is part of the human condition, and people in America have not stopped caring for virtue. We value the cardinal virtues of prudence, justice, fortitude, and temperance as much as ever (though our understanding of what these virtues require has changed in some ways).

We also continue to value kindness, though Catholic teaching regards kindness as a theological virtue. True, as religious adherence has declined, some have joined the cult of Ayn Rand. But a culture of charity flourishes among secular people. Witness the growth of the effective altruism movement.

The only traditional Christian virtues that are now widely rejected are those specifically concerning religious belief and those that concerned sexual morality. Even if you think that sexual purity is a virtue (I don't), regarding it as among the most important virtues has never been reasonable.

C. L. H. Daniels , says: January 12, 2018 at 12:06 pm
As another writer somewhere wrote on the topic of Deneen's book (or perhaps it was a quote from the book itself, I don't remember), liberalism has until now been surviving by spending down the store of accumulated moral norms and civic mindedness that it inherited from its pre-modern progenitors. But since it cannot replenish those stores, it is essentially starving itself of that which it needs to survive. Eventually we (the people) will forget those things, and as norms break down and social trust diminishes toward the point of anarchy, we will beg for the state to step in and protect us from our fellow citizens. And that is when liberalism will give way to authoritarianism in what I'm sure will be an irony appreciated by almost no one when it actually happens.
Siarlys Jenkins , says: January 12, 2018 at 2:12 pm
I'm afraid our gracious host has affirmed David Brooks in the substance of Rod's stated disagreement. The Judeo-Christian moral order is as good as any moral order, and better than most in significant aspects. Its probably not the only one that would work, but if liberalism is a secular version of Christianity, then Brooks is right.

As a critic of liberalism from the left, but a sadder and wiser adherent of constitutional liberty after flirting in theory with Bolshevism, I think the word "liberal" is overplayed here. Liberalism is a political expression of laissez-faire capitalism. The concept of individual liberty, and the concept of ordered liberty, are not the exclusive province of liberalism.

Colonel Bogey provides a modest case in point. He is an advocate of the divine right of kings and monarchical superiority to any parliament the king may deign to authorize although he comfortably enjoys the privileges of living in a federal republic that prohibits any hereditary nobility. Colonel Bogey is no liberal, yet he is an enemy of the most viable alternatives to liberalism.

Embedded within liberalism the the emancipation of the self from constraint. How do you maintain tradition in such a culture?

The murderer is unregulated capitalism a la Ronald Reagan, just as Reagan was the murderer of the Savings and Loans, a true Mr. Potter. If the only virtue is getting rich at the expense of the general community, and only a few make it, what do faith, family, and tradition have to do with it? Now if the union hall was a center of social life, not only for you but for your entire family, and solidarity was woven into the fabric of your life, things might be different.

Only certain selves are liberated from restraint by liberalism. It also, historically speaking, involves the subordination of the employee to the employer, and the consumer to the purveyor of shoddy goods at exorbitant prices. Which has a morally degrading effect on both the dominant and the oppressed classes. The faux-left dismissal of the "working class," or to indulge a politically correct euphemism, the "white working class," is just another variant on the traditional class distinctions in liberalism.

At the heart of liberty is the right to define one's own concept of existence, of meaning, of the universe, and of the mystery of human life.

Nothing wrong with that statement, per se. The problem is overlooking that "one's own concept" is not binding on anyone else, nor does a law of general application have to bend and twist to accommodate each and every "own concept" every individual may have. Which is why Lawrence was valid, Windsor plausible and Obergefell a terribly sloppy application of generally valid constitutional principles.

Brendan , says: January 12, 2018 at 6:16 pm
The problem with Brooks is that he fails to realize that the things he treasures -- personal virtue, community, self-restraint, temperance and so on -- are not actually creations of liberalism, nor are they necessary products of it. To a large degree these came from the pre-existing culture(s) that came to the US before the founding from non-liberal societies. Included among these was, of course, Christianity as a prominent influence on values, virtues, community and so on. Liberalism was draped over this, but it doesn't create this, and none of this is inherent in liberalism. The liberal system in America has "free ridden" on these inherited aspects, which stem from non-liberal sources, for pretty much the entire history of the country. But they didn't come from liberalism.

The very things that Brooks values the most do not themselves come from liberalism, and it is far from clear, particularly as Western liberalism reaches its particularly illiberal/hegemonic phase culturally, actively seeking to strictly limit the permitted influence of these things which glued the society together for most of our history but did not stem from liberalism itself, that liberalism is the best system in which to preserve or even practice these things moving forward. I think a part of Brooks's brain senses this, but he is so committed to liberalism -- or at least so fearful of potential alternatives -- that although he sees the problem (much of his column writing bemoans the loss of these things, really), he can't really bring himself to see that liberalism is fundamentally indifferent as to whether the things that David Brooks so cherishes fade into the mists of history completely, so long as the absolute prioritization of individual freedom of action remains paramount.

It's unfortunate, really, because it makes a lot of what he writes rather painful to read, sadly.

[Jan 14, 2018] The U.S. is "owned" whole and complete. At the risk of repeating thy self; They've got a giant segment of the population duped into believing they live in a democracy, and some of them are just dumb enough to waste their time voting

Notable quotes:
"... Come on dude. I mean, I really like your stuff, but get with the times -- the U.S. is "owned" whole and complete. At the risk of repeating thy self; They've got a giant segment of the population duped into believing they live in a democracy, and some of them are just dumb enough to waste their time voting. ..."
"... America is like a religion -- you are required to "believe", because the reality is absent of any kind of deity. ..."
"... If only, Americans could get the kind of understanding of how the owners think of them -- contemptuous at best -- needed for certain tasks, but expendable if required -- basically, not well liked. Akin to a dirty, smelly employee that keeps showing up as not to get fired. ..."
Jan 14, 2018 | www.unz.com

Biff , January 14, 2018 at 6:06 am GMT

to finally restore the sovereignty of the US to the people of the US

Come on dude. I mean, I really like your stuff, but get with the times -- the U.S. is "owned" whole and complete. At the risk of repeating thy self; They've got a giant segment of the population duped into believing they live in a democracy, and some of them are just dumb enough to waste their time voting.

The owners throw the elected(owned prostitutes) officials a bone now and then, but that's all they get. If there ever was a corporate house negro, Obama, and the rest of them are it, and Trump has had his dumb ass neoconed from day one.

America is like a religion -- you are required to "believe", because the reality is absent of any kind of deity.

If only, Americans could get the kind of understanding of how the owners think of them -- contemptuous at best -- needed for certain tasks, but expendable if required -- basically, not well liked. Akin to a dirty, smelly employee that keeps showing up as not to get fired.

[Jan 14, 2018] Democracy in crisis? What democracy? There has not been a democracy for quite some time. by Cloudchopper

Jan 13, 2018 | therealnews.com

Cloudchopperan hour ago

Democracy in crisis? What democracy? There has not been a democracy for quite some time. Matter of fact it turned into a corporate oligarchy ruled by them, Wall Street and the Pentagon and not to forget Israel.

If Trump is messing with this so called democracy so be it. He is the bull walking through the delicate china closet the shadow rulers have set up for a long time. He smashes most of all those delicate dishes who really did not help the regular people at all. They were just there on display as teasers. Well Trump is smashing things left and right. "Racism" is being so overdone that it is becoming ridiculous and that real racism is still being hidden. Don't know about Bannon, never cared or paid much attention to him nor Breitbart news.

But believe me democracy is not in crisis because of Trump. There had to be a real democracy to begin with in order to be in crisis. What's in crisis is the two party system, the oligarchy, the false prophets, the media and the exceptionalism of the USA. All good things to have a crisis over and change things towards a new awakening.

John Ellis5 hours ago .

SHIT-HOLE DEMOCRACY --- ROOT CAUSE

● Republicans are top 25% of society who own 75% of wealth.
● Democrats are educated middle-class who own 25% of wealth.
● Working-poor are uneducated bottom 50% who refuse to vote until they stop getting shit upon. see more

PrMaine 9 hours ago

they all overestimated the American people.

That is true if the election really reflected the will of the American people. But do our elections do that?

Although we have all been indoctrinated into believing that we have the best democracy in the world, do our elections really reflect what the people want? Even if we believe the counting of votes to be accurate , we know that many citizens are denied their right to vote by manipulation of the voting rolls, voter intimidation, or the engineering of long lines.

But even if these issues are ignored, there is the two-party system that makes it so easy for big money and in particular big media to ensure that we do not get to choose from candidates that we would really want. A good step in moving toward a multi-party system would be to adopt some voting system that would encourage a multi-party system.

Democracy in America? We should work to give it a try.

NoDifference PrMaine7 hours ago

It's a good point. You figure that, at best, maybe 60 or 70 per cent of voters actually participate in an election. Then, out of that, it takes only 50%+1 to win. That means that a seat can be won with as little as perhaps 35% of all voters casting ballots.

However, first-past-the-post vote calculations are not an absolute impediment to winning elections. In Seattle, there is a socialist on the city council. In Minneapolis, another socialist came extremely close to a win there also. And the example of Canada's CCF/NDP cannot be ignored. All of these examples are in the context of first-past-the-post.

Now, I am firmly in favor of RCV. But we will probably only get RCV once the American Left gets itself to a position of power where it can make that kind of reform reality. The duopoly powers will not concede this to us gleefully, unless they see an opportunity to benefit from it somehow, such as gaming the system somehow (maybe setting off competition on the Left to ensure a win for the Right during a prolonged period of Rightwing solidarity as sometimes happens... like right now). I urge people to learn about the rise of the NDP even if they do not believe it to be a legitimate Left party (and there is plenty to support the impression that it has drifted to the center, sadly). I urge people to closely and carefully the Sawant win in Seattle. We can learn from these historical lessons.

We could be winning far more often and deeply if we just had something like RCV, like Proportional Representation (PR). But we don't. And the fact we don't have them should be that much more fuel for ignition. We must start winning. I always suggest starting at the bottom, not the top, where the Left could make inroads far more easily than attempting heroic battles with the duopoly at the highest levels of government. Over time, our presence would strengthen and our local efforts would weave a strong fabric of regional and maybe federal parties.

Getting depressed by the unfairness of the electoral college should move us in efforts to abolish it (and that is happening, btw). But at the same time, it should not be discouraging us from doing sensible things, like organizing local campaigns, taking over city halls, disrupting city planning departments and planning committees, and beginning to build what will one day become a national presence.

Yes, we should definitely give democracy a try. And we could be trying, mostly, at the local level with an eye toward eventual coalescence into more regional bodies of power. It has been done, and we would be wise to examine thoroughly how it was done and how we could improve that process.

NoDifference9 hours ago

Bannon's "far right Leninism" does not read well the first time, or the second time, or as many times as I read and re-read that phrase. I wish writers for the Left press would take the time to carefully proofread their own work before posting.

Yeah, I think I get what the author meant , but maybe it would have read more easily if it had been written something like "the Bannon version of authoritarianism" (or whatever it is the author precisely meant). It would have been clearer and not have appeared to conflate a rather Leftish ideology with some form of RW extremism.

[Jan 13, 2018] And by voting against its own interests, the white working class isn t just making itself poorer, it s literally killing itself

Notable quotes:
"... The central fact of US political economy, the source of our exceptionalism, is that lower-income whites vote for politicians who redistribute income upward and weaken the safety net because they think the welfare state is for nonwhites. ..."
"... And by voting against its own interests, the white working class isn't just making itself poorer, it's literally killing itself. ..."
"... With some slight variations, Krugman was essentially re-stating the thesis of my 2004 book, What's the Matter With Kansas?, in which I declared on the very first page that working people "getting their fundamental interests wrong" by voting for conservatives was "the bedrock of our civic order; it is the foundation on which all else rests". ..."
Jan 13, 2018 | www.theguardian.com

On New Year's Day, the economist and New York Times columnist Paul Krugman issued a series of tweets in which he proclaimed as follows:

The central fact of US political economy, the source of our exceptionalism, is that lower-income whites vote for politicians who redistribute income upward and weaken the safety net because they think the welfare state is for nonwhites.

and then, a few minutes later:

And by voting against its own interests, the white working class isn't just making itself poorer, it's literally killing itself.

Was I psyched to see this! With some slight variations, Krugman was essentially re-stating the thesis of my 2004 book, What's the Matter With Kansas?, in which I declared on the very first page that working people "getting their fundamental interests wrong" by voting for conservatives was "the bedrock of our civic order; it is the foundation on which all else rests".

... ... ...

Let me be more explicit. We have just come through an election in which underestimating working-class conservatism in northern states proved catastrophic for Democrats. Did the pundits' repeated insistence that white working-class voters in the north were reliable Democrats play any part in this underestimation? Did the message Krugman and his colleagues hammered home for years help to distract their followers from the basic strategy of Trump_vs_deep_state?

I ask because getting that point wrong was kind of a big deal in 2016. It was a blunder from which it will take the Democratic party years to recover. And we need to get to the bottom of it.

Thomas Frank is a Guardian columnist

[Jan 07, 2018] Neoliberal MSM want to control the narrative

"Controlling the narrative" is politically correct term for censorship.
Notable quotes:
"... I suspect most of the people who write all that furious invective on the Internet, professional polemicists and semiliterate commenters alike, are lashing out because they've been hurt -- their sense of fairness or decency has been outraged, or they feel personally wounded or threatened. ..."
"... "controlling the narrative" by neoliberal MSM is the key of facilitating the neoliberal "groupthink". Much like was in the USSR with "communist" groupthink. This is a step in the direction of the theocratic society (which the USSR definitely was). ..."
"... In other words "controlling the narrative" is the major form of neoliberal MSM "war on reality" as the neoliberal ideology is now completely discredited and can be sustained only by cult-style methods. ..."
Jan 30, 2017 | economistsview.typepad.com
libezkova -> Fred C. Dobbs... January 29, 2017 at 08:31 AM , 2017 at 08:31 AM
Neoliberal MSM want to control the narrative.

That's why "alternative facts" should be called an "alternative narrative".

https://opinionator.blogs.nytimes.com/2014/06/09/controlling-the-narrative/?_r=0

== quote ==

Maybe this is the same kind of clinical detachment doctors have to cultivate, a way of distancing oneself from the subject, protecting yourself against a crippling empathy. I won't say that writers or artists are more sensitive than other people, but it may be that they're less able to handle their own emotions.

It may be that art, like drugs, is a way of dulling or controlling pain. Eloquently articulating a feeling is one way to avoid actually experiencing it.

Words are only symbols, noises or marks on paper, and turning the messy, ugly stuff of life into language renders it inert and manageable for the author, even as it intensifies it for the reader.

It's a nerdy, sensitive kid's way of turning suffering into something safely abstract, an object of contemplation.

I suspect most of the people who write all that furious invective on the Internet, professional polemicists and semiliterate commenters alike, are lashing out because they've been hurt -- their sense of fairness or decency has been outraged, or they feel personally wounded or threatened.

libezkova -> libezkova... , January 29, 2017 at 09:24 AM
"controlling the narrative" by neoliberal MSM is the key of facilitating the neoliberal "groupthink". Much like was in the USSR with "communist" groupthink. This is a step in the direction of the theocratic society (which the USSR definitely was).

In other words "controlling the narrative" is the major form of neoliberal MSM "war on reality" as the neoliberal ideology is now completely discredited and can be sustained only by cult-style methods.

They want to invoke your emotions in the necessary direction and those emotions serve as a powerful filter, a firewall which will prevents you from seeing any alternative facts which taken as whole form an "alternative narrative".

It also creates certain taboo, such as "don't publish anything from RT", or you automatically become "Putin's stooge." But some incoherent blabbing of a crazy neocon in Boston Globe is OK.

This is an old and a very dirty game, a variation of method used for centuries by high demand cults:

"Why, of course, the people don't want war. Why would some poor slob on a farm want to risk his life in a war when the best that he can get out of it is to come back to his farm in one piece.

Naturally, the common people don't want war; neither in Russia nor in England nor in America, nor for that matter in Germany. That is understood.

But, after all, it is the leaders of the country who determine the policy and it is always a simple matter to drag the people along, whether it is a democracy or a fascist dictatorship or a Parliament or a Communist dictatorship

Voice or no voice, the people can always be brought to the bidding of the leaders. That is easy. All you have to do is tell them they are being attacked and denounce the pacifists for lack of patriotism and exposing the country to danger. It works the same way in any country."

– Hermann Goering (as told to Gustav Gilbert during the Nuremberg trials)

You need to be able to decipher this "suggested" set of emotions and detach it from the set of facts provided by neoliberal MSM. It might help to view things "Sine ira et studio" ( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sine_ira_et_studio )

That helps to destroy the official neoliberal narrative.

Here skepticism (whether natural or acquired) can be of great help in fighting groupthink pushed by neoliberal MSM.

We are all guilty of this one sidedness, but I think that we need to put some efforts to move in direction of higher level of skepticism toward our own views and probably provide at least links to alternative views.

[Jan 05, 2018] I find Democratic Party optimism for the 2018 mid-term election to be odd

Jan 05, 2018 | turcopolier.typepad.com

Editorial comment:

I find Democratic Party optimism for the 2018 mid-term election to be odd. It seems to rest on two expectations.

1. The yearning of the faithful Left for some crime that could be laid at DJT's feet as a plausible basis for impeachment or "sale" to Trump supporters as a basis for voting Democratic in congressional and gubernatorial elections. This seems an unlikely outcome to me. In spite of all the hyper-ventilation in the MSM over every rumored "smoking gun" to come in the Russophobic investigations, there is nothing yet in evidence of a crime with which DJT could be charged in the process of impeachment and trial. Manafort, Flynn, etc. all have profound legal problems, but they are not Trump. Guilt by association has not yet become a chargeable offense in the US. Removal for mental incompetence under the 25th Amendment is not a realistic possibility. This would require a majority vote of the cabinet and with the concurrence of the VP. Good luck on that! AND, a hell of a lot of people across the country like Trump's actions even if they think his behavior is bizarre. Is it seemly for a serving president to host a for profit $750/plate gala at his Florida resort? No. It is not but most people just don't care about that. It is not a crime.

2. The Democrats believe/hope that the US economy will decline between now and November and that will cause scales to fall from the eyes of the masses. Well, pilgrims, that is a hell of a thing to hope for and that collapse in the economy seems to me to be very unlikely given the cumulative stimulative effect of DJT actions in tax law, deregulation and his various jaw-boning efforts with business. The private sector added 250,000 jobs in December BEFORE the tax law was signed. the DOW crossed the 25,000 frontier early today and just kept going. Rich people in New York, New Jersey, California and other blue states were never going to vote for Trump anyway sooo ... the loss of their state income tax deduction is not politically significant. Republican Congressman Reed from western New York state was asked about this today on the Tee Vee. He replied that he understood this would be difficult for rich people in the big cities but that in his district the average income is $42,000/year and that the continued $10,000 real estate deduction would take care of 99.9% of his constituents and so he had voted for the new tax law.

It seems to me that the Democrats are counting their chickens mighty early. pl

A.Pols ,

The Democrats are indeed counting their chickens....
The economy can do all kinds of things such as deflate when the hot money (endless levitation by the Fed) runs out, which it won't unless Petrodollar and Dollar reserve currency status come to an end. Now there is a real good chance that will happen, but probably not by November of this year, though by November of 2038 it probably will have come to pass.
I had been a Democrat since my first election in 1968, but these days what do the Democrats actually represent? If you love the idea of Stone Mountain being blown up and you're a full fledged diversity catamite or gender crybaby, then They're the virtue signalling voice of "progressivism". Otherwise what do they offer except domestic stagnation, persecution of the people who keep the lights on, and schizoid foreign intervention?
Anyone who thinks Alabama was a call to man the barricades is mistaken.Roy Moore was a stinker of a candidate, but he still made it to the one yard line.
Greco ,
Perhaps Democrats have reason to be cautiously optimistic, if not assured of themselves.

They have been aided no less by Trump's former strategist. The self-proclaimed Leninist, Mr.Bannon, has stuck his little dagger into the president. I don't know what mindlessness propelled him to sit for hours with Mr. Wolffe on record and mercilessly attack the president and his family. It's possible Wolffe is playing loose with Bannon's words, but it doesn't appear that Bannon himself can recall with any certainty that he didn't say what has been attributed to him.

I assume Bannon's inner Machiavelli figured he would be quoted anonymously as a "White House source." Serves him right to be exposed like this, but he has caused untold damage to a movement he has both helped to propel and control, not to mention having forced Trump into unneeded damage control just at a time when he was getting into the swing of things and was beginning to turn the table on his enemies.

At least we now know why McMaster astutely decided to get rid of Bannon from the NSC and why Kelly had him fired. Bannon was not only a leaker, he would privately disparage anyone who attempted to stand in the way of his influence, including the president. I just hope Trump is now better served by those around him now, but that doesn't strike me being necessarily so.

Farmer Don , 04 January 2018 at 02:41 PM
Where will the economy be at the end of 2018
I HAVE NO CLUE!

too many variables for me:

Reasons for crash:
Personal debt rising starting to cause problems. Credit card debt up/Car loan defaults up
US debt rising.
US balance of trade continuing
Fed says it will quit increasing QE & may raise interest rates.
China and bricks completing parallel monetary trade and movement systems to stop US financial monopoly. Ie chinese SWIFT replacement system, Chinese credit cards, Russian increasing gold holdings compared to US$
Rents and housing most expensive compared to wages ever.
US health care costs rising


Reasons for good times
Central banks printing money and buying stocks.
Tax laws brings money back to US (more stock buybacks)
US debt ceiling seems to be an illusion
Trump great spokesman for business
Trump may use new tools to fight recession (helicopter money etc.)
Trump says he likes cheap US$
Momentum of stock markets
Trump has started no new wars. Military $$ stay mostly inside the USA
Trump gets huge infrastructure bill passed

Wild cards
Crypto currencies?
Interest rates?
Job outsourcing or coming back to USA?
Economic Black Swan from outside USA

Richardstevenhack , 04 January 2018 at 02:41 PM
I tend to agree that the economy is due for a crash to the limited degree I read economics news and opinion (I used to be much more interested but after forty years of waiting for the "Big Depression" which hasn't come, I've become tired.) But hoping it will happen in the next year is clearly speculative.

Bottom line is Democrats have no plan for 2018 - and therefore are likely to lose big again.

kao_hsien_chih said in reply to tv... , 04 January 2018 at 02:41 PM
Of all the components of the tax bill (many of which are problematic--but that's mostly b/c it's a tax bill, not necessarily for ideological reasons), I thought putting a lot of tax onus on wealthy bicoastals was a stroke of genius. Having said that, things are looking in a lot of mixed directions: many people are uneasy for all sorts of reasons about Trump, but the bottom line (esp on economic matters) does not look too bad, to say the least.

In many ways, actually, the overall situation looks like Bill Clinton 2.0: people had all sorts of issues with WJC--Democrats were uneasy with him and Republicans absolutely hated him. But things were looking OK or better in general and voters weren't going to punish him for nothing that was particularly off track. I see the Democrats trying some of the same tricks. Maybe even all the way to impeachment. Unless things come apart at the seams very visibly, none of them will stick on DJT.

Jack , 04 January 2018 at 02:41 PM
Sir

The stock market and financial asset prices in general drive perceptions of the strength of the economy. As long as financial assets prices remain in melt-up mode it will benefit the incumbents. While the Fed and the other major central banks are slowly reducing liquidity by either reducing the rate of growth of their balance sheet or reducing it outright as in the case of the Fed, there's no knowing when speculation peaks. The one thing that bulls should watch is the flattening of the yield curve.

[Jan 02, 2018] What We Don t Talk about When We Talk about Russian Hacking by Jackson Lears

Highly recommended!
It you need to read a singe article analyzing current anti-Russian hysteria in the USA this in the one you should read. This is an excellent article Simply great !!! And as of December 2017 it represents the perfect summary of Russiagate, Hillary defeat and, Neo-McCarthyism campaign launched as a method of hiding the crisis of neoliberalism revealed by Presidential elections. It also suggest that growing jingoism of both Parties (return to Madeleine Albright's 'indispensable nation' bulling. Both Trump and Albright assume that the United States should be able to do as it pleases in the international arena) and loss of the confidence and paranoia of the US neoliberal elite.
It contain many important observation which in my view perfectly catch the complexity of the current Us political landscape.
Bravo to Jackson Lears !!!
Notable quotes:
"... Neoliberals celebrate market utility as the sole criterion of worth; interventionists exalt military adventure abroad as a means of fighting evil in order to secure global progress ..."
"... Sanders is a social democrat and Trump a demagogic mountebank, but their campaigns underscored a widespread repudiation of the Washington consensus. For about a week after the election, pundits discussed the possibility of a more capacious Democratic strategy. It appeared that the party might learn something from Clinton's defeat. Then everything changed. ..."
"... A story that had circulated during the campaign without much effect resurfaced: it involved the charge that Russian operatives had hacked into the servers of the Democratic National Committee, revealing embarrassing emails that damaged Clinton's chances. With stunning speed, a new centrist-liberal orthodoxy came into being, enveloping the major media and the bipartisan Washington establishment. This secular religion has attracted hordes of converts in the first year of the Trump presidency. In its capacity to exclude dissent, it is like no other formation of mass opinion in my adult life, though it recalls a few dim childhood memories of anti-communist hysteria during the early 1950s. ..."
"... The centrepiece of the faith, based on the hacking charge, is the belief that Vladimir Putin orchestrated an attack on American democracy by ordering his minions to interfere in the election on behalf of Trump. The story became gospel with breathtaking suddenness and completeness. Doubters are perceived as heretics and as apologists for Trump and Putin, the evil twins and co-conspirators behind this attack on American democracy. ..."
"... Like any orthodoxy worth its salt, the religion of the Russian hack depends not on evidence but on ex cathedra pronouncements on the part of authoritative institutions and their overlords. Its scriptural foundation is a confused and largely fact-free 'assessment' produced last January by a small number of 'hand-picked' analysts – as James Clapper, the director of National Intelligence, described them – from the CIA, the FBI and the NSA. ..."
"... It is not the first time the intelligence agencies have played this role. When I hear the Intelligence Community Assessment cited as a reliable source, I always recall the part played by the New York Times in legitimating CIA reports of the threat posed by Saddam Hussein's putative weapons of mass destruction, not to mention the long history of disinformation (a.k.a. 'fake news') as a tactic for advancing one administration or another's political agenda. Once again, the established press is legitimating pronouncements made by the Church Fathers of the national security state. Clapper is among the most vigorous of these. He perjured himself before Congress in 2013, when he denied that the NSA had 'wittingly' spied on Americans – a lie for which he has never been held to account. ..."
"... In May 2017, he told NBC's Chuck Todd that the Russians were highly likely to have colluded with Trump's campaign because they are 'almost genetically driven to co-opt, penetrate, gain favour, whatever, which is a typical Russian technique'. The current orthodoxy exempts the Church Fathers from standards imposed on ordinary people, and condemns Russians – above all Putin – as uniquely, 'almost genetically' diabolical. ..."
"... It's hard for me to understand how the Democratic Party, which once felt scepticism towards the intelligence agencies, can now embrace the CIA and the FBI as sources of incontrovertible truth. One possible explanation is that Trump's election has created a permanent emergency in the liberal imagination, based on the belief that the threat he poses is unique and unprecedented. It's true that Trump's menace is viscerally real. But the menace posed by George W. Bush and Dick Cheney was equally real. ..."
"... Trump is committed to continuing his predecessors' lavish funding of the already bloated Defence Department, and his Fortress America is a blustering, undisciplined version of Madeleine Albright's 'indispensable nation'. Both Trump and Albright assume that the United States should be able to do as it pleases in the international arena: Trump because it's the greatest country in the world, Albright because it's an exceptional force for global good. ..."
"... Besides Trump's supposed uniqueness, there are two other assumptions behind the furore in Washington: the first is that the Russian hack unquestionably occurred, and the second is that the Russians are our implacable enemies. ..."
"... So far, after months of 'bombshells' that turn out to be duds, there is still no actual evidence for the claim that the Kremlin ordered interference in the American election. Meanwhile serious doubts have surfaced about the technical basis for the hacking claims. Independent observers have argued it is more likely that the emails were leaked from inside, not hacked from outside. On this front, the most persuasive case was made by a group called Veteran Intelligence Professionals for Sanity, former employees of the US intelligence agencies who distinguished themselves in 2003 by debunking Colin Powell's claim that Saddam Hussein possessed weapons of mass destruction, hours after Powell had presented his pseudo-evidence at the UN. ..."
"... The crucial issue here and elsewhere is the exclusion from public discussion of any critical perspectives on the orthodox narrative, even the perspectives of people with professional credentials and a solid track record. ..."
"... Sceptical voices, such as those of the VIPS, have been drowned out by a din of disinformation. Flagrantly false stories, like the Washington Post report that the Russians had hacked into the Vermont electrical grid, are published, then retracted 24 hours later. Sometimes – like the stories about Russian interference in the French and German elections – they are not retracted even after they have been discredited. These stories have been thoroughly debunked by French and German intelligence services but continue to hover, poisoning the atmosphere, confusing debate. ..."
"... The consequence is a spreading confusion that envelops everything. Epistemological nihilism looms, but some people and institutions have more power than others to define what constitutes an agreed-on reality. ..."
"... More genuine insurgencies are in the making, which confront corporate power and connect domestic with foreign policy, but they face an uphill battle against the entrenched money and power of the Democratic leadership – the likes of Chuck Schumer, Nancy Pelosi, the Clintons and the DNC. Russiagate offers Democratic elites a way to promote party unity against Trump-Putin, while the DNC purges Sanders's supporters. ..."
"... Fusion GPS eventually produced the trash, a lurid account written by the former British MI6 intelligence agent Christopher Steele, based on hearsay purchased from anonymous Russian sources. Amid prostitutes and golden showers, a story emerged: the Russian government had been blackmailing and bribing Donald Trump for years, on the assumption that he would become president some day and serve the Kremlin's interests. In this fantastic tale, Putin becomes a preternaturally prescient schemer. Like other accusations of collusion, this one has become vaguer over time, adding to the murky atmosphere without ever providing any evidence. ..."
"... Yet the FBI apparently took the Steele dossier seriously enough to include a summary of it in a secret appendix to the Intelligence Community Assessment. Two weeks before the inauguration, James Comey, the director of the FBI, described the dossier to Trump. After Comey's briefing was leaked to the press, the website Buzzfeed published the dossier in full, producing hilarity and hysteria in the Washington establishment. ..."
"... The Steele dossier inhabits a shadowy realm where ideology and intelligence, disinformation and revelation overlap. It is the antechamber to the wider system of epistemological nihilism created by various rival factions in the intelligence community: the 'tree of smoke' that, for the novelist Denis Johnson, symbolised CIA operations in Vietnam. ..."
"... Yet the Democratic Party has now embarked on a full-scale rehabilitation of the intelligence community – or at least the part of it that supports the notion of Russian hacking. (We can be sure there is disagreement behind the scenes.) And it is not only the Democratic establishment that is embracing the deep state. Some of the party's base, believing Trump and Putin to be joined at the hip, has taken to ranting about 'treason' like a reconstituted John Birch Society. ..."
"... The Democratic Party has now developed a new outlook on the world, a more ambitious partnership between liberal humanitarian interventionists and neoconservative militarists than existed under the cautious Obama. This may be the most disastrous consequence for the Democratic Party of the new anti-Russian orthodoxy: the loss of the opportunity to formulate a more humane and coherent foreign policy. The obsession with Putin has erased any possibility of complexity from the Democratic world picture, creating a void quickly filled by the monochrome fantasies of Hillary Clinton and her exceptionalist allies. ..."
"... For people like Max Boot and Robert Kagan, war is a desirable state of affairs, especially when viewed from the comfort of their keyboards, and the rest of the world – apart from a few bad guys – is filled with populations who want to build societies just like ours: pluralistic, democratic and open for business. This view is difficult to challenge when it cloaks itself in humanitarian sentiment. There is horrific suffering in the world; the US has abundant resources to help relieve it; the moral imperative is clear. There are endless forms of international engagement that do not involve military intervention. But it is the path taken by US policy often enough that one may suspect humanitarian rhetoric is nothing more than window-dressing for a more mundane geopolitics – one that defines the national interest as global and virtually limitless. ..."
"... The prospect of impeaching Trump and removing him from office by convicting him of collusion with Russia has created an atmosphere of almost giddy anticipation among leading Democrats, allowing them to forget that the rest of the Republican Party is composed of many politicians far more skilful in Washington's ways than their president will ever be. ..."
"... They are posing an overdue challenge to the long con of neoliberalism, and the technocratic arrogance that led to Clinton's defeat in Rust Belt states. Recognising that the current leadership will not bring about significant change, they are seeking funding from outside the DNC. ..."
"... Democrat leaders have persuaded themselves (and much of their base) that all the republic needs is a restoration of the status quo ante Trump. They remain oblivious to popular impatience with familiar formulas. ..."
"... Democratic insurgents are also developing a populist critique of the imperial hubris that has sponsored multiple failed crusades, extorted disproportionate sacrifice from the working class and provoked support for Trump, who presented himself (however misleadingly) as an opponent of open-ended interventionism. On foreign policy, the insurgents face an even more entrenched opposition than on domestic policy: a bipartisan consensus aflame with outrage at the threat to democracy supposedly posed by Russian hacking. Still, they may have found a tactical way forward, by focusing on the unequal burden borne by the poor and working class in the promotion and maintenance of American empire. ..."
"... This approach animates Autopsy: The Democratic Party in Crisis, a 33-page document whose authors include Norman Solomon, founder of the web-based insurgent lobby RootsAction.org. 'The Democratic Party's claims of fighting for "working families" have been undermined by its refusal to directly challenge corporate power, enabling Trump to masquerade as a champion of the people,' Autopsy announces. ..."
"... Clinton's record of uncritical commitment to military intervention allowed Trump to have it both ways, playing to jingoist resentment while posing as an opponent of protracted and pointless war. ..."
"... If the insurgent movements within the Democratic Party begin to formulate an intelligent foreign policy critique, a re-examination may finally occur. And the world may come into sharper focus as a place where American power, like American virtue, is limited. For this Democrat, that is an outcome devoutly to be wished. It's a long shot, but there is something happening out there. ..."
Jan 04, 2018 | lrb.co.uk

American politics have rarely presented a more disheartening spectacle. The repellent and dangerous antics of Donald Trump are troubling enough, but so is the Democratic Party leadership's failure to take in the significance of the 2016 election campaign. Bernie Sanders's challenge to Hillary Clinton, combined with Trump's triumph, revealed the breadth of popular anger at politics as usual – the blend of neoliberal domestic policy and interventionist foreign policy that constitutes consensus in Washington. Neoliberals celebrate market utility as the sole criterion of worth; interventionists exalt military adventure abroad as a means of fighting evil in order to secure global progress . Both agendas have proved calamitous for most Americans. Many registered their disaffection in 2016. Sanders is a social democrat and Trump a demagogic mountebank, but their campaigns underscored a widespread repudiation of the Washington consensus. For about a week after the election, pundits discussed the possibility of a more capacious Democratic strategy. It appeared that the party might learn something from Clinton's defeat. Then everything changed.

... ... ...

[Dec 31, 2017] Is [neo]Liberalism a Dying Faith by Pat Buchanan

Highly recommended!
Nationalism really represent a growing threat to neoliberalism. It is clear the the rise of nationalism was caused by the triumph of neoliberalism all over the globe. As neoliberal ideology collapsed in 2008, thing became really interesting now. Looks like 1920th-1940th will be replayed on a new level with the USA neoliberal empire under stress from new challengers instead of British empire.
Rumor about the death of neoliberalism are slightly exaggerated ;-). This social system still has a lot of staying power. you need some external shock like the need of cheap oil (defined as sustainable price of oil over $100 per barrel) to shake it again. Of some financial crisis similar to the crisis of 2008. Currently there is still no alternative social order that can replace it. Collapse of the USSR discredited both socialism even of different flavors then was practiced in the USSR. National socialism would be a step back from neoliberalism.
Notable quotes:
"... The retreat of [neo]liberalism is very visible in Asia. All Southeast Asian states have turned their backs on liberal democracy, especially Indonesia, the Philippines and Myanmar in the last decade. This NYT article notes that liberalism has essentially died in Japan, and that all political contests are now between what the west would consider conservatives: https://www.nytimes.com/2017/10/15/opinion/liberalism-japan-election.html ..."
"... What is today called "Liberalism" and "Conservatism" both are simply corrupted labels applied to the same top-down corporate-fascistic elite rule that I think Mr. Buchanan once referred to as "two wings of the same bird of prey." ..."
"... Nobody at the top cares about 'diversity.' They care about the easy profits that come from ever cheaper labor. 'Diversity' is not suicide but rather murder: instigated by a small number of very powerful people who have decided that the long-term health of their nations and civilization is less important than short-term profits and power. ..."
"... Hillary and Obama are to the right of the President that Buchanan served in his White House. Richard Nixon was to the Left of both Hillary and Obama. I can't even imagine Hillary accepting and signing into law a 'Clean Water Act' or enacting Price Controls to fight inflation. No way. Heck would freeze over before Hillary would do something so against her Banker Backers. ..."
"... It's sure that financial (neo)liberalism was in a growth phase prior to year 2000 (under Greenspan, the "Maestro") with a general belief that the economy could be "fine tuned" with risk eliminated using sophisticated financial instruments, monetary policy etc. ..."
"... If [neo] Liberalism is a package, then two heavy financial blows that shook the whole foundation were the collapse of the dot.com bubble (2000) and the mortgage bubble (2008). ..."
"... And, other (self-serving) neoliberal stories are now seen as false. For example, that the US is an "advanced post-industrial service economy", that out-sourcing would "free up Americans for higher skilled/higher wage employment" or that "the US would always gain from tariff free trade". ..."
"... The basic divide is surely Nationalism (America First) vs. Globalism (Neo-Liberalism), as shown by the last US Presidential election. ..."
"... Neoliberalism, of which the Clintons are acolytes, supports Free Trade and Open Borders. Although it claims to support World Government, in actual fact it supports corporatism. This is explicit in the TPPA Trump vetoed. Under the corporate state, the state controls the corporations, as Don Benito did in Italy. Under corporatism, the corporations tell the state what to do, as has been the case in America since at least the Clinton Presidency. ..."
"... But I recall that Pat B also said neoconservatism was on its way out a few years after Iraq war II and yet it's stronger than ever and its adherents are firmly ensconced in the joint chiefs of staff, the pentagon, Congress and the White House. It's also spawned a close cousin in liberal interventionism. ..."
Oct 01, 2002 | www.unz.com

Asked to name the defining attributes of the America we wish to become, many liberals would answer that we must realize our manifest destiny since 1776, by becoming more equal, more diverse and more democratic -- and the model for mankind's future.

Equality, diversity, democracy -- this is the holy trinity of the post-Christian secular state at whose altars Liberal Man worships.

But the congregation worshiping these gods is shrinking. And even Europe seems to be rejecting what America has on offer.

In a retreat from diversity, Catalonia just voted to separate from Spain. The Basque and Galician peoples of Spain are following the Catalan secession crisis with great interest.

The right-wing People's Party and far-right Freedom Party just swept 60 percent of Austria's vote, delivering the nation to 31-year-old Sebastian Kurz, whose anti-immigrant platform was plagiarized from the Freedom Party. Summarized it is: Austria for the Austrians!

Lombardy, whose capital is Milan, and Veneto will vote Sunday for greater autonomy from Rome.

South Tyrol (Alto Adige), severed from Austria and ceded to Italy at Versailles, written off by Hitler to appease Mussolini after his Anschluss, is astir anew with secessionism. Even the Sicilians are talking of separation.

By Sunday, the Czech Republic may have a new leader, billionaire Andrej Babis. Writes The Washington Post, Babis "makes a sport of attacking the European Union and says NATO's mission is outdated."

Platform Promise: Keep the Muslim masses out of the motherland.

To ethnonationalists, their countrymen are not equal to all others, but superior in rights. Many may nod at Thomas Jefferson's line that "All men are created equal," but they no more practice that in their own nations than did Jefferson in his

... ... ...

European peoples and parties are today using democratic means to achieve "illiberal" ends. And it is hard to see what halts the drift away from liberal democracy toward the restrictive right. For in virtually every nation, there is a major party in opposition, or a party in power, that holds deeply nationalist views.

European elites may denounce these new parties as "illiberal" or fascist, but it is becoming apparent that it may be liberalism itself that belongs to yesterday. For more and more Europeans see the invasion of the continent along the routes whence the invaders came centuries ago, not as a manageable problem but an existential crisis.

To many Europeans, it portends an irreversible alteration in the character of the countries their grandchildren will inherit, and possibly an end to their civilization. And they are not going to be deterred from voting their fears by being called names that long ago lost their toxicity from overuse.

And as Europeans decline to celebrate the racial, ethnic, creedal and cultural diversity extolled by American elites, they also seem to reject the idea that foreigners should be treated equally in nations created for their own kind.

Europeans seem to admire more, and model their nations more, along the lines of the less diverse America of the Eisenhower era, than on the polyglot America of 2017.

And Europe seems to be moving toward immigration polices more like the McCarran-Walter Act of 1950 than the open borders bill that Sen. Edward Kennedy shepherded through the Senate in 1965.

Kennedy promised that the racial and ethnic composition of the America of the 1960s would not be overturned, and he questioned the morality and motives of any who implied that it would.

Jason Liu , October 20, 2017 at 12:02 pm GMT
Yes. Fuck yes.

Liberalism is the naivete of 18th century elites, no different than today. Modernity as you know it is unsustainable, mostly because equality isn't real, identity has value for most humans, pluralism is by definition fractious, and deep down most people wish to follow a wise strongman leader who represents their interests first and not a vague set of universalist values.

Blind devotion to liberal democracy is another one of those times when white people take an abstract concept to weird extremes. It is short-sighted and autistically narrow minded. Just because you have an oppressive king doesn't mean everyone should be equals. Just because there was slavery/genocide doesn't mean diversity is good.

The retreat of [neo]liberalism is very visible in Asia. All Southeast Asian states have turned their backs on liberal democracy, especially Indonesia, the Philippines and Myanmar in the last decade. This NYT article notes that liberalism has essentially died in Japan, and that all political contests are now between what the west would consider conservatives: https://www.nytimes.com/2017/10/15/opinion/liberalism-japan-election.html

Good riddance. The idea that egalitarianism is more advanced than hierarchy has always been false, and flies against the long arc of history. Time for nationalists around the world to smash liberal democracy and build a new modernity based on actual humanism, with respect to hierarchies and the primacy of majorities instead of guilt and pathological compassion dressed up as political ideology.

TG , October 20, 2017 at 1:10 pm GMT
"Liberalism" is not dying. "Liberalism" is dead, and has been since at least 1970.

What is today called "Liberalism" and "Conservatism" both are simply corrupted labels applied to the same top-down corporate-fascistic elite rule that I think Mr. Buchanan once referred to as "two wings of the same bird of prey."

Nobody at the top cares about 'diversity.' They care about the easy profits that come from ever cheaper labor. 'Diversity' is not suicide but rather murder: instigated by a small number of very powerful people who have decided that the long-term health of their nations and civilization is less important than short-term profits and power.

Paul's Ghost , October 20, 2017 at 6:08 pm GMT
Its been dead for nearly 20 years now. Liberalism has long been the Monty Python parrot nailed to its perch. At this point, the term is mainly kept alive in right-wing attacks by people who lack the imagination to change their habitual targets for so long.

To my eye, the last 'liberal' politician died in a susupicious plane crash in 2000 as the Bush Republicans were taking the White House by their famous 5-4 vote/coup and also needed to claim control of the Senate. So, the last authentic 'liberal' Senator, Paul Wellstone of MN was killed in a suspicious plane crash that was never properly explained.

Hillary and Obama are to the right of the President that Buchanan served in his White House. Richard Nixon was to the Left of both Hillary and Obama. I can't even imagine Hillary accepting and signing into law a 'Clean Water Act' or enacting Price Controls to fight inflation. No way. Heck would freeze over before Hillary would do something so against her Banker Backers.

And, at the root, that is the key. The 'Liberals' that the right now rails against are strongly backed and supported by the Wall Street Banks and other corporate leaders. The 'Liberals' have pushed for a government Of the Bankers, By the Bankers and For the Bankers. The 'Liberals' now are in favor of Endless Unconstitutional War around the world.

Which can only mean that the term 'Liberal' has been so completely morphed away from its original meanings to be completely worthless.

The last true Liberal in American politics was Paul Wellstone. And even by the time he died for his sins, he was calling himself a "progressive" because after the Clintons and the Gores had so distorted the term Liberal it was meaningless. Or it had come to mean a society ruled by bankers, a society at constant war and throwing money constantly at a gigantic war machine, a society of censorship where the government needed to control all music lyrics, the same corrupt government where money could by anything from a night in the Lincoln Bedroom to a Presidential Pardon or any other government favor.

Thus, 'Liberals' were a dead movement even by 2000, when the people who actually believed in the American People over the profits of bankers were calling themselves Progressives in disgust at the misuse of the term Liberal. And now, Obama and Hillary have trashed and distorted even the term Progressive into bombing the world 365 days a year and still constantly throwing money at the military machine and the problems it invents.

So, Liberalism is so long dead that if you exumed the grave you'd only find dust. And Pat must be getting senile and just throwing back out the same lines he once wrote as a speechwriter for the last Great Lefty President Richard Nixon.

Miro23 , October 20, 2017 at 6:17 pm GMT

Is Liberalism a Dying Faith?

Another question is whether this is wishful thinking from Pat or some kind of reality.

I think that he's right, that Liberalism is a dying faith, and it's interesting to check the decline.

It's sure that financial (neo)liberalism was in a growth phase prior to year 2000 (under Greenspan, the "Maestro") with a general belief that the economy could be "fine tuned" with risk eliminated using sophisticated financial instruments, monetary policy etc.

If [neo] Liberalism is a package, then two heavy financial blows that shook the whole foundation were the collapse of the dot.com bubble (2000) and the mortgage bubble (2008).

And, other (self-serving) neoliberal stories are now seen as false. For example, that the US is an "advanced post-industrial service economy", that out-sourcing would "free up Americans for higher skilled/higher wage employment" or that "the US would always gain from tariff free trade".

In fact, the borderless global "world is flat" dogma is now seen as enabling a rootless hyper-rich global elite to draw on a sea of globalized serf labour with little or no identity, while their media and SWJ activists operate a scorched earth defense against any sign of opposition.

The basic divide is surely Nationalism (America First) vs. Globalism (Neo-Liberalism), as shown by the last US Presidential election.

reiner Tor , October 20, 2017 at 6:39 pm GMT
@Randal

A useful analogy might be Viktor Orbán. He started out as a leader of a liberal party, Fidesz, but then over time started moving to the right. It is often speculated that he started it for cynical reasons, like seeing how the right was divided and that there was essentially a vacuum there for a strong conservative party, but there's little doubt he totally internalized it. There's also little doubt (and at the time he and a lot of his fellow party leaders talked about it a lot) that as he (they) started a family and having children, they started to realize how conservatism kinda made more sense than liberalism.

With Kurz, there's the possibility for this path. However, he'd need to start a family soon for that to happen. At that age Orbán was already married with children

Verymuchalive , October 20, 2017 at 10:10 pm GMT
@Paul's Ghost

Liberalism ( large L) is indeed long dead.

Neoliberalism, of which the Clintons are acolytes, supports Free Trade and Open Borders. Although it claims to support World Government, in actual fact it supports corporatism. This is explicit in the TPPA Trump vetoed. Under the corporate state, the state controls the corporations, as Don Benito did in Italy. Under corporatism, the corporations tell the state what to do, as has been the case in America since at least the Clinton Presidency.

Richard Nixon was a capitalist, not a corporatist. He was a supporter of proper competition laws, unlike any President since Clinton. Socially, he was interventionist, though this may have been to lessen criticism of his Vietnam policies. Anyway, his bussing and desegregation policies were a long-term failure.

Price Control was quickly dropped, as it was in other Western countries. Long term Price Control, as in present day Venezuela, is economically disastrous.

KenH , October 21, 2017 at 1:51 pm GMT
Let's hope liberalism is a dying faith and that is passes from the Western world. If not it will destroy the West, so if it doesn't die a natural death then we must euthanize it. For the evidence is in and it has begat feminism, anti-white racism, demographic winter, mass third world immigration and everything else that ails the West and has made it the sick and dying man of the world.

But I recall that Pat B also said neoconservatism was on its way out a few years after Iraq war II and yet it's stronger than ever and its adherents are firmly ensconced in the joint chiefs of staff, the pentagon, Congress and the White House. It's also spawned a close cousin in liberal interventionism.

What Pat refers to as "liberalism" is now left wing totalitarianism and anti-white hatred and it's fanatically trying to remain relevant by lashing out and blacklisting, deplatforming, demonetizing, and physically assaulting all of its enemies on the right who are gaining strength much to their chagrin. They resort to these methods because they can't win an honest debate and in a true free marketplace of ideas they lose.

[Dec 31, 2017] What Happens When A Russiagate Skeptic Debates A Professional Russiagater

Highly recommended!
What a pitiful pressitute this Like Harding is...
The fact that he is employed by Guardia tells a lot how low Guardian fall. It's a yellow press (owned by intelligence agencies if we talk about their coverage of Russia).
Notable quotes:
"... In theory, it would be hard to find two journalists more qualified to debate each side of this important issue. In practice, it was a one-sided thrashing that The Intercept 's Jeremy Scahill accurately described as "brutal". ..."
"... Russiagate only works if you allow it to remain zoomed out, where the individually weak arguments of this giant Gish gallop fallacy form the appearance of a legitimate argument. ..."
"... That's not how you're going to get the truth about Russia. He's all appeals to authority - Steele's most of all, even name dropping Kerry. To finally land on "oh well if you would read my whole book" is just getting to the silly season. Also "well this is the kind of person Putin is" is a terrible argument. This isn't about either Putin or Trump really, its about the long history of US-Russia relations and all that has occurred. Also, the ubiquitous throwing around of accusations of the murder of journalists in Russia is a straw man argument, especially when it is just thrown in as some sort of moral shielding for a shabby argument. ..."
Dec 28, 2017 | www.zerohedge.com

Have you ever wondered why mainstream media outlets, despite being so fond of dramatic panel debates on other hot-button issues, never have critics of the Russiagate narrative on to debate those who advance it? Well, in a recent Real News interview we received an extremely clear answer to that question, and it was so epic it deserves its own article.

Real News host and producer Aaron Maté has recently emerged as one of the most articulate critics of the establishment Russia narrative and the Trump-Russia conspiracy theory, and has published in The Nation some of the clearest arguments against both that I've yet seen. Luke Harding is a journalist for The Guardian where he has been writing prolifically in promotion of the Russiagate narrative, and is the author of New York Times bestseller Collusion: Secret Meetings, Dirty Money, and How Russia Helped Donald Trump Win.

In theory, it would be hard to find two journalists more qualified to debate each side of this important issue. In practice, it was a one-sided thrashing that The Intercept 's Jeremy Scahill accurately described as "brutal".

The term Gish gallop , named after a Young Earth creationist who was notoriously fond of employing it, refers to a fallacious debate tactic in which a bunch of individually weak arguments are strung together in rapid-fire succession in order to create the illusion of a solid argument and overwhelm the opposition's ability to refute them all in the time allotted. Throughout the discussion the Gish gallop appeared to be the only tool that Luke Harding brought to the table, firing out a deluge of feeble and unsubstantiated arguments only to be stopped over and over again by Maté who kept pointing out when Harding was making a false or fallacious claim.

https://www.youtube.com/embed/9Ikf1uZli4g

In this part here , for example, the following exchange takes place while Harding is already against the ropes on the back of a previous failed argument. I'm going to type this up so you can clearly see what's happening here:

Harding: Look, I'm a journalist. I'm a storyteller. I'm not a kind of head of the CIA or the NSA. But what I can tell you is that there have been similar operations in France, most recently when President Macron was elected ? -

Maté: Well actually Luke that's not true. That's straight up not true. After that election the French cyber-intelligence agency came out and said it could have been virtually anybody.

Harding: Yeah. But, if you'll let me finish, there've been attacks on the German parliament ? -

Maté: Okay, but wait Luke, do you concede that the France hack that you just claimed didn't happen?

Harding: [pause] What? -- ?that it didn't happen? Sorry?

Maté: Do you concede that the Russian hacking of the French election that you just claimed actually is not true?

Harding: [pause] Well, I mean that it's not true? I mean, the French report was inconclusive, but you have to look at this kind of contextually. We've seen attacks on other European states as well from Russia, they have very kind of advanced cyber capabilities.

Maté: Where else?

Harding: Well, Estonia. Have you heard of Estonia? It's a state in the Baltics which was crippled by a massive cyber attack in 2008, which certainly all kind of western European and former eastern European states think was carried out by Moscow. I mean I was in Moscow at the time, when relations between the two countries were extremely bad. This is a kind of ongoing thing. Now you might say, quite legitimately, well the US does the same thing, the UK does the same thing, and I think to a certain extent that is certainly right. I think what was different last year was the attempt to kind of dump this stuff out into kind of US public space and try and influence public opinion there. That's unusual. And of course that's a matter of congressional inquiry and something Mueller is looking at too.

Maté: Right. But again, my problem here is that the examples that are frequently presented to substantiate claims of this massive Russian hacking operation around the world prove out to be false. So France as I mentioned; you also mentioned Germany. There was a lot of worry about Russian hacking of the German elections, but it turned out? -- ?and there's plenty of articles since then that have acknowledged this? - ? that actually there was no Russian hack in Germany.

In the above exchange, Maté derailed Harding's Gish gallop, and Harding actually admonished him for doing so, telling him "let me finish" and attempting to go on listing more flimsy examples to bolster his case as though he hadn't just begun his Gish gallop with a completely false example .

That's really all Harding brought to the debate. A bunch of individually weak arguments, the fact that he speaks Russian and has lived in Moscow, and the occasional straw man where he tries to imply that Maté is claiming that Vladimir Putin is an innocent girl scout. Meanwhile Maté just kept patiently dragging the debate back on track over and over again in the most polite obliteration of a man that I have ever witnessed.

The entire interview followed this basic script. Harding makes an unfounded claim, Maté holds him to the fact that it's unfounded, Harding sputters a bit and tries to zoom things out and point to a bigger-picture analysis of broader trends to distract from the fact that he'd just made an individual claim that was baseless, then winds up implying that Maté is only skeptical of the claims because he hasn't lived in Russia as Harding has.

jeremy scahill 0
@jeremyscahill
This @aaronjmate interview is brutal. He makes mincemeat of Luke Harding, who can't seem to defend the thesis, much less the title, of his own book: Where's the 'Collusion' - YouTube
11:03 AM-Dec 25, 2017
Q 131 11597 C? 1,148

The interview ended when Harding once again implied that Maté was only skeptical of the collusion narrative because he'd never been to Russia and seen what a right-wing oppressive government it is, after which the following exchange took place:

Maté: I don't think I've countered anything you've said about the state of Vladimir Putin's Russia. The issue under discussion today has been whether there was collusion, the topic of your book.
Harding: Yeah, but you're clearly a kind of collusion rejectionist, so I'm not sure what sort of evidence short of Trump and Putin in a sauna together would convince you. Clearly nothing would convince you. But anyway it's been a pleasure.

At which point Harding abruptly logged off the video chat, leaving Maté to wrap up the show and promote Harding's book on his own.

You should definitely watch this debate for yourself , and enjoy it, because I will be shocked if we ever see another like it. Harding's fate will serve as a cautionary tale for the establishment hacks who've built their careers advancing the Russiagate conspiracy theory , and it's highly unlikely that any of them will ever make the mistake of trying to debate anyone of Maté's caliber again.

The reason Russiagaters speak so often in broad, sweeping terms? - saying there are too many suspicious things happening for there not to be a there there, that there's too much smoke for there not to be fire? - ? is because when you zoom in and focus on any individual part of their conspiracy theory, it falls apart under the slightest amount of critical thinking (or as Harding calls it, "collusion rejectionism"). Russiagate only works if you allow it to remain zoomed out, where the individually weak arguments of this giant Gish gallop fallacy form the appearance of a legitimate argument.

Well, Harding did say he's a storyteller.

* * *

Thanks for reading! My work here is entirely reader-funded so if you enjoyed this piece please consider sharing it around, liking me on Facebook , following me on Twitter , bookmarking my website , throwing some money into my hat on Patreon or Paypal , or buying my new book Woke: A Field Guide for Utopia Preppers . Our Hidden History 4 days ago (edited) That Harding tells Mate to meet Alexi Navalny, who is a far right nationalist and most certainly a tool of US intelligence (something like Russia's Richard Spencer) was all I needed to hear to understand where Luke is coming from.

He's little more than an intelligence asset himself if his idea of speaking to "Russians" is to go and speak to a bunch of people who most certainly have their own ties back to the western intelligence agencies.

That's not how you're going to get the truth about Russia. He's all appeals to authority - Steele's most of all, even name dropping Kerry. To finally land on "oh well if you would read my whole book" is just getting to the silly season. Also "well this is the kind of person Putin is" is a terrible argument. This isn't about either Putin or Trump really, its about the long history of US-Russia relations and all that has occurred. Also, the ubiquitous throwing around of accusations of the murder of journalists in Russia is a straw man argument, especially when it is just thrown in as some sort of moral shielding for a shabby argument.

Few in the US know about these cases or what occurred, or of the many forces inside of Russia that might be involved in murdering journalists just as in Mexico or Turkey. But these cases are not explained - blame is merely assigned to Putin himself. Of course if someone here discusses he death of Michael Hastings, they're a "conspiracy theorist", but if the crime involves a Russian were to assign the blame to Vladimir Putin and, no further explanation is required.

[Dec 31, 2017] Is [neo]Liberalism a Dying Faith by Pat Buchanan

Highly recommended!
Nationalism really represent a growing threat to neoliberalism. It is clear the the rise of nationalism was caused by the triumph of neoliberalism all over the globe. As neoliberal ideology collapsed in 2008, thing became really interesting now. Looks like 1920th-1940th will be replayed on a new level with the USA neoliberal empire under stress from new challengers instead of British empire.
Rumor about the death of neoliberalism are slightly exaggerated ;-). This social system still has a lot of staying power. you need some external shock like the need of cheap oil (defined as sustainable price of oil over $100 per barrel) to shake it again. Of some financial crisis similar to the crisis of 2008. Currently there is still no alternative social order that can replace it. Collapse of the USSR discredited both socialism even of different flavors then was practiced in the USSR. National socialism would be a step back from neoliberalism.
Notable quotes:
"... The retreat of [neo]liberalism is very visible in Asia. All Southeast Asian states have turned their backs on liberal democracy, especially Indonesia, the Philippines and Myanmar in the last decade. This NYT article notes that liberalism has essentially died in Japan, and that all political contests are now between what the west would consider conservatives: https://www.nytimes.com/2017/10/15/opinion/liberalism-japan-election.html ..."
"... What is today called "Liberalism" and "Conservatism" both are simply corrupted labels applied to the same top-down corporate-fascistic elite rule that I think Mr. Buchanan once referred to as "two wings of the same bird of prey." ..."
"... Nobody at the top cares about 'diversity.' They care about the easy profits that come from ever cheaper labor. 'Diversity' is not suicide but rather murder: instigated by a small number of very powerful people who have decided that the long-term health of their nations and civilization is less important than short-term profits and power. ..."
"... Hillary and Obama are to the right of the President that Buchanan served in his White House. Richard Nixon was to the Left of both Hillary and Obama. I can't even imagine Hillary accepting and signing into law a 'Clean Water Act' or enacting Price Controls to fight inflation. No way. Heck would freeze over before Hillary would do something so against her Banker Backers. ..."
"... It's sure that financial (neo)liberalism was in a growth phase prior to year 2000 (under Greenspan, the "Maestro") with a general belief that the economy could be "fine tuned" with risk eliminated using sophisticated financial instruments, monetary policy etc. ..."
"... If [neo] Liberalism is a package, then two heavy financial blows that shook the whole foundation were the collapse of the dot.com bubble (2000) and the mortgage bubble (2008). ..."
"... And, other (self-serving) neoliberal stories are now seen as false. For example, that the US is an "advanced post-industrial service economy", that out-sourcing would "free up Americans for higher skilled/higher wage employment" or that "the US would always gain from tariff free trade". ..."
"... The basic divide is surely Nationalism (America First) vs. Globalism (Neo-Liberalism), as shown by the last US Presidential election. ..."
"... Neoliberalism, of which the Clintons are acolytes, supports Free Trade and Open Borders. Although it claims to support World Government, in actual fact it supports corporatism. This is explicit in the TPPA Trump vetoed. Under the corporate state, the state controls the corporations, as Don Benito did in Italy. Under corporatism, the corporations tell the state what to do, as has been the case in America since at least the Clinton Presidency. ..."
"... But I recall that Pat B also said neoconservatism was on its way out a few years after Iraq war II and yet it's stronger than ever and its adherents are firmly ensconced in the joint chiefs of staff, the pentagon, Congress and the White House. It's also spawned a close cousin in liberal interventionism. ..."
Oct 01, 2002 | www.unz.com

Asked to name the defining attributes of the America we wish to become, many liberals would answer that we must realize our manifest destiny since 1776, by becoming more equal, more diverse and more democratic -- and the model for mankind's future.

Equality, diversity, democracy -- this is the holy trinity of the post-Christian secular state at whose altars Liberal Man worships.

But the congregation worshiping these gods is shrinking. And even Europe seems to be rejecting what America has on offer.

In a retreat from diversity, Catalonia just voted to separate from Spain. The Basque and Galician peoples of Spain are following the Catalan secession crisis with great interest.

The right-wing People's Party and far-right Freedom Party just swept 60 percent of Austria's vote, delivering the nation to 31-year-old Sebastian Kurz, whose anti-immigrant platform was plagiarized from the Freedom Party. Summarized it is: Austria for the Austrians!

Lombardy, whose capital is Milan, and Veneto will vote Sunday for greater autonomy from Rome.

South Tyrol (Alto Adige), severed from Austria and ceded to Italy at Versailles, written off by Hitler to appease Mussolini after his Anschluss, is astir anew with secessionism. Even the Sicilians are talking of separation.

By Sunday, the Czech Republic may have a new leader, billionaire Andrej Babis. Writes The Washington Post, Babis "makes a sport of attacking the European Union and says NATO's mission is outdated."

Platform Promise: Keep the Muslim masses out of the motherland.

To ethnonationalists, their countrymen are not equal to all others, but superior in rights. Many may nod at Thomas Jefferson's line that "All men are created equal," but they no more practice that in their own nations than did Jefferson in his

... ... ...

European peoples and parties are today using democratic means to achieve "illiberal" ends. And it is hard to see what halts the drift away from liberal democracy toward the restrictive right. For in virtually every nation, there is a major party in opposition, or a party in power, that holds deeply nationalist views.

European elites may denounce these new parties as "illiberal" or fascist, but it is becoming apparent that it may be liberalism itself that belongs to yesterday. For more and more Europeans see the invasion of the continent along the routes whence the invaders came centuries ago, not as a manageable problem but an existential crisis.

To many Europeans, it portends an irreversible alteration in the character of the countries their grandchildren will inherit, and possibly an end to their civilization. And they are not going to be deterred from voting their fears by being called names that long ago lost their toxicity from overuse.

And as Europeans decline to celebrate the racial, ethnic, creedal and cultural diversity extolled by American elites, they also seem to reject the idea that foreigners should be treated equally in nations created for their own kind.

Europeans seem to admire more, and model their nations more, along the lines of the less diverse America of the Eisenhower era, than on the polyglot America of 2017.

And Europe seems to be moving toward immigration polices more like the McCarran-Walter Act of 1950 than the open borders bill that Sen. Edward Kennedy shepherded through the Senate in 1965.

Kennedy promised that the racial and ethnic composition of the America of the 1960s would not be overturned, and he questioned the morality and motives of any who implied that it would.

Jason Liu , October 20, 2017 at 12:02 pm GMT
Yes. Fuck yes.

Liberalism is the naivete of 18th century elites, no different than today. Modernity as you know it is unsustainable, mostly because equality isn't real, identity has value for most humans, pluralism is by definition fractious, and deep down most people wish to follow a wise strongman leader who represents their interests first and not a vague set of universalist values.

Blind devotion to liberal democracy is another one of those times when white people take an abstract concept to weird extremes. It is short-sighted and autistically narrow minded. Just because you have an oppressive king doesn't mean everyone should be equals. Just because there was slavery/genocide doesn't mean diversity is good.

The retreat of [neo]liberalism is very visible in Asia. All Southeast Asian states have turned their backs on liberal democracy, especially Indonesia, the Philippines and Myanmar in the last decade. This NYT article notes that liberalism has essentially died in Japan, and that all political contests are now between what the west would consider conservatives: https://www.nytimes.com/2017/10/15/opinion/liberalism-japan-election.html

Good riddance. The idea that egalitarianism is more advanced than hierarchy has always been false, and flies against the long arc of history. Time for nationalists around the world to smash liberal democracy and build a new modernity based on actual humanism, with respect to hierarchies and the primacy of majorities instead of guilt and pathological compassion dressed up as political ideology.

TG , October 20, 2017 at 1:10 pm GMT
"Liberalism" is not dying. "Liberalism" is dead, and has been since at least 1970.

What is today called "Liberalism" and "Conservatism" both are simply corrupted labels applied to the same top-down corporate-fascistic elite rule that I think Mr. Buchanan once referred to as "two wings of the same bird of prey."

Nobody at the top cares about 'diversity.' They care about the easy profits that come from ever cheaper labor. 'Diversity' is not suicide but rather murder: instigated by a small number of very powerful people who have decided that the long-term health of their nations and civilization is less important than short-term profits and power.

Paul's Ghost , October 20, 2017 at 6:08 pm GMT
Its been dead for nearly 20 years now. Liberalism has long been the Monty Python parrot nailed to its perch. At this point, the term is mainly kept alive in right-wing attacks by people who lack the imagination to change their habitual targets for so long.

To my eye, the last 'liberal' politician died in a susupicious plane crash in 2000 as the Bush Republicans were taking the White House by their famous 5-4 vote/coup and also needed to claim control of the Senate. So, the last authentic 'liberal' Senator, Paul Wellstone of MN was killed in a suspicious plane crash that was never properly explained.

Hillary and Obama are to the right of the President that Buchanan served in his White House. Richard Nixon was to the Left of both Hillary and Obama. I can't even imagine Hillary accepting and signing into law a 'Clean Water Act' or enacting Price Controls to fight inflation. No way. Heck would freeze over before Hillary would do something so against her Banker Backers.

And, at the root, that is the key. The 'Liberals' that the right now rails against are strongly backed and supported by the Wall Street Banks and other corporate leaders. The 'Liberals' have pushed for a government Of the Bankers, By the Bankers and For the Bankers. The 'Liberals' now are in favor of Endless Unconstitutional War around the world.

Which can only mean that the term 'Liberal' has been so completely morphed away from its original meanings to be completely worthless.

The last true Liberal in American politics was Paul Wellstone. And even by the time he died for his sins, he was calling himself a "progressive" because after the Clintons and the Gores had so distorted the term Liberal it was meaningless. Or it had come to mean a society ruled by bankers, a society at constant war and throwing money constantly at a gigantic war machine, a society of censorship where the government needed to control all music lyrics, the same corrupt government where money could by anything from a night in the Lincoln Bedroom to a Presidential Pardon or any other government favor.

Thus, 'Liberals' were a dead movement even by 2000, when the people who actually believed in the American People over the profits of bankers were calling themselves Progressives in disgust at the misuse of the term Liberal. And now, Obama and Hillary have trashed and distorted even the term Progressive into bombing the world 365 days a year and still constantly throwing money at the military machine and the problems it invents.

So, Liberalism is so long dead that if you exumed the grave you'd only find dust. And Pat must be getting senile and just throwing back out the same lines he once wrote as a speechwriter for the last Great Lefty President Richard Nixon.

Miro23 , October 20, 2017 at 6:17 pm GMT

Is Liberalism a Dying Faith?

Another question is whether this is wishful thinking from Pat or some kind of reality.

I think that he's right, that Liberalism is a dying faith, and it's interesting to check the decline.

It's sure that financial (neo)liberalism was in a growth phase prior to year 2000 (under Greenspan, the "Maestro") with a general belief that the economy could be "fine tuned" with risk eliminated using sophisticated financial instruments, monetary policy etc.

If [neo] Liberalism is a package, then two heavy financial blows that shook the whole foundation were the collapse of the dot.com bubble (2000) and the mortgage bubble (2008).

And, other (self-serving) neoliberal stories are now seen as false. For example, that the US is an "advanced post-industrial service economy", that out-sourcing would "free up Americans for higher skilled/higher wage employment" or that "the US would always gain from tariff free trade".

In fact, the borderless global "world is flat" dogma is now seen as enabling a rootless hyper-rich global elite to draw on a sea of globalized serf labour with little or no identity, while their media and SWJ activists operate a scorched earth defense against any sign of opposition.

The basic divide is surely Nationalism (America First) vs. Globalism (Neo-Liberalism), as shown by the last US Presidential election.

reiner Tor , October 20, 2017 at 6:39 pm GMT
@Randal

A useful analogy might be Viktor Orbán. He started out as a leader of a liberal party, Fidesz, but then over time started moving to the right. It is often speculated that he started it for cynical reasons, like seeing how the right was divided and that there was essentially a vacuum there for a strong conservative party, but there's little doubt he totally internalized it. There's also little doubt (and at the time he and a lot of his fellow party leaders talked about it a lot) that as he (they) started a family and having children, they started to realize how conservatism kinda made more sense than liberalism.

With Kurz, there's the possibility for this path. However, he'd need to start a family soon for that to happen. At that age Orbán was already married with children

Verymuchalive , October 20, 2017 at 10:10 pm GMT
@Paul's Ghost

Liberalism ( large L) is indeed long dead.

Neoliberalism, of which the Clintons are acolytes, supports Free Trade and Open Borders. Although it claims to support World Government, in actual fact it supports corporatism. This is explicit in the TPPA Trump vetoed. Under the corporate state, the state controls the corporations, as Don Benito did in Italy. Under corporatism, the corporations tell the state what to do, as has been the case in America since at least the Clinton Presidency.

Richard Nixon was a capitalist, not a corporatist. He was a supporter of proper competition laws, unlike any President since Clinton. Socially, he was interventionist, though this may have been to lessen criticism of his Vietnam policies. Anyway, his bussing and desegregation policies were a long-term failure.

Price Control was quickly dropped, as it was in other Western countries. Long term Price Control, as in present day Venezuela, is economically disastrous.

KenH , October 21, 2017 at 1:51 pm GMT
Let's hope liberalism is a dying faith and that is passes from the Western world. If not it will destroy the West, so if it doesn't die a natural death then we must euthanize it. For the evidence is in and it has begat feminism, anti-white racism, demographic winter, mass third world immigration and everything else that ails the West and has made it the sick and dying man of the world.

But I recall that Pat B also said neoconservatism was on its way out a few years after Iraq war II and yet it's stronger than ever and its adherents are firmly ensconced in the joint chiefs of staff, the pentagon, Congress and the White House. It's also spawned a close cousin in liberal interventionism.

What Pat refers to as "liberalism" is now left wing totalitarianism and anti-white hatred and it's fanatically trying to remain relevant by lashing out and blacklisting, deplatforming, demonetizing, and physically assaulting all of its enemies on the right who are gaining strength much to their chagrin. They resort to these methods because they can't win an honest debate and in a true free marketplace of ideas they lose.

[Dec 28, 2017] How CrowdStrike placed malware in DNC hacked servers by Alex Christoforou

Highly recommended!
If this is true, then this is definitely a sophisticated false flag operation. Was malware Alperovich people injected specifically designed to implicate Russians? In other words Crowdstrike=Fancy Bear
Images removed. For full content please thee the original source
One interesting corollary of this analysis is that installing Crowdstrike software is like inviting a wolf to guard your chicken. If they are so dishonest you take enormous risks. That might be true for some other heavily advertized "intrusion prevention" toolkits. So those criminals who use mistyped popular addresses or buy Google searches to drive lemmings to their site and then flash the screen that they detected a virus on your computer a, please call provided number and for a small amount of money your virus will be removed get a new more sinister life.
I suspected many of such firms (for example ISS which was bought by IBM in 2006) to be scams long ago.
Notable quotes:
"... Disobedient Media outlines the DNC server cover-up evidenced in CrowdStrike malware infusion ..."
"... In the article, they claim to have just been working on eliminating the last of the hackers from the DNC's network during the past weekend (conveniently coinciding with Assange's statement and being an indirect admission that their Falcon software had failed to achieve it's stated capabilities at that time , assuming their statements were accurate) . ..."
"... To date, CrowdStrike has not been able to show how the malware had relayed any emails or accessed any mailboxes. They have also not responded to inquiries specifically asking for details about this. In fact, things have now been discovered that bring some of their malware discoveries into question. ..."
"... there is a reason to think Fancy Bear didn't start some of its activity until CrowdStrike had arrived at the DNC. CrowdStrike, in the indiciators of compromise they reported, identified three pieces of malware relating to Fancy Bear: ..."
"... They found that generally, in a lot of cases, malware developers didn't care to hide the compile times and that while implausible timestamps are used, it's rare that these use dates in the future. It's possible, but unlikely that one sample would have a postdated timestamp to coincide with their visit by mere chance but seems extremely unlikely to happen with two or more samples. Considering the dates of CrowdStrike's activities at the DNC coincide with the compile dates of two out of the three pieces of malware discovered and attributed to APT-28 (the other compiled approximately 2 weeks prior to their visit), the big question is: Did CrowdStrike plant some (or all) of the APT-28 malware? ..."
"... The IP address, according to those articles, was disabled in June 2015, eleven months before the DNC emails were acquired – meaning those IP addresses, in reality, had no involvement in the alleged hacking of the DNC. ..."
"... The fact that two out of three of the Fancy Bear malware samples identified were compiled on dates within the apparent five day period CrowdStrike were apparently at the DNC seems incredibly unlikely to have occurred by mere chance. ..."
"... That all three malware samples were compiled within ten days either side of their visit – makes it clear just how questionable the Fancy Bear malware discoveries were. ..."
Dec 28, 2017 | theduran.com

Of course the DNC did not want to the FBI to investigate its "hacked servers". The plan was well underway to excuse Hillary's pathetic election defeat to Trump, and CrowdStrike would help out by planting evidence to pin on those evil "Russian hackers." Some would call this entire DNC server hack an "insurance policy."

... ... ...

[Dec 28, 2017] On your surmise that Putin prefers Trump to Hillary and would thus have incentive to influence the election, I beg to differ. Putin is one smart statesman; he knows very well it makes no difference which candidates gets elected in US elections.

Highly recommended!
Notable quotes:
"... I accept your point that the Democrats and the Republicans are two sides of the same coin, but it's important to understand that Putin is deeply conservative and very risk averse. ..."
"... Hillary Clinton may be a threat to Russia but she knows the "rules" and is very predictable, while Trump doesn't know the rules and appears to act on a whim ..."
"... However, given the problems that Hillary Clinton had to overcome to get elected, backing her against Trump would be risky. So the highly risk averse Putin would logically stay out of the election entirely and all the claims of Russia hacking the election are fake news. ..."
"... As for the alleged media campaign, my response is "so what!". Western media, including state-owned media, interferes around the world all the time so complaining about Russian state-owned media doing the same is pure hypocrisy and should be ignored. ..."
Dec 28, 2017 | www.moonofalabama.org

Ghost Ship , Dec 27, 2017 10:17:37 AM | 92

Posted by: Oriental Voice | Dec 26, 2017 3:56:16 PM | 35
On your surmise that Putin prefers Trump to Hillary and would thus have incentive to influence the election, I beg to differ. Putin is one smart statesman; he knows very well it makes no difference which candidates gets elected in US elections.

I accept your point that the Democrats and the Republicans are two sides of the same coin, but it's important to understand that Putin is deeply conservative and very risk averse.

Hillary Clinton may be a threat to Russia but she knows the "rules" and is very predictable, while Trump doesn't know the rules and appears to act on a whim , so if Putin were to have interfered in the 2016 presidential election, logic would suggest that he would do so on Hillary Clinton's side. However, given the problems that Hillary Clinton had to overcome to get elected, backing her against Trump would be risky. So the highly risk averse Putin would logically stay out of the election entirely and all the claims of Russia hacking the election are fake news.

As for the alleged media campaign, my response is "so what!". Western media, including state-owned media, interferes around the world all the time so complaining about Russian state-owned media doing the same is pure hypocrisy and should be ignored.

[Dec 27, 2017] Putin is one smart statesman; he knows very well it makes no difference which candidates gets elected in US elections. Any candidate that WOULD make a difference would NEVER see the daylight of nomination, especially at the presidential level. I myself believe all the talk of Russia interfering the 2016 Election is no more than a witch hunt

Highly recommended!
Neocons dominate the US foreign policy establishment.
In other words Russiagate might be a pre-emptive move by neocons after Trump elections.
Notable quotes:
"... The dogma does not come from questioning this conclusion. Because Putin, during the campaign, complimented Trump, does not support the conclusion with its insinuation that those who voted for Trump needed to be influenced by anything other than being fed up with the usual in American politics. Same with Brexit. That dissatisfaction continues, and it doesn't need Russian influence to feed it. This is infantile oversimplification to say so. ..."
"... "The centrepiece of the faith, based on the hacking charge, is the belief that Vladimir Putin orchestrated an attack on American democracy by ordering his minions to interfere in the election on behalf of Trump. The story became gospel with breathtaking suddenness and completeness. Doubters are perceived as heretics and as apologists for Trump and Putin, the evil twins and co-conspirators behind this attack on American democracy. Responsibility for the absence of debate lies in large part with the major media outlets. Their uncritical embrace and endless repetition of the Russian hack story have made it seem a fait accompli in the public mind. It is hard to estimate popular belief in this new orthodoxy, but it does not seem to be merely a creed of Washington insiders. If you question the received narrative in casual conversations, you run the risk of provoking blank stares or overt hostility – even from old friends. This has all been baffling and troubling to me; there have been moments when pop-culture fantasies (body snatchers, Kool-Aid) have come to mind." ..."
"... But I do believe Putin, and for that matter Xi Jinping of China too, should make efforts to infiltrate the USA election processes. It's an eye for an eye. USA has been exercising its free hands in manipulating elections and stirring up color revolutions all around the world, including the 2012 presidential election in Russia. They should be given a taste of their own medicine. In fact, I believe it is for this reason that the US MSM is playing up this hocus pocus Russian-gate matter, as a preemptive measure to justify imposing electioneering controls in the future. ..."
"... USA may not be vulnerable as yet to this kind of external nuisances, as the masses have not yet reached the stage of being easily stirred. But that time will come. ..."
Dec 27, 2017 | www.moonofalabama.org

Rhett , Dec 26, 2017 2:18:30 PM | 20

I have great respect for the reporting on this site regarding Syria and the Middle East. I regret that for some reason there is this dogmatic approach to the issue of Russian attempts to influence the US election. Why wouldn't the Russians try to sway the election? Allowing Hillary to win would have put a dangerous adversary in the White House, one with even more aggressive neocon tendencies than Obama. Trump has been owned by Russian mobsters since the the 1990s, and his ties to Russian criminals like Felix Sater are well known.

Putin thought that getting Trump in office would allow the US to go down a more restrained foreign policy path and lift sanctions against Russia, completely understandable goals. Using Facebook/Twitter bots and groups like Cambridge Analytica, an effort was made to sway public opinion toward Trump. That is just politics. And does anyone really doubt there are incriminating sexual videos of Trump out there? Trump (like Bill Clinton) was buddies with billionaire pedophile Jeffrey Epstein. Of course there are videos of Trump that can be used for blackmail purposes, and of course they would be used to get him on board with the Russian plan.

The problem is that everything Trump touches dies. He's a fraud and an incompetent idiot. Always has been. To make matters worse, Trump is controlled by the Zionists through his Orthodox Jewish daughter and Israeli spy son-in-law. This gave power to the most openly extreme Zionist elements who will keep pushing for more war in the Middle East. And Trump is so vile that he's hated by the majority of Americans and doesn't have the political power to end sanctions against Russia.

Personally, I think this is all for the best. Despite his Zionist handlers, Trump will unintentionally unwind the American Empire through incompetence and lack of strategy, which allows Syria and the rest of the world to breathe and rebuild. So Russia may have made a bad bet on this guy being a useful ally, but his own stupidity will end up working out to the world's favor in the long run.

Sid2 , Dec 26, 2017 3:17:40 PM | 27
@20

there is considerable irony in use of "dogmatic" here: the dogma actually occurs in the rigid authoritarian propaganda that the Russians Putin specifically interfered with the election itself, which now smugly blankets any discussion. "The Russians interfered" is now dogma, when that statement is not factually shown, and should read, "allegedly interfered."

The dogma does not come from questioning this conclusion. Because Putin, during the campaign, complimented Trump, does not support the conclusion with its insinuation that those who voted for Trump needed to be influenced by anything other than being fed up with the usual in American politics. Same with Brexit. That dissatisfaction continues, and it doesn't need Russian influence to feed it. This is infantile oversimplification to say so.

To suggest "possibly" in any argument does not provide evidence. There is no evidence. Take a look at b's link to the following for a clear, sane assessment of what's going on. As with:

"The centrepiece of the faith, based on the hacking charge, is the belief that Vladimir Putin orchestrated an attack on American democracy by ordering his minions to interfere in the election on behalf of Trump. The story became gospel with breathtaking suddenness and completeness. Doubters are perceived as heretics and as apologists for Trump and Putin, the evil twins and co-conspirators behind this attack on American democracy. Responsibility for the absence of debate lies in large part with the major media outlets. Their uncritical embrace and endless repetition of the Russian hack story have made it seem a fait accompli in the public mind. It is hard to estimate popular belief in this new orthodoxy, but it does not seem to be merely a creed of Washington insiders. If you question the received narrative in casual conversations, you run the risk of provoking blank stares or overt hostility – even from old friends. This has all been baffling and troubling to me; there have been moments when pop-culture fantasies (body snatchers, Kool-Aid) have come to mind."

this is b's link in URL form here:

https://www.lrb.co.uk/v40/n01/jackson-lears/what-we-dont-talk-about-when-we-talk-about-russian-hacking

Oriental Voice , Dec 26, 2017 3:56:16 PM | 35
@20:

I echo you opinion that this site gives great reports on issues pertaining to Syria and the ME. Credit to b.

On your surmise that Putin prefers Trump to Hillary and would thus have incentive to influence the election, I beg to differ. Putin is one smart statesman; he knows very well it makes no difference which candidates gets elected in US elections. Any candidate that WOULD make a difference would NEVER see the daylight of nomination, especially at the presidential level. I myself believe all the talk of Russia interfering the 2016 Election is no more than a witch hunt.

But I do believe Putin, and for that matter Xi Jinping of China too, should make efforts to infiltrate the USA election processes. It's an eye for an eye. USA has been exercising its free hands in manipulating elections and stirring up color revolutions all around the world, including the 2012 presidential election in Russia. They should be given a taste of their own medicine. In fact, I believe it is for this reason that the US MSM is playing up this hocus pocus Russian-gate matter, as a preemptive measure to justify imposing electioneering controls in the future.

USA may not be vulnerable as yet to this kind of external nuisances, as the masses have not yet reached the stage of being easily stirred. But that time will come.

Continued

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