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Bill, Hillary, Barack and the rest should do the decent and honorable thing: disappear completely, along with the rest of their vicious elitist Neoliberal Democrat ilk. Progressives who have insisted on backing these criminals – and who have tried to bully those of us on the actual left into joining them in that ugly and viciously circular embrace – need to make themselves over or just drop off the face of the political landscape and let people who are more serious and radical step in. |
This rigging of DNC was consistent with the neoliberal corporate Democratic Party elite’s longstanding vicious hatred of left-wing of the party and anti-plutocratic populists. They hate and viciously fight them in the ranks of their pro-Wall Street Party. It's "Clinton Third Way Democrats" who essentially elected Trump, because Bernie for them is more dangerous than Trump (It was the Democrats' embrace of neoliberalism that won it for Trump Naomi Klein Opinion The Guardian, Nov 9, 2016)
Under Bill Clinton the Democrats have become the party of Financial Oligarchy. At this time corporate interests were moving to finance as their main activity and that was a very profitable betrayal for Clintons. They were royally remunerated for that. Clintons have positioned the Dems as puppets of financial oligarchy and got in return two major things:
When the neoliberal media have to choose between their paymasters and the truth, their paymasters win every time. Like under Bolshevism, they are soldiers of the Party. In any case, starting from Clinton Presidency Democratic Party lost any connection with the majority of the USA population. Bill Clinton was more Davos Man than Democrat. A puppet of Robert Rubin, a prodigious fundraiser who became his Treasury Secretary, Clinton embraced neoliberal vision of a global future in which corporate investors were unregulated and the social contract was history. That's why the majority working-class Americans, feeling abandoned by the Democrats, got on the hook of the Republican re-definition of class struggle as struggle for nation sovereignty (which is the essence of nationalism.) In other words, Democrats (and Clintons personally) created conditions for the rise of far right and neofascism in the USA. The fact that after Presidential Election of 2016 they recruited factions of intelligence agencies (Brennan faction in CIA, Comey faction in FBI) to depose Trump makes the situation even worse.
Like Republicans, Clinton Democrats now completely depends on "divide and conquer" strategy. Essentially they became "Republicans light." That's why they used "identity wedge" politics to attract African American votes (which is ironic as Bill Clinton probably helped to incarcerate more black males than any other president) and minorities (especially woman and sexual minorities.)
As if Spanish and African-American population, as a whole, have different economic interests then white working class and white lower middle class.
We can say that Dems became a party which represents an alliance of neoliberal establishment and minorities, where minorities are duped again and again (as in Barack Obama "change we can believe in" bait and switch classic). This dishonest playing of race and gender cards was a trademark of Hillary Clinton campaign.
Clintons understood well that their "The Third Way" turn represents the major betrayal of the working class, but they counted (and pretty successfully until 2016) on the fact that white working class "has nowhere to go" and will vote for them anyway, as a lesser evil. But in 2016 they were up to a big and unpleasant surprise -- white working class turned to right wing populists. So Clinton Democrat are instrumentals in the big "Far right Renaissance". They essentially created all the necessary preconditions for it.
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Clinton's strategy was that workers have nowhere to go, and that was true for almost two decades, But then came Trump.... |
All those hissy hits of Democrats (and neoliberals MSM controlled by the same interest groups; see, for example Krugman in NYT) after Hillary Clinton landmark defeat just reflect this fact. As rejection of Democrats by lower middle and working class is now a permanent factor in US politics (The Democrats' Davos ideology won't win back the midwest Thomas Frank Opinion The Guardian, Apr 27, 2017)
Clinton Dems now are trying to ally themselves with intelligence agencies (which became a real political force during 2018 elections), sliding to neofascism. They position themselves as the Second War Party, trying to outdid in jingoism Republicans. It is pretty ironic that Pelosi opposed Trump wall, which cost around 1% of the cost of F35 program (F-35 Program Costs Jump to $406.5 Billion in Latest Estimate).
But as the head of "Davos Party" she wants to derail and if possible to impeach Trump: no even slightest deviation from neoliberal Washington consensus is allowed and now intelligence agencies are recruited to ensure this.
| It is clear that the US financial and business elites represented in Davos are far more interested in global markets and corporate investors than they are in ordinary Americans' needs. |
Essentially US Democrats are a wing of "Davos party" and that situation can't be changed by promoting "National Security Democrats" (format staff of three letter agencies, or military) to counter rising far right in the USA. The latter is just a desperate move by the party brass after Hillary Clinton fiasco (which worked for Congress elections in 2018). If this works, it is only because due to blunders and betrayal of his voters by Trump, who became something like Republican Obama), In any case, financial oligarchy still dominates (or more correctly have bought) the Democratic Patty as Jeff Faux noted in his article in Nation (The Party of Davos The Nation , Jan 26, 2016):
Davos is rather the most visible symbol of the virtual political network that governs the global market in the absence of a world government. It is more like a political convention, where elites get to sniff one another out, identify which ideas and people are “sound” and come away with increased chances that their phone calls will be returned by those one notch above them in the global pecking order.
Americans are of course prominent members of this “Party of Davos,” which relies on the financial and military might of the US superpower to support its agenda. In exchange, the American members of the Party of Davos get a privileged place for their projects–and themselves. Whether it’s at Davos, at NATO headquarters or in the boardroom of the International Monetary Fund, heads turn and people listen more carefully when the American speaks.
“Davos Man,” a term coined by nationalist scholar Samuel Huntington, is bipartisan. To be sure, Democrats tend to be more comfortable with the forum’s informal seminar-style and big-think topics like global poverty, cultural diversity and executive stress. Bill Clinton goes often, and Al Gore, John Kerry, Robert Rubin, Madeleine Albright, Joe Biden and other prominent Democrats are familiar faces. Republicans generally prefer more private venues. George W. Bush, of course, doesn’t do anything unscripted. But people like Dick Cheney, Newt Gingrich, John McCain and Condoleezza Rice have all worked the Davos circuit.
That the global economy is developing a global ruling class should come as no shock. All markets generate economic class differences. In stable, self-contained national economies, where capital and labor need each other, political bargaining produces a social contract that allows enough wealth to trickle down from the top to keep the majority loyal. “What’s good for General Motors is good for America,” Dwight Eisenhower’s Defense Secretary famously said in the 1950s. The United Auto Workers agreed, which at the time seemed to toss the notion of class warfare into the dustbin of history.
But as domestic markets become global, investors increasingly find workers, customers and business partners almost anywhere. Not surprisingly, they have come to share more economic interests with their peers in other countries than with people who simply have the same nationality. They also share a common interest in escaping the restrictions of their domestic social contracts.
The class politics of this new world economic order is obscured by the confused language that filters the globalization debate from talk radio to Congressional hearings to university seminars. On the one hand, we are told that the flow of money and goods across borders is making nation-states obsolete. On the other, global economic competition is almost always defined as conflict among national interests. Thus, for example, the US press warns us of a dire economic threat from China. Yet much of the “Chinese” menace is a business partnership between China’s commissars, who supply the cheap labor, and America’s (and Japan’s and Europe’s) capitalists, who supply the technology and capital. “World poverty” is likewise framed as an issue of the distribution of wealth between rich and poor countries, ignoring the existence of rich people in poor countries and poor people in rich countries.
The conventional wisdom makes globalization synonymous with “free trade” among autonomous nations. Yet as Renato Ruggiero, the first director-general of the World Trade Organization, noted in a rare moment of candor, “We are no longer writing the rules of interaction among separate national economies. We are writing the constitution of a single global economy.” (Emphasis added.)
With Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump, there is some evidence that Clinton and Co. actually wanted to run against Donald Trump, and tried to get their allies to manipulate the Republican primary in favor of a Trump victory (hence all the free corporate media coverage of the Donald). The dossier, fabricated or not, seems to have been one of many 'ace in the holes' that the Clinton campaign thought they could use to discredit Trump (including the Access Hollywood tape, etc.) in the general election. If so, this strategy really blew up in their face – they thought they could manipulate the process, so they could ignore the Rust Belt concerns, and that's what handed Trump the presidency.
If the Clintonites were to admit this, however, they'd have to step down from party leadership and let the Sanders Democrats take over, and that's what this is really all about now, their effort to prevent that outcome. And they do not want to do that. Instead they decided to launch a smoke screen to hide their fiasco in the form of Russiagate hysteria.
Trump essentially run as independent using Republican Party as a host. And then Republican Party tried to capture him after the victory converting him into the run-of-a-mill republican -- a stooge of MIC. Which was an easy move that was fully successful in just three month after inauguration. Extinct of neoliberal/neocon Trojan Horses within Trump entourage such a Jared Kushner make it "slam dank".
Trump was right to point out that the Clintons and their allies in DNC rigged the game against Bernie. Now we know that FBI helped to achieve this particular result. But even he can't predict that elimination of Sanders would be such a disaster for Democratic Party.
Meanwhile, Hillary lost not merely because she misread the “real” people, she decided to run a very divisive and nasty negative campaign, which has fueled the violence ever since. According to WikiLeaks emails from campaign John Podesta, Clinton colluded with the DNC and the media to raise what they thought would be the extreme right among Republicans to then make her the middle of the road to hide her agenda.
... ... ...
Clinton called this her “pied piper” strategy, that intentionally cultivated extreme right-wing presidential candidates and that would turn the Republicans away from their more moderate candidates. This enlisted mainstream media who then focused to Trump and raise him above all others assuming that would help Hillary for who would vote for Trump. This was a deliberate strategy all designed to propel Hillary to the White House.
The Clinton campaign and Democratic National Committee along with mainstream media all called for using far-right candidates “as a cudgel to move the more established candidates further to the right.” Clinton’s camp insisted that Trump should be “elevated” to “leaders of the pack” and media outlets should be told to “take them seriously.”If we look back on April 23, 2015, just two weeks after Hillary Clinton officially declared her presidential campaign, her staff sent out a message on strategy to manipulate the Republicans into selecting the worse candidate. They included this attachment a “memo for the DNC discussion.”
The memo was addressed to the Democratic National Committee and stated bluntly, “the strategy and goals a potential Hillary Clinton presidential campaign would have regarding the 2016 Republican presidential field.” Here we find that the real conspiracy was Clinton manipulating the Republicans. “Clearly most of what is contained in this memo is work the DNC is already doing. This exercise is intended to put those ideas to paper.”
“Our hope is that the goal of a potential HRC campaign and the DNC would be one-in-the-same: to make whomever the Republicans nominate unpalatable to a majority of the electorate.”
The Clinton strategy was all about manipulating the Republicans to nominate the worst candidate Clinton called for forcing “all Republican candidates to lock themselves into extreme conservative positions that will hurt them in a general election.”
It was not Putin trying to rig the elections, it was Hillary. Clinton saw the Republican field as crowded and she viewed as “positive” for her. “Many of the lesser known can serve as a cudgel to move the more established candidates further to the right.” Clinton then took the strategic position saying “we don’t want to marginalize the more extreme candidates, but make them more ‘Pied Piper’ candidates who actually represent the mainstream of the Republican Party.”
Her manipulative strategy was to have the press build up Donald Trump, Sen. Ted Cruz and Ben Carson. “We need to be elevating the Pied Piper candidates so that they are leaders of the pack and tell the press to them seriously.”
This conspiracy has emerged from the Podesta emails. It was Clinton conspiring with mainstream media to elevate Trump and then tear him down. We have to now look at all the media who endorsed Hillary as simply corrupt. Simultaneously, Hillary said that Bernie had to be ground down to the pulp. Further leaked emails showed how the Democratic National Committee sabotaged Sanders’ presidential campaign. It was Hillary manipulating the entire media for her personal gain. She obviously did not want a fair election because she was too corrupt.
What is very clear putting all the emails together, the rise of Donald Trump was orchestrated by Hillary herself conspiring with mainstream media, and they sought to burn him to the ground. Their strategy backfired and now this is why she has not come out to speak against the violence she has manipulated and inspired.
This is by far the WORST campaign in history and it was all orchestrated by Hillary to be intentionally divisive for the nation all to win the presidency at all costs. She has torched the constitution and the country. No wonder Hillary could not go to the stage to thank her supporters. She never counted on them and saw the people as fools. The entire strategy was to take the White House with a manipulation of the entire election process. Just unbelievable. Any Democrat who is not angry at this is clearly just a biased fool. Wake up and smell the roses. You just got what you deserve.
Neoliberal MSM are now justifiably discredited, along with some most obnoxious neocons like Robert Kagan, Max Boot, and Bill Kristol. Kristol lost his magazine "Weekly Standard", which for many year was the flagship neocon publication. Max Boot got under the fire from Tucker Carlson, who suggested that he only good for painting houses (which actually is true, judging from the quality of his perditions and policy recommendations). Victoria Nuland quickly resigned, as she particulate in distribution of Steele dossier. And may be more then that.
Neoliberal MSM remains very kind to Obama and the Wall Street Democrats. What else we can expect. Clinton Democratic Party was all about throwing the people under the bus in the pursuit of the Almighty Dollar. Hillary candidacy was about betrayal of working Americans. Thomas Franks was especially clear about this in this speech watch-v=pmCibWptzZQ
This was the Clinton Legacy, and that's why "serial betrayer" Obama, who also belongs to Clinton DemoRats camp (while hating Clintons; money makes strange bedfellows) , and the rest of the Democratic Establishment went along for the ride — and hit the electoral brick wall. Bill Clinton great idea of betrayal of working class backfired: he thought that the working people have nowhere to go and body slamming the people who get you elected has no consequences for Democratic politicians. Worked for him and Obama. But it finally backfired with Hillary.
For the professional class of politicians and the wealthy this was not about civil rights, this was not about decency and justice, and it certainly was not about compassion and kindness even if they were very careful to keep mouthing the words and giving lip service to the pretenses of social (but not economic) equality. It was all about money and power. Theirs. Narrowly focused greed that was willfully blind to all that was happening around it. Washington and New York and London and Berlin are thick with it.
And now that their mighty God has betrayed them and bestowed its power on its other, more faithfully vicious children, they are running around without a mission or a purpose other than themselves, not knowing what to do next.
Michael Moore in his facebook post urged to "Fire all pundits, predictors, pollsters and anyone else in the media who had a narrative they wouldn't let go of and refused to listen to or acknowledge what was really going on. Those same bloviators will now tell us we must "heal the divide" and "come together." They will pull more hooey like that out of their ass in the days to come. Turn them off."
Morning After To-Do List:
1. Take over the Democratic Party and return it to the people. They have failed us miserably.
2. Fire all pundits, predictors, pollsters and anyone else in the media who had a narrative they wouldn't let go of and refused to listen to or acknowledge what was really going on. Those same bloviators will now tell us we must "heal the divide" and "come together." They will pull more hooey like that out of their ass in the days to come. Turn them off.
3. Any Democratic member of Congress who didn't wake up this morning ready to fight, resist and obstruct in the way Republicans did against President Obama every day for eight full years must step out of the way and let those of us who know the score lead the way in stopping the meanness and the madness that's about to begin.
4. Everyone must stop saying they are "stunned" and "shocked". What you mean to say is that you were in a bubble and weren't paying attention to your fellow Americans and their despair. YEARS of being neglected by both parties, the anger and the need for revenge against the system only grew. Along came a TV star they liked whose plan was to destroy both parties and tell them all "You're fired!" Trump's victory is no surprise. He was never a joke. Treating him as one only strengthened him. He is both a creature and a creation of the media and the media will never own that.
5. You must say this sentence to everyone you meet today: "HILLARY CLINTON WON THE POPULAR VOTE!" The MAJORITY of our fellow Americans preferred Hillary Clinton over Donald Trump. Period. Fact. If you woke up this morning thinking you live in an effed-up country, you don't. The majority of your fellow Americans wanted Hillary, not Trump. The only reason he's president is because of an arcane, insane 18th-century idea called the Electoral College. Until we change that, we'll continue to have presidents we didn't elect and didn't want. You live in a country where a majority of its citizens have said they believe there's climate change, they believe women should be paid the same as men, they want a debt-free college education, they don't want us invading countries, they want a raise in the minimum wage and they want a single-payer true universal health care system. None of that has changed. We live in a country where the majority agree with the "liberal" position. We just lack the liberal leadership to make that happen (see: #1 above).
As neoliberal elite definitely prefers Trump to Sanders, so the DNC rigging of primaries was consistent with the neoliberal Democratic Party elite’s (Clinton wing of the Democratic Party) longstanding vicious hatred of left-leaning progressives and anti-plutocratic populists in the ranks of their party (The Guardian)
...Democratic leaders made Hillary their candidate even though they knew about her closeness to the banks, her fondness for war, and her unique vulnerability on the trade issue – each of which Trump exploited to the fullest. They chose Hillary even though they knew about her private email server. They chose her even though some of those who studied the Clinton Foundation suspected it was a sketchy proposition. To try to put over such a nominee while screaming that the Republican is a rightwing monster is to court disbelief. If Trump is a fascist, as liberals often said, Democrats should have put in their strongest player to stop him, not a party hack they’d chosen because it was her turn. Choosing her indicated either that Democrats didn’t mean what they said about Trump’s riskiness, that their opportunism took precedence over the country’s well-being, or maybe both.
Clinton’s supporters among the media didn’t help much, either. It always struck me as strange that such an unpopular candidate enjoyed such robust and unanimous endorsements from the editorial and opinion pages of the nation’s papers, but it was the quality of the media’s enthusiasm that really harmed her.
... ... ...
...the act of opening the newspaper started to feel like tuning in to a Cold War propaganda station. Here’s what it consisted of:
- Hillary was virtually without flaws.
- She was a peerless leader clad in saintly white, a super-lawyer, a caring benefactor of women and children, a warrior for social justice.
- Her scandals weren’t real.
- The economy was doing well / America was already great.
- Working-class people weren’t supporting Trump. And if they were, it was only because they were botched humans.
- Racism was the only conceivable reason for lining up with the Republican candidate.
How did the journalists’ crusade fail? The fourth estate came together in an unprecedented professional consensus. They chose insulting the other side over trying to understand what motivated them. They transformed opinion writing into a vehicle for high moral boasting. What could possibly have gone wrong with such an approach?
What has happened on November 8, 2016 can be described as a repudiation of the neoliberal globalization and the US neoliberal elite. If is even more significant if you understand that Trump essentially run as an independent: Unlike Hillary he was shunned by the Republican elite. Mitt Romney, the Republican presidential candidate in 2012, actively worked against Trump’s nomination. Many senior Republicans refused to endorse him, or even give him their support. The Republican National Committee did not raise money for Trump to the extent it had for other Republican candidates for president.
Now we know that appointing of Mueller (WDM guy in FBI) was the "insurance policy" for the Clinton wing of Dems. Obama probably appointed Brennan to do this and Brennan with some help from Clapper, MI6 and Rosenstein succeed in May 2017, putting Trump on a very short leash.
It is now clear that the tiny elite (0.01%) with the help of intelligence agencies (top brass of which belong to the neoliberal elite) controls the political leaders of both parties, their political operatives, and fundraisers; all major MSM; the country’s biggest corporations, their top executives, and Washington lobbyists and trade associations; the biggest Wall Street banks, their top officers, traders, hedge-fund and private-equity managers, and their lackeys in Washington; as well as bunch of super wealthy individuals who invest directly in politics.
Democratic party became a neoliberal party of top 10%, the party of bankers and white collar professionals. After Bill Clinton sold the Democratic Party to Wall Street it is Financial Oligarchy, who determines the agenda of the Party, not voters. At this time corporate interests were moving to finance as their main activity. Clintons have positioned the Dems as puppets of financial oligarchy and got in return the ability to control the media, which was owned by the same corporations.
When the MSM have to choose between their paymasters and honesty, their paymasters win every time.
Hillary Clinton’s defeat is all the more remarkable in that her campaign not only enjoyed unconditional support of major neoliberal MSM, but also almost twice outspent the Trump campaign on television and radio advertisements, as well on get-out-the-vote efforts. The net result is that the Democratic party lost the lion share of working class voters and have no chances to attract them back in foreseeable future, unless it rejects its neoliberal ideology, re-adopt the New Deal principles and remove the current leaders, especially Clinton and Obama families.
The best article on this issue that so far I managed to find is Sophia A. McClennen article in Salon which is devoted to defeat of Sanders, not Trump victory on November 8, 2016, despite all "sure" prediction of Hillary win.10 reasons why #DemExit is serious Getting rid of Debbie Wasserman Schultz is not enough byShortly after Bernie Sanders publicly endorsed Hillary Clinton a new hashtag trended on Twitter: #DemExit. The hashtag offered Sanders supporters a chance to vent their frustrations with the Democratic Party and with the sense that their candidate had been pressured into an endorsement. Rather than reach out to these disaffected voters, the Democratic National Committee (DNC) ignored them. Understood within the larger narrative that Sanders supporters were just whining brats who refused to concede and move on, #DemExit was dismissed as just more sour milk.
But now that the latest leak of DNC emails proves that Sanders supporters have a legitimate right to feel cheated, #DemExit increasingly seems like an appropriate response to a rigged system.
The new leak shows that the DNC never took the Sanders campaign seriously, even when he was winning state after state. Rather than recognize that Sanders was attracting new voters to the party, members of the DNC chose to mock them and close ranks around Clinton.
Here are 10 reasons why the #DemExit movement has a valid reason to want nothing to do with the DNC. Having DNC chair Debbie Wasserman Schultz resign is not enough for #DemExit supporters because their concerns run throughout the ranks of the DNC. Until party leaders take these concerns seriously they will have to spend their convention watching potential voters jump ship.
1. Superdelegates
It is important to recognize that frustrations over party politics are not uniquely tied to the email leaks. The frustration over the superdelegate system is one clear example that distrust of the DNC goes deeper. The fact that the party even has superdelegates is a sign of its anti-democratic, pro-oligarchy stance. As Branko Marcetic of In These Times reports the superdelegate system was created specifically to challenge the will of voters. According to Marcetic, “When a Sanders supporter criticized superdelegate Howard Dean for sticking with Clinton despite Sanders’ landslide victory in Vermont, Dean tweeted back: “Superdelegates don’t represent the people.”
While there have been new negotiations to adjust the role of superdelegates, these concessions still give too much power to the party elite.
In addition, the fact that Clinton superdelegates were regularly reported by the media in her delegate tally contributed to the sense that Sanders couldn’t win. So it was not just the existence of the superdelegates; it was the way they were covered by the corporate media that pissed off Sanders supporters. Any party with a superdelegate system should be prepared to alienate voters. This time it worked.
2. The Debate Schedule
The DNC created a debate schedule designed to make it hard for candidates to challenge Clinton’s status as the “presumptive” nominee. Debates were held on weekends, at times that conflicted with other events, and were generally slotted to attract fewer viewers. From the start, well before it was clear that Sanders was gaining momentum, folks were already complaining that the debate schedule was slanted towards Clinton. According to a piece in The National Review from November some Democrats thought it was no accident the DNC scheduled a debate in Iowa on the night of a big Iowa Hawkeyes game. The next two debates were also scheduled for less viewer heavy weekend slots.
The drama over the debate schedule got worse as the DNC refused to add more debates to give Sanders a chance to continue to build momentum. As The Intercept reports the DNC laughed at the idea of adding another debate prior to the California primary, even though Fox News offered to host one. Fox News wrote that, “the race is still contested, and given that you sanctioned a final trio of debates, the last of which has not yet been held, we believe a final debate would be an excellent opportunity for the candidates to, as you said when you announced these debates, ‘share Democrats’ vision for the country.’” There never was a California debate set up. Not on Fox News or any other venue.
3. Campaign finance
Back in April the Sanders campaign questioned “serious apparent violations” of campaign finance laws under a joint fundraising deal between Hillary Clinton’s campaign and the Democratic National Committee. The Sanders camp alleged that the joint fundraising agreement offered Clinton a chance to “launder” money through the DNC. “While the use of joint fundraising agreements has existed for some time — it is unprecedented for the DNC to allow a joint committee to be exploited to the benefit of one candidate in the midst of a contested nominating contest,” said Jeff Weaver, Sanders’ campaign manager.
Politico reported that legal experts gave conflicting views on whether the practice constituted a violation of campaign finance law. But whether or not it was legal was not the only point. Larry Noble, the general counsel of the Campaign Legal Center, who served for 13 years as general counsel at the Federal Election Commission, stated that “It clearly goes against what was intended for the joint fundraising committees.” Given the already significant war chest Clinton had to run her campaign it is not surprising that Sanders supporters would find this news disturbing.
4. Refusal to Address Claims of Election Fraud
According to a piece from the Observer on calls in California to have the DNC investigate election fraud, “Voter tampering has been frequently cited in California, with many alleging their party registration was changed without their consent. In Riverside County, district attorney Mike Hestrin confirmed voters’ party affiliations were changed without their knowledge.” And that was just one part of the story from California.
The primary elections were rife with claims of election fraud. From the purging of voter rolls (Brooklyn) to cutting poll locations (Arizona, Rhode Island, Puerto Rico), to the debacle of the California primary, there were numerous situations where the DNC could and should have called for an investigation. Despite the fact that in many cases it was Democratic voters that were directly affected, the DNC made no move to support voters’ claims of election fraud.
5. The Democratic Party Platform
The recent fights over the DNC platform reveal a real lack of support for progressive policy, especially on key economic issues. As Marcetic reported for In These Times “there’s no denying that the platform compromises on certain core progressive values.” While some suggested that the new platform was a “win” for Sanders, in the end the platform submits to corporate will on many issues
Committee delegates selected by Clinton and Wasserman Schultz voted down several measures dear to progressives’ hearts: “amendments advocating single-payer health care and a $15 minimum wage indexed to inflation, several proposals to halt climate change, language criticizing Israeli ‘occupation’ of Palestine and an amendment explicitly opposing the TPP trade agreement.” As Marcetic shows, delegates to the committee with corporate ties were among the most avid in promoting pro-business policy completely out of step with the sort of progressive values that once separated Democrats from Republicans. Unsurprisingly, those very same delegates were the ones connected to Clinton and Wasserman Schultz.
6. Documented Attempts to Discredit / Dismiss Sanders
As if the previous issues were not evidence enough to justify the #DemExit movement, the Guccifer 2.0 leaks now offer Sanders supporters copious examples of ways that the DNC simply did not respect the Sanders campaign. It is important to note that Wasserman Schultz was not alone in this general attitude. Even more disturbing, we have no examples of any DNC staffer suggesting that Sanders deserved a better shake than he was getting. Some of the most egregious examples can be found here.
7. DNC Collusion with Media
The corporate media was no ally to the Sanders campaign. With AP calling the primary for Clinton before California, New Mexico, New Jersey, Montana, North Dakota, and South Dakota were set to vote, many Sanders’ supporters felt betrayed by the press. As Bill Boyarsky reports for Truthdig, “The story was not just a scoop. It fed the hostility and cynicism of Sen. Bernie Sanders’ fervent supporters.”
The Guccifer 2.0 leaks also reveal a disturbing pattern of collusion between the media and the DNC to support Clinton and not Sanders. Luis Miranda, the national communications director for the DNC, communicated with reporters from both Politico and the Wall Street Journal in efforts to discredit Sanders. In one email thread, Miranda told Politico he would “point out… some of the issues” with Sen. Sanders’ DNC committee appointments, but only “off the record.” Miranda also helped craft “talking points” to be used by the Clinton campaign in response to the Hillary Victory Fund’s money laundering allegations referenced above.
DNC Press Secretary Mark Paustenbach also vetted a Politico story by reporter Ken Vogel before it was sent to editors: “Vogel gave me his story ahead of time/before it goes to his editors as long as I didn’t share it,” Paustenbach wrote to Miranda. “Let me know if you see anything that’s missing and I’ll push back.”
8. False Claims of Neutrality
Perhaps one of the most enervating features of the story is the fact that the leaked documents counter Wasserman Schultz’s claims that the DNC was neutral. There simply is no evidence of neutrality at all–only evidence of bias. It makes moments like Wasserman Schultz’s interview with “The Daily Show” host Trevor Noah where he asked her to respond to allegations that she has been cock-blocking Sanders seem like an orchestrated cover-up exist and they make the DNC look really bad. Rather than worry about Russian hacks, the DNC should worry about its integrity.
Today the polling for a potential Donald Trump win is increasingly frightening. Even Michael Moore is predicting a Trump win. While there are a variety of forces that are working together to advance the Trump campaign, the DNC’s actions are certainly not helping. If Trump wins in November, the DNC will certainly bear a good portion of the blame.
Sophia A. McClennen is Professor of International Affairs and Comparative Literature at the Pennsylvania State University. She writes on the intersections between culture, politics, and society. Her latest book, co-authored with Remy M. Maisel, is, Is Satire Saving Our Nation? Mockery and American Politics
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May 09, 2021 | www.zerohedge.com
play_arrowCheapBastard 39 minutes ago (Edited) remove link(Coward) Attorney General Bill Barr threatened to quit last year over Trump's attempts to fire FBI Director Chris Wray
Should never have appointed these swamp creatures to begin with.
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Apr 07, 2021 | www.zerohedge.com
Yen Cross 2 hours ago (Edited)
South China Sea 58 minutes agoi want to know when the Durham probe is going to recommend indictments of the fake Russia probes, Biden laptops, IRS scandal ect...?
I demand ******* justice as a USA Citizen taxpayer!
Those scumbag assholes should be incarcerated.
Biden comes first in the Alphabet.
Durham retired. Did you miss that bit of news?
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Feb 27, 2021 | www.moonofalabama.org
gm , Feb 26 2021 22:54 utc | 24Special Counsel John Durham Resigns as US Attorney – Effective February 28th -- Before Biden AG Merrick Takes Office
Durham was investigating the Mueller Russia-Collusion coup against President Trump and his administration.
He was appointed as Special Counsel in October.He resigned as US Attorney in Connecticut.
There will likely be no indictments after the Deep State spied on Trump and attempted to throw him from office.
[...]
Update 3:59 pm EST via Twitter/Chad Pergram:
"John Durham steps down as US Atty in CT. But stays on board as special counsel probing origins of Trump/Russia investigation. Biden Admin asked US attys to resign by end of February"
Probably means whatever Durham was investigating will receive a quiet burial.
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Jan 29, 2021 | www.rt.com
29 Jan, 2021 18:47 / Updated 6 hours ago Get short URL
Kevin Clinesmith is the FBI lawyer who altered evidence to secure a FISA warrant for spying on Carter Page (December 7, 2018 file photo). © REUTERS/Yuri Gripas 152 Follow RT on
The only FBI official charged in the improper use of FISA warrants to spy on President Donald Trump via campaign aide Carter Page got a slap on the wrist. Kevin Clinesmith's sentence was a year of probation, and community service.
Clinesmith worked at the FBI General Counsel's Office (GCO) and was assigned to Crossfire Hurricane, the probe of Trump's alleged ties with Russia during the 2016 election. In that capacity, he altered an email from the CIA that described Page as a source for the spy agency, to say he was "not" a source – enabling the FBI to request a Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA) warrant against Page as a "Russian agent" – and, through him, spy on the Trump campaign, transition and presidency.
ALSO ON RT.COM Trump declassifies 'binder of materials' related to Russiagate probe, but caves to FBI & keeps saucy bits secretOn Friday, federal judge James Boasberg – who also sits on the FISA court – sentenced Clinesmith to 12 months' probation, 400 hours of community service, and a $100 fine.
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Boasberg was reportedly swayed by Clinesmith's insistence that he'd acted in good faith and that his wife has a baby on the way, while shrugging-off Page's testimony that his life had been ruined as the result of false claims he was a "Russian agent."
The Republicans sitting on the House Judiciary Committee called the sentence "insanity" and "outrageous."
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Led by Rep. Devin Nunes (R-California), the Judiciary GOP first exposed the FISA abuse and published a memo about it in February 2018, revealing that the FBI had relied on the "Steele Dossier" – a collection of spurious claims compiled by a British spy and paid-for by Hillary Clinton's campaign – in the initial spying request.
Others pointed out that Clinesmith's transgression was far greater than almost anyone who ended up going to jail as a result of special counsel Robert Mueller's 'Russiagate' probe. Campaign aide George Papadopoulos spent two weeks in jail for allegedly lying to the FBI – the same process crime Clinesmith pled guilty to last August – and General Michael Flynn spent four years trying to beat the same charge.
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Clinesmith is also the only FBI official to face any scrutiny over the bureau's handling of Crossfire Hurricane. Former director James Comey, his deputy Andy McCabe, lead agent Peter Strzok and attorney Lisa Page – all of whom were involved in the probe – have landed lucrative book contracts or cable news jobs, or become heroes of the Democrat "resistance" instead.
ALSO ON RT.COM Twitter influencer Douglass Mackey, aka Ricky Vaughn, arrested for allegedly tricking Clinton backers to lose their votes in 2016The lenient sentence for a FBI lawyer altering evidence was seen as especially egregious, as, earlier this week, a Trump supporter going by the handle 'Ricky Vaughn' on Twitter was arrested and charged by the Biden administration for "conspiracy to deprive people of their voting rights" by posting memes that allegedly misled Clinton voters in 2016.
"The entire game is rigged," said Federalist editor Sean Davis. "The rule of law is dead."
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"As outrageous as this is, it's also useful. It's in our faces now," wrote lawyer and filmmaker Mike Cernovich. "When they come for more Trump supporters Remember today."
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Democrats, who spent the past four years insisting that "no one is above the law" and that Trump must be investigated for an array of suspected crimes, did not comment.
ALSO ON RT.COM Pro-Trump 'WalkAway' campaign founder Brandon Straka arrested by FBI on federal charges linked to Capitol riot
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Dec 27, 2020 | www.zerohedge.com
Longtime Trump ally Roger Stone announced on Friday that he will be filing a $25 million lawsuit against the department of Justice, along with former FBI Director James Comey, former CIA Director John Brennan, Special Counsel Robert Mueller and several other individuals, according to the Washington Examiner .
Stone was arrested in a 2019 pre-dawn raid (which CNN was alerted to in advance) and sentenced to 40 months in prison before President Trump commuted it in July, leaving stone with a fine and supervised release. Trump granted Stone a full presidential pardon on Wednesday.
" The terms of my pardon allow me to sue the Department of Justice, Robert Mueller, James Comey, John Brennan, Rod Rosenstein, Josnathan [sic] Kravis, Aaron 'Fat Ass' Zelinsky Jeannie Rhee and Michael Morando, " stone wrote on Parler . "My lawyers will be filing formal complaints for prosecutorial misconduct's with DOJ office of professional responsibility at the same time I file a 25 million dollar lawsuit against the DOJ and each of these individuals personally ."
Stone was found guilty of five separate counts of lying to the House Intelligence Committee during its own Russia investigation regarding his outreach to WikiLeaks during the 2016 campaign, one count that he "corruptly influenced, obstructed, and impeded" the congressional investigation, and one count for attempting to "corruptly persuade" the congressional testimony of radio show host Randy Credico.
...
Also pardoned Wednesday were Paul Manafort and Jared Kushner's father . On Tuesday, George Papadopoulos and Alex van der Zwaan, also charged in connection with Mueller's Russia investigation, were granted full pardons . - Washington Examiner
"I have an enormous debt of gratitude to God almighty for giving the president the strength and the courage to recognize that my prosecution was a completely, politically motivated witch hunt and my trial was a Soviet-style show trial ," Stone said Wednesday evening, adding on Parler that he will add former Attorney General Bill Barr to the lawsuit - and that he would "handle his cross-examination personally."
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dging 1 hour ago
Lansman 3 hours agoI'm not a lawyer, but does Stone any chance in the world of getting more than 10 minutes before a judge, let a long discovery, let alone inside a court room?
known unknown 2 hours agoSomehow the court will declare that he doesn't have standing.
anduka 2 hours ago (Edited)That's right a accepting a pardon is an admission of guilt.
known unknown 2 hours agoIf the president pardons you because he thinks you are innocent, what guilt could accepting that pardon possibly admit? Pardons have no formal, legal effect of declaring guilt.
anduka 2 hours ago (Edited)It's the law. If you think you're innocent you don't accept a pardon then what exactly are you pardoning an innocent man.
known unknown 2 hours agoYou need to read up on Burdick v. United States 1915. If you think you're innocent you're free to reject the pardon and have your day in court. But if you're innocent you can also accept the pardon with no implication of guilt, to save yourself legal time and expense.
anduka 2 hours agoIn 1915, the Supreme Court indeed said, of pardons, that "acceptance" carries "a confession of" guilt. Burdick v. United States (1915) . Other courts have echoed that since.
LEEPERMAX 1 hour ago (Edited) remove linkYou're reading it wrong. Burdick was about a different issue: the ability to turn down a pardon. But pardons have no formal, legal effect of declaring guilt.
SabOObas 2 hours ago (Edited)Wikileaks just dumped all of their files online . . . Everything from Hillary Clinton's emails, McCain's being guilty, Vegas shooting done by an FBI sniper, Steve Jobs HIV letter, PedoPodesta, Afghanistan, Syria, Iran, Bilderberg, CIA agents arrested for rape, WHO pandemic. Happy Digging! Here you go, please read and pass it on ..
file.wikileaks.org/file/These are Clinton's emails:
The WHOLE 4 yrs Trump was in office showed up the FBI, DOJ, THE SECRET FISA COURT - ALL OF IT - A DISGRACE ON THIS NATION. The criminal activity occurring during the OBAMA smash and grab. OMG
Unfortunately even if Stone won (which I don't believe he will) the damage to the reputation and credibility of these institutions won't recover. The shame was visible on a global scale. What was done to Flynn was a national tragedy.
At least he survived, unlike LaVoy Finicum.
Obama far exceeded any standard as the worst POTUS this country has ever seen. The damage to our institutions was a tragedy on a Greek scale.
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Nov 24, 2020 | disqus.com
Democrats the Media and Big Tech rendered the Voter obsolete.
Jason Evans Archie Bunker • an hour ago ,
QBall8 Archie Bunker • an hour ago ,CNN, NPR, MSNBC, Facebook, Twitter, Google.
Enemies of the Republic.
Why should they not be extinguished.
QBall8 • an hour ago ,Actually, it was good old-fashioned voter fraud. Trump overcame the Big Tech censorship with his rallies.
Fleetwood Factor • an hour ago • edited ,Poll: 79% of Trump Voters
BelieveKnow 'Election Was Stolen Through Illegal Voting and Fraud'There. Fixed it.
ChardonnayJack • an hour ago ,Count me among the 79%. I WILL NEVER BELIEVE that Joe Biden won the 2020 presidential election without MASSIVE CHEATING from Democrats and the Washington Swap - to INCLUDE a select number of RINOs, Never-Trumpers and Lincoln Project Scuumm, whose main mission, admittedly, was just to "get rid of Trump and then worry about Biden later" . That is more or less a quote from Turncoat, Michael Steele.
6:00pm......winning Big
7:00pm......winning Bigger
8:00pm......winning Biggest
9:00pm......winning Biggest Ever
10:00pm....WON in a landslide
11:00pm....lights-out (shuffle-shuffle)
6:00am......LOST
MAGA Deplorable • an hour ago ,CVG27 • an hour ago ,Trump has got it right. Allow GSI to fund Biden transition team without conceding. Americans deserve to know the election results are counted properly. Dominion voting machines need to be audited. No signature authorization means no vote. Votes showing up after deadlines not acceptable. Ensuring a fair and free vote is essential in America. Given the mass of mail in votes due to covid America needs to follow the authenticity guidelines more than ever. Not less.
Washington Democrats don't care what America knows, what America thinks - they care about power and if stealing it is their only path then they will steal it and leave it to you and me to prove it.
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Nov 22, 2020 | www.unz.com
Anonymous [290] Disclaimer , says: Next New Comment November 22, 2020 at 4:11 pm GMT • 2.5 hours ago
@anastasia ny investigation would occur only after a Trump victory, in which case the investigation would not be bi-partisan.
In terms of your original quote concerning maintenance of legitimacy:
* The urban areas will never accept election of Trump, as Trump and his supporters have no intention of trying to remedy urban fiscal shortfalls by Federal borrowings.
* It would appear that governmental legitimacy has already been lost on both the urban and hinterland coalitions in the US.
* The urban coalition cannot support itself even in the absence of conflict with the hinterland coalition, and is thus incapable of ruling the USA.
* Legitimacy of some sort of government might be restored if Trump's election concerns are acted upon, and if the US urban areas declined into political irrelevance, but not otherwise.
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Nov 19, 2020 | www.rt.com
While probably "less aggressively nasty" than Hillary Clinton, Joe Biden is still a "conventional politician," but it won't be easy for him to dismiss his party's progressive wing, Larry Sanders told RT's Going Underground.
Brother to US Senator Bernie Sanders and the Green Party Spokesperson on Health and Social Care (England & Wales), Larry Sanders told RT's Going Underground host Afshin Rattansi that while Biden was not his "choice" for president, he prefers him over the current incumbent, President Donald Trump.
... ... ...
As a fixture of the establishment, Biden will follow the interests of corporate money and the military-industrial complex rather than anybody else's, Sanders noted.
"Biden is a conventional politician, he is beholden to big money, he is beholden to defense industries,
joe_go 13 hours ago 19 Nov, 2020 07:03 AM
If no one in America went to vote the country would still look the way it looks today. The big money and military industry would run the country the way it runs it when people vote and think it matters.Spirgily_Klump 20 hours ago 19 Nov, 2020 12:46 AMDo you know after Biden was out of the VP office the Chinese communist party had donated $70 million to one of his foundations at the University of Pennsylvania from which Joe drew a salary of over $900,000 per year? With his benefiting from the hundreds of millions his family took in from foreign powers and persons how can he gain the security clearance necessary for the presidency? The president needs the highest clearance. Even an applicant to the CIA get polygraphed.shadow1369 Spirgily_Klump 9 hours ago 19 Nov, 2020 11:00 AMJust one of many skeletons jangling in Bidet's closet, they will be used by his controllers to keep him on track.Iwanasay 19 hours ago 19 Nov, 2020 01:22 AMIt doesn't matter who is in power, America's destiny has been chosen by other behind the scene facesRedDragon 15 hours ago 19 Nov, 2020 05:27 AMAll USA presidents are beholden to big money entities, inclusive incoming Biden presidency. Trump is beholden to the Jewish money powers etc..
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Nov 19, 2020 | www.youtube.com
Tucker: We heard you. It's hard to trust anything. Here's what we know.
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Nov 18, 2020 | www.breitbart.com
A slight majority of Republicans believe that President Trump "rightfully won" the presidential election two weeks ago, a Reuters/Ipsos opinion poll released Wednesday found.
The survey, taken November 13-17 among 1,346 U.S. respondents, found 73 percent expressing the belief that Joe Biden (D) won the election, compared to five percent who chose Trump. However, 53 percent of Republicans, specifically, believe Trump "rightfully won," while less than a third, 29 percent, said the same for the former vice president:
According to Reuters, an even greater majority of Republicans expressed concern that the election was, in fact, "rigged":
[email protected] • an hour ago • editedAsked why, Republicans were much more concerned than others that state vote counters had tipped the result toward Biden: 68% of Republicans said they were concerned that the election was "rigged," while only 16% of Democrats and one-third of independents were similarly worried.
Sooo, 48% of Republicans think the steal was legitimate?... hey gee [email protected] • an hour ago
Any election using the Dominion electronic voter correction facility should be declared null and void QuidPro Joe Buddy McKenzie • 13 minutes ago
We all know Reuters is at least 20 points off! SC [email protected] • an hour ago
BB is in on the steal.. Im sure their sponsors or investors dictated them to ignore the steal.. just another 'conservative' betrayal. DreamKilla2.0 [email protected] • 40 minutes ago
It's a Reuters poll -- definitely fake Incurablewound [email protected] • 38 minutes ago
Social media censorship of anything that questions party line.
4 • Reply • Share › −
Protests are met with police oppression.
We are told when & where we can go & how many we can see.
Plans to prove health & vaccine status.
A reset no one voted for.
Is this enough for everyone to say NO? #NoGreatResetOlde_Brooklyn_Lantern [email protected] • 42 minutes ago • edited
Using polls as proof of anything? After 2016 AND 2020!??? Absurd.
IndependentWhoShouldntBeBanned Olde_Brooklyn_Lantern • 30 minutes ago • editedOlde, sadly it probably exceeds 52% bc we know some rightwing dishonesty to pollsters is still a big prob that needs fixing!! For how to correct these 52+ %, my idea is online training for a few things like mask use obs, and a sensitivity/civilty course, and also training could cover how elections are secure and legit. It wouldn't be totally mandatory, but anyone passing the quiz after it could receive rewards, maybe corporations would donate stuff?? And or maybe anyone whose social media accounts were suspended could have them restored provisionally???!? We need to unify the country somehow!!
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Nov 17, 2020 | www.zerohedge.com
"No, This Is Trump": Georgia Recount Auditor Claims Multiple Trump Ballots Fraudulently Called For Biden
span by Tyler Durden Mon, 11/16/2020 - 20:25 Twitter Facebook Reddit Email Print
A GOP recount observer in Georgia claims that several ballots recorded as Biden were actually votes for Trump , and workers conducting the recount became angry when he reported what was happening to elections officials.
The insider told Project Veritas , "The second person was supposed to be checking it right, three times in three minutes she called out Biden," adding "The second auditor caught it and she said, " No, this is Trump .""
"Now, that's just while I'm standing there. So, does the second checker catch it every time? But this lady in three times in three minutes from 2:09 to 2:12 she got three wrong."" he continued, adding "They were calling their bosses. They were pointing at me..."
Watch:
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Earlier in the day, Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger hit back against claims that he facilitated an unfair, illegal ballot count . He's also been accused of trying to skip the manual recount altogether, and initially "wanted to just rescan the bar codes & be done with it."
, 3 hours ago
smellmyfingers , 3 hours agoWelcome To America
Welcome To The Most Corrupt Nation On The Planet......Fact
Welcome To The Most Dumbest Naive Brainwashed Nation On The Planet....Fact
The First Rule , 1 hour agoThis is click bait for people who want Trump and and an honest election.
The evidence is overwhelming. They will do Nothing.
You reap what you sow, America better get ready for a totally lawless society because it's coming.
Normalcy Bias , 3 hours agoFulton and Dekalb Counties are cesspools of Democrat Cheating (as is apparently areas of Cobb).
Brad Raffensperger knows this. He just doesn't care to make sure the votes are counted accurately there.
If he did, Trump would win GA. And Perdue would NOT be in a Run-Off.
But Brad's boss, George Soros, would frown upon that.
Didymus , 3 hours agoThis is exactly why they've made Republican Poll Watchers stand back 50'-100.'
Having spent over half of my life in or in a county next to Fulton, I'd wager that half of the Fulton County poll workers aren't even literate.
106 play_arrow 1LetThemEatRand , 3 hours agoand gop allows it. they never fight, they always give in.
Sven Novgorod , 2 hours agoUniparty.
Gerrilea , 2 hours agoThe Uniparty = Deepstate.
It's been like this for a long time and when you look back in time with that point of view most of the unusual laws and decisions made by lawmakers over the years start to make sense, at least from the point of view of the Uniparty and it's associates.
Kan , 2 hours agoPsychotic question, seriously. Blame the victim.
The American public has been trained & conditioned like Pavlov's dogs to believe our government has our best interests at heart. Hell, I believed it for a very long time. Slowly I woke up to the Uniparty after the 2004 election.
We can't have endless wars & war profiteering by multi-national conglomerates like Halliburton without cannon fodder AND Pelosi giving her "men" in the White House, all the money and resources the American people can offer for the next 10 generations.
We've been continually sold a bill of goods that most did not realize was a poison pill. "The Crime Bill", "took a bite out of crime". When in reality it created the Prison Industrial Complex that initiated the New American Plantation and how we got a CANDIDATE for the VP position whom actually argued in court NOT to allow criminals out whom had done their time BECAUSE it would hurt the business model of the prison.
I could go on and on AND all we are left with is armed restoration of Constitutional Law and bringing the traitors before a military tribunal for execution.
slightlyskeptical , 32 minutes ago98% of the counties are NOT corrupt, so you'd not see much just the software slowly without your knowledge moving the numbers over to the BLUE candidates and RHINO's.
That is why most of the map of counties is RED and not BLUE. You only need some of the most populous locations in the past because the news was setup to keep us around 50/50 all the time... But in this case its 30% more trump votes they have to overcome with cheating in the democrap cities.
DebbieDowner , 2 hours agoThe recount will give the answer on the machines. Thus far they haven't found any machine tabulating errors in the recounts.
Peace_and_Love , 3 hours agoSpent my time trying NOT to get into politics, because it's a waste of my talents and skills.
What a sham... there was never any way to WIN. The only option was/is all out war.
LetThemEatRand , 3 hours agoSo, they need to stop the whole effing process and start over, and have every damned vote verified by both parties, with video recording the damned process.
The interesting question is whether Trump (a highly flawed candidate who brought us a bigger banker bailout than Bush/Obama by far) is going to finally wake up middle America to the fact that elections don't matter. If he accomplishes that, he won. Bigly.
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Nov 09, 2020 | www.rt.com
By Graham Hryce , an Australian journalist and former media lawyer, whose work has been published in The Australian, the Sydney Morning Herald, the Age, the Sunday Mail, the Spectator and Quadrant. It's only when you compare what is happening in America to the likes of Australia, which also recently held elections, that you appreciate just how alarming the situation in the US is. Civil war is a real possibility.
Despite the fact that America and Australia are both liberal democracies sharing a common cultural heritage, key aspects of the US presidential and congressional elections appear extraordinary from an Australian perspective.
To paraphrase Tolstoy: all happy democracies may resemble one another, but every unhappy democracy is apparently unhappy in its own way.
In recent months, elections have taken place in three Australian states and territories. In each of these contests, the incumbent government has been returned with an increased majority, while in America, President Donald Trump has been narrowly defeated by Joe Biden.
Leaving aside the disparate results, the following important differences between the Australian and the American elections are clear: Firstly, the comparative irrelevance of Covid-19 as an issue in the American election. Secondly, the dominance of a crude populist pro-capitalist ideology (favouring business interests and profits over lives) in the American electoral contests. And finally, Trump's predictable and completely unprincipled response to his defeat.
Debate host Chris Wallace sparks more conservative fury by comparing Trump ally Ted Cruz to Japanese soldiers unaware of war's endThese differences augur badly for the future of democracy in America – in fact, they indicate that it may be in its death throes. In Australia, however, recent events have strengthened democracy, enabling a perspective to emerge which comprehends the disaster that may be about to engulf the US.
The outcome of the recent elections in Australia turned on the issue of how incumbent governments had handled the pandemic. Australia is a federal polity, comprising six states and two territories, with a population of some 25 million. To date, it has recorded 27,000 Covid-19 cases and 900 Covid-19-related deaths – one of the best outcomes of all Western democracies. America, by way of contrast, has seen 10 million cases and chalked up over 250,000 deaths.
Australia's remarkable result has been achieved by an early federal government closure of national borders, strict state government lockdowns and the closure of state borders.
Each of the recent Australian elections was fought on the coronavirus. The Queensland result is the most instructive. The state's Labor government imposed strict lockdowns and closed its borders very early on in the pandemic. The conservative parties opposed this, and the two Trump-like populist parties – One Nation and the Palmer Party – spent the election campaigning for the immediate lifting of all restrictions and opening of the state borders.
Last week, the Queensland Labor government was returned to power with an increased majority, and the One Nation and Palmer Party populist vote – primarily the vote of an older demographic – collapsed and crossed over to Labor.
The situation in America could not be more different. Trump refused to adopt a national policy to deal with Covid-19. He ignored and/or minimised the risk of the spread of the virus, promoted untested cures and belittled the advice of his own public health experts. He also consistently opposed all lockdown measures and other efforts by state governments to control the pandemic, and blatantly lied to voters, telling them that the virus was under control when it has continued to spread at an alarming rate.
Despite all this, Trump only narrowly lost the presidency, and, more astoundingly, the Republican Party easily retained control of the Senate. The 'blue wave' in favour of Biden and the Democrats – predicted by almost all pollsters – did not materialise.
US election is a 'travesty for democracy', says embattled Belarusian leader LukashenkoOne explanation for the relative unimportance of the coronavirus in the US elections is the dominance in America of a crude pro-capitalist ideology that favours the interests of business and the economy over the health of the American people. This ideology has political adherents in all Western democracies (including Australia), but only in America could mainstream politicians fervently embrace it and hope to win office.
And Trump and the Republican Party did this when the Covid-19 second wave was sweeping through Europe, compelling political leaders there (including conservatives like Boris Johnson and Emmanuel Macron) to reintroduce strict shutdowns and other measures to deal with it.
Fifty years ago, the historian Louis Hartz, in the Liberal Tradition in America , portrayed America as a nation trapped in a liberal, pro-capitalist ideological straitjacket that prevented it from dealing effectively with the social and economic challenges that confronted it. Hartz's analysis seems even more relevant now than it did then.
The most extraordinary aspect of the US election, however, has been Trump's – and the Republican Party's – refusal to accept defeat. It is this that portends, more than anything else, the demise of American democracy.
'Ugly face of liberal democracy': Iran's Khamenei jeers at highly contentious US presidential electionNot surprisingly, Trump has reacted to his defeat by alleging that Biden "stole the election" by means of widespread electoral fraud. Trump maintains that he won the election. Even before the counting of votes had concluded, he commenced a number of legal actions – most of which are doomed to failure – challenging the results in various states.
Donald Trump Jr. urged Republican supporters to "go to total war" to keep his father in office. Trump's former adviser, Steve Bannon (who is currently facing criminal charges) called for the beheading of senior public health officer Anthony Fauci and the FBI director, Christopher A. Wray.
Powerful Republican politicians, including Senator Lindsey Graham, have vigorously supported Trump's response to his defeat. Newt Gingrich, the former Republican powerbroker, predicted that Biden's victory would generate a build-up of rage that would keep Trump in power.
Republican Governor of Florida Ron DeSantis has urged members of the Electoral College – whose votes determine the outcome of the presidential election – to break with convention and give their votes to Trump, despite the fact that voters in their states preferred Biden. This unprecedented suggestion, which has not been disavowed by Trump and his supporters, constitutes a serious attack on the mechanism at the heart of the US presidential electoral process.
It also offers Trump a way to stay in power – because if the Electoral College does not conclude its deliberations by mid-December, it falls to the Republican-dominated Congress to decide who becomes president.
Trump and the Republican Party have plunged America into an extraordinary political crisis that will not be resolved for some time. Trump will not voluntarily give up office, and it is uncertain how this impasse will be resolved.
The president's response to his defeat has astounded conservative Australian politicians. When asked to comment this week, Prime Minister Scott Morrison could only say that he was an observer of and not a participant in the US democratic process. Some of his colleagues, however, have been severely critical of Trump.
More ominously, the Covid-19 pandemic is intensifying dramatically in America, with 100,00 new cases now being recorded each day, along with 1,100 deaths. This ongoing health crisis can only exacerbate and intensify the current political crisis.
At the weekend, we saw protests in major American cities. Most disturbingly, armed Trump supporters massed outside an Arizona voting centre in an attempt to stop the count. Such events could become more common as the political crisis intensifies. It is inevitable that both sides of the intractable political and ideological divide in America will become increasingly more irrational in the coming months.
It is all very well for the Democratic Party elites to criticise Trump and his supporters for believing in conspiracy theories about the pandemic and mass electoral fraud. But these elites have themselves been peddling equally irrational views about catastrophic climate change, critical race theory and identity politics for decades. After all, whose world view is really more irrational, Trump's or Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez's?
Joe Biden's victory speech on the weekend was predictable and bland. It is all very well to announce "a time to heal" and tell Americans "to remain calm and patient" and that "the purpose of our politics is not unending warfare." But these are just meaningless platitudes in the current circumstances.
Reaping discord: Republicans split after Biden declares victory over Trump in US presidential electionWhatever happens, Biden will not be sworn in as president until January 20 next year. He cannot begin to deal with the pandemic until then, when it will be too late, nor can he do anything about the civil unrest that will engulf America. And even if Biden does take office as president in January, the Republican-dominated Senate will no doubt block his entire legislative program – such as it is.
America today is in a very similar position to that which it was in in the 1850s in the lead-up to the Civil War. It is deeply divided over fundamental issues of principle, which have calcified to the degree that rational debate is no longer possible. The political system, previously based on compromise, has become so ideologically divided that compromise is no longer possible.
In such circumstances, civil war becomes a very real possibility. But any coming war will be very different from the American Civil War of the 1860s. That war was fought, in effect, between two nations with regular armies.
The coming civil war in America will be a disorganised bitter social conflict fought in cities by armed groups of citizens on the barricades, much like the European revolutions of 1830 and 1848 – with one important difference. The insurgents in the European revolutions were fighting for democracy – whereas the participants in America's coming civil war will be engaged in a war to destroy it.
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The statements, views and opinions expressed in this column are solely those of the author and do not necessarily represent those of RT.
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Nov 09, 2020 | www.rt.com
Wayne Dupree has been to the White House to talk to President Trump about race relations and appeared at election events for him. He was named in Newsmax's top 50 Influential African-American Republicans in 2017, and, in 2016, served as a board member of the National Diversity Coalition for Donald Trump. Before entering politics, he served for eight years in the US Air Force. His website is here: www.waynedupree.com . Follow him on Twitter @WayneDupreeShow I've participated in eight elections including this one, and I've never before witnessed the open hostility and vitriol that's been aimed at President Trump.
No president was ever abused like Trump was from day one. The Republicans didn't cooperate with Barack Obama at all, but any thinking person can see the difference between the way Obama was treated and the way Trump has been treated. The past four years have set a dangerous precedent, and you know what they say about karma.
Representative Nancy Pelosi and Senator Chuck Schumer refused to work with President Trump on anything, but now the socialists want the Republicans to work with them. Interpretation: we want the Republicans to work with us as long as they believe everything we believe and do everything to help us, even if, in their eyes, it destroys America. No dissent will be accepted.
You really have to wonder about this arrogance from the Democrats and their call for unity, don't you? Joe Biden is calling for unity because he doesn't want to face the constant scrutiny the Trump administration faced. After all, do you think the hundreds of millions he received in campaign contributions didn't come with strings attached?
READ MOREWayne Dupree: Why I, as a black man, am voting for Trump, along with a large number of people who consider themselves Democrats
Right now, there's not enough critical thinking for unity to happen; our emotions govern too many of us. The media have played on that for four years. They convinced millions of Americans they would have to be insane to consider re-electing Trump, even though most Americans are sick of the establishment politicians and their big empty promises, sick of their endless and expensive foreign wars, sick of a sluggish economy, and tired of the outsourcing of American jobs.
How can unity happen when the rift between liberals and conservatives is larger than ever, and the two sides envision this country's future in vastly different ways? How will half of the American population ever again trust their sources of news and information when nearly every outlet has lost all pretense of objectivity? Every bit of reporting has become an opinion piece.
In marriage, they call these irreconcilable differences. It may not happen in my lifetime, but this country would do well to consider a peaceful separation.
Our national media have failed us. And that's all media, including social. They caught us all hook, line, and sinker. Why? Money. We are such a gullible species. The more people hear an idea promoted, the more it sounds true. This is why our country is divided. We rely too heavily on our media for information, true or not. They manipulate us with their words like modern-day bards. Journalism is indeed dead, and it's been replaced by sensationalism. But it all boils down to who's really at fault. To find that out, look in the mirror. Yes, we all let this happen to us.
I wouldn't blame people for believing phony news. Think about it: why do companies spend literally billions of dollars on commercials? Companies use commercials to change our buying habits, and they work extremely well on a subliminal level. Likewise, the mainstream and social media use misinformation, distortions, deceptions, and omissions to change people's voting behavior on that same subliminal level. The only way to ensure legitimate elections in the future is to destroy mainstream and social media's hold on our country.
ALSO ON RT.COM Bitter election aftermath suggests that US democracy really is in its death throesIn the past four years, the behavior of the Democrats has been that of junior high school bullies with no adult supervision. What all men want most is power, and the Democrats will do anything to get it. We can't take their low road, but should stand against their further attempts to turn this into a one-party nation. We need a broad spectrum of ideas to keep our country strong and our citizens cared for.
One party does not have all the answers, nor can they dictate to the other parties how to worship, think, or even eat. When I was young, I was a Bill Clinton Democrat. I walked away before the Obama administration and never looked back. I believe more and more people are doing that, and, by the 2022 midterms – well, watch out, Dems!
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The statements, views and opinions expressed in this column are solely those of the author and do not necessarily represent those of RT.
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Nov 07, 2020 | www.moonofalabama.org
Altai , Nov 6 2020 13:28 utc | 19
This is the essence of it. When you actually drill down, the things both Democrat and Republican voters want much the same things and that is more collectivism. They want more collectivism on social matters and they want more collectivism on economic matters. They want society back.
Both the social 'conservatism' and economic 'progressivism' on offer tend to be welded to highly unpopular opposites. If you want immigration control (Which is both a social and economic issue but only framed in social terms effectively) and an end to insane post-modern SJW identity politics, you're obliged to also vote for people who will further deregulate the economy and give tax cuts to the wealthy. If you want social democrat politics you're obliged to vote for people who will further promote insane anti-social solidarity post-modern SJW politics and unending mass migration that are counter-productive, perhaps fatality so, to their social democratic agenda. (See AOC and her wishes for literal open borders and full Nordic-style social democrat welfare state)
The currency of a system of economic redistribution within a democracy is the willingness of those with resources to give to those without. The 'progressive' Democrats in the US are hooked on this ideal of expanding welfare but that doesn't empower the poor because they're depended on those with resources to support taxes to give them it. Industrial policy and immigration restriction (Both to decrease job competition and to make the recipients of resource redistribution more sympathetic to those with resources) to actually shift the real wealth and power in society is far more important.
A synthesis on at least immigration restriction and progressive economic policies like banking regulations, trade reform and industrial policy would be highly popular and is entirely open ground to take. In 2016 Trump became the first person to make that offer in stark form in 40 years and despite all the ammo the media and intellectual class were able to throw at him, he beat Hilary Clinton. Bernie and Corbyn both understand this synthesis and have spoken of it in the past but now are trapped in political apparatuses that make any mention of immigration and the economic and social interests of the native working class totally impermissible. Worse, they wed them to an ideal of ever expanding immigration that will rip apart any social solidarity needed for socialist or social democrat policies since the new group interests of the native working class will be battling the newcomers for social and economic space.
A great deal of American 'Libertarians' are actually quite community oriented and are infact just not in favour of their taxes being redistributed to outgroups whom they don't have any sense of social solidarity with. Ask them what should be done in their community and they start sounding like Bernie Sanders. They view the Federal government as an alien thing that will take from them and give to alien outgroups.People will say they're being 'duped' but I think those people just don't understand that people are born out of ethnic groups not class groups, ethnicity is more important and we might expect it to be so given human evolution.
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Nov 06, 2020 | www.moonofalabama.org
jinn , Nov 5 2020 13:48 utc | 27
The elites may control who gets nominated but no matter how flawed or repugnant their candidate is or how obvious that the candidate was chosen for them the flocks that follow the candidates act as if they did the choosing.
Trump was given 10 times the free advertising than all the other primary candidates combined and yet his followers think they picked him.
And Biden will go down in history as the candidate who got more popular votes than any other candidate ever has and yet he is about as popular as a hemorrhoid.
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Nov 05, 2020 | www.zerohedge.com
Rome, the USSR and Revolutionary France are all compelling analogies due to the hubristic cluelessness of their fractured elites as the pretensions of stability collapsed around them. Even though Nero didn't actually fiddle while Rome burned and Marie Antoinette didn't gush "Let them eat brioche" when notified that the peasants had no bread (or more accurately, could no longer afford it), these myths are handy encapsulations of the disconnect from reality that infested the elites in the last years before the deluge of non-linear chaos overwhelmed the regimes.
While historians gather evidence of tipping points such as pandemics, ecological damage, invasions, droughts, inflation, etc., the core dynamic is ultimately the loss of social cohesion within the ruling elites and in the social order at large.
As a generality, the permanence of the status quo is taken for granted by elites, who then feel free to squabble amongst themselves over the spoils of wealth and power. Distracted by their own infighting, the elites are blind to the erosion of the foundations of their power.
As coherence in the elites unravels, the ties uniting the elites with the masses unravel as well.
One camp within the elites recognizes the danger and seeks reforms , but the reforms are too little, too late, and in any event, the elites who cling most ardently to the past stability fight the reform movement to a standstill.
As social cohesion unravels, systems that once seemed immutable (i.e. linear ) suddenly display non-linear dynamics in which modest changes that would have made little difference in the past now unleash regime-shattering disorder.
So take your pick, America: what's the closest analogy? A sclerotic Politburo of elders living in the past, an elite fiddling while the nation disintegrates, or an elite so out of touch with reality that it claims inflation is zero while the populace can no longer afford bread?
They all lead to the same destination.
richsob , 1 hour ago
HRH of Aquitaine 2.0 , 1 hour agoI know a lot of history and I think we will go the route of Rome. We will have a slow slide into total failure from a debased currency, an over extended military, tax revolts, unmanageable immigration and an internal war among the elites.
MAOUS , 31 minutes agoMy name is an indirect reference to France and the French Revolution.
When Pelosi was photo'd in front of two massive Sub Zero fridges with gourmet ice cream, that was the equivalent of "let them eat brioche." She is fvucking clueless. A tool that is barely coherent, much like Joe.
People see through it. The greed of the politicians, and their apparatchiks, the bureaucrats, is obvious to anyone willing to look. FFS apparatchiks can retire with six fixure salaries after being a government employee! People are sick to death of their arrogance, their greed, their out-and-out abuse of the taxpayer!
The other analogy, which I think is valid, is to ancient Rome. I was a philosophy major / Latin minor so took quite few courses involving the classes, reading the classics, or translating them. I also spent a semester in Rome, tramping through the Forum and walking underground and overground. In 1997 Rome was a beautiful city, mostly safe.
Anyhow, ancient Rome ended up debasing their currency, literally. Which the US (and other central banks) are doing with excessive money printing.
Excessive taxation drove away the tax base of ancient Rome. The first jingle keys event was there. Why? Taxes were too high. People will work hard if there is a profit incentive and they are able to earn a good return from their labor. Once that incentive was gone, people abandoned their farms and property and left. Where did they go? Away. Away from the tax collectors, which were richly rewarded for any taxes they were able to collect. I suppose at the end, the collection methods became quite brutal. At that point, when it is your money or your life, you throw the tax collector your money and flee with your life. You walk away from land that you love and start over.
Never an easy choice to abandon one's land and home. But that is exactly what happened.
Central bankers and governments, along with the common citizen, would do well to heed historical precedents.
Omega Point , 1 hour agoI see it more like The Godfather Part I & II. We were betrayed by the stupidest simpletons of our own family (citizenry) that sold us out for trinkets, false promises of grandeur and propaganda from Rival Mafia Families who wanted to rub our family out, kill our leader and take over. "I didn't know until today, it was Barzini all along." Yeah, but Fredo was the turn coat that made it all possible. Meet the simpletons of our Family known as your fellow American voter. "A Republic, if you can keep it." We lost it, kiss it goodbye. Say hello to the new Black Hand on the block.
sbin , 1 hour agoOne of the best articles on ZH in a while. The elites are so full of hubris, they behave as if the state of affairs since the post-WWII era has always been the state of affairs throughout history and are immutable. They believe that they are cause of America's dominance, not the individuals who built this country on whose goodwill they are now quickly draining.
I think we're like Rome. Currency debasement, no border security, massively corrupt politicians, most of population on welfare, and games and circuses to distract from the rot.
The elites will soon be surprised how quickly things will decline, just as shocked as the Romans when the Visigoths came through the city walls and looted the Imperial City in 410 AD.
play_arrowRKKA , 1 hour agoThe USSR was very similar with decrepit old party hacks ruining everything.
Unfortunately American exceptional lunatics will try to destroy the world before excepting reality.
Never been a group so corrupt and delusional with so much destructive weaponry.
Dr Strangelove is more appropriate.
Max21c , 2 hours agoIn the summer of 1941, the 4th Panzer Division of Heinz Guderian, one of the most talented German tank generals, broke through to the Belarusian town of Krichev. Parts of the 13th Soviet Army were retreating. Only one gunner, Nikolai Sirotinin, did not retreat - very young, short, thin.
On that day, it was necessary to cover the withdrawal of troops. “There will be two people with a cannon here,” said the battery commander. Nikolai volunteered. The second was the commander himself.
On the morning of July 17, a column of German tanks appeared on the highway.
Nikolai took up a position on the hill right on the field. The cannon was sinking in the high rye, but he could clearly see the highway and the bridge over the river. When the lead tank reached the bridge, Nikolai knocked it out with the first shot. The second shell set fire to the armored personnel carrier that closed the column.
We must stop here. Because it is still not entirely clear why Nikolai was left alone at the cannon. But there are versions. He apparently had just the task - to create a "traffic jam" on the bridge, knocking out the head car of the Nazis. The lieutenant at the bridge and adjusted the fire, and then, disappeared. It is reliably known that the lieutenant was wounded and then he left towards the withdrawing positions. There is an assumption that Nikolai had to move away, having completed the task. But ... he had 60 rounds. And he stayed!
Two tanks tried to move the lead tank off the bridge, but they were also hit. The armored vehicle tried to cross the river not across the bridge. But she got stuck in a swampy shore, where another shell found her. Nikolai shot and shot, knocking out tank after tank ...
Guderian's tanks rested on Nikolai Sirotinin, like the Chinese wall, like the Brest fortress. Already 11 tanks and 6 armored personnel carriers were on fire! For almost two hours of this strange battle, the Germans could not understand where the gun was firing from. And when we reached the position of Nikolai, he had only three shells left. The Germans offered him to surrender. Nikolai responded by firing at them with a carbine.
This last battle was short-lived ...
11 tanks and 7 armored vehicles, 57 soldiers and officers were lost by the Nazis after the battle, where they were blocked by the Russian soldier Nikolai Sirotinin.
The inscription on the monument: "Here at dawn on July 17, 1941 entered into combat with a column of fascist tanks and in a two-hour battle repulsed all enemy attacks, senior artillery sergeant Nikolai Vladimirovich Sirotinin, who gave his life for the freedom and independence of our Motherland."
"After all, he is a Russian soldier, is such admiration necessary?" These words were written down in his diary by Chief Lieutenant of the 4th Panzer Division Henfeld: “July 17, 1941. Sokolnichi, near Krichev. An unknown Russian soldier was buried in the evening. He alone stood at the cannon, shot a convoy of our tanks and infantry for a long time, and died. Everyone was amazed at his courage ... Oberst (Colonel) before the grave said that if all the soldiers of the Fuehrer fought like this Russian soldier, they would have conquered the whole world! Three times they fired volleys from rifles. After all, he is a Russian soldier, is such admiration necessary? "
Ordinary people were ready to defend and die for the USSR. And who is Gorbachev, who destroyed the USSR. A traitor who betrayed everything and everyone. A stupid dilettante who imagines himself a world-class politician. The main drawback of the USSR was that the power was too concentrated in the hands of one person, who was trusted without question. But when people realized where he was leading the country, it was too late.
ZeroTruth , 1 hour agoIt's a mix between Nazi Germany and its criminality and thievery and persecution machinery, and Bolshevist Russia and its criminality and thievery and persecution machinery and many third world banana republics and their criminality and thievery and political persecution machinery.
Face it Washingtonians are evil.
ZeroTruth , 1 hour agoAmericuck in and of its entirety is just a criminal organization. I know a restaraunteur that started his business in the Bay Area selling drugs using a fleet of vehicles that had hidden compartments everywhere. Each vehicle was capable of holding up to half a key of yay and powdered molly already grammed up. Drivers were issued burner phones and given orders via dispatcher.
Last I checked, he had 7 restaurants that did amazing business and those vehicles were still on the road providing the other service. That's just one of the many I know of and it's small time compared to what the US government is doing.
DeeDeeTwo , 2 hours agoAmericuck in and of its entirety is just a criminal organization. I know a restaraunteur that started his business in the Bay Area selling drugs using a fleet of vehicles that had hidden compartments everywhere. Each vehicle was capable of holding up to half a key of yay and powdered molly already grammed up. Drivers were issued burner phones and given orders via dispatcher.
Last I checked, he had 7 restaurants that did amazing business and those vehicles were still on the road providing the other service. That's just one of the many I know of and it's small time compared to what the US government is doing.
TBT or not TBT , 2 hours agoThe elites, Big Tech, Media and Deep State threw the kitchen sink at this election and did not move the needle. Regardless of who is next President, nothing changes. This is a tribute to the stability of the American system. In fact, the pendulum is swinging against the subversives who are becoming increasingly reckless and discredited.
What did Huxley call the future country depicted in Brave New World?
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Nov 05, 2020 | www.counterpunch.org
Roaming Charges: The Fuck Up BY JEFFREY ST. CLAIR Facebook Twitter Reddit Email
"Don't underestimate Joe's ability to fuck things up."
+ The outcome is still in play, but if Biden loses, we're going to hear a lot of Malarky about why and most of it will be bullshit. (When I called it a night, at 2am Left Coast Time, Biden had come back to claim to a narrow lead in Wisconsin.)
+ I predicted in my column last Friday that the polls were underestimating Trump's support (or voter indifference to Biden) by 3 percent. It looks more like 5 to 6 percent in many of the decisive states. In Wisconsin, for example, Biden was favored by 8 percent. At 2Am, he was leading by 0.3 percent. The elite consultants and pollsters may have fucked up more profoundly than the Democrats who relied upon their statistical sorcery.
+ In the midst of a killer pandemic and mass unemployment, the Democrats could have offered the nation a universal health care plan, a moratorium on evictions and a guaranteed basic income. Instead, they believed that the key to victory over Trump was to meld neoliberal economics with a neoconservative foreign policy. I don't know where they got this idea. Probably, the same place Obama got his health insurance plan, the Heritage Foundation.
+ The Democrats' candidate voted for the Iraq war, NAFTA, the destruction of welfare, helped instigate the war on drugs, wrote federal crime laws that incarcerated two generations of young black & brown Americans and has preached austerity his entire political career. I'm not surprised by the inconclusive results of an election which should have been a sure thing.
+ I've long argued that Biden was a weaker candidate than HRC, who was terrible. At least HRC had a rationale for her campaign. Biden had none. The argument was that Biden wasn't hated as much as Hillary. Perhaps. But most people just didn't feel anything about him. Which is fatal for a politician.
+ Look on the bright side. Just think how much money the DNC will raise off of a Biden loss
+ Trump's 2am speech was worthy of Somoza's infamous declaration, "Yes, you won the election. But I won the counting."
+ Trump says he will be going to the U.S. Supreme Court to stop ALL vote counting across the country. "As far as I am concerned, we have already won," Trump says.
+ Trump says a sad group of people is trying to disenfranchise those who voted for him. Sad, indeed.
+ By contrast, Biden's passive speech sounded like Tsar Alexander's the night before the battle of Austerlitz, completely unaware of the concussive force that's going to hit him in the morning .
+ Biden is speaking, but saying nothing. Biden should never speak. Ever.
+ Recall how Biden spent most of the early primary season telling people, most of them young progressives, to vote for someone else if they didn't like his reactionary policies? Surprise!
+ Biden, who spent much of the year recruiting war criminals from the Bush administration, did worse with Republicans than HRC did in 2016.
+ Remember the Zoom election simulation the New Yorker did that got Jeffrey Toobin so excited? Do you think this was the scenario that triggered him?
+ The Biden campaign preferred to court the exiled neocons who started the Iraq war, than Hispanics and progressives. They may not lose, but they probably deserve to
+ Back in May, the Biden campaign announced that they didn't consider Latinos a key part of their " path to victory. " This kind of arrogance yielded the predictable results.
+ Hispanic voters per early 2020 exit polls:
Florida:
2016: Clinton +27
2020: Biden +8Georgia:
2016: Clinton +40
2020: Biden +25Ohio:
2016: Clinton +41
2020: Biden +24+ The results from Starr County, Texas, the most Latino county in the United States (96% Latino) and the second poorest in Texas, with a poverty rate of 33%. In 2016, it went for Clinton by 60 percent. In 2020, Biden won it by only 5 percent, with >98% reporting.
+ The argument against Bernie was that he'd never win the Cuban exile vote in Florida.
+ I guess that Ana Navarro gambit was a bust
+ Biden kept saying this was a fight for the "soul of the nation". What if the nation never had a soul and it was actually a fight for health care, jobs, and a livable climate?
+ We were told that this election was all about "saving democracy" and in order to save democracy, the Democrats had to rig their primaries for Biden.
+ I was never a big fan of Sanders. But he gave people policies to vote for. Biden ran away from all them and offered nothing of substance on his own. The best he had to offer was Kamala Harris, a hard-ass former prosecutor who progressives distrusted and the right could race-bait and caricaturize as the second coming of Angela Davis.
+ Still, it's easy to proclaim that Bernie would have won. It's a proposition that can't be proven. But he would have been shackled by the same party apparatus that failed to win the senate and lost ground in the House. Until the Democratic Party itself is reconstituted, it's electoral fortunes are going to continue to erode.
+ Had the feeling the night might go south for the Democrats when the first crop of exit polls came out showing that 48% of voters believed the COVID pandemic was under control .
+ Trump, at 63,085,022 votes, has already amassed more votes than in 2016.
+ According to the early exit polls, Trump did better in 2020 with every race and gender except . white men!
Change from 2016:
White Men -5
White Women +2
Black Men +4
Black Women +4
Latino Men +3
Latino Women +3
Other +5+ Clearly, this election would have been a Trump rout without the intervention of COVID.
+ This symbolizes the entire night Republican David Andahl, a North Dakota legislator who died of COVID-19, won re-election .
+ Good news for the squad, plus Cori Bush, who also won. Their victories are, of course, also good news for FoxNews, which can spend the next two years scaremongering them
+ 26 out of the 30 nationally-endorsed Democratic Socialist candidates won their elections.
+ Meanwhile, Scott DesJarlais slept with subordinates, prescribed opioids for his young lover-patients and pressured one to get an abortion, still won in Tennessee, running as a pro-life, family values Republican
+ Looks like the awful Prop 22 will pass in California, cementing drivers' status as independent contractors as Uber, Doordash and other gig companies prevail in their $200M bid to defeat legislation making them employees.
+ Memo to Justice Barrett: "Louisiana has passed Amendment 1, which establishes there is no constitutional right to an abortion."
+ Georgia is still in play and could go for both Biden and Q, thus spawning a decade's worth of new conspiracy theories
+ It turns out, the only debate Biden seems to have won was the one that was canceled.
+ Quitter!
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+ The Democrats can't blame the Greens this time (though I'm sure they'll find some reason to hurl insults at Susan Sarandon), having gotten them kicked off the ballot in key states. Perhaps they'll blame the Libertarians for not pulling enough votes from Trump.
+ Go figure .Trump did better in counties with high COVID death rates than he did in 2016.
+ Trump stomped Biden in Florida, yet the state overwhelmingly passed a $15 minimum wage referendum.
+ Florida Polls are the statistician's version of Florida Man
+ Biden had hopes of winning Iowa, but this once Democratic state is slipping further and further away
2000: Gore by 0.32%
2004: Bush by 0.67%
2008: Obama by 8.5%
2012: Obama by 5.6%
2016: Trump by 9.3%
2020: Trump by 8%+ It was a good night for drugs. Oregon becomes the first state to decriminalize low-level drug possession and to legalize the use of magic mushrooms.
+ South Dakota, Arizona, Montana, New Jersey all legalized marijuana at the ballot box tonight, a policy which isn't supported by either major party.
+ This polling reinforces my view that if Biden loses, it will be because he spent too much time campaigning and not enough time staying out of sight "Two-thirds of voters say their choice for president was driven by their opinion of President Trump," according to AP VoteCast .
+ The EU is keeping Americans on the no fly list , which is probably prudent given all the celebrities who've vowed to flee the States in the event of Trump's reelection.
+ All Quiet on the Lincoln Project Front?
+ The Lincoln Project raised $67 million. Republican Voters Against Trump raised another $10 million. 93% of Republicans voted for Trump in 2020, up from 90% in 2016.
+ WH Auden: "America can break your heart."
Jeffrey St. Clair is editor of CounterPunch. His most recent books are Bernie and the Sandernistas: Field Notes From a Failed Revolution and The Big Heat: Earth on the Brink (with Joshua Frank) He can be reached at: [email protected] or on Twitter @ JSCCounterPunch .
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Nov 04, 2020 | dissidentvoice.org
The polls closed with " no winner yet in cliffhanger presidential election," as of Wednesday evening. Despite a period of uncertainty, which is typically the nemesis of Wall Street , the Dow climbed 0.9%, the S&P 500 opened 1.5% higher, and the Nasdaq Composite jumped 2.6%.
The explanation is that the financial elites know that they win regardless of who occupies the Oval Office, which is something that some leftists , who had advocated temporarily subordinating an independent working-class alternative to campaign for the leading neoliberal candidate, did not firmly grasp.
Trouncing the contender that Noam Chomsky hyperbolically called " worse than Hitler " would be a blow to overt white supremacy. But bedrock institutional racism, entombed in the US carceral state, will still endure and the tasks of the left will remain.
Legitimizing neoliberal rule
The left's vote was not needed to ensure a Biden victory. But it was needed to justify voting for the "lesser evil" based on the false narrative of TINA – "there is no alternative."
The Revolutionary Communist Party, normally marginalized by the corporate media, received banner headlines when it declared for Biden. The "paper of record" for the Democratic wing of the two-party duopoly, The New York Times, opportunistically posted an op-ed by a self-described socialist because it pleaded , "leftists should vote for Biden in droves."
The Democratic Socialists of America (DSA) readily acknowledged "there is no choice at the top of the ticket that would advance our movement or constitute a 'victory' for democratic socialism." But that did not deter them from jumping on the Biden bandwagon. DSA seemed more worried about Biden losing than about Sanders being excluded by the DNC.
It is not the left's responsibility to strategize how the Democrats could have run this or future campaigns. Incidentally, a Biden/Harris victory would preclude a liberalish Democrat, such as a member of the Squad , making a run as the Democratic standard bearer for next 12 to 16 years.
The contribution of those parttime leftists who campaigned for Biden was not to put him into the White House – they didn't have the numbers to do that – but to help legitimize neoliberal rule. Their preemptive political surrender obscured the failure of a political system incapable of addressing the critical issues of our times.
Politics of fear obscured critical issues
Fear was the operational motivator for apocalyptic fantasies of a fascist coup, which served to obviate a progressive agenda. A tanking economy, a still uncontained pandemic, and unprecedented protests against racialized police brutality were attributed solely to Trump's watch, instead of being understood as also endemic to the neoliberal order.
Neither presidential candidate advocated comprehensive healthcare in a time of pandemic, with both in effect opting for triage of the most vulnerable – people of color and the elderly . The two wings of the duopoly mainly differ on this existential health issue over the advisability of wearing face masks .
Climate catastrophe remains an existential threat. Biden may throw a few more crumbs than Trump in the direction of the alternative energy industry. But both candidates contested to see who was more enthusiastic about fracking , while they agree that tax cuts and subsidies to the fossil fuel industry will be continued. Biden's predecessor, whom he served as VP, boasted "we've added enough new oil and gas pipeline to circle the Earth and then some." The next four years portends a choice of someone who denies global warming or another who believes in the science but does not act on it.
The financial elites disproportionately lavished their support on the Democrats. The oligarchs understood more clearly than certain elements of the left where their class interests reside. "Wall Street," Politico reported , grew "giddy about Biden," because Uncle Joe would best help recover their legitimacy while carrying their water. The financiers also hedged their bets with contributions to Trump. Along with the DNC, they understood that another four years of the current occupant would be better than a Bernie Sanders presidency for the owning class.
Game of Thrones
While the outcome of the presidential election is uncertain, the legitimacy of the ruling class has surely been sullied by the arguably ugliest campaign in recent history. The elite club must now figure out how to anoint their new emperor without further damaging their image. The hiccups over their transfer of power is their dilemma and our good fortune.
It may be too early to tell, but the widely feared Trump coup has yet to be realized. The Proud Boys, with their mail-order munitions, have yet to replace the Joint Chiefs of Staff.
Nervous leftists, apprehensive about a Trump coup, are calling upon labor to wage a general strike to install a neoliberal into the White House. Joe Hill would find that ironic at best.
While "President Donald Trump has cast doubt on whether he will commit to a peaceful transfer of power," CNN revealed , "the secretive process to prepare a would-be Biden administration has been underway for months with help from top Trump officials (emphasis added)."
Biden may now be less unpalatable than Trump, but Uncle Joe had the advantage of not being in power for the last four years. He may not look so hot after another term of neoliberal rule, characterized by increasing austerity for working people, entrenched institutional racism, oppressive surveillance and security state measures, and an aggressive imperialism abroad. Substantial differences exist between Trump and Biden, but those differences do not extend to which class they serve.
Recovering the left alternative
With record turnout , never before have so many voted for so little. Now is auspicious for alternatives to the two-party duopoly.
As reported by Alan Mcleod, Trump's abysmal approval rating of 42% is barely edged out by Biden's of 46%. Two-thirds of prospective Democratic voters polled claim they would be voting against Trump rather than for Biden; only a quarter of the prospective Republicans are voting so much for Trump as against the Democrats. Biden way squeak through on the appeal of not being Trump, but that will wear thin quickly.
With both major parties continuing to abandon the interests of working people, the left must either take the initiative or surrender it to a growing right wing. Rather than this being the time when never before has there been a greater need to support the lesser-evil Democrats and give them an extraordinary mandate to rule , this is a time to leverage the ruling class's loss of legitimacy to articulate a left alternative.
Taking a left initiative, despite the loss of legitimacy of the ruling elites, is challenging. With a Republican victory, the left has historically gotten absorbed into a resistance that devolves into an assistance – the graveyard of social movements that is the Democratic Party. With a Democratic victory, the illusion of hope and that anyone's better than Trump are false excuses to "give Biden a chance." After campaigning for the Democrat, it will be problematic for these same left forces to credibly do an about-face and fight him. As for an independent electoral left, more rigorous party registration rules targeting left alternatives, recently imposed by Democrats , foreshadow fewer left choices on future ballots.
However, the majority of working people support a progressive agenda, which has been ignored and suppressed by the duopoly:
- Effectively addressing global warming
- COVID safety over economic activity and economic relief
- Ending forever wars and sanctions, while de-escalating the threat of nuclear conflagration
- National healthcare program modelled after Medicare
- Opposition to the militarization of the police and preservation of civil liberties
- Reduction of income inequality, stronger anti-trust laws, and fairly taxing wealth
These were among the critical issues that were lost in the distracting political theatre of the 2020 campaign and the basis for a renewed left initiative.
Facebook Twitter Reddit Email Roger D. Harris is on the state central committee of the Peace and Freedom Party , the only ballot-qualified socialist party in California. Read other articles by Roger .This article was posted on Wednesday, November 4th, 2020 at 6:42pm and is filed under "The Left" , Civil Liberties , Democrats , Donald Trump , Elections , Fearmongering , Health/Medical , Joe Biden , Media Bias , Militarism , Neoliberalism , Politics , Republicans , Ruling Elite , Surveillance , US Congress , US Foreign Policy , US Media .
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Nov 05, 2020 | www.strategic-culture.org
Tim Kirby
November 4, 2020 © Photo: REUTERS/Mike Segar
If one cares about the stability of the United States then they should have been wishing for a decisive victory in yesterday's election. A decisive victory for whom you ask? Perhaps in the long run that could be relevant, but in the short term it really doesn't matter at all, the main thing is that someone needs to walk away as the undisputed champion for the sake of America.
Not only has the United States had a very solid track record of stability due to having the best possible geopolitical location on the planet, but also in part thanks to the wisdom of those within the two-party system to value said stability over a temporary victory time after time.
Image: is getting rid of Trump really worth killing the golden goose? For some apparently it is.
As a teenager any thinking American will quickly wake up to the fact that with " Hanging Chads ", Gerrymandering , and rumors of the dead and non-citizens voting, that our electoral system is at least highly and deeply flawed if not completely illegitimate. With all the "irregularities" that happen in November it seems to young minds that this is simply a massive farce that needs to end.
However, as one gets older we can see the wisdom in both American parties constantly cheating and yet acknowledging every election as legit, even during the bizarre final moments of the battle like those between Bush and Gore in Florida . The two-party system must have gotten the picture that both teams are going to do anything they can to win and that this is perfectly natural. But in turn, just because both teams cheat there is no reason to declare the competition to be illegitimate as a whole, lest we repeat the U.S. Civil War or the early days in the Russian Revolution in which many factions fought till there could "be only one". Accepting that both sides can and will cheat but they must acknowledge the winner is critical for American stability and perfectly reasonable to those of us with grey hair.
Image: The dangerous electoral situation at the time of writing (source: Fox News)
The issue at hand in 2020 is that this old wisdom of how to play the game in Washington is dying or dead. Both sides are signaling to the other that they will not acknowledge a peaceful transfer/retaining of power . And just a day before voting, suburban soccer mom extremist Nancy Pelosi said that the House is ready to decide who will become President if the elections are "disputed" i.e. they are prepared to bureaucratically make Biden become President of the United States. This type of rhetoric could have big consequences for America as a whole.
With ballots still left to be counted, Trump says, in his usual exaggerated assuredness, that 'Frankly, (his side) did win this election' and is already making plans to go to the Supreme Court. This seems to be really jumping the gun, perhaps he knows about things happening behind the scenes that we do not, or he is simply no better than Pelosi when it comes to keeping their yap shut.
Image: Nancy Pelosi does not seem concerned about risking American stability for a presidential party victory.
So far the official threats that we have heard are all focussed on using bureaucratic procedures against each other, but with BLM, Antifa and other forces already out on the streets and possibly awaiting orders, certain observing forces could throw gasoline on the fire at any moment. Violence on a non-organized/revolutionary level has already started (as expected) with 4 Trump supporters being stabbed .
This is why the results of the election as they stand at this moment are the worst they could possibly be – as a strong victory for either would almost certainly guarantee the United States would remain stable for at least another 4 years. The "score" we are seeing right now is fertile ground for Color Revolution like action.
We should not forget that Color Revolutions happen almost always in connection with hot election cycles and take place in the nation's capital with full media support on the side of the rebels. All these check boxes are currently ticked and if cooler heads don't prevail Americans will get to experience the lifestyle, violence and fear they brought to the former Soviet Union after it lost the Cold War via the CIA's/State Department's Color Revolutions.
It is imperative for cooler heads on both sides to remind their colleagues that America did not become a super power due to "exceptionalism" but instead thanks to location, certain opportunities (WWII), and select wise policies.
Then again if you are an Accelarationist, well, it looks like your moment has finally come. The Right and Left are playing chicken and it doesn't look like anyone is going to blink.
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Nov 04, 2020 | www.zerohedge.com
Authored by John Whitehead via The Rutherford Institute,
"If liberty means anything at all, it means the right to tell people what they do not want to hear."
- George Orwell
The American people remain eager to be persuaded that a new president in the White House can solve the problems that plague us.
Yet no matter who wins this presidential election, you can rest assured that the new boss will be the same as the old boss, and we -- the permanent underclass in America -- will continue to be forced to march in lockstep with the police state in all matters, public and private.
Indeed, it really doesn't matter what you call them -- the Deep State, the 1%, the elite, the controllers, the masterminds, the shadow government, the police state, the surveillance state, the military industrial complex -- so long as you understand that no matter which party occupies the White House in 2021, the unelected bureaucracy that actually calls the shots will continue to do so.
In the interest of liberty and truth, here are a few hard truths about life in the American police state that will persist no matter who wins the 2020 presidential election. Indeed, these issues persisted -- and in many cases flourished -- under both Republican and Democratic administrations in recent years.
Police militarization will continue . Thanks to federal grant programs allowing the Pentagon to transfer surplus military supplies and weapons to local law enforcement agencies without charge, police forces will continue to be transformed from peace officers to heavily armed extensions of the military, complete with jackboots, helmets, shields, batons, pepper-spray, stun guns, assault rifles, body armor, miniature tanks and weaponized drones. "Today, 17,000 local police forces are equipped with such military equipment as Blackhawk helicopters, machine guns, grenade launchers, battering rams, explosives, chemical sprays, body armor, night vision, rappelling gear and armored vehicles ," stated Paul Craig Roberts, former Assistant Secretary of the Treasury. "Some have tanks."
Overcriminalization will continue. In the face of a government bureaucracy consumed with churning out laws, statutes, codes and regulations that reinforce its powers and value systems and those of the police state and its corporate allies, we will all continue to be viewed as petty criminals, guilty of violating some minor law. Thanks to an overabundance of 4,500-plus federal crimes and 400,000-plus rules and regulations, it is estimated that the average American actually commits three felonies a day without knowing it. In fact, according to law professor John Baker, " There is no one in the United States over the age of 18 who cannot be indicted for some federal crime ." Consequently, we now find ourselves operating in a strange new world where small farmers who dare to make unpasteurized goat cheese and share it with members of their community are finding their farms raided, while home gardeners face jail time for daring to cultivate their own varieties of orchids without having completed sufficient paperwork. This frightening state of affairs -- where a person can actually be arrested and incarcerated for the most innocent and inane activities, including feeding a whale and collecting rainwater on their own property -- is due to what law scholars refer to as overcriminalization.
Jailing Americans for profit will continue. At one time, the American penal system operated under the idea that dangerous criminals needed to be put under lock and key in order to protect society. Today, as states attempt to save money by outsourcing prisons to private corporations, imprisoning Americans in private prisons run by mega-corporations has turned into a cash cow for big business. In exchange for corporations buying and managing public prisons across the country at a supposed savings to the states, the states have to agree to maintain a 90% occupancy rate in the privately run prisons for at least 20 years. Such a scheme simply encourages incarceration for the sake of profits, while causing millions of Americans, most of them minor, nonviolent criminals, to be handed over to corporations for lengthy prison sentences which do nothing to protect society or prevent recidivism. Thus, although the number of violent crimes in the country is down substantially , the number of Americans being jailed for nonviolent crimes such as driving with a suspended license is skyrocketing .
Poverty will continue. Despite the fact that we have 46 million Americans living at or below the poverty line , 16 million children living in households without adequate access to f ood, and at least 900,000 veterans relying on food stamps (mind you, these are pre-COVID numbers, which have only got worse during this pandemic), enormous sums continue to be doled out for presidential excursions (taxpayers have been forced to pay at least $100 million so that Donald Trump could visit his golf clubs and private properties more than 500 times during his four years in office).
Endless wars that enrich the military industrial complex will continue. Having been co-opted by greedy defense contractors, corrupt politicians and incompetent government officials, America's expanding military empire is bleeding the country dry at a rate of more than $15 billion a month (or $20 million an hour) -- and that's just what the government spends on foreign wars. That does not include the cost of maintaining and staffing the 1000-plus U.S. military bases spread around the globe. Incredibly, although the U.S. constitutes only 5% of the world's population, America boasts almost 50% of the world's total military expenditure, spending more on the military than the next 19 biggest spending nations combined. In fact, the Pentagon spends more on war than all 50 states combined spend on health, education, welfare, and safety. Yet what most Americans fail to recognize is that these ongoing wars have little to do with keeping the country safe and everything to do with enriching the military industrial complex at taxpayer expense. Consider that since 2001, Americans have spent $10.5 million every hour for numerous foreign military occupations, including in Iraq and Afghanistan.
Police shootings of unarmed Americans will continue. No matter what our party politics, race, religion, or any other distinction used to divide us, we all suffer when violence becomes the government's calling card. Remember, in a police state, you're either the one with your hand on the trigger or you're staring down the barrel of a loaded gun. At least 400 to 500 innocent people are killed by police officers every year. Indeed, Americans are now eight times more likely to die in a police confrontation than they are to be killed by a terrorist. Americans are 110 times more likely to die of foodborne illness than in a terrorist attack. Police officers are more likely to be struck by lightning than be made financially liable for their wrongdoing. As a result, Americans are largely powerless in the face of militarized police.
SWAT team raids will continue. More than 80,000 SWAT team raids are carried out every year on unsuspecting Americans for relatively routine police matters. Nationwide, SWAT teams have been employed to address an astonishingly trivial array of criminal activity or mere community nuisances including angry dogs, domestic disputes, improper paperwork filed by an orchid farmer, and misdemeanor marijuana possession, to give a brief sampling. On an average day in America, over 100 Americans have their homes raide d by SWAT teams. There has been a notable buildup in recent years of SWAT teams within non-security-related federal agencies such as the Department of Agriculture, the Railroad Retirement Board, the Tennessee Valley Authority, the Office of Personnel Management, the Consumer Product Safety Commission, the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, and the Education Department.
The government's war on the American people will continue. "We the people" are no longer shielded by the rule of law. While the First Amendment -- which gives us a voice -- is being muzzled, the Fourth Amendment -- which protects us from being bullied, badgered, beaten, broken and spied on by government agents -- is being disemboweled. Consequently, you no longer have to be poor, black or guilty to be treated like a criminal in America. All that is required is that you belong to the suspect class -- that is, the citizenry -- of the American police state. As a de facto member of this so-called criminal class, every U.S. citizen is now guilty until proven innocent. The oppression and injustice -- be it in the form of shootings, surveillance, fines, asset forfeiture, prison terms, roadside searches, and so on -- will come to all of us eventually unless we do something to stop it now.
Government corruption will continue. The government is not our friend. Nor does it work for "we the people." Americans instinctively understand this. When asked to name the greatest problem facing the nation, Americans of all political stripes ranked the government as the number one concern . In fact, almost eight out of ten Americans believe that government corruption is widespread . Our so-called government representatives do not actually represent us, the citizenry. We are now ruled by an oligarchic elite of governmental and corporate interests whose main interest is in perpetuating power and control. Congress is dominated by a majority of millionaires who are, on average, fourteen times wealthier than the average American.
The rise of the surveillance state will continue. Government eyes are watching you. They see your every move: what you read, how much you spend, where you go, with whom you interact, when you wake up in the morning, what you're watching on television and reading on the internet. Every move you make is being monitored, mined for data, crunched, and tabulated in order to form a picture of who you are, what makes you tick, and how best to control you when and if it becomes necessary to bring you in line. Police have been outfitted with a litany of surveillance gear, from license plate readers and cell phone tracking devices to biometric data recorders. Technology now makes it possible for the police to scan passersby in order to detect the contents of their pockets, purses, briefcases, etc. Full-body scanners, which perform virtual strip-searches of Americans traveling by plane, have gone mobile, with roving police vans that peer into vehicles and buildings alike -- including homes. Coupled with the nation's growing network of real-time surveillance cameras and facial recognition software, soon there really will be nowhere to run and nowhere to hide.
The erection of a suspect society will continue. Due in large part to rapid advances in technology and a heightened surveillance culture, the burden of proof has been shifted so that the right to be considered innocent until proven guilty has been usurped by a new norm in which all citizens are suspects. This is exemplified by police practices of stopping and frisking people who are merely walking down the street and where there is no evidence of wrongdoing. Making matters worse are Terrorism Liaison Officers (firefighters, police officers, and even corporate employees) who have been trained to spy on their fellow citizens and report "suspicious activity," which includes taking pictures with no apparent aesthetic value, making measurements and drawings, taking notes, conversing in code, espousing radical beliefs and buying items in bulk. TLOs report back to "fusion centers," which are a driving force behind the government's quest to collect, analyze, and disseminate information on American citizens.
Government tyranny under the reign of an Imperial President will continue. The Constitution invests the President with very specific, limited powers: to serve as Commander in Chief of the military, grant pardons, make treaties (with the approval of Congress), appoint ambassadors and federal judges (again with Congress' blessing), and veto legislation. In recent years, however, American presidents have anointed themselves with the power to wage war, unilaterally kill Americans, torture prisoners, strip citizens of their rights, arrest and detain citizens indefinitely, carry out warrantless spying on Americans, and erect their own secretive, shadow government. The powers amassed by each past president and inherited by each successive president -- powers which add up to a toolbox of terror for an imperial ruler -- empower whomever occupies the Oval Office to act as a dictator, above the law and beyond any real accountability. The grim reality we must come to terms with is the fact that the government does whatever it wants, freedom be damned. More than terrorism, more than domestic extremism, more than gun violence and organized crime, the U.S. government has become a greater menace to the life, liberty and property of its citizens than any of the so-called dangers from which the government claims to protect us. This state of affairs has become the status quo, no matter which party is in power.
The government's manipulation of national crises in order to expand its powers will continue. "We the people" have been the subjected to an "emergency state" that justifies all manner of government tyranny and power grabs in the so-called name of national security. Whatever the so-called threat to the nation -- whether it's civil unrest, school shootings, alleged acts of terrorism, or the threat of a global pandemic in the case of COVID-19 -- the government has a tendency to capitalize on the nation's heightened emotions, confusion and fear as a means of extending the reach of the police state. Indeed, the government's answer to every problem continues to be more government -- at taxpayer expense -- and less individual liberty.
The bottom line is this: nothing taking place on Election Day will alleviate the suffering of the American people. Unless we do something more than vote, the government as we have come to know it -- corrupt, bloated and controlled by big-money corporations, lobbyists and special interest groups -- will remain unchanged. And "we the people" -- overtaxed, overpoliced, overburdened by big government, underrepresented by those who should speak for us and blissfully ignorant of the prison walls closing in on us -- will continue to trudge along a path of misery.
As I point out in my book Battlefield America: The War on the American People , these problems will continue to plague our nation unless and until Americans wake up to the fact that we're the only ones who can change things for the better and then do something about it. If there is to be any hope of restoring our freedoms and reclaiming control over our government, it will rest not with the politicians but with the people themselves.
After all, Indeed, the Constitution opens with those three vital words, "We the people."
What the founders wanted us to understand is that we are the government.
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There is no government without us -- our sheer numbers, our muscle, our economy, our physical presence in this land. There can also be no police state -- no tyranny -- no routine violations of our rights without our complicity and collusion -- without our turning a blind eye, shrugging our shoulders, allowing ourselves to be distracted and our civic awareness diluted.
No matter which candidate wins this election, the citizenry and those who represent us need to be held accountable to this powerful truth.
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Oct 27, 2020 | www.rt.com
Helen Buyniski is an American journalist and political commentator at RT. Follow her on Twitter @velocirapture23 Democratic presidential candidate Joe Biden's campaign is using a vast reserve of donations from the usual plutocratic suspects to pry even deep-red states away from an incumbent who's done little to help the working class.
The Biden campaign broke all-time records for TV ad spending over the weekend, leveraging Wall Street donors' unprecedented largesse in its effort to woo ordinary Americans back into the establishment fold.
Given how Trump's record bristles with policies so 'pro-business' they can be seen as anti-working-class, it's a strategy just crazy enough to work. Voters need only be reminded how the incumbent cut taxes for the wealthy and corporations while printing trillions of dollars to be diverted directly into the pockets of big banks and big companies during the pandemic. The media is encouraged to do its part by hyping up Trump's " divisiveness. "
ALSO ON RT.COM Woman says her DYING pro-Trump dad voted for Biden because 'it matters to his girls,' but not everybody feels the inspirationThe same corporate-friendly policies that alienated many in Trump's 2016 base have somehow failed to keep the .01 percent in the Republican camp, and Wall Street has poured $50 million into the Biden campaign, CNBC reported on Monday, holding up former Goldman Sachs president Harvey Schwartz as a typical contributor. Schwartz made his largest-ever political donation earlier this month to the Biden Action Fund, a $100,000 gift that was also one of the biggest donations the Fund received during that period.
And it's not just Wall Street - aside from hardcore Republican Zionists like casino mogul Sheldon Adelson and vulture capitalist Paul Singer, the US oligarchy is firmly and vocally in the Biden camp. Former New York City Republican-turned-Democrat mayor Mike Bloomberg announced a $15 million ad buy in Texas and Ohio on Monday, two states where Trump won by a healthy margin in 2016 but where the failed presidential candidate apparently smells weakness. That hefty sum is in addition to over $100 million Bloomberg spent in the critical swing state of Florida, where he also raised millions of dollars to pay off the court fees of black and Hispanic ex-cons - whose votes the businessman believes will reliably land in the Biden camp, never mind the candidate's history of supporting the kind of laws that probably landed them in prison in the first place.
READ MOREWhat if neither Democrats nor Republicans want to win in 2020? No one wants the task of changing the full diaper of US Empire
Overwhelming support for Biden among the ruling class is also amplified by wealthy celebrities. From Cher's cringe-inducing ditty " Happiness is just a thing called Joe ," recently performed at a Biden benefit concert, to Taylor Swift's insistence that 2020's election is " more important than I could even possibly say ," to questionable statements from one-time anti-establishment stalwarts like Jello Biafra of the Dead Kennedys, Americans are being cajoled, shamed, and pushed into the voting booth to deliver their support to candidates who have never cared less about average Americans.
Working class people whose lives have been torn asunder by the coronavirus shutdowns Biden has essentially pledged to expand aren't left with many options. While Trump resisted calls to lock down the nation, his self-presentation as an anti-establishment maverick contrasts with four years spent racking up debt and bombing Middle Eastern civilians. Recent polls suggest that even the " poor and uneducated " - groups whose support for Trump has long been the butt of liberal jokes - are defecting.
While a New York Times analysis on Sunday showed Trump continuing to outperform Biden in low-income areas and Biden's support remains concentrated in traditional liberal bastions on the East and West Coasts, it showed middle-class suburban voters bailing out of the " Trump train " in droves. Meanwhile, wealthy and college-educated voters have coalesced around Biden more firmly than in the past, with even big-money establishment Republican types drawn to Biden's promise of a return to the Obama-era status quo.
Where does that leave the poor, or those who lost their middle-class status in the last crash? Trump's detractors have pointed out the irony of the man surrounded by gold presenting himself as the people's champion, and the Biden campaign is spending relentlessly to poach wavering Trump supporters, with ads and opinion pieces featuring self- described " Christian Republicans " embracing the Democrat.
ALSO ON RT.COM Slavoj Zizek: Biden's just Trump with a human face, and the two of them share the same enemyShort of voting for a third party - described by the media establishment as something akin to a war crime, especially for swing state residents - the working class is caught in an unenviable bind. More than a few must be wondering if voting is merely a long con aimed at drafting Americans into participating in their own oppression. Driving through rural western Pennsylvania, a state polls insist Biden has bagged, a bumper crop of Trump signs - more than a few of them handmade - has blossomed, suggesting the small farmers of the Rust Belt really are expending their meager resources to re-elect the man with the gold-plated bathroom . But if this is, indeed, what democracy looks like, it's no wonder the system is losing support among the younger generation.
If you like this story, share it with a friend! Jojo jordan 1 day ago Sorry Helen but you lost me where you claimed Trump didn't help the working class. Also, the Big companies got rich during the pandemic due to Democrat Governors and Mayors shutdowns of small businesses. Biden is THE definition of swamp creature. Trump is for the people. He's a realist. Reply 10 2 Zogg Jojo jordan 1 day ago Nope, Trump heavily damaged the working class when signed the law having the corporate taxes halved and not halving the working class taxes. tracie72 1 day ago "It's one big party, we aren't invited." George Carlin J_P_Franklin 1 day ago "wondering if voting is merely a long con aimed at drafting Americans into participating in their own oppression" Democracy is the problem. "Voting only encourages them." - Gore Vidal Juan_More J_P_Franklin 1 day ago Actually it is the reverse. The more the people vote the more it scares the politicians. It is usually non-aligned voters that make up the vast majority of those who do not vote. That way the parties count on the party faithful to get out and vote. With all those independent voters voting it makes those sure thing seats a lot less sure. Why are you trying to discourage people from voting. From the number of comments like yours I've seen in social media there would appear to be move to suppress people from voting. Lastly everyone should keep in mind, there may not be anything worth voting for but there is always something to vote against.
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Oct 30, 2020 | www.unz.com
animalogic , says: October 28, 2020 at 8:23 am GMT
@romanempire ionaires.Dumbo , says: October 28, 2020 at 11:20 am GMT
"How to consume the surplus capital? " I suspect you maybe confusing money/debt with capital ["-The latter [capital] is so cheap these days it costs nothing to a qualified borrower. "] which is the capacity to use labour productively, usually combination with technology.
"surplus" capital then is non/under utilised factories etc & labour.
As to the vast inflation of debt/money .as Dr Hudson says, debts that can't be paid, won't be paid. The easiest way to rid the world of the trillions that elites have, is to liquidate the elites themselves. Either that, or like Samson, pull the whole shithouse down around you .@romanempire e. the economy/dollar will collapse), or they realize that the global democratic neo-liberal order is on its last legs, and can't last, so they are anticipating things.Stick , says: October 28, 2020 at 2:36 pm GMTIt is indeed more likely that an authoritarian regime can last longer than the current one, and they can more easily push the things they want this way. "Democracy" and "free speech" served their purpose for a time, now it's time to try something else.
The final push will be when they make people complete slaves by embedding our bodies with technology (i.e. Musk's project for a microchip in the brain, among other things). The Unabomber wrote about that in his Manifesto.
@animalogicThey, like all aristocrats, want to be Too Big To Fail. This is what drives all the New World Order Wankers.
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Oct 28, 2020 | www.zerohedge.com
You'd think that voting Republican would be an easy decision if you work on Wall Street, especially given the lower taxes and the removal of burdensome regulations. But Democrats have entangled themselves so deeply in the web of Wall Street, that the industry is now leaning to the left, according to a new report from Reuters .
The Center for Responsive Politics took a look at how the industry, and its employees, break down for the 2020 election cycle.
It has been obvious that Democratic candidate Joe Biden has been outpacing President Trump when it comes to fundraising, and this is also true of "winning cash from the banking industry," Reuters notes.
Biden's campaign has been the beneficiary of $3 million from commercial banks, compared to the $1.4 million Trump has raised. This is a far skew from 2012, where Mitt Romney was able to raise $5.5 million from commercial banks, while Barack Obama only raised $2 million. In 2012, Wall Street banks were among the top five contributors to Romney' campaign.
In 2020, campaign contributions to congressional races from Wall Street banks are about even. Republicans have raised $14 million while Democrats have brought in $13.6 million. About four years ago, Republicans pulled in $18.9 million, which was about twice as much as the Democrats raised. In 2012, Republicans raised about 61% of total bank donations.
Interestingly enough, when Biden and Trump are removed from the equation, the highest recipient from Wall Street is none other than Bernie Sanders, who has raised $831,096. Sanders often tops contributions in many industries due to his grassroots following.
When you remove the employees from the equation and only look at how the bank's political arms donate, the picture turns more Republican-friendly.
NEVER MISS THE NEWS THAT MATTERS MOSTHouse of Representatives lawmaker Blaine Luetkemeyer of Missouri, one of the senior Republicans on the House Financial Services Committee, which is key for the banking industry, tops the list, hauling in $226,000. Next up is Patrick McHenry of North Carolina, the top Republican on that panel, with $185,500 in cash from bank political committees.
The top 20 recipients of bank political funds comprise 14 Republicans and six Democrats. Representative Gregory Meeks of New York, a senior member of the House banking panel, received the most among Democrats, with $140,000.
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The shift in data shows that while Wall Street's top brass may still understand the value of Republican leadership, bank employees themselves may overwhelmingly favor progressives.
ay_arrow
tonye , 3 hours ago
Le SoJ16 , 3 hours agoIt's obvious. Wall Street is part of the Deep State...
tonye , 3 hours agoHow can you hate capitalism and work for a Wall Street bank?
Macho Latte , 2 hours agoBecause Wall Street is no longer capitalist.
Main Street is capitalist, they create the GNP.
Wall Street is a casino owned by globalists and bankers. They don't create much anymore.
Lord Raglan , 2 hours agoIt has nothing to do with ideology. The Biden is FOR SALE!
Any questions?
KashNCarry , 2 hours agoIt is because the majority of Wall Street are Jewish and **** overwhelmingly support Democrats.
David Horowitz has said that 80% of the donations to the Democrat Party come from ****.
artvandalai , 3 hours agoWhat a bunch of ****. Wall St. elites are in it up to their necks casting their lot with the globalists who want total control NOW. Trump is the only thing in their way....
FauxReal , 3 hours agoWall street people don't know much about the real economy. They also know little, nor do they care about, the real problems faced by business people who have to work everyday to overcome the policies put in place by liberals.
They do understand finance however. But all that requires is the ability to push paper around all day.
But let them vote for the Libotards and have them watch Elizabeth Warren take charge of the US Senate Financial Institutions and Consumer Protection Committee. They'll be jumping out of windows.
sun tzu , 1 hour agoWall Street favors free money?
American2 , 2 hours agoWall Street wants bailouts. 0bozo gave them a yuge bailout
CosmoJoe , 2 hours agoBased on the massively coordinated MSM suppression of the Biden corruption scandal, now I know why these folks back Biden.
bgundr , 2 hours agoDemocrats as the party of the big banks,
Homie , 2 hours agoOf course banksters favor policies that make the average person a slave with less agency
mtl4 , 2 hours agoEspecially if you like the endless bailouts, give-aways, and freedom from those pesky rules limiting the Squid's diet
You'd think that voting Republican would be an easy decision if you work on Wall Street, especially given the lower taxes and the removal of burdensome regulations.
tunetopper , 2 hours agoThe shift in data shows that while Wall Street's top brass may still understand the value of Republican leadership, bank employees themselves may overwhelmingly favor progressives.
The banks are big on corruption and that's one poll the Dems are definitely leading by a longshot.......thick as thieves.
radar99 , 36 minutes agoWall St youngsters dont realize their job is to whore themselves out as much as possible to the few remaining classes of folk they dont already have accounts with. The few Millennials and Gen Xers that have enough capital saved up are their target market. Ever since the take-down of Bear Stearns and Lehman, and the exit of many others from their Private Client Groups- the Whorewolves of Wall St are very busy pretending to be Progs and Libs.
And like this post says: " who really cares, they all live in NY, NJ and CT which are guaranteed Dem states anyway"
So in essence- they have nothing to lose while pretending to be a Prog/Lib. in order to ge the clients money.
moneybots , 59 minutes agoI arrived to wall st in 2010. My female boss at a large investment bank hated me from the moment I criticized Obama. I was and still am absolutely amazed you can work on wall st and be a democrat
Flynt2142ahh , 1 hour ago"The shift in data shows that while Wall Street's top brass may still understand the value of Republican leadership, bank employees themselves may overwhelmingly favor progressives."
So 50 Cent alone went Trump after finding out NYC's top tax rate would be 62% under Biden?
invention13 , 1 hour agoalso known as MBNA Joe Biden friends, you mean the privatize profits but liberalize losses crowd that always looks for gubment money to bail out failures - Shocking !
Loser Face , 1 hour agoWall St. just knows Biden is someone you can do business with.
Obamaroid Ointment , 1 hour agoWall Street leans towards anyone who passes laws that benefit Wall Street.
Sound of the Suburbs , 2 hours agoThe Wally Street crowd has always been a bunch Globalist Mercedes Marxists and Limousine Liberals, this article is ancient history.
Caliphate Connie and the Headbangers , 2 hours agoUS politicians haven't got a clue what's really going on and got duped by the banker's shell game.
When you don't know what real wealth creation is, or how banks work, you fall for the banker's shell game.
Bankers make the most money when they are driving your economy towards a financial crisis.
On a BBC documentary, comparing 1929 to 2008, it said the last time US bankers made as much money as they did before 2008 was in the 1920s.
Bankers make the most money when they are driving your economy into a financial crisis.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vAStZJCKmbU&list=PLmtuEaMvhDZZQLxg24CAiFgZYldtoCR-R&index=6
At 18 mins.
The bankers loaded the US economy up with their debt products until they got financial crises in 1929 and 2008.
As you head towards the financial crisis, the economy booms due to the money creation of bank loans.
The financial crisis appears to come out of a clear blue sky when you use an economics that doesn't consider debt, like neoclassical economics.
That's what the banker's shell game does to your economy.
Bankers are playing a shell game, which you can't see if you don't know how banks actually work like today's policymakers.
The real estate shell game.
Watch this video of the S&L crisis to refresh your memory.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UwFXvc1rJDw
They were just cutting their teeth messing about transferring financial assets around in those days.
It's all pretty straight forward.
Bank loans create money out of nothing.
Money and debt come into existence together and disappear together like matter and anti-matter.
It's a shell game; you have to keep your eye on the money and the debt.
The speculators pocket the money, and the debt builds up in the S&Ls until the ponzi scheme collapses.
US taxpayers then bail out the bust S&Ls.
The shell game only works when no when is looking at the debt building up in the financial system like the UK from 1980 – 2008.
Money and debt come into existence together and disappear together like matter and anti-matter.
The money flows into the economy making it boom.
The debt builds up in the financial system leading to a financial crisis.
Banks – What is the idea?
The idea is that banks lend into business and industry to increase the productive capacity of the economy.
Business and industry don't have to wait until they have the money to expand. They can borrow the money and use it to expand today, and then pay that money back in the future.
The economy can then grow more rapidly than it would without banks.
Debt grows with GDP and there are no problems.
The banks create money and use it to create real wealth.
medium giraffe , 3 hours agohttps://youtu.be/U06jlgpMtQs Democrat President, Republican Senate, Democratic House equals Deflation
Victory_Rossi , 3 hours agoThe banks and corporations of America have been welfare queens since 2008. Regardless of who wins, they will be the beneficiaries of moar US-style corporate welfare socialism.
FreemonSandlewould , 3 hours agoWall Street loves globalism and hates the entire ethos of "America First". They're people with dodgy loyalties and grand self-interests.
What a surprise. The Banking Cartel faction of the Jish Control Grid sent Trotsky and company to Russia to implement the Bolshevik revolution. Should I be surprised they lean left?
Well I guess not. But they are at base amoral - that is to say with out moral philosophy. Their real motto is "Whatever gets the job done".
I know you human fungus in Wall St banks read Zh.
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Oct 25, 2020 | www.zerohedge.com
The Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) and the General Services Administration (GSA) undermined the Trump transition team by violating a memorandum of understanding between the Trump transition team and the GSA - when they complied with requests from the FBI and special counsel Robert Mueller's office to provide private records on members of Trump's team , according to a Senate report released on Friday.
As Just the News notes:
The majority staff report from both the Senate Committee on Finance and the Committee on Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs claims that officials from both the FBI and Mueller's office " secretly sought and received access to the private records of Donald J. Trump's presidential transition team, Trump for America, Inc. "
"They did so," the report continues, "despite the terms of a memorandum of understanding between the Trump transition team and the General Services Administration.. . -- the executive agency responsible for providing services to both candidates' transition teams -- that those records were the transition team's private property that would not be retained at the conclusion of the transition."
According to the report, the GSA - without notifying the White House - reached out to the FBI following Michael Flynn's resignation as national security adviser and offered to retain records from the Trump transition team in early 2017. The records compiled eventually made their way into Mueller's office, according to the report.
"At bottom," continues the report, " the GSA and the FBI undermined the transition process by preserving Trump transition team records contrary to the terms of the memorandum of understanding, hiding that fact from the Trump transition team, and refusing to provide the team with copies of its own records."
" These actions have called into question the GSA's role as a neutral service provider, and those doubts have consequences ," the report reads. "Future presidential transition teams must have confidence that their use of government resources and facilities for internal communications and deliberations -- including key decisions such as nominations, staffing, and significant policy changes -- will not expose them to exploitation by third parties, including political opponents ."
1 play_arrow
911bodysnatchers322 , 4 hours ago
3O4jF"> Macho Latte play_arrow Mzhen , 5 hours ago1) Was this illegal surveillance?
2) Was this spying before a FISA warrant was given?
3) Did this occur before the special council was incepted (ie before may 2017)?
4) Which attorneys on his team requested this information?
5) Which US employees at GSA approved the FBI's request?
6) Why did the GSA approve the request, despite the MOU from TTT?
7) Will the employees cry out for mommy or for God when they are executed for treason (participants in seditious conspiracy against a lawful president)?
8) If they aren't executed, will president trump please give any us citizen a pre-pardon for carrying out justice against these employees after they are fired, and the sum total of their assets seized and divested to the us taxpayer base and they are homeless?
Thank you congressmen. Reclaiming our time
RedDog1 , 3 hours agoNovember 29, 2019 – The history of Flynn prosecutor Brandon Van Grack – from the Special Counsel's Office to the prosecution of Flynn
booboo , 4 hours agoIt can't be repeated enough...the Weissman "investigation" and Clinton campaign were doing exactly what President Trump was falsely accused of...using disinformation obtained from RUSSIAN sources (the Steele Dossier) to influence an election and undermine the peaceful transfer of power.
4whatitsworth , 3 hours agomore specifically they knew the charge would not stick because you can't charge someone for obstruction for calling out your prosecutor.
Metastatic Debt , 3 hours agoMr Muller please confirm that the name of the firm that produced the Christopher Steele dossier was Fusion GPS.. Muller hmmm Fusion GPS "I'm not familiar with that," - what a lying peice of ****!
UserLevel9000 , 4 hours agoFeds only solve crimes they manufacture or entrap for political gain, gain internally for promos or externally for glory.
That agency was founded by a black mailing, cross dressing weirdo.
No wonder it's corrupt. That was Its core makeup.
Joebloinvestor , 4 hours agoHe was a frontman. He didn't even read the report. Didn't you see the interview?
4Y_LURKER , 3 hours agoSo the GSA has no integrity.
Who goes to jail or gets fined?
Smedley Butler Jr , 3 hours agocurtisw , 4 hours agofiring them will now be easier
yrad , 3 hours agoMueller is a swamp rat.
Mzhen , 4 hours agoShort of killing him, our government exhausted all resources in order to remove Trump. What's the term? Ah yes, a ******* coup.
Im 44yo but I hope I live long enough for the historians to connect the dots and write the story. Much like JFK, all involved will be dead and will never pay for their crimes against this country and attack on one of the most important protections we have as a Republic- a peaceful transfer of power.
Totally_Disillusioned , 3 hours agoWho, specifically, has his name on the Mueller team letter to the GSA. Brandon Van Grack. The same prosecutor who spent years persecuting General Flynn, before being forced to withdraw from the case. The same Brandon Van Grack who was part of a failed sting operation against George Papadopoulos.
High Vigilante , 4 hours agoThe ENTIRE bureaucracy was against Trump and made EVERY EFFORT to sabotage, obstruct and deny President Trump's full authority over the Executive Branch.
Contagion Deleverage , 4 hours agoAnother scandal by globalists and Demsheviks every single day. Each worse than Watergate.
Reaper , 4 hours agoThe implications of Mueller having access to SECRET information pertaining to Donal Trump is remarkable and powerful. I believe that this is the source for leaking important and damaging information on Trump, his closest advisors, and critically, their plans and capabilities!
Secret Weapon , 5 hours agoThe prosecutor was the criminal.
chubbar , 3 hours agoThe trash in DC really hates the average American. I guess they meant it when they called us "deplorable".
ConanTheContrarian1 , 1 hour agoWhen you say "GSA did this" or "FBI did that", you are being lazy in your reporting. There are actual PEOPLE who made those decisions, not some nameless entity. What has to happen is that these actual people need to be found, charged and tried for these crimes. Otherwise, let's just call everything legal if no laws are to be enforced and quit bringing up the details of their treachery.
getsometoo , 4 hours agoEver read a gov't document? "It was decided....", "It seemed best....", etc. NEVER "I decided" or "Joe and Maxine decided". Ten thousand coverups and misdirections per department.
Sigh. , 4 hours agoHow do these bureautards get off thinking they're going dispose a duly elected President? Seriously, don't they understand the people would never allow it. What would it take for the people to utterly wipe out the FBI? To execute every damn one of them for treason? There's only around 35-40,000 of them. We could hang every damn one of them in a weekend. Sonofabitches. These people must absolutely lose their jobs. Then the guilty leadership must hang.
Barrock , 4 hours agoSo. GSA is Deep State. Never would've figured that.
Walking Turtle , 3 minutes agoEven the GSA is part of the swamp! Who would've figured? The USA needs to cut the annual budget hugely. The government needs a complete rehaul.
Bigboot , 36 minutes agoSeems Mr. Trump is positioned now to do pretty much that.
His recent creation per EO of GSA "Schedule F" employment lays waste to the "non-fireable" Senior Executive Service's stranglehold on Executive Branch administrative process. Sched F appointees are strictly at-will, serving at the sole pleasure of the President. Failure to serve as directed carries severe consequences, including jail time.
Moreover, a Sched F appointee can reportedly be placed above the SES wonk at the head of a recalcitrant agency. (Currently that means ALL of them - 80+ iirc.) Puts the BRIT-LOYAL Senior Executive Service under actual Constitution-loyal Executive Branch supervision. Betsy and Thomas d of American Intelligence Media (.mp3 podcast @link) have plenty good reason LOVE this, as does YT. The SES Policy Wonk Armee, otoh, does not .
Panic in DC. Long time coming; HERE NOW. DC-region dentists are gonna' clean right UP with all the gnashing of teeth and consequent self-inflicted damage to the dentition of those Swamp Rats imvho. And that is all. 0{;-)o[
gcjohns1971 , 40 minutes agoWhat happened to all the expos\'es of the Hunter Laptop we were told were coming out?
Isn't it amazing, stultifying and incredibly nightmarish that we are heading into the
election and NOT ONE of the Democrat criminals has been indicted? My God, there's something
really rotten in the state of America (cf Shakespeare, I know America is not a state).
Total corruption at all levels. God save us from the Government and all its rotten
agencies.
Leguran , 44 minutes agoGovernment does not believe in Democracy or in the Republic.
They work for other masters. And they assert exclusive right to choose which ones.
Good questions to ask include:
Which ones?
On what basis is their choosing?
What is in it for the rest of us?
Why should we continue to enable a "government" on such a self-serving basis?
Mister Delicious , 54 minutes agoThese actions have called into question the GSA's role as a neutral service provider, and those doubts have consequences?????
No ****! Who the hell is supposed to trust government when those in top positions feel free to do exactly what they please. That MOU was an agreement, the government's word.
Republicans in the Senate, you are all dirt bags with no values. At least the Democrats do not claim to have values.
Mueller himself violated a court order
https://thefederalist.com/2019/07/31/robert-mueller-defy-court-order-stop-lying-russian-companies/
Aside from the prosecutorial rulea they violated
https://thefederalist.com/2019/04/25/5-times-mueller-probe-broke-prosecutorial-rules-ensure-justice/
That court order directed him to stop claiming the "Russian troll" company, Comcord ( their ads were typical clickbait , not 'meddling') was connected to the Russian government - because he had produced no evidence at all to substantiate that.
He also would have had access to information that casted serious doubt on the alleged hacking.. nevermind 'collusion' - they NEVER had any evidence of a hack.
How do we know, apart from the lack of any credible evidence ever actually produced?
Well, for one, the testimony of the president of CrowdStrike which Adam Schiff deliberately suppressed during impeachment.
Indict these people for seditious conspiracy and election interference or stop asking us to believe a word anyone in the governmnt says.
The FBI is a criminal mafia operating under color of law and should be dismantled.
Have Wray and Haspel complied with Trump's -alleged- orders to release the documents related to that coup effort?
If not - why have they kept their jobs?
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Sep 30, 2020 | www.moonofalabama.org
Where the allegations that Russia intervened in the 2016 presidential elections made up by the Clinton campaign?
A letter sent by Director of National Intelligence John Ratcliffe seems to suggest so :
On Tuesday, Ratcliffe, a loyalist whom Trump placed atop U.S. intelligence in the spring, sent Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.) a letter claiming that in late July 2016, U.S. intelligence acquired "insight" into a Russian intelligence analysis. That analysis, Ratcliffe summarized in his letter, claimed that Clinton had a plan to attack Trump by tying him to the 2016 hack of the Democratic National Committee.
...
Ratcliffe stated that the intelligence community "does not know the accuracy of this allegation or to the extent to which the Russian intelligence analysis may reflect exaggeration or fabrication."bigger The letter says that then CIA Director John Brennan briefed President Obama on the intelligence. He reported that the Russians believed that Clinton approved the campaign plan on July 26 2016.
So U.S. intelligence spying on Russian intelligence analysts found that the Russians believed that Clinton started a 'Trump is supported by the Russian hacking of the DNC' campaign. The Russian's surely had reason to think that.
Emails from the Democratic National Committee were published by Wikileaks on July 22 2016, shortly before the Democratic National Convention. They proved that during the primaries the DNC had actively worked against candidate Bernie Sanders.
On July 24 Clinton campaign manager Robby Mook went on CNN and made, to my knowledge, the very first allegations (video) that Russia had 'hacked' the DNC in support of Donald Trump.
It is likely that the Russian analysts had seen that.
Mook's TV appearance was probably a test balloon raised to see if such claims would stick.
Two days later Clinton allegedly approved campaign plans to emphasize such claims.
In the infamous Steele dossier , prepared for the Clinton campaign by a 'former' British spy, the first entry that is tying the Trump campaign to the 'Russian DNC hack' was allegedly written on July 28 2016.
The president of Crowdstrike, the cybersecurity company which investigated the DNC leak, later said that his company never found any proof that Russia had hacked the DNC.
There are suspicions that Seth Rich, an IT administrator for the DNC and Bernie Sanders supporter, has leaked the DNC emails to Wikileaks . Rich was murdered on July 10 2016 in Washington DC in an alleged 'robbery' during which nothing was stolen.
The claims made in the Ratcliffe letter fit the timeline of the scandal as it developed. They supports the assertion that the Clinton campaign made up 'Russiagate' from whole cloth. It was supported in that by a myriad of media and by dozens of high level anti-Trump activists in the FBI and CIA.
Posted by b on September 30, 2020 at 16:04 UTC | Permalink
psychohistorian , Sep 30 2020 16:30 utc | 1
Are you trying to tell me b that "We came, we saw, he died" Clinton is suspected of wrongdoing?/snarkannie , Sep 30 2020 16:36 utc | 2I am all for bringing down the whole house of corrupt cards that fronts for the private finance cult. The Clintons are just examples of semi-recent to recent corruption. Obama is in that boat as is Biden and others.
But just remember that Trump was already entirely corrupt before (s)elected into power. Trump is just another front for global private finance evil that humanity must face.
i've always suspected (assumed) russiagate came from the clinton campaign.LXV , Sep 30 2020 16:37 utc | 3Another "conspiracy theory" turned into conspiracy fact.james , Sep 30 2020 16:38 utc | 4With regards to Killary being "supported in that by a myriad of media and by dozens of anti-Trump activists...", well, it's a pay-to-play world and CGI was the piggybank at that particular time...
thanks b... the timeline certainly fits and is consistent here.... larry johnson at sst has an article up on the same topic... how much of this is coming out now due the election and how much of it is coming out now, just because it happens to be coming out now??Et Tu , Sep 30 2020 16:41 utc | 5It's hard to tell when Trump is ever being truthful, but in last night's debate he clearly stated:William Gruff , Sep 30 2020 16:50 utc | 6"There was no transition because they came after me trying to do a coup. They came after me spying on my campaign. They started from the day I won and even before I won. From the day I came down the escalator with our First Lady. They were a disaster. They were a disgrace to our country. And we've caught 'em. We've caught 'em all. We've got it all on tape. We've caught 'em all."
Whether that is indicative of an imminent substantial October surprise i guess we will all have to wait and see.
The murder/robbery of Seth Rich has frequently been described as "botched" , which I have always felt was a strange way to describe a murder. It is as if the mass media were trying to exculpate the murderer even though we are supposed to not know who the murderer actually is.Cousin Jack , Sep 30 2020 16:59 utc | 7So nothing was taken from Rich, but perhaps that is because the murderer couldn't find what he was looking for? The USB thumb drive with the purloined emails, maybe? Of course, by the time Rich was murdered the emails had already been passed along to Wikileaks, but I suppose the murderer might not have known that at the time. That would make an effort to retrieve the emails "botched" , wouldn't it? This suggested to me from the moment that I heard it that those in the mass media who seeded the story of a robbery being "botched" in fact were knowingly covering for the effort to control the leak which was what was "botched" .
The need to then cover for murder added to the urgency to propagate the whole "Russiagate" fiction. The US' misnamed "intelligence community" and mass media both were complicit in the murder of Rich, so they had additional motivation to lead the public off the scent with an entirely fabricated false narrative.
With no evidence at all my suspicion is that Rich was killed as a crime of passion committed by a hotheaded member of his own family, which would explain both the family's reticence and the somewhat muted investigation.vk , Sep 30 2020 17:05 utc | 8Bemildred , Sep 30 2020 17:19 utc | 9There are suspicions that Seth Rich, an IT administrator for the DNC and Bernie Sanders supporter, has leaked the DNC emails to Wikileaks. Rich was murdered on July 10 2016 in Washington DC in an alleged 'robbery' during which nothing was stolen.That explains why Bernie Sanders suddenly became the "sheep dog". He flat out doesn't want to be assassinated and doesn't want his family to be also assassinated.
Gee, and it isn't even October yet.karlof1 , Sep 30 2020 17:26 utc | 10While it would be a boon for the nation, I rather doubt Trump will have Barr indict the Clintons for their crimes or go after the daily fraud committed at the Fed or on Wall Street. I doubt Trump has any inkling that in order to truly make America Great Again he must first destroy the Financial Parasites who caused America's downfall in the first place. Thirty-four days to go.annie , Sep 30 2020 17:37 utc | 11Assange repeatedly stated russia didn't leak the emails. i saw no compelling reason to think he would lie about it. then when the steel dossier came out it was so over the top and reeked of fabrication. the whole thing was so far fetched and then ratcheted up 1000 fold after she lost the election as an excuse. she never took any responsibility for her loss.Hoarsewhisperer , Sep 30 2020 18:06 utc | 12i think what amazes me most is how the media, and everyone following along, believed this story that drove the narrative for years. this ridiculous obsession with russia was all part of a coverup to distract the public from how rotten to the core the dnc is.
Thanks b.Tuyzentfloot , Sep 30 2020 18:06 utc | 13The mention of Seth Rich in connection with Russiagate prompted a hazy recollection of an article over at SST by Larry C Johnson (LCJ), who has been exposing flaws in the Russiagate fiasco for several years. LCJ deduced from the publicly-available Wikileaks/DNC files that they couldn't have been hacked over the WWW because the timestamp for each file indicated that those files came from a portable device, a thumb drive. From that info, and Assange being very upset about the murder of Seth Rich, LCJ concluded that Rich sent the DNC files to Wikileaks.
I looked up SST's "Russiagate" files and found the relevant article dated August 28, 2019 from which the following brief extract is the section mentioning file-types which LCJ found so compelling...
...
An examination of the Wikileaks DNC files shows they were created on 23 and 25 May and 26 August respectively. The fact that they appear in a FAT system format indicates the data was transfered to a storage device, such as a thumb drive.How can you prove this? The truth lies in the "last modified" time stamps on the Wikileaks files. Every single one of these time stamps end in even numbers. If you are not familiar with the FAT file system, you need to understand that when a date is stored under this system the data rounds the time to the nearest even numbered second.
Bill examined 500 DNC email files stored on Wikileaks and found that all 500 files ended in an even number -- 2, 4, 6, 8 or 0. If a system other than FAT had been used, there would have been an equal probability of the time stamp ending with an odd number. But that is not the case with the data stored on the Wikileaks site. All end with an even number.
...Maybe the Russians had read this article from july 26th : http://patricklawrence.us/shades-cold-war-dnc-fabricated-russian-hacker-conspiracy-deflect-blame-email-scandal/.JohnH , Sep 30 2020 18:13 utc | 14I doubt that it was solely a Clinton operation. After all, CIA director Mike Morrell kicked it off with his piece in the NY Times, which signaled some significant level of support at least parts of the intelligence community.Kali , Sep 30 2020 18:20 utc | 15The whole Russiagate affaire was very reminiscent of the Ken Starr inquisition, which yielded nothing until Bubba cavalierly incriminated himself with Monica. Trump has yet to prove himself that stupid.
I suspect that Hillary was delighted at the prospect of revenge for all she and Bubba had gone through in the 1990s...except that she totally blew it...
Remember when Tulsi Gabbard called out Hillary Clinton about getting the media to support her Russiagating of her? Here it is, you can see she blames Hillary as the source of the story:Prairie Bear , Sep 30 2020 18:23 utc | 16"Great! Thank you @HillaryClinton You, the queen of warmongers, embodiment of corruption, and personification of the rot that has sickened the Democratic Party for so long, have finally come out from behind the curtain. From the day I announced my candidacy, there has been a concerted campaign to destroy my reputation. We wondered who was behind it and why. Now we know -- it was always you, through your proxies and powerful allies in the corporate media and war machine, afraid of the threat I pose. It's now clear that this primary is between you and me. Don't cowardly hide behind your proxies. Join the race directly."
The Ballad of Tulsi and Hillary shows us how much the US and the world lost by the media supporting Hillary in her plan to Russiagate the world.
Erelis , Sep 30 2020 18:26 utc | 17The letter says that then CIA Director John Brennan briefed President Obama on the intelligence. He reported that the Russians believed that Clinton approved the campaign plan on July 26 2016.I was one of those who thought that the whole Russia conspiracy was dubious from day one, although I might have been kind of, "Well, maybe " for a day or so.
But that line from your post I quoted above points to one of the earliest and most convincing pieces of evidence to me that the whole thing was fake. It was reported early on that Obama had been briefed on the Russian interference and he wanted to go public to the American people about what was going on, but Senator Mitch McConnell wouldn't agree to it!
Seriously, Mr. President? You have been given a personal intelligence briefing from your CIA Director that one of the candidates to succeed you in the Presidency is an actual, bought and paid-for agent of Russia? And you don't go public because Ole Meanie Mitch won't let you ?
This said to me that Obama knew it was all BS from the beginning. Of course, there have been gobs of disclosures and evidence since that it was fake and BS, and none whatsoever that it was real.
Even with all the revelations debunking the whole Russiagate narrative, the Deep State has been successful in instilling in the news media, Hollywood, political elites of both parties, and the overwhelming base of the democratic party that Russia somehow "installed" Trump, that he is a Putin "puppet/puppy" (your choice), and any resistance to establishment democratic party power is due to Russian manipulation of social media, and in general Russia (etc.) is fundamental to causing social and political problems. It took America about seven years to get over McCarthyism. Russiagate will stay in American discourse for a long time.Tuyzentfloot , Sep 30 2020 18:30 utc | 18The dangerous part of Russiagate is that it has reached the level of hysteria that it can be used by American Deep State to justify direct and dangerous confrontations with Russia up to and including war. Russiagate pales the propaganda about Saddam and WNDs. Let us remember that two days into the US invasion of Iraq, the invasion had a 72% approval rating according to Gallup. Any conflict with Russia will probably have even higher approval levels.
Between Trump and Biden, it is Biden who will be the most likely to start the final conflagration.
Also nice, a list of journalists, commentators etc & media organizations who never succumbed to Russiagate :spudski , Sep 30 2020 18:50 utc | 21https://medium.com/@codecodekoen/list-of-vindicated-russiagate-skeptics-3f6fc0e55812
@19Tuyzentfloot , Sep 30 2020 19:05 utc | 22The probability of all 500 files having even numbers as a random outcome starts with a decimal point followed by 150 zeroes and then a three.
@hoarsewhisperer I trust that the time stamps indicates that a FAT format was used at a certain stage. What I don't recall is that how this would exclude workflows which involve an USB stick at any later stage after a hack. I think this technical proof is not as decisive as it seems and calculating huge statistical odds does not change that. The fact that the NSA has not come up with proof, now that does mean something. Something Baskervillish.Rae , Sep 30 2020 19:25 utc | 23Who cares.spudski , Sep 30 2020 19:27 utc | 24Found it interesting that in the very mainstream 'Friends' sitcom it was already a joke in the 90s that "gi joe looks after american foreign oil interests".
Except for a few conflict sitreps there really hasn't been much of note posted here this year.
Former NSA Technical Director Bill Binney has also argued that the data could not have been hacked because internet speeds at the time were not sufficient for the transfer of the data when it was extracted. He claims that the speed was consistent with saving to a thumb drive.Bart Hansen , Sep 30 2020 19:35 utc | 25The word "botched" could have been invented to explain why nothing was stolen, in order to put off those who questioned the motive. No witness came forward but it could be that someone saw the shooting from a distance and yelled at the perp.Per/Norway , Sep 30 2020 19:46 utc | 26"Ratcliffe's letter, which is based on information obtained by the CIA, states that Hillary decided on 26 July 2016 to launch the Russia/Trump strategem. But the CIA was mistaken. The Clinton effort started in 2015--December 2015 to be precise.TrixiefromDixie , Sep 30 2020 19:55 utc | 27Thanks to Wikileaks, we have a copy of an email exchange between Hillary's Campaign Manager, John Podesta and longtime Democratic operative Brent Budowsky talking about how Hillary should take on The Donald. Budowski tells Podesta: "Best approach is to slaughter Donald for his bromance with Putin, but not go too far betting on Putin re Syria.""
Larry Johnson wrote today in his article "I Told You Long Ago, Hillary's Team Helped Fabricate the Trump Russia Collusion Lie by Larry C Johnson"
If I remember correctly Obummer signed legislation making it ok for the press to openly lie to everyone in the us! HR4310, legalized propaganda for US consumption. He gave us fake news!powerandpeople , Sep 30 2020 20:11 utc | 28The constant stream of US, UK, NATO, EU fabrications framing Russia, from MH17, Skripal, 'interfering in elections' garbage, the Navalry poisoning, coupled with endless provocations like interfering in the Syrian settlement, twisting the OPCW work, attempting to destroy the Iran nuclear agreement and so much more appear to -finally - running out Russia's strategic patience with the Trump administration.karlof1 , Sep 30 2020 20:43 utc | 291. 24 September Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov:
"...the incumbent US administration has lost its diplomatic skills almost for good."
https://www.mid.ru/en/foreign_policy/news/-/asset_publisher/cKNonkJE02Bw/content/id/4350105
2. 30 September FM Lavrov:
"we have come to realise that in terms of Germany and its EU and NATO allies' conduct, ...it is impossible to deal with the West until it stops using provocations and fraud and starts behaving honestly and responsibly."
https://www.mid.ru/en/foreign_policy/news/-/asset_publisher/cKNonkJE02Bw/content/id/4350105
The Russiagate fabrication was a political convenience for the Dems, but it allowed Trump and his NATO/EU agents to sanction, pressurise, interfere with Russia in every dimension, because Trump 'had to' to show they he was not Russia's sock puppets!
Looks like Russia might be shifting strategy from strictly going through the defined and agreed processes in relation to problems with the West to perhaps not engaging so meticulously.
After all, what's the point when the agreed processes are ignored by the other party?
So, does "impossible to deal with" mean "will not deal with"?
We'll see.
The video I just watched and linked to on the Week in Review thread makes this observation: The Ds burned the US-Russia relationship while the Rs made no real protest; now we have the Rs burning the US-China relationship while the Ds make no real protest.Eric Zuesse , Sep 30 2020 20:53 utc | 30Many other nations are watching, some already having joined the China-Russia bloc while others get ready as they watch what little remains of US soft power go down the tubes thanks to Imperial tactics being deployed onto US streets. Meanwhile, lurking not too far away is the coming escalation of the financial crisis which Trump's Trade War has exacerbated. Those running this show are myopic to the max--in order to post an economic recovery, the markets existing in those nations now being alienated will be essential since the domestic market will be far too weak to fuel a recovery by itself, even with enlightened leadership.
Regarding the allegation by "b" that:William Gruff , Sep 30 2020 21:09 utc | 31"On July 24 Clinton campaign manager Robby Mook went on CNN and made, to my knowledge, the very first allegations (video) that Russia had 'hacked' the DNC in support of Donald Trump."
It is not the case that it was the first such allegation. To my knowledge, the first such allegation that was published was published on 14 June 2016 in the Washington Post, headlining "Russian government hackers penetrated DNC, stole opposition research on Trump" and I provide here an archived link to it instead of that newspaper's link, so that no paywall will block a reader from seeing that article:
https://archive.is/T4C2Gpowerandpeople @28: "So, does "impossible to deal with" mean "will not deal with"?"David , Sep 30 2020 21:28 utc | 32Highly unlikely. The Russians will continue to pursue reason even after the war on Russia goes hot. If the Russians give up on diplomacy then that means Lavrov is out of a job. The Russians are capable of walking and chewing gum, or shooting and talking as the case may be, at the same time.
By the way, I think the same is true for the Chinese, even if they have not done much shooting lately. When America's war against them goes hot they will keep the door to diplomacy open throughout the conflict. Neither of these countries wants a war and it is the US that is pushing for one. They will be happy to stop the killing as soon as the US does.
Personally I think that may be a mistake because when the war goes hot and the US suffers some military defeats and sues for peace, if America still has the capability to wage war then the peace will just be temporary. The US will use any cessation of hostilities to rearm and try to catch its imagined enemies off guard.
Whether or not the US will be able to rearm after significant military defeats in its current de-industrialized condition is another matter.
How can the US possibly contemplate a war with China? The US cannot function without China's production. To cite just one example; eighty percent of US pharmaceuticals are produced in China. The US needs China far more than China needs the US. A war with China is a war the US cannot win.William Gruff , Sep 30 2020 21:37 utc | 33Eric Zuesse @30Jackrabbit , Sep 30 2020 21:43 utc | 34Assange announced on June 12, 2016 that a new tranche of DNC emails had been leaked to Wikileaks and was being prepared for publication. The effort to manufacture the false narrative about Russian hacking began immediately after that, likely within minutes of the announcement.
We already knew that Hillary had engaged Steele in Spring 2016 as what was termed an "insurance policy". This "insurance" angle makes no sense: 1) Hillary was the overwhelming favorite when she engaged Steele and had virtually unlimited resources that she could call upon. And, 2) the bogus findings in Steele's dossier could easily be debunked by any competent intelligence agency so it wasn't any sort of "insurance" at all.William Gruff , Sep 30 2020 21:46 utc | 35<> <> <> <> <>
That Hillary started Russiagate is not surprising. This limited hangout, which is so titillating to some, is meant to cover for a far greater conspiracy than Hillary's vindictiveness.
We should first recognize a few things:
These facts lead to the following conclusions:
- the Empire is a bi-partisan affair;
- the Presidency is the lynch-pin of the Empire;
- it became apparent in 2013-14 that the Empire (aka "World Order") was at grave risk as Russia's newfound militancy showed that her alliance with China had teeth.
- the 2016 race was KNOWN to be rigged via Hillary's collusion with DNC and Sanders' sheepdogging (Note: After the collusion became know, Hillary gave disgraced Debra Wasserman-Shultz a high-level position within Hillary's campaign - further angering progressives). Why does it surprise anyone that the General Election was also rigged?
- A "populist outsider" will NEVER be allowed to win the Presidency. It was claimed that Obama was also a "populist outsider" yet he served the Deep State/Empire and the US establishment very well.
- Hillary's 2016 "campaign mistakes" were likely deliberate/calculated to allow Trump to win. MAGA Nationalist Trump was the Deep State's favorite. This explains why Trump announced that he would not investigate the Clintons within days of his being elected and why Trump picked close associates of all his 'Never Trump' Deep State enemies to fill key posts in his Administration such as: John Brennan's gal Gina Haspel for CIA Director; John McCain's guy Mike Pence as VP; the Bush's guy William Barr for Attorney General; and the neocon's John Bolton for NSA.
- Russiagate was primarily a means of initiating a new McCarthyism as part of a plan to counter Russia and China.
!!David @32: "How can the US possibly contemplate a war with China?"Sadly, the United States is suffering from delusions of exceptionality. Mass psychosis. The importance of industrial capacity is radically underestimated by the top economic theorists (and thus advisors) in the West, and except for some of the deplorable working people in America and perhaps about five or six Marxists in the country, the rest of the American population is equally delusional. "Well, if we can't get it from China then we will just order it from Amazon!
No, really, it's that bad.
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Sep 23, 2020 | www.zerohedge.com
Authored by Rusty Weiss via The Political Insider blog,
FBI agent John Robertson, the man who found Hillary Clinton's emails on the laptop of Anthony Weiner, claims he was advised by bosses to erase his own computer.
Former FBI Director James Comey, you may recall, announced days before the 2016 presidential election that he had "learned of the existence" of the emails on Weiner's laptop .
Weiner is the disgraced husband of Clinton aide Huma Abedin.
Robertson alleges that the manner in which his higher-ups in the FBI handled the case was "not ethically or morally right."
His startling claims are made in a book titled, "October Surprise: How the FBI Tried to Save Itself and Crashed an Election," an excerpt of which has been published by the Washington Post .
Told to Erase Laptop Containing Investigation of Anthony Weiner Laptop
Robertson alleges that the FBI did nothing for a month after discovering Clinton's emails on the Anthony Weiner laptop. It was only after he spoke with the U.S. Attorney's office overseeing the case, he claims, that the agency took action.
"He had told his bosses about the Clinton emails weeks ago," the book contends . "Nothing had happened."
"Or rather, the only thing that had happened was his boss had instructed Robertson to erase his computer work station."
This, according to the Post report, was to "ensure there was no classified material on it," but also would eliminate any trail of his actions taken during the investigation.
FBI Did Nothing About Hillary Clinton's Emails For Months?
Robertson's assertions match up with a Wall Street Journal report from 2018 . In that report, text messages between agent Peter Strzok and his girlfriend, lawyer Lisa Page, indicated the former had been called to discuss the newly discovered emails on September 28th. Those emails wouldn't be revealed until former Director James Comey notified Congress about them on October 28th.
A book written by James B . Stewart in 2019 asserts that FBI agents had referred to the discovery of Hillary Clinton's emails as an "oh s***" moment." One agent admitted there were "ten times" as many emails as Comey admitted to publicly.
These allegations make it difficult to say Comey did not lie to the public – if not Congress .
Robertson's story is being revealed as U.S. Attorney John Durham is investigating the FBI's role in the origins of the Russia probe into President Trump's campaign.
Recently released documents from the DOJ show multiple FBI officials had "accidentally wiped" their phones after the Office of the Inspector General (OIG) requested them .
Erasing evidence is a consistent theme for the Obama-era FBI. Meanwhile, the Senate Homeland Security Committee has voted to authorize over three dozen subpoenas and depositions of some of these officials, including Comey.
Democrats seem skittish about what Durham is uncovering .
Four House committee chairs last week asked for an "emergency" review of Attorney General William Barr's handling of Durham's probe.
"We are concerned by indications that Attorney General Barr might depart from longstanding DOJ principles," a letter to the IG reads .
They contend Barr may "take public action related to U.S. Attorney Durham's investigation that could impact the presidential election." Top Democrats have also been threatening to impeach Barr over the investigation.
Kevin Clinesmith, one of the FBI officials involved in gathering evidence in the Russia investigation, pled guilty last month to making a false statement. He was accused by the Inspector General of altering an email about former Trump campaign adviser Carter Page.
President Trump's Chief of Staff, Mark Meadows, said in July that he expects further indictments and jail time to come out of Durham's probe. Democrats, Comey, and others at the FBI might be a little nervous.
DaiRR , 12 hours ago
MissCellany , 13 hours agoDemoRat operatives still pervade the DOJ and to a lesser extent the FBI. Treasonous F's all of them. Andrew Weissmann is an evil a Rat as any of them and he should be tried, disbarred and punished for all his lying and despicable crimes while at the DOJ. Of course MSNBC now loves paying him to be their "legal analyst".
RoadKill4Supper , 12 hours agoWhat, like with a cloth or something?
FBGnome , 3 hours ago"What difference, at this point, does it make?"
Unknown User , 14 hours agoThe current election would be at stake.
Sense , 13 hours agoUnless the Swamp does it. Not just a post or a website disappear, people disappear.
ElmerTwitch , 12 hours agoThe difficulty is not just that Comey and his underlings were obstructing justice to benefit Clinton, and made a total **** show of it. It is that Sessions was, "to protect the DOJ"... and Barr, also, clearly, as long he continues to run interference for Comey, Clinton, et al, is also obstructing justice. Barr has crafted a veneer, it seems... in the Durham probe... to provide himself plausible deniability. That veneer can remain plausible only as long as Durham does nothing, and fails to make the files public.
Only if Durham proceeds to use the files, and/or makes the files public, will we find out if we get prosecutions, or if we get more obstruction under Barr's watch. So, Barr is carrying a pretty big hammer. It isn't at all clear what he intends to do with that hammer, or how he intends to use it if he does.
A wild card, perhaps, in the potential for an Senate or House investigation including Barr's forced participation... in response to which he might be compelled to answer the unasked question ? Makes it kind of hard to see how "investigating Barr"... poses a threat to Barr, or Trump... rather than a threat to those investigating him ? The fact they're even twittering about it suggests more than awareness about the content of that information... and thus maybe complicity in the effort to cover it up ?
That would explain most of the events of the last four years.
And, as a note, it wasn't "the FBI" that "found the e-mails" (and other files) on the Weiner laptop.
It was the NYPD. And, that cadre of NYPD officers recognized what was likely to happen when they did turn it over to the FBI. So they made copies. And, the copies got distributed to the cloud.
It is not possible, I'd think, that Julian Assange didn't get a copy... in case you wonder why Barr's DOJ is still prosecuting journalism. I doubt they're doing that because of past publication... rather than in an effort to prevent future publication. Because Assange... in all likelihood... might be the only journalist left in the world... who will not be coerced into withholding publication.
sparky139 , 12 hours agoThe emails are in the stellarwind database , according to William Binney. So are all the texts that the Mueller crew "erased." IntercoursetheEU is correct - every email and text ever sent is archived in that database.
The DOJ is indeed protecting Obama, Hillary, Comey, Brennan, Clapper et al. by claiming "the emails are gone! The texts are gone, too!"
TheReplacement's Replacement , 1 hour agoWhat is the stellarwind database
takeaction , 15 hours agoLook up NSA.
No_Pretzel_Logic , 14 hours agoAs all of us here on ZH understand. NOTHING WILL EVER HAPPEN... And Trump Team....if you are reading this... THIS IS THE BIGGEST LET DOWN OF YOUR ENTIRE PRESIDENCY...
maggie2now , 13 hours agotakeaction - I disagree. I think things are happening right now....out of the country.
TRIALS.....
Where is that slimy, former CIA Director who wouldn't shut-up on national TV from late 2016 to early 2020? Hhmm, not a freaking peep nor have I seen any recent images. How about the dirtball, prior FBI Dir? His Twitter acct has only had "quotes" posted for about a month now.
Clapper? Another Trump trasher on constant TV the last few years.....where is he? NOT A PEEP. Why wouldn't he keep trashing to diminish DJT's election chances?
I'm telling ya, I think they are on a certain Caribbean Island. And my wager is that Trump is going to toss a wild curveball into this election about the 3rd week of Oct.
Treason convictions announced, is my bet.
MoreFreedom , 12 hours agoBrennan was on an MSNBC panel last week pale, sweating, moving around in his seat at the mere mention of John Durham. Not his usual cocky self that's for sure. HRC was online flapping her yap with Jennifer Palmieri not too long ago trying to convince the Biden campaign not to concede the 2020 election under any circumstances. As for Clapper, I don't know - maybe hiding in a remote location ****ting himself?
YouJustCouldnt , 2 hours agoThey've shut up because their actions betray them. Publicly they say Trump is a Russian spy or puppet, while under oath, in a closed room, representing their former government position and top secret clearance, they've no information to support it. That shows an anti-Trump political motivation, regarding their prior actions in government. It's also defrauding the public and government.
Ms No , 15 hours agoCouldn't agree more. How many times have we been here before!
20 years on from 9/11 - From the thousands of experts on the Architects and Engineers for 9/11 Truth , the latest news is that The National Institute of Standards and Technology ( NIST ) is now more than a week late in issuing its "initial decision" on the pending "request for correction" to its 2008 report on the collapse of World Trade Center Building 7. Big Whoop - and just another nothing burger.
Unknown User , 14 hours agoUhhhh.....yeah.
We have seen this type of thing since JFK. If you hadn't long ago figured this out then you are either an amateur or a paid internet herd-moving troll/anti-human.
Some of us aren't part of the herd.
(((Anthony Weiner))), just like (((Mossad Epstein honeypot))) and (((lucky Larry Silverstein))), countless other examples that blow statistical likelihood way beyond coincidence.
Not rocket science. Its a mob and these are their puppets and fronts. They dont just own the FBI. They own all branches of your government and all the alphabets.
Enjoying the covid hysteria and run-up to WWIII?
VWAndy , 15 hours agoIf by (((they))) you mean the British who created the OSA and then the CIA. They also created all the think-tanks, like the CFR. They own the Fed and run the worldwide banking cartel. The British Crown owns all the countries of the Commonwealth. And they started the COVID-19 delusion. Yes. Make no mistake. It is (((THEY))).
Stackers , 15 hours agoAn he didnt go public with it either.
occams razor. they are all corrupt.
radical-extremist , 15 hours agoAnyone who thinks that anybody beyond this low level flunky, Kliensmith, is going to get any kind of prosecution is dreaming. None of these people will face any consequences to their outright sedition and they know it. Disgusting.
High Vigilante , 15 hours agoShe created a private personal server to purposely circumvent the FOIA system and any other prying eyes. Her staff was warned not to do it, but they refused to confront her about it. They were so technically inept that they didn't understand emails are copied on to servers everywhere...including the pentagon and the state department. And Huma's laptop that her perv husband used to sext girls.
She maintained and exchanged Top Secret information on a personal/private/unsecured server in her house. That is a crime punishable with prison time...and yet she skates.
Bay of Pigs , 13 hours agoThis guy should avoid walking out in dark.
His name was Seth!
dogfish , 13 hours agoWe have to face reality. If Durham doesn't indict some of these people before the election, nothing is going to happen. It's the end of the line. Time has run out.
"We bullsh#tted some folks...."
OCnStiggs , 13 hours agoTrump is a charlatan and a fraud. The only winners with Trump are the Zionist they are Trumps top priority.
play_arrowSparehead , 13 hours agoGood thing NYPD copied the HD on that laptop for just this occurrence. There reportedly at least two copies in safes in NYC. Criminality of the highest order that eclipses by 100,000,000 whatever happened in Watergate. These FBI people need to hang.
4Y_LURKER , 12 hours agoSafe in NYC? Like all the evidence of criminal banking activity that was lost in World Trade Center 7?
Oh look! We found passports even though steel and gold was vaporized by jet fuel!!
NIST is a cornspiracy theory!
you're cornfused
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Sep 20, 2020 | www.brookings.edu
The paper's biggest single recommendation was that the United States and EU establish a Counter-Disinformation Coalition, a public/private group bringing together, on a regular basis, government and non-government stakeholders, including social media companies, traditional media, Internet service providers (ISPs), and civil society groups. The Counter-Disinformation Coalition would develop best practices for confronting disinformation from nondemocratic countries, consistent with democratic norms. It also recommended that this coalition start with a voluntary code of conduct outlining principles and agreed procedures for dealing with disinformation, drawing from the recommendations as summarized above.
In drawing up these recommendations, we were aware that disinformation most often comes from domestic, not foreign, sources. 8 While Russian and other disinformation players are known to work in coordination with domestic purveyors of disinformation, both overtly and covertly, the recommendations are limited to foreign disinformation, which falls within the scope of "political warfare." Nevertheless, it may be that these policy recommendations, particularly those focused on transparency and social resilience, may be applicable to combatting other forms of disinformation.
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Sep 12, 2020 | www.rt.com
Dannehy's email contained no information about the investigation, her work for Durham, or political pressure, according to the Courant.
Durham, the US attorney for the district of Connecticut since 2017, was tasked in May 2019 to investigate the way the FBI and the DOJ handled the so-called Russiagate probe of Trump's campaign and administration, from mid-2016 to the appointment of Robert Mueller as special counsel in May 2017.
Though copious evidence that the investigation wasn't on the level has since emerged – from the text messages between FBI employees Peter Strzok and Lisa Page to memos about "entrapment" of General Michael Flynn and a damning inspector-general report, Durham's probe has resulted in only one prosecution so far.
Last month, FBI lawyer Kevin Clinesmith pleaded guilty to making a false statement, admitting that he altered evidence in the case of Carter Page. By claiming Page was a 'Russian agent,' the FBI was able to obtain a warrant to spy on the Trump campaign, both before and after the 2016 presidential election.
Evidence has emerged that the principal basis of the FISA warrants was the discredited 'Trump-Russia dossier,' compiled by British spy Christopher Steele and funded by Hillary Clinton's campaign through the Democratic Party.
bjd050 11 Sep, 2020 07:14 PM
"Improper political influence". That's rich, coming from a coup plotters' apologist.
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Sep 11, 2020 | www.zerohedge.com
Mueller's 'Angry Democrats' Scrubbed Cell Phones After Russia Investigation by Tyler Durden Thu, 09/10/2020 - 18:20 Twitter Facebook Reddit Email Print
Over two dozen phones belonging to members of Robert Mueller's special counsel team were wiped clean before they were handed over to the Inspector General, according to information contained in 87 pages of DOJ records released on Thursday.
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Some of the phones were wiped using the Apple operating system's 'wrong-password' failsafe, where the wrong password must be entered ten times - after which the system wipes the drive.
Those who couldn't seem to remember their password 10 times in a row include 'attack dog' lawyer Andrew Weissman , who urged DOJ attorneys to go rogue and 'not' help US Attorney John Durham investigate FBI and DOJ conduct during the Trump investigation.
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The malarkey continues (via National Review ):
NEVER MISS THE NEWS THAT MATTERS MOSTA phone belong to assistant special counsel James Quarles "wiped itself without intervention from him," the DOJ's records state.
Andrew Weismann, a top prosecutor on Mueller's team, "accidentally wiped" his cell phone, causing the data to be lost. Other members of the team also accidentally wiped their phones, the DOJ said.
Phones issued to at least three other Mueller prosecutors, Kyle Freeny, Rush Atkinson, and senior prosecutor Greg Andres were also wiped of data.
Additionally, t he cell phone of FBI lawyer Lisa Page was misplaced by the special counsel's office . While it was eventually obtained by the DOJ inspector general, by that point the phone had been restored to its factory settings, wiping it of all dat a. The phone of FBI agent Peter Strzok was also obtained by the inspector general's office, which found "no substantive texts, notes or reminders" on it.
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Sep 09, 2020 | irrussianality.wordpress.com
PROOF OF COLLUSION AT LAST! SEPTEMBER 2, 2020 PAULR 18 COMMENTS
Despite the secondary roles played some bit part actors in the Russiagate drama, the central figure in allegations that Donald Trump colluded with the Russian government to be elected as president of the United States has always been Trumps' onetime campaign manager Paul Manafort. The recent US Senate report on Russian 'interference' in the 2016 presidential election thus started off its analysis with a long exposé of Manafort's comings and goings.
Simply put, the thesis is as follows: while working in Ukraine as an advisor to 'pro-Russian' Ukrainian president Viktor Yanukovich, Manafort was in effect working on behalf of the Russian state via 'pro-Russian' Ukrainian oligarchs as well as Russian billionaire Oleg Deripaska (a man with 'close ties' to the Kremlin). Also suspicious was Manafort's close relationship with one Konstantin Kilimnik, whom the US Senate claims is a Russia intelligence agent. All these connections meant that while in Ukraine, Manafort was helping the Russian Federation spread its malign influence. On returning to the USA and joining the Trump campaign, he then continued to fulfill the same role.
The fundamental flaw in this thesis has always been the well-known fact that while advising Yanukovich, Manafort took anything but a 'pro-Russian' position, but instead pressed him to sign an association agreement with the European Union (EU). Since gaining independence, Ukraine had avoided being sucked either into the Western or the Russian camp. But the rise of two competing geopolitical projects – the EU and the Russia-backed Eurasian Union – was making this stance increasingly impossible, and Ukraine was being put in a position where it would be forced to choose. This was because the two Unions are incompatible – one can't be in two customs unions simultaneously, when they levy different tariffs and have different rules. Association with the EU meant an end to the prospect of Ukraine joining the Eurasian Union. It was therefore a goal which was entirely incompatible with Russian interests, which required that Ukraine turn instead towards Eurasia.
Manafort's position on this matter therefore worked against Russia. Even The Guardian journalist Luke Harding had to concede this in his book Collusion , citing a former Ukrainian official Oleg Voloshin that, 'Manafort was an advocate for US interests. So much so that the joke inside [Yanunkovich's] Party of Regions was that he actually worked for the USA.'
If anyone had any doubts about this, they can now put them aside. On Monday, the news agency BNE Intellinews announced that it had received a leak of hundreds of Kilimnik's emails detailing his relationship with Manafort and Yanukovich. The story they tell is not at all what the US Senate and other proponents of the Trump-Russia collusion fantasy would have you believe. As BNE reports:
Today the Yanukovych narrative is that he was a stool pigeon for Russian President Vladimir Putin from the start, but after winning the presidency he actually worked very hard to take Ukraine into the European family. As bne IntelliNews has already reported, Manafort's flight records also show how he crisscrossed Europe in an effort to build support in Brussels for Yanukovych in the run up to the EU Vilnius summit.
On March 1, his first foreign trip as newly minted president was to the EU capital of Brussels. The leaked emails show that Manafort influenced Yanukovych's decision to visit Brussels as first stop, working in concert with his assistant Konstantin Kilimnik In a memorandum entitled 'Purpose of President Yanukovych Trip to Brussels,' Manafort argued that the decision to visit Brussels first would underscore Yanukovych's mission to "bring European values to Ukraine," and kick start negotiations on the Association Agreement.
The memorandum on the Brussels visit was the first of many from Manafort and Kilimnik to Yanukovych, in which they pushed Yanukovych to signal a clear pro-EU line and to carry out reforms to back this up.
To handle Yanukovych's off-message antics, Manafort and Kilimnik created a back channel to Yanukovych for Western politicians – in particular those known to appreciate Ukraine's geopolitical significance vis-à-vis Russia. In Europe, these were Sweden's then foreign minister Carl Bildt, Poland's then foreign minister Radosław Sikorski and European Commissioner for Enlargement Stefan Fule, and in the US, Vice President Joe Biden.
"We need to launch a 'Friends of Ukraine' programme to help us use informal channels in talks on the free trade zone and modernisation of the gas transport system," Manafort and Kilimnik wrote to Yanukovych in September 2010. "Carl Bildt is the foundation of this informal group and has sufficient weight with his colleagues in questions connected to Ukraine and the Eastern Partnership. ( ) but he needs to be able to say that he has a direct channel to the President, and he knows that President Yanukovych remains committed to European integration."
Beyond this, the emails show that Manafort and Kilimnik also tried hard to arrange a meeting between Yanukovich and US President Barack Obama, and urged Yanukovich to show leniency to former Prime Minister Yuliia Timoshenko (who was imprisoned for fraud).
It is noticeable that the members of the 'back channel' Manafort and Kilimnik created to lobby on behalf of Ukraine in the EU included some of the most notably Russophobic European politicians of the time, such as Carl Bildt and Radek Sikorski. Moreover, nowhere in any of what they did can you find anything that could remotely be described as 'pro-Russian'. Indeed, the opposite is true. As previously noted, Ukraine's bid for an EU agreement directly challenged a key Russian interest – the expansion of the Eurasian Union to include Ukraine. Manafort and Kilimnik were therefore very much working against Russia, not for it.
The idea, therefore, that Paul Manafort was an agent of influence for the Russian government flies against everything we know about what he actually did. As for Kilimnik, maybe he is a Russian intelligence agent – I'm not in a position to say. But if he is, he's a very weird one, who spent years actively pushing the Ukrainian government to pursue a policy which directly contradicted Russian interests.
None of this, needless to say, appears in the US Senate report. Instead, the report chooses to focus on the apparently shocking revelation that Manafort shared Trump campaign polling data with Kilimnik, as if this sharing of private information was in some ways a massive threat to national security and proof that Manafort was working for the Russians. The fact that both Manafort and Kilimnik spent years doing their damnedest to undermine Russia is simply ignored. Go figure!
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Sep 01, 2020 | www.rt.com
Fed up with decades of two-party rule, hundreds of thousands of Americans tuned in for the People's Convention, where they voted to form a new political alternative unbeholden to corporate power or the military-industrial complex.
The event drew more than 400,000 viewers to its livestream on Sunday, organizers said. It continued to trend on Twitter through more than 5 hours of speeches that culminated in a vote to create a "major new corporate-free political party in America."
Among the speakers at the convention were several disgruntled Democrats, from Sen. Bernie Sanders's 2020 national co-chair Nina Turner to a candidate in this year's primaries, Marianne Williamson. The roster of speakers also included former Minnesota Governor Jesse Ventura, comedian Jimmy Dore, and Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist Chris Hedges, who summed up the spirit of the convention in a fiery address.
ALSO ON RT.COM No cooperation allowed? Twitter suspends cancel culture prof's 'Articles of Unity' call for bipartisanship & BLOCKS website"There is only one choice in this election, and that is the consolidation of oligarchic power under Donald Trump, or the consolidation of oligarchic power under Joe Biden," said Hedges, who also hosts RT's ' On Contact .' "The oligarchs with Trump or Biden will win again, and we will lose."
Only one thing matters to the oligarchs, it is not democracy, it is not truth, it is not the consent of the governed, it is not income inequality, it is not the surveillance state, it is not endless war it is the primacy of corporate power, which has extinguished our democracy and left most of the working class and the working poor in misery.
www.youtube.com/embed/t6u5xPJaW2s
The People's Convention was held on the heels of the Republican and Democratic national conventions earlier this month, which event organizers said "erased the needs of poor and working people in a time of mounting national crisis." It ended with a vote to create the People's Party in 2021, in which some 99 percent of its 400,000 viewers took part.
Williamson, who made an unsuccessful bid for Democratic nominee in the 2020 race, slammed an economic system that for decades has stranded "millions of people without even a life vest," concentrating massive amounts of wealth upward and leaving the American middle class "completely devastated."
We have reverted to aristocracy; it is now a corporate aristocracy.
"It is health insurance companies, it is big pharmaceutical companies, it is big oil, it is food companies and of course, it is the military industrial complex," she said.
A former Ohio state senator and a senior figure in the Sanders campaign, Turner told the convention that "we are in a fight for our lives and for future generations," adding "We don't believe in the lies and the bribes and the contentment in a lousy peace," quoting from a 1938 poem by Langston Hughs.
"How can we have peace in moments like this, when over 90 million of our sisters and brothers are either uninsured or underinsured?" Turner asked. "How can we have peace when on the streets of America right now, black lives have been reaching out, calling out the racism and the white supremacy and the bigotry of a system that was created for black lives to languish."
ALSO ON RT.COM Rigged US primaries aren't the problem – the rigged election system isHow can we have peace when you got a Congress that goes on recess while millions of people are facing evictions from their homes?
"We need a third or fourth entity to step in. The lesser of two evils is still evil," said Ventura, who was elected Minnesota governor on a third-party ticket in 1998 and has since been involved with the Libertarian and Green parties. Ventura has also hosted RT's ' Off the Grid ' (ending in 2015) and ' The World According to Jesse .'
Harvard professor and social critic Dr. Cornel West also addressed the event, calling to "transform the American empire into a more democratic space," while dubbing the two major parties the "neo-fascist" and "neo-liberal" wings of the "ruling class."
"We are living in a moment of massive imperial meltdown, spiritual breakdown, and we need prophetic fight-back," West said, arguing the new party would provide just that.
The Movement for a People's Party, the organization behind the project, now says it is working to establish local branches around the US, which will "form the building blocks of state parties" and work through the long and often arduous process of securing ballot access. The group has set a lofty goal for the new anti-corporate outfit, hoping it will be "poised to sweep Congress and the White House" by the next election cycle in 2024.
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Sinalco 16 hours ago
Sadly, it's the same all over the world - the corporations have bought all politicians... Governments & Politicians no longer work for us; they work for the highest bidder...
ratfink222 Sinalco 3 hours ago
In the USA it is even worse, CEOs give themselves multimillion dollars raises and bonuses for screwing up and screwing Americans. Their pay is at least 10,000 times higher than employees. They act like they are laying golden bricks but they are robbing everybody.
GottaBeMe venze chern 5 hours ago
This one will be a grassroots organization and has pledged to never accept corporate donations. They are planning to get online funding from individuals as did Bernie Sanders. It can be done. When they have enough momentum, they will work to eliminate corporate money from politics. You should watch their convention. I saw all but the first 45 minutes. It was inspiring.
Juan_More 15 hours ago
There are already other parties running in the election it is just that these also ran parties can't get any traction against the two main parties. Part of the reason that RT got trouble last time is that they gave airtime to these also ran parties. Ross Perot made a good try at it but he failed. These also ran parties have to start winning elections at lower levels and building momentum. The other would be to get a high profile candidate with name recognition like Jesse Ventura or Oprah
GottaBeMe Juan_More 5 hours ago Certainly the game is rigged against alternative parties.
They are not allowed to participate in debates, the media tries to ignore them, election rules are designed to make it nearly impossible to get on a state ballot. (This is why I vote 3rd party in the absence of a decent D or R candidate: a threshold of votes can provide a bit of financial relief and if enough, could mandate ballot access.) I truly hope the People's Party succeeds. I intend to support it as much as I can.
Alan Ditmore Juan_More 5 hours ago
No. ONLY ONE viable strategy and that is to get 1000 MAYORS before running any higher, for which you need a municipal platform. houses 13 hours ago Workers' parties are the only alternative to corporate parties.
The British Labour Party was just that, but it was infiltrated by tory fifth columnists and turned into tory lite, thus depriving the electrorate of any meaningfull choice.
Corbyn is real Labour, and was voted leader by a landslide of the national membership, but the Blairites in the PLP simply undermined everything he did, contradicted everything he said, supported tory fake news and lies, and even campaigned openly against him at the general election. The fact is the corporate fascists will not ALLOW any opposition to their kleptocratic establishment.
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Aug 31, 2020 | www.rt.com
A full-bench US federal appeals court has reversed an earlier decision to dismiss the 'Russiagate' case against former National Security Advisor Michael Flynn, returning it to the judge who refused to let the charges be dropped.
In a 8-2 ruling on Monday, the DC Circuit Court of Appeals sided with Judge Emmet Sullivan, and sent the case back to him for review. Sullivan had been ordered by a three-judge panel in June to drop the case against Flynn immediately, but hired an attorney and asked for an en banc hearing instead.
Flynn's attorney Sidney Powell said the split was "as expected" based on the tone of the oral arguments, pointing to a partisan divide on the bench, and added it was a "disturbing blow to the rule of law."
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The former top lawyer for the Barack Obama administration, Neal Katyal, hailed the decision as "an important step in defending the rule of law" and argued the case should not be dismissed because Flynn had pleaded guilty.
Flynn had indeed pleaded guilty to one charge of lying to the FBI, but Powell moved to dismiss the charges due to the failure of his previous attorneys – a law firm with ties to the Democrats – and the government to disclose evidence that could set him free. After producing documents revealing that the FBI set out to entrap Flynn, had no valid cause to interview him in the first place, and the prosecutors improperly extorted him into a plea by threatening to charge his son, the Justice Department moved to drop all charges.
ALSO ON RT.COM End of Russiagate? DOJ drops case against Trump adviser Flynn that started 'witch hunt'Sullivan had other ideas, however. In a highly unusual move, he appointed a retired judge – who had just written a diatribe about the case in the Washington Post – to be amicus curiae and argue the case should not be dropped. It was at this point that Powell took the case to the appeals court, citing Fokker, a recent Supreme Court precedent that Sullivan was violating.
Ignoring the fact that Sullivan had appointed the amicus and sought to prolong the case after the DOJ and the appeals court both told him to drop it, the en banc panel argued the proper procedure means he needs to make the decision before it can be appealed.
One of the judges, Thomas Griffith, actually argued in a concurring opinion that it would be "highly unusual" for Sullivan not to dismiss the charges, given the executive branch's constitutional prerogatives and his "limited discretion" when it came to the relevant federal procedure, but said that an order to drop the case is not "appropriate in this case at this time" because it's up to Sullivan to make the call first.
ALSO ON RT.COM 'Russiagate' case against ex-Trump adviser Michael Flynn effectively OVER, as DC appeals court orders to close itThe court likewise rejected Powell's motion to reassign a case to a different judge.
Conservatives frustrated by the neverending legal saga have blasted the appeals court's decision as disgraceful. "The Mike Flynn case is an embarrassing stain on this country and its 'judges'," tweeted TV commentator Dan Bongino. "We don't have judges anymore, only corrupted politicians in black robes."
While Flynn was not the first Trump adviser to be charged by special counsel Robert Mueller's 'Russiagate' probe, he was the first White House official pressured to resign over it, less than two weeks into the job.
With Mueller failing to find any evidence of "collusion" between President Donald Trump's campaign and Russia, Democrats have latched onto Flynn's case as proof of their 'Russiagate' conspiracy theory. The latest argument is that the effort to drop the charges against Flynn is politically motivated and proof of Attorney General Bill Barr's "corruption."
Barr is currently overseeing a probe by US attorney John Durham into the FBI's handling of the investigation against Trump during and after the 2016 election, with the evidence disclosed during the Flynn proceedings strongly implicating not just the senior FBI leadership but senior Obama administration figures as well.
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Aug 23, 2020 | www.unz.com
james charles , says: Next New Comment August 23, 2020 at 11:12 am GMT
Hands up those who think the election will only have a 'marginal' effect?
"Testing Theories of American Politics: Elites, Interest Groups, and Average Citizens
Martin Gilens and Benjamin I. Page
Each of four theoretical traditions in the study of American politics -- which can be characterized as theories of Majoritarian Electoral Democracy, Economic-Elite Domination, and two types of interest-group pluralism, Majoritarian Pluralism and Biased Pluralism -- offers different predictions about which sets of actors have how much influence over public policy: average citizens; economic elites; and organized interest groups, mass-based or business-oriented. A great deal of empirical research speaks to the policy influence of one or another set of actors, but until recently it has not been possible to test these contrasting theoretical predictions against each other within a single statistical model. We report on an effort to do so, using a unique data set that includes measures of the key variables for 1,779 policy issues.
Multivariate analysis indicates that economic elites and organized groups representing business interests have substantial independent impacts on U.S. government policy, while average citizens and mass-based interest groups have little or no independent influence.
The results provide substantial support for theories of Economic-Elite Domination and for theories of Biased Pluralism, but not for theories of Majoritarian Electoral Democracy or Majoritarian Pluralism. "
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Aug 21, 2020 | www.theamericanconservative.com
hough it was quickly overshadowed by the big-ticket appearances of Barack Obama and Kamala Harris, Elizabeth Warren's Tuesday address to the Democratic National Convention deserves some consideration.
A probable VP nominee before the events of the summer made race the deciding factor, Warren is an able representative of what might be called the "non-socialist populist" branch of the Democratic Party. Her economic populism -- though it does have an unmistakably left-wing flavor -- has caught the eye of Tucker Carlson, who offered glowing praise of her 2003 book The Two-Income Trap ; her call for "economic nationalism" during the primary campaign earned mockery from some corners of the Left and a bit of hesitant sympathy from the Right. A few days ago in Crisis , Michael Warren Davis referred to her (tongue at least somewhat in cheek) as " reactionary senator Elizabeth Warren ."
There is some good reason for all of this.
As I watched the first half of Warren's speech (before she descended into the week's secondary theme of blaming the virus on Donald Trump) I couldn't help but think that it belonged at the Republican National Convention. Or, rather, that a GOP convention that drove home the themes addressed by Senator Warren on Tuesday would be immensely more effective than the circus I'm expecting to see next week.
Amid a weeklong hurricane of identity politics sure to drive off a good number of moderates and independents, Warren offered her party an electoral lifeline: a policy-heavy pitch gift-wrapped as the solution to a multitude of troubles facing average Americans, especially families.
It was rhetorically effective in a way that few other moments in the convention have been. Part of this is due to the format: a teleconferenced convention left most speakers looking either like bargain-bin Orwell bogeymen or like Pat Sajak presenting a tropical vacation as a prize on Wheel of Fortune. But Warren, for one reason or another, looks entirely at home in a pre-school classroom.
The content, however, is crucial too. Warren grounded her comments in experiences that have been widely shared by millions of Americans these last few months: the loss of work, the loss of vital services like childcare, the stress and anxiety that dominate pandemic-era life. She makes a straightforward case for Biden: his policies will make everyday life better for the vast majority of American families. She focuses on the example of childcare, which Biden promises to make freely available to Americans who need it. This, she claims, will give families a better go of things and make struggling parents' lives a whole lot easier.
It's hard not to be taken in. It's certainly a more compelling sales pitch than, "You're all racist. Make up for it by voting for this old white guy." It's the kind of thing that a smart campaign would spend the next three months broadcasting and repeating every chance they get. (The jury is still out as to whether Biden's campaign is a smart one.) This -- convincing common people that you're going to do right by them -- is the kind of thing that wins elections.
But there's more than a little mistruth in the pitch. Warren shares a touching story from her own experience as a young parent, half a century ago:
When I had babies and was juggling my first big teaching job down in Texas, it was hard. But I could do hard. The thing that almost sank me? Child care.
One night my Aunt Bee called to check in. I thought I was fine, but then I just broke down and started to cry. I had tried holding it all together, but without reliable childcare, working was nearly impossible. And when I told Aunt Bee I was going to quit my job, I thought my heart would break.
Then she said the words that changed my life: "I can't get there tomorrow, but I'll come on Thursday." She arrived with seven suitcases and a Pekingese named Buddy and stayed for 16 years. I get to be here tonight because of my Aunt Bee.
I learned a fundamental truth: nobody makes it on their own. And yet, two generations of working parents later, if you have a baby and don't have an Aunt Bee, you're on your own.
Are we not supposed to ask about the fundamental difference between Elizabeth Warren's experience decades ago and the experience of struggling parents now? Hint: she had a strong extended family to support her, and her kids had a broad family network to help raise them. Not too long ago, any number of people would have been involved in the raising of a single child. ("It takes a village," but not in the looney Clinton way.) Now, an American kid is lucky to have just two people helping him along the way. As we've all been reminded a hundred times, the chances that he'll be raised by only one increase astronomically in poor or black communities.
Shouldn't we be talking about that? Shouldn't we be talking about the policies that contributed to the shift? It's a complex crisis, and we can't pin it down to any one cause. But a slew of left-wing programs are certainly caught up in it. An enormous and fairly lax welfare state has reduced the necessity of family ties in day-to-day life to almost nil. Diverse economic pressures have made stay-at-home parents a near-extinct breed, and left even two-income households struggling to make ends meet. (Warren literally wrote the book on it.) Not to mention that the Democrats remain the party more forcefully supportive of abortion and more ferociously opposed to the institution of marriage (though more than a few Republicans are trying real hard to catch up).
Progressive social engineering has ravaged the American family for decades, and this proposal only offers more of the same. It's trying to outsource childcare to government-bankrolled professionals without asking the important question: Whatever happened to Aunt Bee?
Republicans need an answer. We need to be carefully considering what government has done to accelerate the decline of the family -- and what it can do to reverse it. Some of the reformers and realigners in the party have already begun this project in earnest. But it needs to be taken more seriously. It needs to be a central effort of the party's mainstream, and a constant element of the party's message. Grand, nationalistic narratives about Making America Great Again mean nothing if that revival isn't actually felt by people in their lives and in their homes.
If we're confident in our family policy -- and while it needs a good deal of work, it's certainly better than the Democrats' -- we shouldn't be afraid to take the fight to them. We should be pointing out, for instance, that Warren's claim that Biden will afford greater bankruptcy protections to common people is hardly borne out by the facts: Biden spent a great deal of time and effort in his legislative career doing exactly the opposite. We should be pointing out that dozens of Democratic policies have been hurting American families for decades, and will continue to do so if we let them. We should sell ourselves as the better choice for American families -- and be able to mean it when we say it.
If we let the Democrats keep branding themselves as the pro-family party -- a marketing ploy that has virtually no grounding in reality -- we're going to lose in November. And we're going to keep losing for a long, long time.
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Jan 11, 2020 | www.theguardian.com
apacheman -> DeltaFoxWhiskyMike , 7 Jul 2018 23:32
Excuse me?Huge numbers of people who disagree with me and don't share my particular beliefs are not sociopaths, nothing would stop them from running or holding office, and I've no problem with that.
Are you arguing that sociopaths have an inalienable right to hold office, even though they will inevitably use that office to aggrandize themselves at the expense of everyone else, and could spark a general war just for their own enjoyment and to gather yet more power to themselves?
THAT I'm not ok with, are you?
DeltaFoxWhiskyMike -> apacheman , 7 Jul 2018 21:12
How do people who don't share your beliefs get represented if you rig the system to exclude them? People unlike you are sociopaths? It isn't even tempting. Your cost benefit study benefits you. The world is destabilized if your guys don't get in? No surprise.HauptmannGurski -> Aseoria , 7 Jul 2018 20:26I know, and Bush I was head of the CIA. Strange that one matters and the other does not.Sisyphus2 -> Byron Delaney , 7 Jul 2018 20:05Love this line: "the gig economy combined with record debt and astronomically high rent prices cancel out any potential economic stability for millions of people."Aseoria -> ildfluer , 7 Jul 2018 19:52The under-employment rate is also very informative. People working less hours or in lower positions than their investment in education should have returned to them. They are working, but not enough to be able to independently sustain themselves, which makes them insecure in variety of ways.
Do you think the interpreters might turn out to be agents, or perhaps even assassins, from other governments? Or maybe everybody will be knocked out with fentanyl gas at dinner. In the dining room.Aseoria -> consumerx , 7 Jul 2018 19:47Typical Good-Cop Bad-Cop from here in the vaunted "Two-Party" system of the USA govJanaka77 -> petersview , 7 Jul 2018 19:05I like the way the Republic of Ireland puts strict restrictions on political spending for their elections - including their presidential elections.apacheman -> memo10 , 7 Jul 2018 19:021. It all depends on what the penalties are. Confiscation of hidden assets would chill that behavior, strike one. Loss of the privilege to conduct business with federal and state entities would also chill such behavior, strike two. Finally, for persistent violations of the cap, loss of citizenship and expulsion form the country, three strikes and you are literally out, would be the ultimate penalty.Janaka77 -> scotti dodson , 7 Jul 2018 18:55The alternative, continuing to allow unlimited wealth accumulation will ultimately destroy democracy and end in a dictatorship nearly impossible to remove without massive casualties. Is that preferable to trying to control the behavior of wealth addicts? Make no mistake: billionaires are addicts, their uncontrollable addiction to more is an extreme form of hoarding dysfunction, one that, like all uncontrolled addictions, has had disastrous consequences for everyone but them.
3. Fewer Representatives means you are concentrating power rather than dispersing it. More means smaller districts, which in turn means more accountability, not less. As it stands now, Congresscritters can safely ignore the wishes of the public, because when someone "represents" nearly a million citizens, it means they actually represent only themselves. If taken in conjunction with item #2, more citizens would be invested in the political process and far more likely to pay attention.
4. The Hare test is a standard written exam that is difficult to cheat. Getting caught at cheating or attempting to cheat would mark one automatically as a sociopath. The latest studies of brain structures show that sociopaths have physically different brains, and those physical differences are detectable. Brain activity as shown by fMRI also clearly marks a sociopath from a normal, since while they can fake emotional responses very well, their brain activity shows their true lack of response to emotionally charged images, words, etc. Using a three-layer test, written>fMRI>genetic should be robust enough to correctly identify most. The stakes are too huge to risk a set of sociopaths and their lackeys control of the machinery of government. The genetic test is the most likely to give problematic results, but if the written is failed, the fMRI would then be done to confirm or reject the written results, while the genetics would be a supplementary confirmation. Widespread genetic testing of politicians and would-bes would undoubtedly advance research and understanding dramatically.
When you do even a casual cost-benefit study, the answer is clear: test them. Ask yourself: is the thwarting of an individual's potential career in politics really that great a cost compared to preventing unknowingly electing a sociopath who could destabilize the entire world?
Janaka77 -> Ben Groetsch , 7 Jul 2018 18:15Another big difference of course is a little thing called the law.
Are you under the impression the British don't have rule of law? Their elected representatives make their laws, not their ceremonial royal family. Their royal family's job is to abide by the same laws as every other UK citizen, stay out of politics and promote British tourism and gossip magazines.
WillisFitnurbut -> Byron Delaney , 7 Jul 2018 17:57The United States is actually a federal republic, not a democracy.
The United States is actually both a federation (hardly unique by the way) and a representative democracy. Whether you call them members of Parliament or members of Congress, their representatives are elected by the people.
memo10 -> DeltaFoxWhiskyMike , 7 Jul 2018 17:48If we move the cheap manufacturing to the US, and wages are lower due to a depression, people will take the jobs, and the job numbers will improve. And China will be toast.
We will never beat China at manufacturing cheap and efficient products using human labor. Robotic labor maybe, but that might not happen for a decade or more at least--if they or another country doesn't beat us to retooling our factories.
Labor and manufacturing will never return in the US--unless we have another world war we win, in which all global production is again concentrated in the US because the rest of the worlds factories are bombed to rubble. Besides, they have the most central location for manufacturing in the world and a cheap source of endless labor.What they don't have is innovation, tech and freedom to try products out on a free market. We are squandering those advantages in the US when we cut education and limit college education to the masses.
WillisFitnurbut -> DeltaFoxWhiskyMike , 7 Jul 2018 17:42The system is not crooked,
Are Americans the most immoral people on earth? I don't think so. Do we have the strictest code of laws on earth? I don't think so either. Yet we have the highest incarceration rate on earth. Higher than authoritarian countries like China & Russia.
This alone should tell you something is wrong with our system. Never mind the stats about differing average sentences depending on race & wealth.
Doubt implies a reason behind the wrong, where uncertainty implies an unknowing trait--a mystery behind the wrong.Byron Delaney -> DeltaFoxWhiskyMike , 7 Jul 2018 17:00The right, what with all its fake news scams, deep state BS and witch hunt propaganda, is uncertainty at best, a mystery of sorts--it provides us with a conspiracy that can neither be proved or unproven--an enigma.
Doubt, about if Russia meddled in the US election in collusion with the president or at the least his advisors, surely implies something is wrong, especially in the face of criminal charges, doubt is inherent and well intentioned, but not always true and can be proven false in the face of doubt.
At one time the US was agrarian and one could subsist via bartering. Consider reliance on for-profit healthcare, transportation systems, debt, credit cards, landlords, grocery stores, and the lack of any ability to subsist without statewide and nationwide infrastructure. Right now, people in the US already die prematurely if they can't afford healthcare. Many are homeless. And this is when things are better than ever? What will happen here is what happened in Europe during WWII. People will suffer, and they will be forced to adopt socialist practices (like the EU does today). People in Europe really did starve to death, and people in India, Africa, and other countries are starving and dying today. China doles out food rations because they practice communism. That's why they have cheap, efficient labor that serves to manufacture products for US consumers. Communism and socialism help American corporations big time.DeltaFoxWhiskyMike -> kmacafee , 7 Jul 2018 16:51Citizens United is a First Amendment decision. Which part of the First Amendment do you want moot? What gives any government the right to decide which assemblies of citizens have no free speech rights?DeltaFoxWhiskyMike -> WillisFitnurbut , 7 Jul 2018 16:47Doubt is everybody's political currency.DeltaFoxWhiskyMike -> Byron Delaney , 7 Jul 2018 16:46You are aware, I imagine, that the US can adjust its money supply to adapt to circumstances? We can feed ourselves. We have our own power sources. We can improvise, adapt, and overcome. Prices go up and down. No big deal. Scaring people for political gain doesn't have the clout it onvce did.DeltaFoxWhiskyMike -> tjt77 , 7 Jul 2018 16:40Are you opposed to people deciding who moves across their nation's borders?DeltaFoxWhiskyMike -> Elephantmoth , 7 Jul 2018 16:38Open Secrets Top Donors, Organizations.DeltaFoxWhiskyMike -> memo10 , 7 Jul 2018 16:35Too many virtue signalers seem to think that only the innocent are ever convicted.DeltaFoxWhiskyMike -> WillisFitnurbut , 7 Jul 2018 16:29
The system is not crooked, but if you can set up a better one that doesn't bankrupt every community, have at it.You really, really, really like screaming racist, don't you? And slide in a Godwin. Wow. The concept that black pastors would be negatively impacted by financial attacks on their churches never ever occurred to you, did it? You get off on pretending to care about people that you have no direct, routine connection to. How virtuous of you. Wouldn't deliberately harming black churches make you the racist storm trooper?Byron Delaney -> WillisFitnurbut , 7 Jul 2018 16:08Violence will break out when credit cards stop working. Can't even imagine what will happen if people are starving. No problem in a socialistic country like Finland, but a big problem here. My guess is that Trump knows the economy is hanging by a thread, so needs to create an alternate reason (trade wars). Or he figures he might as well have a trade war if it's all going to pieces anyway. Of course China manufactures just about everything for the US. If we move the cheap manufacturing to the US, and wages are lower due to a depression, people will take the jobs, and the job numbers will improve. And China will be toast.WillisFitnurbut -> Byron Delaney , 7 Jul 2018 15:49Don't forget as the Trump trade war heats up and China decides to sell off US bonds en-masse (they own 1.17 trillion in US debt). That's gonna put a hurt on the already low US dollar and could send inflation soaring. China could also devalue its currency and increase the trade deficit. Combine those with all the things you've pointed out and you've got financial troubles the likes of which no large government has ever dealt with in human history.Melty Clock -> happylittledebunkera , 7 Jul 2018 15:43
Starving people--China can handle in droves; not so much the US. We're talking nasty violence if that kinda stuff happens here.True, but the POTUS is a head of state and the PM is not, so there's a limit to how far we should take comparisons.WillisFitnurbut , 7 Jul 2018 15:05Government is instituted for the common good; for the protection, safety, prosperity, and happiness of the people; and not for profit, honor, or private interest of any one man, family, or class of men; therefore, the people alone have an incontestable, unalienable, and indefeasible right to institute government; and to reform, alter, or totally change the same, when their protection, safety, prosperity, and happiness require it.Byron Delaney , 7 Jul 2018 15:02Occupy Wall Street began due to income inequality when the worst effects of the Great Recession were being felt by the population. Wealth inequality has only increased since then.kmacafee , 7 Jul 2018 14:11
Right now, the population is held at bay because the media and politicians claim that the economy is so incredibly hot it's overheating. But we know that's a lie. For one, the gig economy combined with record debt and astronomically high rent prices cancel out any potential economic stability for millions of people. This year, 401(k) plans have returned almost nothing (or are going negative). This was also the case in 2016. Savings accounts have returned almost nothing for the last decade (they should be providing approximately 5% interest).The worker participation rate today is 3.2% below what it was in 2008 (during the Great Recession). The US population, meanwhile, has increased by approximately 24,321,000. That's a 7.68% increase. The labor force has increased by 5% during this time (unemployment rate was relatively similar, 5.6% vs 4%). From June 2008 to June 2018, the labor force increased by approximately 8 million. However, if the worker participation rate was the same now as it was then, there would be approximately 8 million more people in the labor force. If you add 8 million people to the current number of people who are counted as unemployed by the BLS, the unemployment rate is approximately 9%. This is about as high as the unemployment rate got during the depths of the Great Recession, right when Occupy Wall Street was born.
Now, OK, sure, the economy has REPLACED lost jobs, but it has not ADDED jobs for the last decade. The unemployment rate is false. It should be at least 8%. There's many millions of Americans who do not have steady, gainful employment - or any employment - and they are not counted.
The billionaires and their bought politicians are responsible for fixing this. They can fix it and should fix it. Otherwise, the economy and their profits are going to fall off a giant cliff any day now. The next recession has basically already begun, but it can still be alleviated. If things continue as they are, unemployment could be 16% by 2020, with the U6 measure approaching or exceeding 25%. If stocks drop enough, people may starve to death.Who supported Citizen's United? All cons and republicansmemo10 -> apacheman , 7 Jul 2018 14:10Who supports campaign finance reform and legislation that would make Cititzen's United moot? Democrats and progressives
Really tired of the false equivalencies. Republicans are now the polar opposite of Democrats in policy and principles. Vote Blue this November and get rid of the republicans; every single one of them. It can be done if people get out and vote.
1. Anything is possible but I don't think this is practical. The rich can just cheat on the definition of ownership, pass it around between family members, offshore it, sink it into their businesses in token ways, etc. When you try to take wealth (power) away from the most powerful people in the country they will start devoting SERIOUS resources to getting around it.apacheman -> memo10 , 7 Jul 2018 13:343. I'm not saying we need fewer people doing congress's job in total. But we should be electing fewer of them, and letting those fewer people do more hiring/delegating. The way things are now, most of the public only knows much about the president. Everyone else is mostly just a vote for a party. But if the country only voted for 50 Congressmen in total - or even fewer - then we would all have a more careful eye on them. We would know them better and see them more individually. They would have less pressure to toe the party line all the time.
4. As long as there's a written test then it will get cheated. Right now the testing is rarely given and the specific consequences don't determine powerful people's careers. Make it a widespread & important thing and people will learn to cheat it.
The genetic + fMRI research is interesting but the whole thing opens up serious cans of worms. We're talking about DQ'ing somebody from an important career based partially on the results of a genetic screening for a character trait. That's a dangerous business for our whole society to get into. Although I do realize the payoff for this specific instance would be very big.1. Why do you think that? Using teams of forensic accountants and outlawing secret accounts would go a long way towards increasing enforceability. But you are viewing it as a legal problem rather than a cultural problem. If an effective propaganda campaign aimed on one level at the public and another level at the billionaires, it could work. Many billionaires are already committed to returning their fortunes to the economy (mostly after they are dead, true). Convince a few and the rest will follow. Give them the lure of claiming the title of the richest who ever were and some would be eager for that place in history.WillisFitnurbut -> ConBrio , 7 Jul 2018 13:25Anything can be done if the will is there.
2. Income taxes are just a portion of the federal revenues, ~47%. Corporate taxes, parkland fees, excise taxes, ~18% taken together and Social Security make up the rest. Revenues would increase as taxpayers topped off step amounts to keep control. The beauty of it is that Congress would see very clearly where the nation's priorities were. Any politician trying to raise fines so that they had more money under their control would soon find themselves out of office. Unpopular programs would have to be financed out of the 18%, and that would likely make them increase corporate taxes. But most importantly, it would cut the power of politicians and decrease the effectiveness of lobbyists.
3. Actually, we have too few, not too many. The work of governance suffers because there is too much to be done and too few to do it. Spreading the workload and assigning responsibility areas would increase efficiency. Most importantly though, it would break up the oligarchic duopoly that keeps a stranglehold on the nation's politics, and bring more third party candidates into office giving Congress a more diverse culture by adding viewpoints based on other things than business interests.
4. Actually, advances in fMRI equipment and procedures, along with genetics and written testing can prove beyond a reasonable doubt whether or not someone is a sociopath, do some research and you'l see it is true. False positives in any testing regime are always an issue, but tens of millions of workers submit to drug tests to qualify for their jobs, and their jobs don't usually run the risk of plunging the world into war, economic or environmental disasters. False positives are common in the workplace and cost many thousands their jobs.
And there's an easy way to prove you aren't really a sociopath: be honest, don't lie, and genuinely care about people...things sociopaths cannot do over time.
Seriously, it is a societal safety issue that demands to be done, protecting the few against false positives means opening the floodgates for the many sociopaths who seek power over others.
Not just eliminate--alter and add to it, but since it takes 2/3 majority of the house and senate to amend the constitution--it's not an easy feat--that's why there has only been 17 amendments altogether and two of them are there to cancel each other out!tjt77 -> DeltaFoxWhiskyMike , 7 Jul 2018 12:51
You see, the beauty behind the National Popular Vote Bill is that it's done on a state by state basis and will only work when the required 270 electoral votes are gained with the bill--this means all voters would have their votes tallied in a presidential election and it eliminates swing states with a winner takes all approach. The electoral college and state control of elections are preserved and every one is happy.
I feel like you've not read up on any of this even though I provide a link. 12 of these bills have been enacted into state law already, comprising of 172 electoral votes and 3,112 legislative sponsors. That's more than halfway there.
To continue to say that changing the way we vote by altering the EC is a fantasy is in itself a fantasy because obviously it is gaining traction across the country.Which 'side' do you imagine I'm on Mike ? FYI.. Im not a member of any tribe especially regarding the republican or democrat parties... you may have noticed that as part of the progress towards a globalized economy, 'Money' now has open borders...but the restrictions of movement for people are growing as nationalism rises and wealth and the power it yields, becomes ever more concentrated in fewer hands...this is a dangerous precedent and history repeats if lessons of the past are not learned.Gary Daily , 7 Jul 2018 12:20
I can well recall when humanity and the ability of the individual to attain freedom and liberty based upon the merit of the individual was once celebrated.
What really irks me and causes me to voice my opinion on this forum, ( thank you Guardian for your continued efforts at informing us all and especially for promoting participation) is how easily people are duped .. when 'others' can easily see that they are being lied to. My parents fought for freedom and liberty against vicious tyranny in Europe and paid a HUGE price..by the time the scales had tipped the balance towards fascism, it was far too late for anything other than all out war... the fact that they survived the required sacrifice to pitch in to protect democracy, and the freedom and liberty which comes with it, still seems miraculous..Billionaires on the left should put some of that money into paying for and distributing subscriptions to newspapers and magazines which live up to the standards of professional journalism. These papers should be made available, free, at high schools, colleges, libraries, and commercial centers of loitering and "neighborly" discussions. May I suggest the NYT, WP, The Guardian, and The Economist.ConBrio -> WillisFitnurbut , 7 Jul 2018 12:16The "fact" that there have been 700 attempts to eliminate it should tell you that in all likelihood the The Electoral College will continue.aquacalc -> ghstwrtrx7 , 7 Jul 2018 12:01Whether or not a group of states can effectively circumvent the Constitution is an open question.
"What the country sorely needs is a new constitution."memo10 -> DeltaFoxWhiskyMike , 7 Jul 2018 11:48No thanks! The Founders were quite a bit more intelligent than the current national 'brain trust' -- on the both sides of the Aisle -- that would be charged with writing a new Constitution.
Dorthy Boatman -> scotti dodson , 7 Jul 2018 11:36A defense attorney once told me that his job was one of the toughest out there because an astonishing percentage of defendants are guilty as charged.
That's true. But it doesn't excuse the crooked system whatsoever. It doesn't make the innocent poor people any less innocent.
Since when have politicians and rich people ever followed the law? And what recourse would that be exactly?WillisFitnurbut -> DeltaFoxWhiskyMike , 7 Jul 2018 11:17I like how you immediately expose your racism, right out of the gate. Haven't you got a storm trooper meeting to head out to soon?Elephantmoth -> DeltaFoxWhiskyMike , 7 Jul 2018 11:14Sorry I forgot the link: http://www.http://thehill.com/business-a-lobbying/business-a-lobbying/318177-lobbyings-top-50-whos-spending-bigSisyphus2 -> NYbill13 , 7 Jul 2018 10:41Back to the days of Dickens, workhouses, indentured slaves, etc.
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Dec 13, 2019 | www.unz.com
G. Poulin , says: December 11, 2019 at 9:37 pm GMT
So if propaganda is so easy and effective, remind me again why democracy is such a great idea?El Dato , says: December 12, 2019 at 6:00 am GMT@G. Poulin You have two choices:Johan , says: December 12, 2019 at 11:49 pm GMT1) Democracy with a population that is at least minimally engaged and angrily stays that way (including removing powerful special interests from premises with pitchforks)
2) Being "managed" on behalf of various power centers. This can be liveable or can turn into strip mining of your "resources".Sadly, there is no algorithm that allows you to detect whether your are engaged or are being engaged on behalf of others. That would be easy. But one should start with a minimal state, hard money and the sons of the upper crust on the front lines and forbidden from taking office in government.
That being said, this article is a bit meandering. Came for Bellingcat but was confused.
Who presented the Emmy Award to the film makers, but none other than the rebel journalist Chris Hedges.
Maximum Clown World.
@El Dato "1) Democracy with a population that is at least minimally engaged and angrily stays that way (including removing powerful special interests from premises with pitchforks)"There are no revolutions by means of pitchforks in a democracy, everything is weakened by compromise, false promises, infiltration, manipulation, etc. You cannot stay angry all the time too, it is very bad for your health, it needs to be short and intense to be effective, which is exactly what democracy prevents.
Democracy turns you into a petted animal.
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Feb 17, 2019 | www.theamericanconservative.com
From J.D. Vance's appearance last night on Tucker Carlson Tonight Vance has just said that the donor elites of the GOP are out of touch with the party's base. More:
CARLSON: But more broadly, what you are saying, I think is, that the Democratic Party understands what it is and who it represents and affirmatively represents them. They do things for their voters, but the Republican Party doesn't actually represent its own voters very well.
VANCE: Yes, that's exactly right. I mean, look at who the Democratic Party is and look, I don't like the Democratic Party's policies.
CARLSON: Yes.
VANCE: Most of the times, I disagree with them. But I at least admire that they recognize who their voters are and they actually just as raw cynical politics do a lot of things to serve those voters.
Now, look at who Republican voters increasingly are. They are people who disproportionately serve in the military, but Republican foreign policy has been a disaster for a lot of veterans. They are disproportionately folks who want to have more children. They are people who want to have more single earner families. They are people who don't necessarily want to go to college but they want to work in an economy where if you play by the rules, you can you actually support a family on one income.
CARLSON: Yes.
VANCE: Have Republicans done anything for those people really in the last 15 or 20 years? I think can you point to some policies of the Trump administration. Certainly, instinctively, I think the President gets who his voters are and what he has to do to service those folks. But at the end of the day, the broad elite of the party, the folks who really call the shots, the think tank intellectuals, the people who write the policy, I just don't think they realize who their own voters are.
Now, the slightly more worrying implication is that maybe some of them do realize who their voters are, they just don't actually like those voters much.
CARLSON: Well, that's it. So I watch the Democratic Party and I notice that if there is a substantial block within it, it's this unstable coalition, all of these groups have nothing in common, but the one thing they have in common is the Democratic Party will protect them.
VANCE: Yes.
CARLSON: You criticize a block of Democratic Voters and they are on you like a wounded wombat. They will bite you. The Republicans, watch their voters come under attack and sort of nod in agreement, "Yes, these people should be attacked."
VANCE: Yes, that's absolutely right. I mean, if you talk to people who spent their lives in D.C. I know you live in D.C.
CARLSON: Yes.
VANCE: I've spent a lot of my life here. The people who spend their time in D.C. who work on Republican campaigns, who work at conservative think tanks, now this isn't true of everybody, but a lot of them actually don't like the people who are voting for Republican candidates these days.
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May 19, 2019 | russia-insider.com
A close-knit oligarchy controls all major corporations. Monopolization of ownership in US economy fast approaching Soviet levels
Starting with Ronald Reagan's presidency, the US government willingly decided to ignore the anti-trust laws so that corporations would have free rein to set up monopolies. With each successive president the monopolistic concentration of business and shareholding in America has grown precipitously eventually to reach the monstrous levels of the present day.
Today's level of monopolistic concentration is of such unprecedented levels that we may without hesitation designate the US economy as a giant oligopoly. From economic power follows political power, therefore the economic oligopoly translates into a political oligarchy. (It seems, though, that the transformation has rather gone the other way around, a ferocious set of oligarchs have consolidated their economic and political power beginning from the turn of the twentieth century). The conclusion that the US is an oligarchy finds support in a 2014 by a Princeton University study.
Since the collapse of the Soviet Union, the world has not seen these levels of concentration of ownership. The Soviet Union did not die because of apparent ideological reasons but due to economic bankruptcy caused by its uncompetitive monopolistic economy. Our verdict is that the US is heading in the same direction.
In a later report, we will demonstrate how all sectors of the US economy have fallen prey to monopolization and how the corporate oligopoly has been set up across the country. This post essentially serves as an appendix to that future report by providing the shocking details of the concentration of corporate ownership.
Apart from illustrating the monopolization at the level of shareholding of the major investors and corporations, we will in a follow-up post take a somewhat closer look at one particularly fatal aspect of this phenomenon, namely the consolidation of media (posted simultaneously with the present one) in the hands of absurdly few oligarch corporations. In there, we will discuss the monopolies of the tech giants and their ownership concentration together with the traditional media because they rightfully belong to the same category directly restricting speech and the distribution of opinions in society.
In a future instalment of this report, we will show that the oligarchization of America – the placing it under the rule of the One Percent (or perhaps more accurately the 0.1%, if not 0.01%) - has been a deliberate ideologically driven long-term project to establish absolute economic power over the US and its political system and further extend that to involve an absolute global hegemony (the latter project thankfully thwarted by China and Russia). To achieve these goals, it has been crucial for the oligarchs to control and direct the narrative on economy and war, on all public discourse on social affairs. By seizing the media, the oligarchs have created a monstrous propaganda machine, which controls the opinions of the majority of the US population.
We use the words 'monopoly,' 'monopolies,' and 'monopolization' in a broad sense and subsume under these concepts all kinds of market dominance be it by one company or two or a small number of companies, that is, oligopolies. At the end of the analysis, it is not of great importance how many corporations share in the market dominance, rather what counts is the death of competition and the position enabling market abuse, either through absolute dominance, collusion, or by a de facto extinction of normal market competition. Therefore we use the term 'monopolization' to describe the process of reaching a critical level of non-competition on a market. Correspondingly, we may denote 'monopoly companies' two corporations of a duopoly or several of an oligopoly.
Horizontal shareholding – the cementation of the oligarchyOne especially perfidious aspect of this concentration of ownership is that the same few institutional investors have acquired undisputable control of the leading corporations in practically all the most important sectors of industry. The situation when one or several investors own controlling or significant shares of the top corporations in a given industry (business sector) is referred to as horizontal shareholding . (*1). In present-day United States a few major investors – equity funds or private capital - are as a rule cross-owned by each other, forming investor oligopolies, which in turn own the business oligopolies.
A study has shown that among a sample of the 1,500 largest US firms (S&P 1500), the probability of one major shareholder holding significant shares in two competing firms had jumped to 90% in 2014, while having been just 16% in 1999. (*2).
Institutional investors like BlackRock, Vanguard, State Street, Fidelity, and JP Morgan, now own 80% of all stock in S&P 500 listed companies. The Big Three investors - BlackRock, Vanguard and State Street – alone constitute the largest shareholder in 88% of S&P 500 firms, which roughly correspond to America's 500 largest corporations. (*3). Both BlackRock and Vanguard are among the top five shareholders of almost 70% of America's largest 2,000 publicly traded corporations. (*4).
Blackrock had as of 2016 $6.2 trillion worth of assets under management, Vanguard $5.1 trillion, whereas State Street has dropped to a distant third with only $1 trillion in assets. This compares with a total market capitalization of US stocks according to Russell 3000 of $30 trillion at end of 2017 (From 2016 to 2017, the Big Three has of course also put on assets).Blackrock and Vanguard would then alone own more than one-third of all US publicly listed shares.
From an expanded sample that includes the 3,000 largest publicly listed corporations (Russell 3000 index), institutions owned (2016) about 78% of the equity .
The speed of concentration the US economy in the hands of institutions has been incredible. Still back in 1950s, their share of the equity was 10%, by 1980 it was 30% after which the concentration has rapidly grown to the present day approximately 80%. (*5). Another study puts the present (2016) stock market capitalization held by institutional investors at 70%. (*6). (The slight difference can possibly be explained by variations in the samples of companies included).
As a result of taking into account the common ownership at investor level, it emerges that the US economy is yet much more monopolized than it was previously thought when the focus had been on the operational business corporation alone detached from their owners. (*7).
The Oligarch owners assert their controlApologists for monopolies have argued that the institutional investors who manage passive capital are passive in their own conduct as shareholders as well. (*8). Even if that would be true it would come with vastly detrimental consequences for the economy as that would mean that in effect there would be no shareholder control at all and the corporate executives would manage the companies exclusively with their own short-term benefits in mind, inevitably leading to corruption and the loss of the common benefits businesses on a normally functioning competitive market would bring.
In fact, there seems to have been a period in the US economy – before the rapid monopolization of the last decade -when such passive investors had relinquished control to the executives. (*9). But with the emergence of the Big Three investors and the astonishing concentration of ownership that does not seem to hold water any longer. (*10). In fact, there need not be any speculation about the matter as the monopolist owners are quite candid about their ways. For example, BlackRock's CEO Larry Fink sends out an annual guiding letter to his subject, practically to all the largest firms of the US and increasingly also Europe and the rest of the West. In his pastoral, the CEO shares his view of the global conditions affecting business prospects and calls for companies to adjust their strategies accordingly.
The investor will eventually review the management's strategic plans for compliance with the guidelines. Effectively, the BlackRock CEO has in this way assumed the role of a giant central planner, rather like the Gosplan, the central planning agency of the Soviet command economy.
The 2019 letter (referenced above) contains this striking passage, which should quell all doubts about the extent to which BlackRock exercises its powers:
"As we seek to build long-term value for our clients through engagement, our aim is not to micromanage a company's operations. Instead, our primary focus is to ensure board accountability for creating long-term value. However, a long-term approach should not be confused with an infinitely patient one. When BlackRock does not see progress despite ongoing engagement, or companies are insufficiently responsive to our efforts to protect our clients' long-term economic interests, we do not hesitate to exercise our right to vote against incumbent directors or misaligned executive compensation."
Considering the striking facts rendered above, we should bear in mind that the establishment of this virtually absolute oligarch ownership over all the largest corporations of the United States is a relatively new phenomenon. We should therefore expect that the centralized control and centralized planning will rapidly grow in extent as the power is asserted and methods are refined.
Most of the capital of those institutional investors consists of so-called passive capital, that is, such cases of investments where the investor has no intention of trying to achieve any kind of control of the companies it invests in, the only motivation being to achieve as high as possible a yield. In the overwhelming majority of the cases the funds flow into the major institutional investors, which invest the money at their will in any corporations. The original investors do not retain any control of the institutional investors, and do not expect it either. Technically the institutional investors like BlackRock and Vanguard act as fiduciary asset managers. But here's the rub, while the people who commit their assets to the funds may be considered as passive investors, the institutional investors who employ those funds are most certainly not.
Cross-ownership of oligarch corporationsTo make matters yet worse, it must be kept in mind that the oligopolistic investors in turn are frequently cross-owned by each other. (*11). In fact, there is no transparent way of discovering who in fact controls the major institutional investors.
One of the major institutional investors, Vanguard is ghost owned insofar as it does not have any owners at all in the traditional sense of the concept. The company claims that it is owned by the multiple funds that it has itself set up and which it manages. This is how the company puts it on their home page : "At Vanguard, there are no outside owners, and therefore, no conflicting loyalties. The company is owned by its funds, which in turn are owned by their shareholders -- including you, if you're a Vanguard fund investor." At the end of the analysis, it would then seem that Vanguard is owned by Vanguard itself, certainly nobody should swallow the charade that those funds stuffed with passive investor money would exercise any ownership control over the superstructure Vanguard. We therefore assume that there is some group of people (other than the company directors) that have retained the actual control of Vanguard behind the scenes (perhaps through one or a few of the funds). In fact, we believe that all three (BlackRock, State Street and Vanguard) are tightly controlled by a group of US oligarchs (or more widely transatlantic oligarchs), who prefer not to brandish their power. It is beyond the scope of this study and our means to investigate this hypothesis, but whatever, it is bad enough that as a proven fact these three investor corporations wield this control over most of the American economy. We also know that the three act in concert wherever they hold shares. (*12).
Now, let's see who are the formal owners of these institutional investorsIn considering these ownership charts, please, bear in mind that we have not consistently examined to what degree the real control of one or another company has been arranged through a scheme of issuing different classes of shares, where a special class of shares give vastly more voting rights than the ordinary shares. One source asserts that 355 of the companies in the Russell index consisting of the 3000 largest corporations employ such a dual voting-class structure, or 11.8% of all major corporations.
We have mostly relied on www.stockzoa.com for the shareholder data. However, this and other sources tend to list only the so-called institutional investors while omitting corporate insiders and other individuals. (We have no idea why such strange practice is employed
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Aug 19, 2020 | www.theamericanconservative.com
Non-profit activity lets super-elites broker political power tax-free, reshaping the world according to their designs.
America's super-wealthy have too much power. A republican regime based on the consent of the governed cannot survive when a few hands control too large a sum of money and too much human capital. A dominion of monopolists spells ruin for the common man.
The Federal Reserve calculates that, at present, America's total household wealth equals $104 trillion . Of that, $3.4 trillion belongs to America's 600 billionaires alone. Put another way, 3% of the nation's wealth belongs to 0.0002% of the population. Those 600 names control twice as much wealth as the least wealthy 170 million Americans combined . This is a problem. Economic power means political power. In an era of mass media, it has never been easier to manufacture public opinion and to manipulate the citizenry.
Look no further than the consensus view of Fortune 500 companies as to the virtues of Black Lives Matter. That movement's incredible cultural reach is, in large part, a function of its cachet among American elites. In 2016, the Ford Foundation began a Black-Led Movement Fund to funnel $100 million into racial and social justice causes. George Soros' Open Society Foundation immediately poured in $33 million in grants.
Soros and company received a massive return on investment. The shift leftward on issues of racial and social justice in the last four years has been nothing short of remarkable. Net public support for BLM , at minus 5 percent in 2018, has surged to plus 28 percent in 2020. The New York Times estimates that some 15 to 26 million Americans participated in recent protests over George Floyd's death.
And the money keeps flowing. In the last three months, hundreds of millions of dollars have poured into social and racial justice causes. Sony Music Group , the NFL , Warner Music Group , and Comcast all have promised gifts in excess of $100 million. MacKenzie Bezos has promised more than a billion dollars to Historically Black Colleges and Universities as well as other racial and social justice organizations. Yet, as scholars like Heather MacDonald have pointed out -- America's justice system is not racist. Disquieting anecdotes and wrenching videos blasted across cyberspace are not the whole of, or even representative of, our reality. But well-heeled media and activism campaigns can change the perception. That's what matters.
The American tax code makes all of this possible. It greases the skids for the wealthy to use their fortunes to augment their political power. The 501(c)(3) designation makes all donations, of whatever size, to charitable nonprofits immune from taxation.
A man can only eat so much filet mignon in one lifetime. He can only drive so many Lamborghinis and vacation in so many French chalets. At a certain point, the longing for material pleasures gives way to a longing for honor and power. What a super-elite really wants is to be remembered for "changing the world." The tax code makes the purchasing of such honors even easier than buying fast cars and luxury homes.
For the super-wealthy, political power comes tax-free.
No one ever elected Bill Gates to anything. His wealth, and not the democratic process, is the only reason he has an outsized voice in shaping coronavirus policy. The man who couldn't keep viruses out of Windows now wants to vaccinate the planet. That isn't an unreasonable goal for a man of his wealth, either. Gates's foundation is the second largest donor to the World Health Organization, providing some 10 percent of its funds . That kind of influence over expert opinion is immense -- and it yields results. In April , Gates called for a nationwide total lockdown for 10 weeks. America didn't quite sink to that level of draconian control, but the shutdowns we did get absolutely crushed small businesses. Massive tech firms, however, made out like bandits. Microsoft stock is at an all-time high .
No one ever voted on those lockdowns, either. Like the mask-wearing mandates, they were instituted by executive fiat. The experts , many of them funded through donations given by tech billionaires like Gates , campaigned for policies that radically altered the basic structure of society. Here lies the danger of billionaire power. Without adequate checks and balances, the super-wealthy can skirt the normal political process, working behind the scenes to make policies that the people never even have a chance to debate or vote on.
A republic cannot be governed this way. America needs to bring its current crop of oligarchs to heel. That starts with constraining their ability to commandeer their massive personal fortunes to shape policy. Technically, the 501(c)(3) designation prevents political activities by tax-exempt charities. Those rules apply only to political campaigning and lobbying, however. They say nothing about funding legal battles or shaping specific policies indirectly through research and grants. America's universities, think tanks, and advocacy organizations are nearly universally considered tax-exempt nonprofits. Only a fool would believe they are not political.
One solution to the nonprofit problem to simply get rid of the charitable exemption all together. If there is no loophole, it can't be exploited by the mega-wealthy. Most Americans' charitable giving wouldn't be affected. The average American gives between $2,000 and $3,000 per year . That is well under the $24,800 standard tax deduction for married couples. Ninety percent of taxpayers have no reason to use a line-item deduction. Such a change likely wouldn't affect wealthy givers either. In 2014 , the average high-income American (defined as making more than $200,000 per year or having a million dollars in assets) gave an average of $68,000 to charity, and in 2018 93 percent said their giving had nothing to do with tax breaks.
Eliminating the tax exemption for charitable giving would make it simple to heavily tax the capital gains that drive the wealth of America's richest one thousand people. One could also leave the exemption in place for most Americans (those with a net worth under $100 million), while making larger gifts, especially those over a billion dollars, taxable at extremely high rates close to 100%. Bill Gates wants to give a billion dollars to his foundation? Great. But he should pay a steep fee to the American people to purchase that kind of power.
There is nothing socialist in these or similar tax proposals. We are not making an abstract commentary on whether having a billion dollars is "moral." These are simply prudential measures to put the people back in charge of their own country. Reining in billionaires and monopolists is a conservative free market strategy.
Incentives to make more money are generally good. The libertarians are mostly right -- people are usually better judges of how to spend and use their resources than the government.
But not always. The libertarian account does not adequately recognize man's political nature. We need law and order. We need a regime where elections matter and the opinions of the people actually shape policy. Contract law, borders, and taxes are all necessary to human flourishing, but all impede the total and unrestricted movement of labor and money. At the very top of the wealth pyramid, concentrated economic power always turns into political power. An economic policy that doesn't recognize that fact will create an untouchable class that controls both the market and the regime. There's nothing freeing about that outcome.
An America governed by Mark Zuckerberg, Bill Gates, Jeff Bezos, and George Soros will be -- arguably, already is -- a disaster for the middle class and everyday Americans. Cracking down on their "selfless" philanthropy, combined with antitrust enforcement and higher progressive tax rates, is a key way for Americans to leverage the power of the ballot box against the power of the banker's vault.
Josiah Lippincott is a former Marine officer and current Master's student at the Van Andel School of Statesmanship at Hillsdale College.
AlexanderHistory X • 12 hours agoI'd like to thank the author for actually discussing policy proposals that actually make sense. That's a rarity on TAC. However, he needs to keep a couple of things in mind:
1. You can't just say something isn't socialist on a conservative website. Conservatives have been conditioned for decades to believe that anything the GOP considers to be bad is called by the name "socialism". And taxes are bad. Therefore socialist. To bring any nuance to that word will be devastating to long-term conservative ability to argue points.
2. This proposal won't just hurt the ability of left-leaning tech giants, but also right-leaning oil and defense industry barons. A double-edged sword.
joeo • 12 hours agoThis is an interesting idea that might have had a shot, big maybe, 50 plus years ago. America is too far gone to fix with political changes, not that you could make any major changes like this in the current political environment.
The rotting edifice that is the United States is coming down one way or another. Just accept it.
bumbershoot joeo • 10 hours agoI would end tax exempt status for organizations. When everyone pays taxes we all become better stewards of how that money is used.
Ted joeo • 10 hours agoCertainly! Just so long as the word "organizations" encompasses churches as well, I think lots of people on all sides of the political spectrum would agree.
YT14 joeo • 7 hours ago • editedStarting with the Roman Catholic Church.
YT14 • 12 hours ago • editedComplicated argument. Basically, charitable people will always give charity, even from taxed income. However, if people give charity from taxed income, the state can no longer control what the institutions given money do with that money as long as salaries and surplus are taxed.
Woland • 11 hours agoInteresting proposal. Removing tax deduction should of course throw IRS out of monitoring charitable giving. So less power to Lois Lerner and colleagues.
bumbershoot • 10 hours agoTo think both Mr. Dreher and Mr. Van Buren just recently posted about the superwealthy leaving the big cities, citing as the main reasons the Covid thing on the one hand, and "excessively high" income taxes on the other. Most comments that followed were in the line of "that's what happens when you let socialists run things" and "stop giving money to the poor, then they'll work and get rich." And here we have someone proposing more and higher taxes on the wealthy to bust their political nuts.
Note that the author carefully left out any mention of conservative megadonors shaping public policy. Must be the quiet part, to avoid tarring and feathering by his own side.
AdmBenson • 10 hours agoReining in billionaires and monopolists is a conservative free market strategy.It certainly never has been one before, but we on the left welcome this new appreciation of the perils of growing inequality.
Now all you have to do is convince the entire Republican Party that this isn't "socialism." Good luck!
gnt • 8 hours ago • editedSay you like the game of Monopoly so much that you want it to last longer than the few hours it takes for one player to dominate and beat the others. Well, you could replace $200 as you pass Go with progessive taxation on income, assets, or a combination thereof. If you do it right, you can make the game last into perpetuity by ensuring that the dominance of any one player is only temporary.
YT14 gnt • 7 hours agoIt's an interesting proposal, but it seems that if you're worried about super-elites brokering political power tax-free, you might focus on direct brokering of political power. For example, we could pass a law requiring full disclosure of all sources of funding for any political advertising.
If we wanted to be aggressive, we could even pass a constitutional amendment to specify that corporations are not people. It seems odd to worry about the political power exercised by institutions with no direct control over politics, and ignore the institution whose purpose is politics.
Another approach to deal with the direct influence of the super-elite would be to make lobbying expenses no longer tax deductible. I'm sure you could find support for that.
Pete Barbeaux • 4 hours agoYou are aware that this way IRS will lose control? Lois Lerner will be able no more to go after conservative non-profits?
GeorgeMarshall65 • 3 hours agoThis is the 5th TAC article since May to take something word-for-word from a Bernie Sanders-esque Leftist platform and call it something "Conservatives" want. GTFOOH.
L RNY • 2 hours agoMr. Lippincott: That kind of influence over expert opinion is immense -- and it yields results. In April, Gates called for a nationwide total lockdown for 10 weeks. America didn't quite sink to that level of draconian control, but the shutdowns we did get absolutely crushed small businesses. Massive tech firms, however, made out like bandits. Microsoft stock is at an all-time high.
So the argument here is that the experts were not going to call for a lockdown, but Mr. Gates' outsized influence made them do it? The experts weren't going to do it anyway? Did that outsized influence extend to every other country in the world which imposed lockdowns? Was there a secret communique between Mr. Gates and the NBA so they suspended their season in mid-March? In the US, CA, Clark Cty in NV, Illinois, Kansas City, MA, MI, NY, OR, and WI all began lockdowns in March. Around the world, 80 countries began lockdowns in March. No matter what Mr. Gates said, lockdowns were deemed to be appropriate. Plus, Mr. Lippincott admits that Mr. Gates' proposal was not followed. In terms of "massive tech firms making out like bandits" v small businesses, might that have anything to do with their value?
I very much agree with this article and I think we need another Teddy Roosevelt Monopoly (oligarchy) buster but much has changed in the 100 years since Teddy Roosevelt was President. The first thing that comes to mind is that the aristocracy was mostly protestant and the business class was mostly domestic with high tariffs keeping foreign competitors out so we could break up these companies without a foreign country purchasing them and possibly creating a national security risk.
Today's aristocracy is much more diverse. Its more Jewish and it has much more minority representation from African Americans, Asians, Hispanics, etc so that creates the first problem in breaking up a monopoly or an oligarchy which would be the accusation of targeting minorities for discrimination. The second problem is that many of the aristocratic class in the US consider themselves global citizens and have dual citizenship. They can live anywhere anytime they choose so if you target them the way say Cuomo and DiBlasio and Newsom do then they will leave. Third problem is our global society particularly the digital / virtual society. If you break that up without safeguards then you will only be inviting foreign ownership then you will have a national security issue and even less influence.
The biggest problem is the NGOs, nonprofits that the rich set up to usurp the government on various issues from immigration to gender identity to politics. These NGO nonprofits arent your harmless community soup kitchen doing good works. The anarchy, arson, looting, rioting in Portland, Seattle, Chicago, NYC, Baltimore these are paid for by NGO nonprofits and they have the money to threaten local government, state government and federal government. Trump was 100% correct when he started to tax college endowments but he didnt go far enough. The tax laws have to be rewritten with a very strict and narrow interpretation of what exactly constitutes the public good and is deserving on non-profit status. If you say education then I will say you are correct but endowments are an investment vehicle under the umbrella of an educational nonprofit. Thats like a nonprofit hospital buying a mutual fund company or a mine or a manufacturing plan and claiming its non-profit. For me its relatively simple unless someone has a some other way. If you look at the non-profit community good...what are the budgets for say hospitals, schools, orphanages, retirement homes, etc. Put monetary limits on nonprofits which can vary depending on industry and the rest is taxed at a high rate. We simply cannot have NGOs (nongovernmental organizations) using a nonprofit status to bring down a country's financial system, over-throwing a country, financing civil strife and civil war, usurping the government on things like immigration, etc.
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Aug 19, 2020 | www.defenddemocracy.press
July 25, 2020
Billionaires like Jeff Bezos aren't obscenely wealthy because they work harder than everyone else or they're more innovative. They're obscenely wealthy because their corporate empires drain society's resources -- and we'd all be better off without them.
This week, Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos saw the largest single-day increase in wealth ever recorded for any individual. In just one day, his fortune increased by $13 billion. On current trends, he is on track to become the world's first trillionaire by 2026.Those on the right wing of politics argue that extreme wealth is a function of hard work, creativity, and innovation that benefits society. But wealth and income inequality have increased dramatically in most advanced economies in recent years. The richest of the rich are much wealthier today than they were several decades ago, but it is not clear that they are working any harder.Mainstream economists make a more nuanced version of this argument. They claim that the dramatic increase in income inequality has been driven by the dynamics of globalization and the rise of "superstars." Firms and corporate executives are now competing in a global market for capital and talent, so the rewards at the top are much higher -- even as competition also constrains wages for many toward the bottom end of the distribution.
According to this view, high levels of inequality are a reward for high productivity. The most productive firms will attract more investment than their less productive counterparts, and their managers, who are performing a much more complex job than those managing smaller firms, will be rewarded accordingly.
Read also: Sat. Jan. 25 Global Day of Protest - The People of the World Say: No War With Iran!But here again the narrative runs aground on contact with reality. Productivity has not risen alongside inequality in recent years. In fact, in the United States and the UK productivity has flatlined since the financial crisis -- and in the United States, it has been declining since the turn of the century.
There is another explanation for the huge profits of the world's largest corporations and the huge fortunes of the superrich. Not higher productivity. Not simply globalization. But rising global market power.
Many of the world's largest tech companies have become global oligopolies and domestic monopolies. Globalization has played a role here, of course -- many domestic firms simply can't compete with global multinationals. But these firms also use their relative size to push down wages, avoid taxes, and gouge their suppliers, as well as lobbying governments to provide them with preferential treatment.
Jeff Bezos and Amazon are a case in point. Amazon has become America's largest company through anticompetitive practices that have landed it in trouble with the European Union's competition authorities. The working practices in its warehouses are notoriously appalling . And a study from last year revealed Amazon to be one of the world's most "aggressive tax avoiders."
Part of the reason Amazon has to work so hard to maintain its monopoly position is that its business model relies on network effects that only obtain at a certain scale. Tech companies like Amazon make money by monopolizing and then selling the data generated from the transactions on their sites.
The more people who sign up, the more data is generated; and the more data generated, the more useful this data is for those analyzing it. The monetization of this data is what generates most of Amazon's returns: Amazon Web Services (AWS) is the most profitable part of the business by some distance.
Read also: What Really Worries South Koreans: TrumpFar from representing its social utility, Amazon's market value -- and Bezos' personal wealth -- reflects its market power. And the rising market power of a small number of larger firms has actually reduced productivity. This concentration has also constrained investment and wage growth as these firms simply don't have to compete for labor, nor are they forced to innovate in order to outcompete their rivals.
In fact, they're much more likely to use their profits to buy back their own shares, or to acquire other firms that will increase their market share and give them access to more data. Amazon's recent acquisition of grocery store Whole Foods is likely to be the first of many such moves by tech companies. Rather than the Darwinian logic of compete or die, the tech companies face a different imperative: expand or die.
States are supporting this logic with exceptionally loose monetary policy. Low interest rates make it very easy for large companies to borrow to fund mergers and acquisitions. And quantitative easing -- unleashed on an unprecedented scale to tackle the pandemic -- has simply served to raise equity prices, especially for the big tech companies.
As more areas of our lives become subject to the power of big tech, the fortunes of people like Bezos will continue to mount. Their rising wealth will not represent a reward for innovation or job creation, but for their market power, which has allowed them to increase the exploitation of their workforces, gouge suppliers, and avoid taxes.
The only real way to tackle these inequities is to democratize the ownership of the means of production, and begin to hand the key decisions in our economy back to the people. But you would expect that even social democrats, who won't pursue transformative policies, could get behind measures such as a wealth tax.
Read also: L'Eurogroupe maintient la Grèce sous le joug de la dette illégitime"Building back better" after the pandemic will be impossible without such a tax -- and the vast majority of both Labour and Conservative voters support such an approach, according to a recent poll. And yet it appears that Labour's leadership are retreating from the idea.
In an interview the other day, I was asked why we should care about Jeff Bezos's wealth if it makes everyone else better off. But the extreme inequalities generated by modern capitalism are making obvious something that Marxists have known for decades: the superrich generate their wealth at the expense of workers, the planet, and society as a whole.
In a rational and fair society, the vast resources of a tiny elite would be put to use solving our social problems.
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Feb 04, 2019 | www.nytimes.com
Grindelwald Boston Mass Jan. 29Doug Johnston Chapel Hill, NC Jan. 29@Horsepower the tax bill has, as predicted by almost everyone but the GOP lawmakers, caused the deficit to balloon. Currently, the resulting debt must be paid by the descendents of all of us but the ultra-wealthy. The alternative to that approach, openly proposed by the GOP, was to take away vital services from most of us, like medical care, public education, and retirement support. I'm surprised that you don't find those things "consequential to the life of most Americans".
Eddie Cohen M.D ecohen2 . com Poway, California Jan. 29There is no reason -- economic, social or moral -- why anyone needs a personal fortune above $500 million dollars.
Mary Ann Seattle, WA Jan. 29In the age of AI the US needs a grand rebuilding of our infrastructure including electrical grids, bridges, highways, mass transit systems, and conversion to renewable energy.
It also needs a medical care system that provides a high level of to all of our citizens including the poor and those with pre-existing conditions. What better down payment on these costly necessities than a tax on the ultra rich.
John Murphysboro, IL Jan. 29Elizabeth Warren showed her chops years ago when she was a guest on Bill Moyer's PBS show, and I've been a fan ever since. But - we don't just need more of Teddy Roosevelt - we need a good dose of Franklin Roosevelt, too.
Given where this country is at, taxing the uber-rich alone isn't going to be enough to solve our problems. We need a jobs program - good, family wage jobs - that have been chipped away at for decades by both automation and off-shoring.
Taxing will help fund much needed gov't infrastructure problems, but it's purchasing power that drives the economy - and we can't have one without a vibrant middle class that's actually making and doing stuff. Since the Clinton years, the USA has spawned a bloated investor class, making a lot of money shuffling paper, but what do they produce that drives this country forward? Our infrastructure is fast becoming 3rd world.
Barry Fogel Lexington, MA Jan. 28In Senator Warren we finally have a politician who understands the difference between wealth and income and is willing to start taxing wealth. This is especially important as the truly wealthy receive very little of their money in the form of income and are therefore taxed on far less than they are actually worth. This only serves to exacerbate our inequality problem. The big banks, in particular, are very worried about what would happen should Warren become president. Like that other Roosevelt - Franklin - she welcomes their hatred. Good for her.
Steve Tripoli Hull, MA Jan. 29Extreme income inequality is damaging to social capital and to public health - and thus in the long run to sustainable prosperity. The American epidemic of depression, opioid abuse and suicide is is correlated with the acceleration of income inequality.
Worldwide, countries with high income inequality have more depression, more suicide and less happiness, even when their per capita GNP is higher than their neighbors'. The toxic effects of inequality are especially great in a nation like the US where children are taught that anyone can make it if they work hard enough. In fact, there's a lot more upward mobility in those awful socialist Nordic countries, where teaching public school is a prestigious and well-paid job, college and vocational training are taxpayer-funded (not 'free'), and no one goes bankrupt from a serious illness or injury.
Silas Greenback Guilford, CT Jan. 28Without endorsing anyone's proposals here, a couple of examples from recent history on what's actually possible, despite what people may think: -- Six weeks before the Berlin Wall fell and reunited Germany, the then-West German government issued a report projecting that German reunification was at least 20 years away. -- Japan went from a highly-nuclear power dependent country, with no prospect of changing, to one that drastically cut its dependence on nuclear in just one year after the Fukushima disaster. -- One of my favorites: FDR sits down with the leaders of General Motors at the dawn of WWII and says I need so many tanks, so many trucks etc etc for the war effort. A GM exec responds on these lines: "Mr. President, we can't fulfill those needs and still produce X-hundred-thousand cars a year." FDR: "You don't understand. You're no longer a car company." So the lesson is, no one knows what's possible in a society till you try.
Lisa Bay Area Jan. 28Eliminating carried interest seems perfectly rational. Compensation by any other name is compensation and taxable as ordinary income as it is for everyone else in this country. Once upon a time, capital gains were taxed at 15% and ordinary income at rates as high as 91%. That led to all sorts of devices to game the system, including the infamous collapsible corporation.
But with the difference down to around 10-15%, we may as well bite the bullet and tax income from capital at the same rate we tax income from work. I doubt this will hurt savings, investment, or capital formation.
It is still nice to have money, and owning capital assets will still beat the alternative.
Finally, Senator Warren's proposal seems like an acceleration of the estate tax.
Having worked in trusts and estates law for decades, I suspect that this proposal will invite use of the same techniques used by estate planners, lawyers, and accountants to drive down the fair market value of assets. Her proposal may work, if it is ever enacted, but the devil, as usual, will be in the details. This is a very complex concept, simple as it may seem at first blush. That is not an argument for not trying, but for being very careful in the implementation, beginning with the statutory language.
Tom New Jersey Jan. 28@Taz Bernie talks in bumper-sticker slogans; Elizabeth talks substance.
Kodali VA Jan. 29@Steve B People receiving Social Security only pay taxes on the benefits if their income exceeds the same thresholds that apply to people who go out and work for a living, and pay Social Security taxes that go to the elderly. Ellen, stop treating Social Security like it's a savings bank.
Your Social Security taxes paid for the generation before you, and the Social Security taxes raised now are paying for you. The average Social Security recipient today will receive twice as much as they paid into the system during their earning years.
So please give the "I'm just getting back the money I paid into the system" routine a rest. It's a fiction. The wealth of the over 65s is growing faster than any other age group in our society, and the fraction of government spending on over-65s is the only part of government that has grown in decades.
If you're making enough to pay income taxes, pay your taxes and stop complaining. That means you're doing OK. You'd better hope young people don't wake up and realize just how much of their hard-earned pay is going to pay for retirees.
RobertF Acton Ma Jan. 28The seriousness in her policies is in her work ethics and brilliance. She means what she says and works her heart out to achieve those goals. There isn't anyone out there that matches those qualities.
Doug Rife Sarasota, FL Jan. 28This tax will require staffing up the IRS and that will require dems control over both houses of Congress as the GOPers have defunded the IRS.
The ultra right, ultra rich will be paying more and more of their fortunes to their already privately-owned senators to defeat this and any other progressive tax proposals. We need more, more and more people to get into the democratic process and VOTE to recapture the nation's leadership in 2020!
Ana Luisa Belgium Jan. 28Pretax income concentration at the top increased starting in the 1980s as a direct result of the large reductions in the top marginal income tax rates. Those who complain that a 70% top marginal tax rate is confiscatory need to understand that's the whole point.
When top marginal tax rates are confiscatory that leads to lower pre-tax income inequality because tax aversion of the wealthy leads they to pay themselves less income to avoid paying the government so much in taxes.
Unlike most workers, corporate executives can easily arrange for their boards to pay them far more than their marginal product would justify.
Furthermore, wealth tends to concentrate automatically when top marginal tax rates are low. This is simply due to the math of compound interest. When investment returns are not taxed sufficiently by the estate tax or by capital gains taxes, they will be reinvested leading to extreme wealth accumulation over generations that is automatic and not the result of any kind of investing skill.
Even if a 70% top marginal tax rate did not raise a penny more in tax revenue it would still be justified on the grounds of preventing extreme concentration of wealth and income. Recent economic research has shown that in a purely capitalistic society in which there is no taxation nor redistribution all wealth in the whole society will ultimately be owned by a single household. https://voxeu.org/article/what-would-wealth-distribution-look-without-redistribution
San Francisco Voter San Framcoscp Jan. 28@Baldwin Actually, it's 2% on what is on top of those 50M, so 2% on 100M, if you have a net worth of $150M. That being said, nobody with $150M net worth just "sits" on his money for 35 years. To get there in the first place, in the 21st century you usually have to pay an expert and engage in financial speculation (= speculation about financial transactions, not an investment in the "real" economy), and of course you won't stop paying that expert once you reach $150M, so you continue to add millions to your wealth anyhow. On the other hand, if you belong to the middle class, you easily pay $30,000 taxes a year.
After ten years, that's $300,000, and after 33 years that's a million dollars paid in taxes. Seen in this way, even having the middle class paying taxes seems "unfair", because when they only earn $75,000 a year, why should they pay a million in taxes over 33 years ... ?
Conclusion: taxes are paid year after year not in function of how many you will have paid in total at the end of your career, but in function of what we collectively need to run this country smoothly (military, government, education, roads and bridges, EPA, ...).
A "fair" tax code is a tax code that allows anyone who works hard to live comfortably, weather your a hedge fund manager or teacher. And in order to get there, we can't continue the GOP's constantly lowering taxes for the wealthiest all while cutting services to the 99%. NO one with $150M will suffer by paying $2M in taxes a year ...
Dadof2 NJ Jan. 29I applaud Elizabeth Warren and Alexandra Ocasio-Cortez for espousing Teddy an Franklin Roosevelt's ideas about reducing the concentration of 90% of wealth in the upper 1/10th of 1 per cent (0.1%). That is the situation which can lead to major social unrest, widespread crime, and ultimately, civil war as happened in England in the 17th century, in Russia in 1917, and in the French Revolution that beheaded Louis XVI and Marie Antoinette - along with thousands of other members of the nobility.
We see this anger and violence today in the United States - in mass shootings, in failing public schools (the salaries are not sufficient to attract qualified teachers who instead will work in more remunerative fields, like law and computer technology. What works better is to reduce the concentration of wealth so people in the lower 90% can have more prosperity and social stability in their lives.
All people need a reliable source of food, healthcare, and a place for them and their families to live. All people need access to good education, family planning, and higher education sufficient to alllow them to work. With so much reliance on mechanical work, we also need for all people to have a minimum income - something that no one talks abou yet - but enough to live safely.
There is support for this not only among Democrats but also among Republicans. The help should be for everyone, not based on need (Marxism). This is common sense not socialism.
Mike L NY Jan. 29It was hilarious to read that Rush Limbaugh is SO terrified of AOC and Liz Warren that he, the grandmaster of Goebbels-like mis-information, is calling them "hitlerian" as he and Hannity push Trump every day to emulate Mussolini! But why is simple: I read that Limbaugh makes about $100 million a year, which puts him in the super-rich category. I doubt highly that he's paying the maximum 37(?)% on his income and if he is he needs better accountants and tax lawyers! But AOC's proposal means that $90 million of his $100 million would be taxed at 70%, leaving him "only" a measly $27 million a year to try not to starve on. Along with whatever millions are left after taxes on the first $10 million, say, $5 million (again, needs better tax advice). So he's stuck trying to survive on $32 million! (BTW, Hannity only makes about $29 million before taxes, Oh! The Humanity!--Or is it "Oh! The Hannity"?) That's really why they are vitriolic. Taxes are for the "little people", the suckers who call in and rant, who watch Fox and believe, no matter how illogical their logic. Rush and Sean see a REAL movement to tax their excessive income and will fight it tooth and nail, with fact and fiction (mostly fiction) to protect themselves and their wealth.
Ken McBride Lynchburg, VA Jan. 29Interesting how it is almost exactly a hundred years since this problem was dealt with in the last Gilded Age. Enough time so that the generations that remember are long gone and so the problem came back.
The Uber rich did this to themselves with their complete disconnect from the economic realities facing the 99%. TARP was the kicker - we gave a trillion dollars to the 1% while the 99% were left to fend for themselves. Despite the protestations of the 99%. Now that's political power in the hands of the few for the benefit of the few. Time to stop it now.
Henry's boy Ottawa, Canada Jan. 29"wealthiest 0.1 percent of Americans almost equal to that of the bottom 90 percent combined." The corrupt neoliberalism of the 1% is unsustainable but is reflective of a downward spiral of decline. While we experience continuous political campaigning the U.S. is, in reality, a criminal and corrupt corporate state enriching the 1% and masquerading as a democracy, an Inverted Totalitarianism.
"We can have democracy in this country, or we can have great wealth concentrated in the hands of a few, but we can't have both." Louis D. Brandeis
6 RecommendFran B. Kent, CT Jan. 29Great. The pendulum swings back to sensible taxation rates for the ultra wealthy. Hard to feel sorry for hedge fund managers. I can just see Sean Hannity railing against it now. He would have to cough up.
6 RecommendDavid Dyte Brooklyn Jan. 28This column makes a good case for Elizabeth Warren as Secretary of the Treasury, or head of the Consumer Protection Bureau which she invented following Dodd Frank legislation. But the best way to reach the widest audience is a Presidential campaign. Most of the responses here focus on enough wealth, extreme wealth and self-interest. Beyond their tax liabilities is the reality of the power the the rich wield through lobbyists, campaign contributions, corporate takeovers, and tax dodges over our politics, governments, and over us, the people. It's a pity that any proposed tax fairness adjustments are reduced to epithets against socialism.
6 RecommendSeabiscute MA Jan. 29The problem is that the big money against this will say (ie: fund ads saying) anything (true or false) about any other subject to swing votes against any candidate who's a serious chance of pushing such a tax increase. One can only hope I am wrong.
6 RecommendCindy California Jan. 29@Socrates, another trenchant and witty comment! Thank you.
6 RecommendSteve Scaramouche Saint Paul Jan. 29Fascinating article. Thanks for sharing. Her Accountable Capitalism Act also addresses the root causes of inequality, although some critics have stated that it would lead to the semi-nationalization of business. I think its effect would be commonsense regulation of the economic playing field so that excesses do not occur in how rewards are distributed. It has the potential to address issues early enough to prevent problems.
6 Recommendcslaftery NY, NY Jan. 29@George Thanks to the Republican budget busting tax holiday for rich folks we will need every penny of revenue just to keep our fiscal boat afloat. We should add AOC's 70% rate just to patch our leaks in infrastructure, healthcare, education and social security for the retirees who were gutted by the 2008 Republican Great Recession.
6 RecommendGary Upper West Side Jan. 28Since the super-rich are already paying 2+20 for their wealth management, paying another 2 to the government hardly seems like it would kill incentive...
6 Recommendtexsun usa Jan. 29Throughout most of the history of civilizations, governments have been funded by a wealth tax. This was in the form of property tax, as that was the only wealth there was. Somehow when financial wealth started to build, it was made largely exempt. Proposals to close this loophole are well overdue. It's not so radical as it is just restoring traditional funding methods.
6 RecommendWayne Campbell Ottawa, Canada Jan. 28A sure sign of health when Warren, a veteran politician and Ocasio-Cortez, a first term member of Congress publish ideas early in the election cycle. The next steps are laws that dismantle Citizens United and protect voting rights.
6 Recommendstu freeman brooklyn Jan. 29Elizabeth Warren had better take care. If she doesn't tread softly on these plans to progressively tax the rich and make them spread the wealth to all those millions of people out there who have had a hand in generating their economic success, she'll be called something equally invidious to a 'socialist' -- a 'Canadian'.
6 RecommendAndrew Michigan Jan. 29Prof. Krugman is speaking truth to power but power tends to speak back, telling our citizens that progressives like Sen. Warren are aiming to increase taxes across the board. Never EVER do they narrow the stated target of such projected increases to the uppermost economic stratum. And progressives always manage to let them get away with this. Democratic candidates for political office need to assign members of their campaign staffs to Republican events and arm them with bullhorns for the expressed purpose of shouting out the words "for the rich" every time a typically disingenuous Republican opponent announces that a specific Democrat has a plan to raise Americans' taxes.
6 RecommendTom Pauloski Highland Park, IL Jan. 29"More important, my sense is that a lot of conventional political wisdom still assumes that proposals to sharply raise taxes on the wealthy are too left-wing for American voters." It's just shocking to me that conservative voters supposedly hate liberal elites, yet refuse continuously to tax the mega rich and/or ignore the tax cuts for those households. Do they not see the hypocrisy they're being fed by Fox News?
6 RecommendKem Phillips Vermont Jan. 29I know that it's inconvenient, but the US Constituion prohibits a direct tax that is not apportioned among the states on the basis of population. Hard to see how Ms. Warren's "plan" meets this standard. Serious presidential candidates need to propose plans that actually have a chance to work. After what we're experiencing now, we don't need four additional years of bombast.
6 RecommendAna Luisa Belgium Jan. 28@Mkm Can you give any arguments as to why this is unconstitutional, or a source as to when it was declared so? Note that once (ie, just a few generations ago) abhorrent laws concerning voting rights and segregation were considered just fine.
6 RecommendCA CA Jan. 29@Paul Wortman We indeed tend to believe that the poor and lower middle class must be (more) ignorant, and as such easier victims of the GOP's massive fake news campaigns. Studies show however that a majority of those earning less than $100,000 a year voted for Hillary, whereas a small majority of those earning more than that voted for Trump. That's because her platform included VERY clear and urgent, fact-based measures that would have helped the poor and middle class, after Obama already made serious progress on these issues (a public option added to Obamacare, and many other things). So imho the only ones risking "forgetting" about the needs of the 99% when it comes to voting, are those who don't carefully fact-check politicians' achievements and campaign agenda, before voting (or deciding not to vote) ...
6 RecommendPaul Rogers Montreal Jan. 29@BC The current standard deduction of $12K for single people means that the first $12K is not taxed ($24K joint) which means that your wish has already come true.
6 Recommendboourns Nyc Jan. 29@Socrates Please run for office.
6 RecommendDoug Lowenthal Nevada Jan. 29Fundamentally, a fallacy of modern American society is a perversion of the golden rule. Let's call it "tax not lest ye be taxed." Even though the electorate will never in their wildest dreams make this kind of income, their wildest dreams persist. And thus they will not permit the thought of "unfair" taxation on the ultra-rich, using all the talking points the richest 1% have lobbied deep into our political system at every level.
6 Recommendpjahwah Iowa Jan. 29At this stage in our history when wealth hasn't been more concentrated, raising taxes on the ultra-rich is exactly what populism is about. Think TR and FDR, not DJT.
6 Recommendmichaeltide Bothell, WA Jan. 29@Socrates Oh Socrates, you do have a way with words! Your first and second paragraphs are lol gems! I hope you keep coming back.
6 RecommendTom Maguire Darien CT Jan. 28@Ronald B. Duke, I think I remember people saying that during the civil rights movement too. Be patient. You'll get what you want by'n'by. Waiting for dynastic fortunes trickle away is sort of like waiting for the mountain to be worn away by the wind. It's not gonna happen in our lifetime. There's always a reason for not depriving the wealthy of any part of their fortunes. Each time we fail to do that, the need to do it becomes more dire. Things just don't get better by waiting for someone to voluntarily or even accidentally, divest themselves of money or power. It can be done by legislation, and that's better than by revolution. And, you know, the wealth accumulation has already begun. What has to happen now is to keep it from falling over and crushing all of us (Make that almost all of us).
6 RecommendHarold Winter Park, Fl Jan. 29@Rockets Pual Krugman is almost surely right about incentives on the individual level since few of us will hold off just because the second $50 MM is slightly less lucrative. Buts its funny how he ignores the macroeconomic effect. If the Bezos tax bill was $1 billion, I think we agree it would come exclusively out of savings. *IF* the government simply used the proceeds to reduce spending (below some credible prior baseline) then the net effect on national savings is zero; interest rates unchanged, economic activity unaffected, and so on. But if the government spends the money (as seems likely under President Warren) then national savings is reduced and the fed will (in the current environment) probably feel obliged to push back against a stimulative fiscal policy with a restrictive monetary policy: higher rates, less investment, less consumer spending, etc. So Bezos has no incentive to invest less but as a nation we will do just that. Is that good? Maybe - it would have been great in 2009. Seems to merit a discussion.
6 RecommendDJS New York Jan. 29The 2020 campaign for POTUS is shaping up to be very interesting. That is, if Trump makes it. Combine Warren and Harris we would have a great team. Warren adds specifics with intellectual heft and Harris inspires us with her open, honest and intelligent persona. Just need to find room for Amy K. on that team.
6 RecommendNative Tarheel Durham, NC Jan. 29@FunkyIrishman Your "radical plan " has been tried, and has failed.
6 RecommendHenry Crawford Silver Spring, Md Jan. 29This is far better than changing the rate on capital gains, which would tend to punish middle class retirees for having invested over the years (Mr. Rattner's proposal today) and, I think, would be difficult for the uber-wealthy to avoid. I'm not sure that $50 million is the correct starting point (perhaps a meager $25 million of net worth should be taxed) but this is a brilliant new concept that offers promise of slowing wealth inequality while not terribly constraining the wealthy.
6 RecommendMathman314 Los Angeles Jan. 29"We seem to be heading toward a society dominated by vast, often inherited fortunes." Welcome to kingship, 21st Century style.
6 Recommendstan continople brooklyn Jan. 29In reading this column and the associated comments, there seems to be one glaring omission: the necessity of overturning the Citizens United decision which provides the ultra-rich avenues to continually push their lower taxes agenda by hiring hoards of lobbyists, by "buying" politicians with campaign contributions, by funding misleading and excessive political advertising, and by controlling various media outlets that are little more than propaganda mills. Until Citizens United is overturned much-needed, rational progressive taxation reforms have little chance of becoming reality, and with the current composition of the Supreme Court overturning this decision is unfortunately extremely unlikely.
6 RecommendRosebud NYS Jan. 29@Yabasta Yeah, Dr. Krugman must have sustained a hit to the head since 2016 and would not recognize a photo of Hillary Clinton if it was flashed before him. His incessant savaging of Bernie was positively embarrassing to witness and never adequately explained. Only goes to show you that our much vaunted reason is designed to justify our emotions and that even Nobel laureates have deep subconscious axes to grind.
6 RecommendSteve NJ Jan. 29Under Eisenhower marginal tax rates were approximately 90%. This "Greatest Generation" built the interstate system. We can't even maintain the interstate system we have let alone build a new one. Our national-level political system is dominated by the rich. Our economic policies are totally skewed towards the rich. Our educational system is biased towards the rich. We've let capitalism trump democracy. If making America Great Again means taxing the rich back into reality, I have no problem with that. My only annoyance with Mr. Krugman's essay is his monomaniacal avoidance of saying the word, "Sanders." What's that about?
6 RecommendRima Regas Southern California Jan. 28This makes perfect sense to me. Under Senator Warren's plan households with more than $50 million of annual income would pay a 2% wealth surcharge. I can't imagine this would have any significant effect on any of the 75,000 wealthiest U.S. households. I'd much rather see Michael Bloomberg and his financial peers support broader efforts to make college free or reduce student debt levels than make more lavish gifts to elite institutions like John Hopkins.
6 RecommendSchrodinger Northern California Jan. 28cks, broken promises, scandal. and a presidency in trouble – all pushed Bill Clinton into taking a brand new tack: triangulation. In addition to the definition of triangulation offered by Dick Morris in his Frontline appearance on PBS, here is a quote from his book: "The idea behind triangulation is to work hard to solve the problems that motivate the other party's voters, so as to defang them politically The essence of triangulation is to use your party's solutions to solve the other side's problems. Use your tools to fix their car." The problem with that is that triangulation has not quite worked out that way. "Their car" wasn't what was actually being fixed. What the "tools" did address, however, were the goals of the Republican party. https://www.rimaregas.com/2017/09/04/triangulation-when-neoliberalism-is-at-its-most-dangerous-to-voters-updated-dem-politics-on-blog42 /
6 RecommendPeter Wolf New York City Jan. 29@Jonathan....Current S+P 500 dividend yield is 2.02%. That would provide cash to cover most of the wealth tax. A wealth tax might impact the market for high end art and collectibles, but that is probably a very small fraction of total wealth.
6 Recommendskier 6 Vermont Jan. 29@Duane McPherson I realize Warren may have some limitations re emotional appeal (also re men not wanting to vote for a woman), which is why I said I put her "at the top of my list for Dems, SO FAR." I'll see how this plays out on the campaign trail. Someone else may emerge who has both the smarts and the charisma- or Warren may find an emotional niche. Time will tell.
6 Recommendmrpoizun hot springs Jan. 28@George Warren Buffet has said, "There's class warfare all right. But it's my class, the rich class, that's making war, and we're winning."
6 Recommendfaivel1 NY Jan. 29@Phyliss Dalmatian I'm afraid Sherrod is not liberal enough. Nowadays, if you talk about bi-partisanship and reaching across the aisle, you're talking about making a deal with the devil.
5 RecommendUtahSteve 1953 Gardiner, NY Jan. 29@Yuri Asian Very passionate and authentic comment!
5 RecommendJames Ricciardi Panama, Panama Jan. 28This is a pie pie-in-the-sky comment, but I'll stand by the overall premise based on our history. It's all about the velocity of money and resources. You have to spend it to grow it. Infrastructure also includes 100% healthcare cradle to grave, baseline living standards, Social Security clean water, clean air, clean power, full education, etc. Infrastructure is the key to everything throughout history, period. Close all tax loop holes. Reduce all business taxes by at least half or more. Create a progressive tax rate starting at 0% raised all the way to 80% up the ladder. If you don't like it, renounce your citizenship with all of what that entails and leave. Completely get rid of the cap on Social Security. Everyone except those at the 0% tax rate pays in 7%. That is fair. Make the business contribution 3% of the first $100,000 Reinstate a stronger set of anti-trust guard rails. Re-instate a stronger form of Glass/Steagle. Reinstate a stronger Fairness Doctrine Realize that a corporation is NOT a person and if we think they are, subject them to the 13th amendment regarding one person owning another. They also are not allowed participate in anything of a political nature, in any way shape or form. Period. Full stop. Invest in the poor and middle classes in all ways. Raising standards from the bottom up raises all boats. It's not "trickle down" it's "trickle up". It's all about the velocity of money. You have to spend it to grow it. We can do this in this country.
5 RecommendTruthbeknown Texas Jan. 29Why do by indirection what is better done directly? Income tax rates should be adjusted to push the marginal rate to a percentage needed to produce the estimated revenue from Warren's proposal. This would (1) not require creation of a new beauracracy and a new wealth tax code to administer the new wealth tax, (2) not create incentives for lawyers and accounts to redefine net worth and would (3) not change incentives for investments by wealthy individuals, with unknown and unknowable side effects. If we also want to reduce fortunes directly, enact a truly functional estate tax, not the joke which we have now.
5 RecommendTom Maguire Darien CT Jan. 28One other thought, the high tax rates of the 1950s and 1960s carried with them many, many deductions which are no longer available -- -which were surrendered politically in exchange for lower overall ages. Maybe something additionally to be considered would be combing through the tax code and addressing the special interest provisions which conflate social policy about certain companies/products/goals with tax policy.
5 RecommendJohn Coctosin Florida Jan. 29@A P As you note, simply giving the money to their foundation can spare them the tax bill. They don't actually need to have the foundation disburse that much of it. And my casual impression is that Bill Gates' ability to direct billions through his foundation has preserved his "social capital" - he is still invited to Davos, can tour Africa with Bono or the Pope, get his phone calls returned by Important People, get his kids into whatever college he chooses to endow, hop on private jets to wherever, and so on. As punishments go forcing him to chair a major foundation is not much.
5 RecommendJonathan Lincoln Jan. 28The government has never proven itself to be a good steward of capital. They will tax and spend, tax and reallocate, tax and waste. No thanks. Would rather the incentives remain and America push back against socialist notions. So expected from Krugman.
5 Recommendb fagan chicago Jan. 28@CDN Eh? Real estate is already valued every year and taxed accordingly, it's called property taxes. Art and antiquities are already valued for insurance purposes. It's not difficulty at all.
5 Recommendusa999 Portland, OR Jan. 29@Shiv "I'm completely unable to determine how Jeff Bezos's work building Amazon has caused me or anyone else to be worse off. In fact, we're all better off." So you know nobody who had been making a decent living with a bookstore - or in publishing - or in many other small businesses that have been priced into oblivion by Amazon if they'd been lucky enough to survive the WalMart effect that came before. Robert Reich in "Supercapitalism" was right. The consumer side of a person can so easily derange the thinking of the rest of the person. Not following me? Than picture the dream world of big tech companies with their dreams of stupendous individual wealth by "disrupting" something where people have been making their livings. Each wave of disruption leaves people without their jobs. And these days, the chance of getting into a better-paying job after being disruptive aren't all that terrific if you look at the statistical outcomes. So is your view of morality served by the relentless push to undercut older businesses that provided employment, simply because the disrupting model is "more efficient"? Reconsider what "efficiency" is supposed to accomplish in the bigger picture of society rather than just shareholder (and top executive) financial reward.
5 RecommendWAXwing01 EveryWhere Jan. 30As an authentic Republican, not one of the brigands who hijacked the party as a means to plunder and pillage, I heartily endorse the Warren proposal. To make it somewhat more palatable for voters I would suggest it earmark 50% of the revenue generated go to starting to pay down the national debt. That would mean, using the 2.75 trillion estimate, that in the first decade we would reclaim from the wealthiest approximately what Republicans gave away in the deficit-financed tax cuts of 2017. In effect having had an interest-free loan from us for a decade they would return the cash we have been paying interest on. Would be quite big of them, actually.
5 RecommendAna Luisa Belgium Jan. 28Excellent!
5 Recommendstan continople brooklyn Jan. 29@Alice It's not as if we ignore which tax loopholes for the wealthiest have to be closed and how to do so, you know. Democrats have been trying to do this for quite some time already, but the GOP blocks it. And Obamacare already includes a tax increase for the wealthiest - that's one of the reasons why it cuts the deficit by $100 billion, rather than adding to it. That proves that the wealthiest DNC donors and Democrats (such as Obama himself, and Pelosi) FULLY agree to increase their own taxes. Conclusion: cynicism never helped us move forward, fact-checking does ... ;-)
5 RecommendJeoffrey Arlington, MA Jan. 28@Vink Why do you think they all own a dozen sprawling properties scattered around the globe? They are all Bond villain wannabes never far from a secret citadel. I hope they've got plenty of toilet paper on hand for the siege.
5 RecommendJoe Sneed Bedminister PA Jan. 29@Michael Blazin You think that... why? It's not at all clear. But it is clear that the law could be written so that any transaction could be taxed. So unless the billionaires want to hide their money under their mattresses.....
5 RecommendJim Gordon So Orange,nj Jan. 29A progressive wealth tax is an"idea whose time has come". See Piketty, Thomas. Capital in the Twenty-First Century . Harvard University Press. Use the revenue generated for infrastructure repair.
5 RecommendJohn Homan Yeppoon - Australia Jan. 29@carl bumba You'll need to visit those other countries to see how wrong you are and how right Socrates is.
5 Recommendmrpoizun hot springs Jan. 28@Rajiv The discussion is not about 'attacking' income, but taxing wealth.
5 RecommendZdebman Central US Jan. 29@Blue Moon As far as Social Security and Medicare, all we have to do to fix that is tax the millionaires' income the same as we do the peon- every dime that goes in their overseas accounts should be taxed, same as the rest of us.
5 RecommendPV Wisconsin Jan. 29There are numerous holes in this proposal, none of which have anything to do with "greed". 1. What Krugman, Saez and Zucman fail to mention is that Denmark repealed its wealth tax in 1996 and Sweden repealed its wealth tax more than a decade ago. Not hard to understand why -- it is ultimately a self-defeating tax policy that just drives wealth out of your economy. Krugman doesn't mention that Saez and Zucman's basic premise is that every country has to implement a wealth tax for it to work, which is never going to happen. 2. Warren's proposal is blatantly unconstitutional as a direct tax, so she would need to garner the political support not just to pass the tax but amend the constitution similar to what was done for the income tax. Highly unlikely. The bottom line is that the only way to actually pay for all of the middle-class goodies that Democrats want to be provided by the Federal government (free college, Medicare for all, free daycare, paid leave) is to tax the middle-class like what they do in Sweden and Denmark through VAT and much lower income tax thresholds. Of course, once everyone figures that out, those proposals won't poll nearly as well, which is why AOC is now claiming that it will be magically paid for through the hocus-pocus of Modern Monetary Theory.
5 RecommendCharlesbalpha Atlanta Jan. 29For Warren's tax proposal that "wouldn't lead to large-scale evasion if the tax applied to all assets and was adequately enforced ..." the IRS needs more staff and a bigger budget. Past Republican congresses have purposely gutted the agency's audit and enforcement capabilities at the direction of the very interests Warren's proposal targets.
5 Recommend"Would such a plan be feasible? Wouldn't the rich just find ways around it?" The most likely way around it would be to bribe Congress not to vote for it. Isn't that why they
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Aug 19, 2020 | www.moonofalabama.org
Rob , Aug 19 2020 19:19 utc | 53
Actually, after only a quick review of some of the news reports, it appears that the Senate Committee placed great importance on the "fact" that Russia was involved in the "hacking" of emails from the DNC. This suggests that the Committee relied on the same intelligence sources that fabricated the Russiagate scenario in the first place. I guess that the Republicans on the Committee have not kept up with revelations that there is no evidence of any such hacking. Hence, the Committee's conclusions are likely based on the same old disinformation and can be readily dismissed.
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Aug 19, 2020 | www.zerohedge.com
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amnesia , 5 minutes ago
Demeter55 , 47 minutes agoVery telling that ZH editors don't consider this newsworthy: key findings of the Republican led Senate Select Committee on Intelligence regarding Russia's 2016 election interference.
Manafort and Kilimnik talked almost daily during the campaign. They communicated through encrypted technologies set to automatically erase their correspondence; they spoke using code words and shared access to an email account. It's worth pausing on these facts: The chairman of the Trump campaign was in daily contact with a Russian agent, constantly sharing confidential information with him.
It did not find evidence that the Ukrainian government meddled in the 2016 election, as Trump alleged. "The Committee's efforts focused on investigating Russian interference in the 2016 election. However, during the course of the investigation, the Committee identified no reliable evidence that the Ukrainian government interfered in the 2016 U.S. election."
"Taken as a whole, Manafort's high-level access and willingness to share information with individuals closely affiliated with the Russian intelligence services, particularly [Konstantin] Kilimnik and associates of Oleg Deripaska, represented a grave counterintelligence threat," the report said.
Kilimnik "almost certainly helped arrange some of the first public messaging that Ukraine had interfered in the U.S. election."
Roger Stone was in communications with both WikiLeaks and the Russian hacker Guccifer 2.0 during the election; according to the Mueller report, Guccifer 2.0 was a conduit set up by Russian military intelligence to anonymously funnel stolen information to WikiLeaks.
The Senate Intelligence Committee's investigation found "significant evidence to suggest that, in the summer of 2016, WikiLeaks was knowingly collaborating with Russian government officials," the report said.
The FBI gave "unjustified credence" to the so-called Steele dossier, an explosive collections of uncorroborated memos alleging collusion between the Trump campaign and Russian government officials, the report said. The FBI did not take the "necessary steps to validate assumptions about Steele's credibility" before relying on the dossier to seek renewals of a surveillance warrant targeting the former Trump campaign aide, the report said.
gene5722 , 2 hours agoIt's the latest in 5 years of "Get Trump!", a sitcom featuring the Roadrunner (Trump) and the Wiley Coyote (Deep State/Never Trumpers / etc, etc.)
This classic scenario never fails to please those who realize that the roadrunner rules, and the coyote invariably ends up destroyed.
The lie msm won't let die.
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Aug 16, 2020 | www.zerohedge.com
If Zerohedge comment reflect general population sentiments this is clear sign of the crisis of legitimacy of neoliberal élite.
Via The Strategic Culture Foundation,
William Binney is the former technical director of the U.S. National Security Agency who worked at the agency for 30 years. He is a respected independent critic of how American intelligence services abuse their powers to illegally spy on private communications of U.S. citizens and around the globe.
Given his expert inside knowledge, it is worth paying attention to what Binney says.
In a media interview this week, he dismissed the so-called Russiagate scandal as a "fabrication" orchestrated by the American Central Intelligence Agency. Many other observers have come to the same conclusion about allegations that Russia interfered in the 2016 U.S. elections with the objective of helping Donald Trump get elected.
But what is particularly valuable about Binney's judgment is that he cites technical analysis disproving the Russiagate narrative. That narrative remains dominant among U.S. intelligence officials, politicians and pundits, especially those affiliated with the Democrat party, as well as large sections of Western media. The premise of the narrative is the allegation that a Russian state-backed cyber operation hacked into the database and emails of the Democrat party back in 2016. The information perceived as damaging to presidential candidate Hillary Clinton was subsequently disseminated to the Wikileaks whistleblower site and other U.S. media outlets.
A mysterious cyber persona known as "Guccifer 2.0" claimed to be the alleged hacker. U.S. intelligence and news media have attributed Guccifer as a front for Russian cyber operations.
Notably, however, the Russian government has always categorically denied any involvement in alleged hacking or other interference in the 2016 U.S. election, or elections thereafter.
William Binney and other independent former U.S. intelligence experts say they can prove the Russiagate narrative is bogus. The proof relies on their forensic analysis of the data released by Guccifer. The analysis of timestamps demonstrates that the download of voluminous data could not have been physically possible based on known standard internet speeds. These independent experts conclude that the data from the Democrat party could not have been hacked, as Guccifer and Russiagaters claim. It could only have been obtained by a leak from inside the party, perhaps by a disgruntled staffer who downloaded the information on to a disc. That is the only feasible way such a huge amount of data could have been released. That means the "Russian hacker" claims are baseless.
Wikileaks, whose founder Julian Assange is currently imprisoned in Britain pending an extradition trial to the U.S. to face espionage charges, has consistently maintained that their source of files was not a hacker, nor did they collude with Russian intelligence. As a matter of principle, Wikileaks does not disclose the identity of its sources, but the organization has indicated it was an insider leak which provided the information on senior Democrat party corruption.
William Binney says forensic analysis of the files released by Guccifer shows that the mystery hacker deliberately inserted digital "fingerprints" in order to give the impression that the files came from Russian sources. It is known from information later disclosed by former NSA whistleblower Edward Snowden that the CIA has a secretive program – Vault 7 – which is dedicated to false incrimination of cyber attacks to other actors. It seems that the purpose of Guccifer was to create the perception of a connection between Wikileaks and Russian intelligence in order to beef up the Russiagate narrative.
"So that suggested [to] us all the evidence was pointing back to CIA as the originator [of] Guccifer 2.0. And that Guccifer 2.0 was inside CIA I'm pointing to that group as the group that was probably the originator of Guccifer 2.0 and also this fabrication of the entire story of Russiagate," concludes Binney in his interview with Sputnik news outlet.
This is not the first time that the Russiagate yarn has been debunked . But it is crucially important to make Binney's expert views more widely appreciated especially as the U.S. presidential election looms on November 3. As that date approaches, U.S. intelligence and media seem to be intensifying claims about Russian interference and cyber operations. Such wild and unsubstantiated "reports" always refer to the alleged 2016 "hack" of the Democrat party by "Guccifer 2.0" as if it were indisputable evidence of Russian interference and the "original sin" of supposed Kremlin malign activity. The unsubstantiated 2016 "hack" is continually cited as the "precedent" and "provenance" of more recent "reports" that purport to claim Russian interference.
Given the torrent of Russiagate derivatives expected in this U.S. election cycle, which is damaging U.S.-Russia bilateral relations and recklessly winding up geopolitical tensions, it is thus of paramount importance to listen to the conclusions of honorable experts like William Binney.
The American public are being played by their own intelligence agencies and corporate media with covert agendas that are deeply anti-democratic.
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lay_arrow desertboy , 13 hours agomeditate_vigorously , 11 hours agoWell - who set up them up, converted from the OSS? The banksters.
"Wild Bill" Donovan worked for JP Morgan immediately after WWII.
"our" US intelligence agencies were set up by, and serve, the masters of high finance. Is this in dispute?
Isisraelquaeda , 2 hours agoThey have seeded enough misinformation that apparently it is. But, you are correct. It is the Banksters.
SurfingUSA , 15 hours agoIsrael. The CIA was infiltrated by the Mossad long ago.
Andrew G , 11 hours agoJFK was on to that truth, and would have been wise to mini-nuke Langley before his ill-fated journey to Dallas.
vova.2018 , 7 hours agoExcept when there's something exceptionally evil (like pedo/blackmail rings such as Epstein), in which case it's Mossad / Aman
GreatUncle , 6 hours agoExcept when there's something exceptionally evil (like pedo/blackmail rings such as Epstein), in which case it's Mossad / Aman
The CIA & MOSSAD work hand in hand in all their clandestine operations. There is not doubt the CIA/MOSSAD are behind the creation, evolution, training, supplying weapons, logistic-planning & financing of the terrorists & the destruction of the Middle East. Anybody that believes the contrary has brain problems & need to have his head examined.
CIA/MOSAD has been running illegal activities in Colombia: drug, arms, organs & human (child-sex) trafficking. CIA/MOSAD is also giving training, logistic & arms to Colombia paramilitary for clandestine operation against Venezuela. After Bolsonaro became president, MOSSAD started running similar operation in Brazil. Israel & Brazil also recognizes Guaido as the legit president of Venezuela.
CIA/MOSSAD have a long time policy of assassinating & taking out pep who are a problem to the revisionist-zionist agenda, not just in the M-East but in the world. The CIA/MOSSAD organizations have many connections in other countries like the M-East, Saudi Arabia, UAE, et al but also to the UK-MI5.
The Israelis infiltrated the US to the highest levels a long time ago - Proof
- Israel has & collects information (a database) of US citizens in coordination with the CIA & the 5 eyes.
- Israel works with the NSA in the liaison-loophole operations
- Mossad undercover operations in WDC & all over the world
- The American Israel Public Affairs Committee – AIPAC
- People with 2 citizenships (US/Israel) in WDC/NYC (the real Power)
- From Steve Bannon a christian-zionist: Collusion between the Trump administration and Israel .
- D-Trump, Ivanka Trump & husband Kushner (orthodox Juus)
- Epstein & Ghislaine Maxwell, members of the MOSSAD ran their entire pedo-honey-pot operation for the CIA/Mossad
- CIA/MOSSA want to punish Iran for its role in Syria's victory over ISIS (created by CIA/Mossad) - PROOF: McCain Armed ISIS https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ziNlUuc167E
New book details Israel's secret history of assassinations
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ge-mnC2wGssCIA Assassination Manual Revealed (CIA = Cover action agency)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=s3gQfoFCpPsLyman54 , 16 hours agoWell I never expected anything different.
They have a hand in everything and probably the murder of JFK.
Hell the CIA have even had their own president.
They are supposed to be commanded by the president but personally I think they are a rogue operation controlled by somebody else.
sborovay07 , 15 hours agoMillie Weavers documentary explains everything quite well. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9HFxVvrXjCg
smacker , 11 hours agoFunny how a number of the right wing conspiracy stories according to the MSM from a couple years back were true from the get go. 1 indictment over 4 years in the greatest attempted coup in this country's history. So sad that Binney and Assange were never listened to. They can try to silence us who know of the truth, but as Winston Churchill once said, 'Truth is incontrovertible. Panic may resent it. Ignorance may deride it. Malice may distort it. But there it is.' KDP still censors my book on their advertising platform as it promotes conspiratorial theories (about the Obama led coup) and calls out BLM and Antifa for what they are (marxists) . Yet the same platform still recommends BLM books stating there is a pandemic of cops killing innocent blacks. F them!!!! #RIPSeth #FreeJulian #FreeMillie
ACMeCorporations , 12 hours agoYes, and we all know the name of the DNC leaker who downloaded and provided WikiLeaks
with evidence of CIA and DNC corruption.
He was assassinated to prevent him from naming who Guccifer 2.0 was and where he is located.The Russia-gate farce itself provides solid evidence that the CIA and others are in bed with DNC
and went to extraordinary lengths to prevent Trump being elected. When that failed, they instigated
a program of x-gates to get him out of office any way they could. This continues to this day.This is treason at the highest level.
Nelbev , 9 hours agoHacking? What Russian hacking?
In recently released testimony, the CEO of CrowdStrike admitted in congressional testimony, under oath, that it actually has no direct evidence Russia stole the DNC emails.
Vivekwhu , 8 hours ago"The proof relies on their forensic analysis of the data released by Guccifer. The analysis of timestamps demonstrates that the download of voluminous data could not have been physically possible based on known standard internet speeds. ... a disgruntled staffer who downloaded the information on to a disc. That is the only feasible way such a huge amount of data could have been released. ... William Binney says forensic analysis of the files released by Guccifer shows that the mystery hacker deliberately inserted digital "fingerprints" in order to give the impression that the files came from Russian sources. ... "
Any computer file is a bunch of 1s and 0s. Anyone can change anything with a hex editor. E.g. I had wrong dates on some photographs once, downloaded as opposed to when taken, just edited the time stamp. You cannot claim any time stamp is original. If true time stamps, then the DNC files were downloaded to a thumb drive at a computer on location and not to the internet via a phone line. However anyone can change the time stamps. Stating a "mystery hacker deliberately inserted digital [Russian] 'fingerprints' " is a joke if denying the file time stamps were not tampered with. The real thing is where the narrative came from, political spin doctors, Perkins Coie law firm hired by DNC and Hillary campaign who hired Crowdstrike [and also hired Fusion GPS before for pissgate dossier propaganda and FISC warrants to spy on political opponents] and Perkins Coie edited Crowdstrike report with Russian narrative. FBI never looked at DNC servers. This is like your house was broken into. You deny police the ability to enter and look at evidence like DNC computers. You hire a private investigator to say your neighbor you do not like did it and publicise accusations. Take word of political consultants hired, spin doctor propaganda, Crowdstrike narrative , no police investigation. Atlantic Council?
The_American , 15 hours agoThe Atlantic Council is another NATO fart. Nuff said!
Yen Cross , 14 hours agoGod Damn traitor Obama!
Leguran , 6 hours agoTOTUS
For the youngsters.
Teleprompter Of The United States.
Know thy enemy , 10 hours agoThe CIA has gotten away with so much criminal behavior and crimes against the American public that this is totally believable. Congress just lets this stuff happen and does nothing. Which is worse - Congress or the CIA?
Congress set up the system. It is mandated to perform oversight. And it just sits on its thumbs and wallows in it privileges.
This time Congress went further than ever before. It was behind and engaged in an attempted coup d'état.
DontHateMeBecauseImABureaucrat , 9 hours agoLink to ShadowGate (ShadowNet) documentary - which answers the question, what is the keystone,,,,,
https://www.pscp.tv/Tore_says/1RDGlrYynRgxL
"Comey here, and Holder, while I get a rope for Lynch, and don't forget Brennan."
Kudo's to Millie
bringonthebigone , 8 hours agoNeither google nor Apple will open the link. Or it's not there.
I Claudius , 5 hours agocurrently it is up here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9HFxVvrXjCg
freedommusic , 7 hours agoIt's time for Assange and Wikileaks to name the person who they rec'd the info from. By hiding behind the "we don't name names" Mantra they are helping destroy America by polarizing its citizens. Name the damn person, get it all out there so the left can see that they've been played by their leaders. Let's cut this crap.
on target , 4 hours ago...all the evidence was pointing back to CIA as the originator [of] Guccifer 2.0.
Yep, I knew since day one. I remember seeing Hillary Clinton talking about Guccifer . As soon as uttered the name, I KNEW she with the CIA were the brainchild of this bogus decoy.
They copy. They mimic. These are NOT creative individuals.
Perhaps hell is too good a place for them.
fersur , 7 hours agoThis is old news but worth bringing up again. The CIA never wanted Trump in, and of course, they want him out. Their fingerprints were all over Russiagate, The Kavanaugh hearings, Ukrainegate, and on and on. They are just trying to cover their asses for a string of illegal "irregularities" in their operations for years. Trump should never have tried to be a get along type of guy. He should have purged the entire leadership of the CIA on day one and the FBI on day 2. They can not be trusted with an "America First" agenda. They are all New World Order types who know whats best for everyone.
STONEHILLADY , 7 hours agoBoom, Boom, Boom !
Three Reseachable Tweets thru Facebook, I cut all at once, Unedited !
"#SusanRice has as much trouble with her memory as #HillaryClinton. Rice testified in writing that she 'does not recall' who gave her key #Benghazi talking points she used on TV, 'does not recall' being in any meetings regarding Benghazi in five days following the attack, and 'does not recall' communicating with anyone in Clinton's office about Benghazi," Tom Fitton in Breitbart.
"Adam Schiff secretly subpoenaed, without court authorization, the phone records of Rudy Giuliani and then published the phone records of innocent Americans, including @realDonaldTrump 's lawyers, a member of Congress, and a journalist," @TomFitton .
BREAKING: Judicial Watch announced today that former #Obama National Security Advisor and U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations, Susan Rice, admitted in written responses given under oath that she emailed with former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton on Clinton's non-government email account and that she received emails related to government business on her own personal email account.
Max21c , 7 hours agoIt's not just the Democrats, the warmongering neocons of the Republican party are also in on it, the Bush/Romney McCain/McConnell/Cheney and many more. It's called "Kick Backs" Ever notice these so called retired Generals all end up working for all these spying companies that span the 5eyes to Israel. It seems our POTUS has got his hands full swimming up stream to get this stopped and actually get rid of the CIA. It's the number 1 reason he doesn't trust these people, they all try to tell him stuff that is mis-directed.
Liars, leakers, and thieves are running not only our nation but the world, as George Carlin said, "It's a Big Club, and we ain't in it." If you fall for this false narrative of mail in voting and not actually go and vote on election day, you better start learning Chinese for surely Peelosi and Schumer will have their way and mess up this election so they can drag Trump out of office and possible do him and his family some serious harm, all because so many of you listen to the MSM and don't research their phony claims.
Max21c , 7 hours agoIt's called "Kick Backs" Ever notice these so called retired Generals all end up working for all these spying companies that span the 5eyes to Israel.
American Generals & Admirals are a lot more corrupt today than they were a few generations back. Many of them are outright evil people in today's times. Many of these people are just criminals that will steal anything they can get their banana republic klepto-paws on. They're nothing but common criminals and thieves. No different than the Waffen SS or any other group of brigands, bandits, and criminal gangsters.
BandGap , 7 hours agoThe CIA, FBI, NSA, Military Intelligence, Pentagon Gestapo, defense contractors are mixed up in a lot of crimes and criminal activities on American soil against American citizens and American civilians. They do not recognize borders or laws or rights of liberty or property rights or ownership or intellectual property. They're all thieves and criminals in the military secret police and secret police gangsters cabal.
otschelnik , 8 hours agoI have seen Binney's input. He is correct in my view because he scientifically/mathematically proves his point.
The blinded masses do not care about this approach, just like wearing masks.
The truth is too difficult for many to fit into their understanding of the world.
So they repeat what they have been told, never stopping to consider the facts or how circumstances have been manipulated.
It is frustrating to watch, difficult to navigate at times for me. Good people who will not stop and think of what the facts show them.
fersur , 8 hours agoIt could have been the CIA or it could have been one of the cut-outs for plausible deniability, and of all the usual suspects it was probably CrowdStrike.
- CGI / Global Strategy Group / Analysis Corp. - John Brennan (former CEO)
- Dynology, Wikistrat - General James L. Jones (former chairman of Atlantic Council, NSA under Obama)
- CrowdStrike - Dmitri Alperovich and Shawn Henry (former chief of cyber forensics FBI)
- Clearforce - Michael Hayden (former dir. NSA under Clinton, CIA under Bush) and Jim Jones Jr. (son Gnrl James Jones)
- McChrystal Group - Stanley McChrystal (former chief of special operations DOD)
fersur , 8 hours agoUnedited !
The Brookings Institute – a Deep State Hub Connected to the Fake Russia Collusion and Ukraine Scandals Is Now Also Connected to China Spying In the US
The Brookings Institute was heavily involved in the Democrat and Deep State Russia collusion hoax and Ukraine impeachment fraud. These actions against President Trump were criminal.
This institute is influenced from foreign donations from entities who don't have an America first agenda. New reports connect the Institute to Chinese spying.
As we reported previously, Julie Kelly at American Greatness released a report where she addresses the connections between the Brookings Institute, Democrats and foreign entities. She summarized her report as follows: Accepting millions from a state sponsor of terrorism, foisting one of the biggest frauds in history on the American people, and acting as a laundering agent of sorts for Democratic political contributions disguised as policy grants isn't a good look for such an esteemed institution. One would be hard-pressed to name a more influential think tank than the Brookings Institution. The Washington, D.C.-based nonprofit routinely ranks at the top of the list of the best think tanks in the world; Brookings scholars produce a steady flow of reports, symposiums, and news releases that sway the conversation on any number of issues ranging from domestic and economic policy to foreign affairs.
Brookings is home to lots of Beltway power players: Ben Bernanke and Janet Yellen, former chairmen of the Federal Reserve, are Brookings fellows. Top officials from both Republican and Democrat presidential administrations lend political heft to the organization. From 2002 until 2017, the organization's president was Strobe Talbott. He's a longtime BFF of Bill Clinton; they met in the 1970s at Oxford University and have been tight ever since. Talbott was a top aide to both President Bill Clinton and Secretary of State Hillary Clinton.
Kelly continued:
Brookings-based fellows working at Lawfare were the media's go-to legal "experts" to legitimize the concocted crime; the outlet manipulated much of the news coverage on collusion by pumping out primers and guidance on how to report collusion events from Special Counsel Robert Mueller's appointment to his final report.
Now, testimony related to a defamation lawsuit against Christopher Steele, the author of the infamous "dossier" on Donald Trump, has exposed his direct ties to Talbott in 2016 when he was still head of Brookings. Talbott and Steele were in communication before and after the presidential election; Steele wanted Talbott to circulate the dossier to his pals in John Kerry's State Department, which reportedly is what Talbott did . Steele also briefed top state department officials in October 2016 about his work.
But this isn't the only connection between the Brookings Institute and the Russia collusion and Ukrainian scandals. We were the first to report that the Primary Sub-Source (PSS) in the Steele report, the main individual who supplied Steele with bogus information in his report was Igor Danchenko.
In November 2019, the star witness for the Democrat Representative Adam Schiff's impeachment show trial was announced. Her name was Fiona Hill.
Today we've uncovered that Hill is a close associate of the Primary Sub-Source (PSS) for the Steele dossier – Igor Danchenko – the individual behind most all the lies in the Steele dossier. No wonder Hill saw the Steele dossier before it was released. Her associate created it.
Both Fiona Hill and Igor Danchenko are connected to the Brookings Institute.
They gave a presentation together as Brookings Institute representatives:
Kelly writes about the foreign funding the Brookings Institute partakes:
So who and what have been funding the anti-Trump political operation at Brookings over the past few years? The think tank's top benefactors are a predictable mix of family foundations, Fortune 100 corporations, and Big Tech billionaires. But one of the biggest contributors to Brookings' $100 million-plus annual budget is the Embassy of Qatar. According to financial reports, Qatar has donated more than $22 million to the think tank since 2004. In fact, Brookings operates a satellite center in Doha, the capital of Qatar. The wealthy Middle Eastern oil producer spends billions on American institutions such as universities and other think tanks.
Qatar also is a top state sponsor of terrorism, pouring billions into Hamas, al-Qaeda, and the Muslim Brotherhood, to name a few. "The nation of Qatar, unfortunately, has historically been a funder of terrorism at a very high level," President Trump said in 2017. "We have to stop the funding of terrorism."
An email from a Qatari official, obtained by WikiLeaks, said the Brookings Institution was as important to the country as "an aircraft carrier."
Yesterday the Brookings Institute was connected to spying by Communist China in a post at the Washington Free Beacon :
Part 1 of 2
Let it Go , 8 hours agoPart 2 of 2 !
The Brookings Institution, a prominent Washington, D.C., think tank, partnered with a Shanghai policy center that the FBI has described as a front for China's intelligence and spy recruitment operations, according to public records and federal court documents.
The Brookings Doha Center, the think tank's hub in Qatar, signed a memorandum of understanding with the Shanghai Academy of Social Sciences in January 2018, the institution said . The academy is a policy center funded by the Shanghai municipal government that has raised flags within the FBI.
The partnership raises questions about potential Chinese espionage activities at the think tank, which employs numerous former government officials and nearly two dozen current foreign policy advisers to Joe Biden's presidential campaign.
It is really frightening that one of two major political parties in the US is tied so closely with the Brookings Institute. It is even more frightening that foreign enemies of the United States are connected to this entity as well.
fersur , 7 hours agoOne thing for sure is these guys have far to much of our money to spend promoting their own good.
fersur , 7 hours agoUnedited !
Mueller Indictments Tied To "ShadowNet," Former Obama National Security Advisor and Obama's CIA Director – Not Trump
By Patrick Bergy, Cyber-Security, Veteran & Former DoD Contractor
December 18th, 2018
According to a report in the Daily Beast, which cited the Wall Street Journal's reporting of Special Counsel Robert Mueller's investigation into two companies, Wikistrat and Psy Group, "The firm's advisory council lists former CIA and National Security Agency director Michael Hayden, former national security adviser James L. Jones."
According to numerous reporting from major news outlets like the Wall Street Journal and Daily Beast, both Wikistrat and Psy Group represent themselves as being social media analysts and black PSYOP organizations. Both Wikistrat and Psy Group have foreign ownership mixed between Israeli, Saudi (Middle East) and Russian. Here is what the Wall Street Journal, The Daily Beast and pretty much everyone else out there doesn't know (or won't tell you).
The fact Obama's former National Security Advisor, General James Jones, and former Obama CIA director, Gen. Michael Hayden, are both on Wikistrat's advisory board may not seem suspicious, but both of these general's have another thing in common, and that is the ShadowNet. The ShadowNet, and its optional companion relational database, iPsy, were both originally developed by the small, family owned defense contracting company, Dynology. The family that owns Dynology; Gen. James Jones. I would add Paul Manafort and Rick Davis was Dynology's partner at the time we were making the ShadowNet and iPsy commercially available.
After obtaining the contract in Iraq to develop social media psychological warfare capabilities, known in military nomenclature as Interactive Internet Activities, or IIA, Gen. Jones kept the taxpayer funded application we developed in Iraq for the 4th Psychological Operation Group, and made it commercially available under the trademark of the "ShadowNet" and the optional black PSYOP component, "iPsy." If you think it is interesting that one of the companies under Mueller's indictment is named, "Psy" Group, I did as well. In fact, literally everything both publicly described in news reports, and even their websites, are exactly the same as the ShadowNet and iPsy I helped build, and literally named.
The only thing different I saw as far as services offered by Wikistrat, and that of Dynology and the ShadowNet, was described by The Daily Beast as, "It also engaged in intelligence collection." Although iPsy was a relational database that allowed for the dissemination of whatever the required narrative was, "intelligence collection" struck another bell with me, and that's a company named ClearForce.
ClearForce was developed as a solution to stopping classified leaks following the Edward Snowden debacle in 2013. Changes in NISPOM compliance requirements forced companies and government agencies that had employees with government clearances to take preventive measure to mitigate the potential of leaking. Although the NISPOM compliance requirement almost certainly would have been influenced by either Hayden, Jones or both, they once again sought to profit from it.
Using components of the ShadowNet and iPsy, the ClearForce application (which the company, ClearForce, was named after,) was developed to provide compliance to a regulation I strongly suspect you will find Jones and Hayden had a hand in creating. In fact, I strongly suspect you will find General Jones had some influence in the original requirement for our Iraq contract Dynology won to build the ShadowNet – at taxpayer expense! Dynology worked for several years incorporating other collection sources, such as financial, law enforcement and foreign travel, and ties them all into your social media activity. Their relationship with Facebook and other social media giants would have been nice questions for congress to have asked them when they testified.
Part 1 of 2 !
Balance-Sheet , 4 hours agoPart 2 of 2 !
The ClearForce application combines all of these sources together in real-time and uses artificial intelligence to predictively determine if you are likely to steal or leak based on the behavioral profile ClearForce creates of you. It can be used to determine if you get a job, and even if you lose a job because a computer read your social media, credit and other sources to determine you were likely to commit a crime. It's important for you to stop for a moment and think about the fact it is privately controlled by the former CIA director and Obama's National Security Advisor/NATO Supreme Allied Commander, should scare the heck out of you.
When the ClearForce application was complete, Dynology handed it off to ClearForce, the new company, and Michael Hayden joined the board of directors along with Gen. Jones and his son, Jim, as the president of ClearForce. Doesn't that kind of sound like "intelligence collection" described by the Daily Beast in Wikistrat's services?
To wrap this all up, Paul Manafort, Rick Davis, George Nader, Wikistrat and Psy Group are all directly connected to Mueller's social media influence and election interreference in the 2016 presidential election. In fact, I believe all are under indictment, computers seized, some already sentenced. All of these people under indictment by Mueller have one key thing in common, General James Jones's and Michael Hayden's social media black PSYOP tools; the ShadowNet, iPsy and ClearForce.
A recent meeting I had with Congressman Gus Bilirakis' chief of staff, Elizabeth Hittos, is confirmation that they are reviewing my DoD memorandum stating the work I did on the IIA information operation in Iraq, the Dynology marketing slicks for the ShadowNet and iPsy, along with a screenshot of Goggle's Way-Back Machine showing Paul Manafort's partnership with Dynology in 2007 and later. After presenting to her these facts and making clear I have much more information that requires the highest classification SCIF to discuss and requires being read-on to the program, Elizabeth contacted the office of Congressman Devin Nunez to request that I brief the intelligence committee on this critical information pertaining directly to the 2010 Ukrainian elections, Michael Brown riots, 2016 election interference and the "Russia collusion" hoax. All of that is on top of numerous questionable ethical and potentially illegal profits from DoD contracts while servings as NATO Commander and Obama's National Security Advisor.
We also need to know if the ShadowNet and iPsy were allowed to fall into foreign hands, including Russia, Saudi Arabia and Israel. I'm pretty sure South America is going to have a few questions for Jones and Obama as well? Stay tuned!
Balance-Sheet , 4 hours agoIntelligence Agencies of all countries endlessly wage war at all times especially 'Information Warfare' (propaganda/disinformation) and the primary target has always and will always be the domestic population of the Intelligence Agency's country.
Yes, of course the CIA does target ALL other countries but the primary target will always be the Americans themselves.
Paralentor , 5 hours agoIntelligence Agencies of all countries endlessly wage war at all times especially 'Information Warfare' (propaganda/disinformation) and the primary target has always and will always be the domestic population of the Intelligence Agency's country.
Yes, of course the CIA does target ALL other countries but the primary target will always be the Americans themselves.
yerfej , 8 hours agoA lot more detail can be found here:
https://banned.video/watch?id=5f37fcc2df77c4044ee2eb03
SHADOW GATE – FULL FILM
462,864 views
LaugherNYC , 15 hours agoThe neoliberals own the media, courts, academia, and BUREAUCRACY (including CIA) and they will do anything to make sure they retain power over everyone. These control freaks work hard to create all sorts of enemies to justify their existence.
Stone_d_agehurler , 15 hours agoIt is sad that this information has to be repeatedly published, over and over and over, by SCI and other Russian. outlets.
Because no legit AMERICAN news outlet will give Binney or Assange the time of day or any credence, this all becomes Kremlin-sponsored disinformation and denials. People roll their eyes and say "Oh God, not the whole 'Seth Rich was murdered by the CIA' crap again!! You know, his FAMILY has asked that people stop spreading these conspiracy theories and lies."
SCI is a garbage bin, nothing more than a dizinformatz machine for Putin, but in this case, they are likely right. It seems preposterous that the "best hackers in the world" would forget to use a VPN or leave a signature behind, and it makes far more sense that the emails were leaked by someone irate at the abuses of the DNC - the squashing of Bernie, the cheating for Hillary in the debates - behavior we saw repeated in 2020 with Bernie shoved aside again for the pathetic Biden.
Would that SOMEONE in the US who is not on the Kremlin payroll would pick up this thread. But all the "investigative journalists" now work indirectly for the DNC, and those that don't are cancelled by the left.
PeterLong , 4 hours agoI am Guccifer and I approve this message.
Sarc/
But i do share your opinion. They are likely right this time and most of the pundits and media in the U. S. know it. That's what makes this a sad story about how rotten the U. S. system has become.
Democrats will sacrifice the Union for getting Trump out of office.
If elections in Nov won't go their way, Civil War II might become a real thing in 2021.
RightlyIndignent , 4 hours agoIf " digital "fingerprints" in order to give the impression that the files came from Russian sources" were inserted in the leak by "Guccifer", and if the leak to wikileaks came from Seth Rich, via whatever avenue, then the "Guccifer" release came after the wikileaks release, or after wikileaks had the files, and was a reaction to same attempting to diminish their importance/accuracy and cast doubt on Trump. Could CIA and/or DNC have known the files were obtained by wikileaks before wikileaks actually released them? In any case collusion of CIA with DNC seems to be a given.
novictim , 4 hours agoBecause Seth had already given it to Wikileaks. There is no 'Fancy Bear'. There is no 'Cozy Bear'. Those were made up by CrowdStrike, and they tried the same crap on Ukraine, and Ukraine told them to pound sand. When push came to shove, and CrowdStrike was forced to say what they really had under oath, they said: "We have nothing."
Joebloinvestor , 5 hours agoYou are leaving out Crowd Strike. Seth Rich was tasked by people at the DNC to copy data off the servers. He made a backup copy and gave a copy to people who then got it to Wiki leaks. He used highspeed file transfers to local drives to do his task.
Meanwhile, it was the Ukrainian company Crowd Strike that claimed the data was stolen over the internet and that the thieves were in Russia. That 'proof" was never verified by US Intelligence but was taken on its word as being true despite crowd strike falsifying Russian hacks and being caught for it in the past.
Southern_Boy , 5 hours agoThe "five eyes" are convinced they run the world and try to.
That is what Brennan counted on for these agencies to help get President Trump.
As I said, it is time for the UK and the US to have a serious conversation about their current and ex-spies being involved in US elections.
on target , 5 hours agoIt wasn't the CIA. It was John Brennan and Clapper. The CIA, NSA FBI, DOJ and the Ukrainian Intelligence Service just went along working together and followed orders from Brennan who got them from Hillary and Obama.
Oh, and don't forget the GOP Globalist RINOs who also participated in the coup attempt: McCain, Romney, Kasich, Boehner, Lee and Richard Burr.
With Kasich now performing as a puppy dog for Biden at the Democrat Convention as a Democrat DNC executive, the re-alignment is almost complete: Globalist Nationalist Socialist Bolshevism versus American Populism, i.e. Elites versus Deplorables or Academics versus Smelly Wal-Mart people.
RightlyIndignent , 4 hours agoNo way. CIA up to their eyeballs in this as well as the State Department. Impossible for Russiagate or Ukrainegate without direct CIA and State involvement.
LeadPipeDreams , 6 hours agoFollowing Orders? How did that argument go at Nuremberg? (hint: not very well)
Iconoclast27 , 5 hours agoLOL - the CIA's main mission - despite their "official" charter, has always been to destabilize the US and its citizens via psyops, false flags, etc.
Covid-1984 is their latest and it appears most successful project yet.
A_Huxley , 6 hours agoThe CIA received a $200 million initial investment from the Rockefeller and Carnegie foundations when it was first established, that should tell you everything you need to know how who they truly work for.
Let it Go , 8 hours agoCIA, MI6, 5 eye nations.
All wanted to sway the USA their own way.
avoiceofliberty , 16 hours agoAlmost as frightening as the concentrated power held by companies such as Facebook and Google is the fact Jeff Bezos, CEO of Amazon and the world's richest man, is the person who owns and controls the Washington Post. It is silly to think Jeff Bezos purchased the Washington Post in 2013 because he expected newspapers to make a lucrative resurgence.
It is more likely he purchased the long-trusted U.S. newspaper for the power it would ensure him in Washington when wielded as a propaganda mouthpiece to extend his ability to both shape and control public opinion. More on this subject in the article below.
https://Amazon, Jeff Bezos, And The Influential Washington Post_31.html
avoiceofliberty , 6 hours agoThe amazing thing about Binney's forensic analysis is that it has been around since 2018 .
It's also been clear since 2017 the hack of the DNC computers didn't hold up under scrutiny .
How it is the Democrats, the Deep State, and the legacy media are still able to cling to the remnants of these long discredited narratives is a mystery.
Alice-the-dog , 6 hours agoAt the official level, you have a point.
However, even before Mueller was appointed, a review of the materials in the extant public record of both the DNC "hack" and the history of Crowdstrike showed the narrative simply did not make sense. A detailed investigation of materials not made public was not necessary to shoot down the entire narrative.
Indeed, one of the great scandals of the Mueller probe is the way it did not bring prudential skepticism to the question of the DNC "hack". When building a case, either for public debate or for public trial, a dose of skepticism is healthy; it leads to a careful vetting of facts and reasoning.
snodgrass , 6 hours agoThe CIA has been an agency wholly independent of the US government almost since its inception. It is not under any significant control by the government, and has its own agenda which may occasionally coincide with that of the government, but only coincidentally. It has its own view of how the world should look, and will not balk at any means necessary to achieve such. Including the murder of dis-favorable members of government.
Floki_Ragnarsson , 7 hours agoIt's the CIA and the FBI, Obama and people in his administration who cooked up Russiagate.
DeportThemAll , 6 hours agoThe CIA whacked JFK because he was going to slow the roll to Vietnam AND disband the CIA and reform it.
It is broken and needs to be disbanded and reformed along lines that actually WORK! The CIA missed the fall of the USSR, 9/11, etc. HTF does THAT happen?
Let it Go , 8 hours agoThe CIA didn't "miss" 9/11... they participated in it.
tion , 16 hours agoThe CIA is a tool that when improperly used can do great damage.
Anyone who doesn't believe that countries use psychological warfare and propaganda to sway the opinions of people both in and outside of their country should be considered naive. Too many people America is more than a little hypocritical when they criticize other countries for trying to gain influence considering our history of meddling in the affairs of other countries.
Americans have every reason to be concerned and worried considering revelations of just how big the government intelligence agencies have grown since 9-11 and how unlimited their spying and surveillance operations have become. The article below explores this growth and questions whether we have lost control.
http://Psychological Warfare And Propaganda Out Of Control.html
Son of Captain Nemo , 8 hours agoThe idea of Binney and Jason Sullivan privately working to 'secure the vote' is something that I actually consider to be very eyebrow raising and alarming.
fliebinite , 9 hours agoBill Binney under "B" in the only "yellow pages" that show a conscience and a soul!...
https://www.ae911truth.org/signatures/#/General/B/williambinneysevernMDUS
bringonthebigone , 9 hours agoThis is the dumbest article ever. Russiagate is a total fabrication of the FBI as per Clinesmith, CIA provided information that would have nipped it at the bud. Read the real news.
PKKA , 14 hours agoWrong. this article is one small piece of the puzzle. Clinesmith is one small piece of the puzzle. The Flynn entrapment is one small piece of the puzzle. The Halper entrapment was one small piece of the puzzle.
Because Clinesmith at the FBI covered up the information saying Page was a CIA source does not mean it was a total FBI fabrication and does not mean the CIA was not involved and does not mean the DNC server hack is irrelevant.
Milley Weaver gets close in her recent video. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9HFxVvrXjCg
Sundance does a better job pulling it all together.
smacker , 12 hours agoRelations have already soured between Russia and the United States, and sanctions have been announced. Tensions have grown on the NATO-Russia border. The meat has already been rolled into the minced meat and it will not be possible to roll the minced meat back into the meat. The CIA got it. But the Russian people now absolutely understand that the United States will always be the enemy of Russia, no matter whether socialist or capitalist. But I like it even more than the feigned hypocritical "friendship". Russia has never reached such heights as during the good old Cold War. All Russians have a huge incentive, long live the new Cold War!
smacker , 12 hours agoMore and more people have worked out that the fabricated tensions between the US and Russia
and US and China have little to do with those two countries posing any sort of threat to world peace.It is all about the US trying to remain in No.1 position as uni-polar top dog via the Anglo American Empire.
We see examples of this every day in the M/E, South China Sea, Taiwan, Libya all over Eastern Europe,
Ukraine, Iran and now Belaruse. HK was added along the way.Both Russia and China openly want a multi-polar world order. But the US will never accept that.
Hence the prospect of war. The only unknown today is what and where the trigger will be.
hang_the_banksters , 31 minutes agoMore and more people have worked out that the fabricated tensions between the US and Russia
and US and China have little to do with those two countries posing any sort of threat to world peace.It is all about the US trying to remain in No.1 position as uni-polar top dog via the Anglo American Empire.
We see examples of this every day in the M/E, South China Sea, Taiwan, Libya all over Eastern Europe,
Ukraine, Iran and now Belaruse. HK was added along the way.Both Russia and China openly want a multi-polar world order. But the US will never accept that.
Hence the prospect of war. The only unknown today is what and where the trigger will be.
ConanTheContrarian1 , 1 hour agothe best proof thAt Guccifer 2 was CIA hacking themselves to frame Wikileaks is this:
Guccifer has not yet been identified, indicted and arrested.
you'd think CIAFBINSA would be turning over every stone to the ends of the earth to bust Guccifer. we just had to endure 4 years of hysterical propaganda that Russia had hacked our election and that Trump was their secret agent. so Guccifer should be the Most Wanted Man on the planet. meanwhile, it's crickets from FBI. they arent even looking for him. because Guccifer is over at Langley. maybe someone outta ask Brennan where G2 is now.
remember when DOJ indicted all those GRU cybersoldiers? the evidence listed in the indictment was so stunning that i dont believe it. NSA so thoroughly hacked back into GRU that NSA was watching GRU through their own webcams and recording them doing Google searches to translate words which were written in Guccifer's blog posts about the DNC email leaks. NSA and DOJ must think we are all stupid, that we will believe NSA is so powerful to do that, yet they cant identify Guccifer.
i say i dont believe that for a second because no way Russian GRU are so stupid to even have webcams on the computers they use to hack, and it is absurd to think GRU soldiers on a Russian military base would be using Google instead of Yandex to translate words into English.
lay_arrowgreatdisconformity , 1 hour agoAs a confirmed conspiracy theorist since I came back from 'Nam, here's mine: The European nobility recognized with the American and French revolutions that they needed a better approach. They borrowed from the Tudors (who had to deal with Parliament) and began to rule by controlling the facade of representative government. This was enhanced by funding banks to control through currency, as well as blackmail and murder, and morphed into a complete propaganda machine like no other in history. The CIA, MI6 and Mossad, the mainstream media, deep plants in bureaucracy and "democratic" bodies all obey their dictates to create narratives that control our minds. Trump seems to offer hope, but remember, he could be their latest narrative.
A Democracy cannot function on a higher level than the general electorate.
The intelligence and education of the general electorate has been sliding for generations, because both political parties can play this to their advantage.
It is no accident that most of the messages coming from politicians are targeted to imbeciles.
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Aug 16, 2020 | turcopolier.typepad.com
FBI Lawyer Who Was A Member of the Mueller Probe Committed A Crime On Company Time. by JThe Mueller 'gang' as I'll call them has been caught with their pants down. The official FBI lawyer team-member of the Mueller gang is now under criminal indictment. A criminal indictment has been filed against former FBI Attorney Kevin Clinsesmith. H is criminal action occurred while he was a part of the Mueller Investigative Team . This crime is detailed in the Information Charging Document filed by the United States Department of Justice with the United States District Court for the District of Columbia, wherein it documents that "on or about June 19, 2017" Kevin Clinesmith "did willfully and knowingly make and use a false writing and document, knowing the same to contain materially false, fictitious, and fraudulent statement and entry in a matter before the jurisdiction of the executive branch and judicial branch of the Government of the United States".
https://assets.documentcloud.org/documents/7036421/Kevin-Clinesmith-Indictment.pdf
Kevin Clinesmith while he was part of the Mueller Team did this while President Trump was in office.
-- "Count One" violation of 18 U.S.C. § 1001 (a) (3), that specifically says Clinesmith "shall be fined under this title, imprisoned not more than 5 years or, if the offense involves international or domestic terrorism (as defined in section 2331), imprisoned not more than 8 years, or both" -- the critical meaning of which is that Clinesmith is not only facing 5-years in prison, but could see his sentence having another 8-years added on if the crime he committed was domestic terrorism as defined by 18 U.S. C. § 2331.Definitions -- a definition that makes it a domestic terrorism crime "to influence the policy of a government by intimidation or coercion" -- and is a domestic terrorism crime.
Clinesmith effectively admitted to committing this crime when he sent a text saying "I Have Initiated the Destruction of the Republic" -- that explains why Clinesmith has agreed to a plea deal with US Attorney Durham that will see him pleading guilty and giving evidence against other coup plotters.
See U.S.C. : 18 U.S. C. § 2331.Definitions
Clinesmith is proving to be a linchpin of the Operation Crossfire Hurricane investigation that the FBI used to illegally target the Trump campaign in which Clinesmith took part in the decision to send an FBI special agent into a counterintelligence briefing with Donald Trump and General Michael Flynn. Clinesmith being one of the FBI lawyers who took part in interviews with George Papadopoulos -- as well as Clinesmith was one of the plotters behind the FISA warrant having been illegally obtained to spy on President Trump after he was in office. Clinesmith did with joy as evidenced by his 22 November 2016 text disdaining Trump's election victory saying Viva le Resistance , of which caught Clinesmith by his short-hairs and he now fearing dread knowing he stuck his foot in his mouth so-to-speak.
It is sad that Clinesmith forgot his FBI OATH -- "I do solemnly swear that I will support and defend the Constitution of the United States against all enemies, foreign and domestic; that I will bear true faith and allegiance to the same; that I take this obligation freely, without any mental reservation or purpose of evasion; and that I will well and faithfully discharge the duties of the office on which I am about to enter. So help me God"
It is now Trump's turn to take down all of the membership of the attempted Coup d'Etat. Pop your popcorn, get out your beer and sodas, and settle in. The show is just getting started.J
JohninMK , 16 August 2020 at 11:44 AM
nbsp; turcopolier , 16 August 2020 at 12:12 PMEven though we assume (the case is not clear yet) this is all about Clinsesmith reversing the meaning of a document submitted to the FISA court, about as bad act a senior FBI lawyer can get up to, they are nowhere near as confident as yourself about the potential outcome of this case over at the CTH.
Much more along the lines of this being another James Wolfe situation. Like Wolfe, Clinsesmith knows too much and if he spills it all hell lets loose. However, to show there is justice for all he, again like Wolfe, will spend a short amount of time in a white collar jail and that's it.
By pleading guilty he has saved himself a small fortune in lawyers fees. Nice one.
SusieQ , 16 August 2020 at 12:34 PMJohninMK
I agree that he has made a deal with Durham but if Durham presses him he must tell all about all or loose the deal and become the cutest fellow in the cell block.
nbsp; turcopolier , 16 August 2020 at 12:43 PMSomeone asked that I paint a bird's eye, 20,000 mile high view of the why's and wherefore's for this whole fiasco, and I'd like feedback.
I draw a direct line from Russiagate to the West's NATO/EU expansion it's collusion with fascist forces to Regime Change(TM) Ukraine in '14
• where Manafort was working to promote Ukraine's EU accession (AGAINST Russia's interests)
• backed by the Clinton, Obama, McCain, Kerry, Nuland State Department, and the establishment media
• leading Crimeans to vote 95% for annexation with Russia, to escape the Ukraine civil war
prompting punishing sanctions to damage the recovery of Russia• which was looted by the oligarchs under Clinton/Yeltsin/Summers "shock therapy" in the '90s.
• including by oligarch tax cheat Bill Browder who lied to promote the extra-judicial and bogus Magnitsky Act (REAL reason for Trump Tower meeting)
• all hiding behind a massive psy-op campaign of McCarthyite anti-Russia, anti-Putin hysteria
• brought to you by the (corrupt) FBI, CIA, NSA, MI-6, Five Eyes, all led by the nose by John Brennan, and
• and the disinfo industry and a spy network which laid out the breadcrumbs of distraction, while trying to entrap bozos George Papadopolous, Carter Page, Roger Stone, etc.
• ALL because Trump (via Manafort) would know the truth, and not see Russia as THE ENEMY - which would totally blowing their cover.
So, the incompetent Dems handed Trump his re-election victory and sparked a dangerous new Cold War (World War?) and nuclear M.A.D.
No one benefits from this other than the military/national security/information industry complex.
-=-=- whadayathink? -=-=-
Deap , 16 August 2020 at 12:45 PMSuzieQ
"I draw a direct line from Russiagate to the West's NATO/EU expansion it's collusion with fascist forces to Regime Change(TM) Ukraine in '14" Do you think the Russians were guilty or not?
SusieQ , 16 August 2020 at 01:13 PMPlead guilty to a crime and you lose your bar license. I guess Clinesmith was not ready to fall back being only a bar-tender after all, so he is now wiggling out of his "plea agreement". The gulf between pleading guilty and pleading nolo contendre now appears insurmountable.
Reality bites, along with the drawn-out difficulty getting justice in any of this Spygate takedown. Humbles one about the amount of time it takes to actually build a beyond a reasonable doubt case against any of these now exposed players, when the defendant can successfully argue - I didn't intend to commit a crime, and/or I can't recall or I don't remember anything about this incident.
Carry on Barr-Durham You have my very best wishes and even prayers. Just like Benghazi, something happened, but you just can't prove something happened. Is that justice served or a miscarriage of justice?
JohninMK , 16 August 2020 at 01:38 PMTurcopolier
Guilty of what in particular?
Jack , 16 August 2020 at 01:40 PMCol, the Russians guilty of what?
nbsp; turcopolier , 16 August 2020 at 03:40 PMSusieQ,
An alternate theory that I find very plausible is that FBI contractors were using the NSA database for political opposition research. When the NSA found out and closed that avenue there was a movement to hide that activity. Russia Collusion provided that opportunity as the Clinton campaign funded Steele Dossier got laundered by Fusion GPS, DOJ official Bruce Ohr and with the support of Obama White House became the basis to launch a counter-intelligence investigation. After Trump got elected this operation moved to hide and obfuscate. Getting Flynn out became priority one and Trump obliged by firing him. Mueller was the additional option to prevent exposure and Trump once gain acceded by not declassifying.
As documents get declassified now the public, at least those following this story, get to see how law enforcement and intelligence were used to interfere in a presidential election and frame an opposition political candidate and duly elected president as a Manchurian Candidate. Even more importantly we see how the entire justice system got weaponized using false evidence and secret courts as well as a campaign of disinformation using the media who were in cahoots to destroy the Trump presidency.
Clinesmith's plea deal is an important cornerstone in uncovering both the malfeasance and the violation of law. He knowingly submitted false evidence to FISC to obtain a FISA warrant. The only open question is how far and deep does Bill Barr want to go?
SusieQ , 16 August 2020 at 04:40 PMSuzieQ
Your comment is badly written and I am trying to get a clarification.
Turcopoier,
Begging your indulgence for my 'stream-of-consciousness' argument. Just trying to connect so many points and history into a concise post.
My view of Russia under Putin has been of a country initially leaning West but unwilling to give up its sovereignty to US diktat, given the history of NATO aggression.
It was the logical course of events which convinced me Putin was not the aggressor in Ukraine. First, the Sochi Olympics with all of the media potshots at Russia/Putin, concurrent and immediately followed by the Maidan coupe and ultra-right attacks on eastern Ukrainians, especially the fiery massacre in the Odessa Trade Union building killing nearly nearly 50, with 200 injured.
In the public record at the time was NATO's position that Ukraine must cancel a lease given the Russians to keep its centuries old naval fleet (it's only warm water base) on the Crimean peninsula. So, the accession of Crimea to the Russian federation by democratic vote seemed only too logical, considering it had historically been considered part of Russia.
Otherwise, Russia foreign policy appears to be a model for the world, when compared side-by-side with that of the U.S., IMHO.
Thank you for the opportunity to clarify.
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Nov 24, 2019 | crookedtimber.org
...14% of New Jersey Republicans thought Obama was Antichrist and 15% weren't sure
Hidari 11.23.19 at 8:37 am (no link)
@1Hidari 11.23.19 at 10:36 am ( 11 )
Well for various reasons I was in a room full of young Chinese people immediately after the election of Trump. I asked what their opinion was, and one piped up (with the obvious support of the rest) that they thought it would be very good, as Trump was obviously a deranged lunatic and imbecile whose shambolic rule (this was not how he expressed it, of course, but this was the gist) would weaken the United States, and 'America's weakness is China's opportunity'.While I agree with the basic points that this post is making, obviously, I am very wary of opinions in which it is assumed that the 'threat' to a Western country is that it might 'sink' to the level of some non-Western country (assuming you conceptualise Russia as being non-Western which is a highly debatable point).
'Trump is the natural friend of dictators everywhere,' As opposed to precisely which American President? 'It's hard to see democracy surviving anywhere if it fails in the US.'
The US 'leads the world' in gerrymandering and voter suppression ( https://www.gregpalast.com/crosscheck-not-just-crooked-criminal/ ), and this is almost invariably racially tinged, which the equivalent in Russia is not (or at least not so openly). Congressional seats are openly gerrymandered ( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gerrymandering_in_the_United_States#Modern_implementation_(2000_-_) )
And the Senate is even worse: https://www.answers.com/Q/Why_is_the_US_Senate_is_considered_undemocratic
The electoral college is grotesque and racist: https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2019/11/electoral-college-racist-origins/601918/
As everyone has pointed out, Hilary in fact won the last Presidential election in terms of votes. It is almost unheard of in an advanced 'democracy' for the Head of State to 'win' an election via a minority of the votes.
On top of these things one has the increasing powergrab by the non-democratic Supreme Court, which has simply decreed that it is the major 'power in the land' with a 'lock' on what laws get passed and which do not, and the populace be damned.
Not to mention the de facto chokehold that corporations have on who can run for office and what positions they can hold (Sanders, with his 'new' way of raising money, is challenging this. We shall see what happens).
It is not at all clear to me that the US is in any objective sense more democratic than, say, Iran (although it is a lot more FREE than Iran .but that's not the same thing).
So Trump is likely to exacerbate and intensify trends that have been going on for decades.
A bit more about what I wrote about the Supreme Court (and the American 'justice' system) more generally, which CT commentator Corey Robin has been noting tirelessly, to widespread apathy amongst Democratic elites.John Quiggin 11.23.19 at 11:09 am ( 12 )'The Supreme Court will probably overrule decades of progressive precedents and strike down the next Democratic president's reforms. You would not know this from watching the 2020 Democratic presidential debates. Wednesday's showdown in Atlanta, the fifth so far, did not include a single question about the courts. Earlier debates allowed for brief discussions of the Supreme Court, but every candidate dramatically underestimated the threat it poses to the Democratic Party. Both the candidates and the moderators appear to be astonishingly naïve about the judiciary's lurch to the right under Donald Trump. And it is pointless to discuss the Democrats' ambitious proposals without explaining how they are going to survive at SCOTUS.
It's not just the debates -- Democratic politicians rarely talk about the courts at all. There is an enthusiasm gap between Democrats and Republicans when it comes to the judiciary: GOP voters are more likely to be motivated by the opportunity to fill judicial vacancies, which is why Trump ran on a promise of appointing archconservative judges. Democratic voters focus more on individual political issues, and their party has never prioritized judges -- or campaigned on the fact that every political dispute is ultimately resolved as a judicial question. This complacency will prove catastrophic for progressives now that Justice Brett Kavanaugh has replaced Justice Anthony Kennedy, shoring up a conservative majority that will obstruct liberal policies for a generation.'
THIS is the threat to progressivism (well, all the other things that I mentioned are threats too, but this is the one that's liable to be the 'straw that breaks the camels' back').
https://slate.com/news-and-politics/2019/11/democratic-candidates-supreme-court-trump-judiciary.html
@Hidari Most of the Democratic candidates have signalled willingness to pack the SC if it rules in a partisan way. Even Booker and Klobuchar are saying "wait and see" rather than opposing outright. . I'm sure Roberts doesn't need reminders, so the absence of much discussion doesn't seem like a problem to me.Robert Zannelli 11.23.19 at 11:17 am ( 13 )
https://www.politico.com/story/2019/03/18/2020-democrats-supreme-court-1223625As regards the lower courts, they can only interpret legislation. A determined Congressional majority can respond to any adverse interpreation with legislation that repudiates it. It's only gridlock and Congressional cowardice that has given US courts so much power.
An Excellent analysis, I am happy to see the pseudo intellectual Jonathan Haidt called out for what he is. He's the king of false equivalencies , a disease we suffer from these days. Haidt is a conservative pretending to be a neutral observer to legitimize the toxic ideology of conservatism. Maybe someone should send Haidt Corey Robin's book " The Reactionary Mind " not that he would read itsteven t johnson 11.23.19 at 4:00 pm (no link)I was so astonished at the notion Trump cares (or trusts?) his children enough to appoint one president I rather forgot the rest of the post.But fascism is just a different way of mobilizing the nation for war than democracy. So the real issue with Trumpian fascism is who he's going to fight and how. I believe economic warfare waged against the masses in a foreign country is an atrocity. Venezuela, Iran and as ever North Korea are targets. The goal in the economic war on China is the restoration of capitalism and/or the division of the country. But do democrats/Democrats really disagree with this? Except that they want more use of weapons and a better deal for the EU?
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Apr 30, 2018 | www.wsws.org
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. Elissa Slotkin
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."
The 23rd Congressional District in Texas, which includes a vast swathe of the US-Mexico border along the Rio Grande, features a contest for the Democratic nomination between Gina Ortiz Jones, an Air Force intelligence officer in Iraq, who subsequently served as an adviser for US interventions in South Sudan and Libya, and Jay Hulings. The latter's website describes him as a former national security aide on Capitol Hill and federal prosecutor, whose father and mother were both career undercover CIA agents. The incumbent Republican congressman, Will Hurd, is himself a former CIA agent, so any voter in that district will have his or her choice of intelligence agency loyalists in both the Democratic primary and the general election.
CNN's "State of the Union" program on March 4 included a profile of Jones as one of many female candidates seeking nomination as a Democrat in Tuesday's primary in Texas. The network described her discreetly as a "career civil servant." However, the Jones for Congress website positively shouts about her role as a spy, noting that after graduating from college, "Gina entered the US Air Force as an intelligence officer, where she deployed to Iraq and served under the US military's 'Don't Ask, Don't Tell' policy" (the last phrase signaling to those interested in such matters that Jones is gay).
According to her campaign biography, Ortiz Jones was subsequently detailed to a position as "senior advisor for trade enforcement," a post President Obama created by executive order in 2012. She would later be invited to serve as a director for investment at the Office of the US Trade Representative, where she led the portfolio that reviewed foreign investments to ensure they did not pose national security risks. With that background, if she fails to win election, she can surely enlist in the trade war efforts of the Trump administration.
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Aug 08, 2020 | www.zerohedge.com
by Tyler Durden Fri, 08/07/2020 - 21:05 Twitter Facebook Reddit Email Print
Authored by Sara Carter via SaraACarter.com,
Many people have asked me why I haven't written a book since the start of my reporting on the FBI's debunked investigation into whether President Donald Trump's campaign conspired with Russia.
I haven't done so because I don't believe the most important part of the story has been told: indictments and accountability. I also don't believe we actually know what really happened on a fundamental level and how dangerous it is to our democratic republic. That will require a deeper investigation that answers the fundamental questions of the role played by former senior Obama officials, including the former President and his aides.
We're getting closer but we're still not there.
Still, the extent of what happened during the last presidential election is much clearer now than it was years ago when trickles of evidence led to years of what Fox News host Sean Hannity and I would say was peeling back the layers of an onion. We now know that the U.S. intelligence and federal law enforcement was weaponized against President Donald Trump's 2016 campaign and administration by a political opponent. We now know how many officials involved in the false investigation into the president trampled the Constitution.
I never realized how terrible the deterioration inside the system had become until four years ago when I stumbled onto what was happening inside the FBI. Those concerns were brought to my attention by former and current FBI agents, as well as numerous U.S. intelligence officials aware of the failures inside their own agencies. But it never occurred to me when I first started looking into fired FBI Director James Comey and his former side kick Deputy Director A ndrew McCabe that the cultural corruption of these once trusted American institutions was so vast.
I've watched as Washington D.C. elites make promises to get to the bottom of it and bring people to justice. They appear to make promises to the American people they never intended to keep. Who will be held accountable for one of the most egregious abuses of power by bureaucrats in modern American political history? Now I fear those who perpetuated this culture of corruption won't ever really be held accountable.
These elite bureaucrats will, however, throw the American people a bone. It's how they operate.
They expect us to accept it and then move on.
https://lockerdome.com/lad/13084989113709670?pubid=ld-dfp-ad-13084989113709670-0&pubo=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.zerohedge.com&rid=www.zerohedge.com&width=890
One example is the most recent decision by the Justice Department to ask that charges be dropped on former national security advisor Michael Flynn. It's just a bone because we know now these charges should have never been brought against the three-star general but will anyone on former Special Counsel Robert Mueller's team have to answer for ruining a man's life. No, they won't. In fact, Flynn is still fighting for his freedom.
Think about what has already happened? From former Attorney General Jeff Session's appointment of Utah Prosecutor John Huber to the current decision by Attorney General William Barr to appoint Connecticut prosecutor John Durham to investigate the malfeasance what has been done? Really, nothing at all. No one has been indicted.
The investigation by the FBI against Trump was never predicated on any real evidence but instead, it was a set-up to usurp the American voters will. It doesn't matter that the establishment didn't like Trump, in 2016 the Americans did. Isn't that a big enough reason to bring charges against those involved?
His election was an anomaly for the Washington elite. They were stunned when Trump won and went into full gear to save their own asses from discovery and target anyone who supported him. The truth is they couldn't stand the Trump and American disruptors who elected him to office.
Now they will work hand in fist to ensure that this November election is not a repeat win of 2016. We're already seeing that play out everyday on the news.
But Barr and Durham are now up against a behemoth political machine that seems to be operating more like a steam roller the closer we get to the November presidential elections.
Barr told Fox News in June that he expects Durham's report to come before the end of summer but like always, it's August and we're still waiting.
Little is known about the progress of Durham's investigation but it's curious as to why nothing has been done as of yet and the Democrats are sure to raise significant questions or concerns if action is taken before the election. They will charge that Durham's investigation is politically motivated. That is, unless the charges are just brought against subordinates and not senior officials from the former administration.
I sound cynical because I am right now. It doesn't mean I won't trying to get to the truth or fighting for justice.
But how can you explain the failure of Durham and Barr to actually interview key players such as Comey, or former Director of National Intelligence James Clapper, or former CIA Director John Brennan. That is what we're hearing from them.
If I am going to believe my sources, Durham has interviewed former FBI special agent Peter Strzok, along with FBI Special agent Joe Pientka, among some others. Still, nothing has really been done or maybe once again they will throw us bone.
If there are charges to be brought they will come in the form of taking down the subordinates, like Strzok, Pientka and the former FBI lawyer Kevin Clinesmith , who altered the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act application against short term 2016 campaign advisor Carter Page.
Remember DOJ Inspector General Michael Horowitz's report in December, 2019: It showed that a critical piece of evidence used to obtain a warrant to spy on Page in 2016 was falsified by Clinesmith.
But Clinesmith didn't act alone. He would have had to have been ordered to do such a egregious act and that could only come from the top. Let's see if Durham ever hold those Obama government officials accountable.
I don't believe he will.
Why? Mainly because of how those senior former Obama officials have behaved since the troves of information have been discovered. They have written books, like Comey, McCabe, Brennan and others, who have published Opinion Editorials and have taken lucrative jobs at cable news channels as experts.
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It's frankly disgusting and should anger every American. We would never get away with what these former Obama officials have done. More disturbing is that the power they wield through their contacts in the media and their political connections allows these political 'oligarchs' unchallenged power like never before.
Here's one of the latest examples.
Former Special Counsel Robert Mueller's top prosecutor Andrew Weissmann just went after Barr in a New York Times editorial on Wednesday. He went so far as to ask the Justice Department employees to ignore any direction by Barr or Durham in the Russia investigations. From Weissmann's New York Times Opinion Editorial:
Today, Wednesday, marks 90 days before the presidential election, a date in the calendar that is supposed to be of special note to the Justice Department. That's because of two department guidelines, one a written policy that no action be influenced in any way by politics. Another, unwritten norm urges officials to defer publicly charging or taking any other overt investigative steps or disclosures that could affect a coming election.
Attorney General William Barr appears poised to trample on both. At least two developing investigations could be fodder for pre-election political machinations. The first is an apparently sprawling investigation by John Durham, the U.S. attorney in Connecticut, that began as an examination of the origins of the F.B.I. investigation into Russia's interference in the 2016 election. The other , led by John Bash, the U.S. attorney for the Western District of Texas, is about the so-called unmasking of Trump associates by Obama administration officials. Mr. Barr personally unleashed both investigations and handpicked the attorneys to run them.
But Justice Department employees, in meeting their ethical and legal obligations , should be well advised not to participate in any such effort.
I think Barr and Durham need to move fast if they are ever going to do anything and if they are going to prove me wrong. We know now that laws were broken and our Constitution was torched by these rogue government officials.
We shouldn't give the swamp the time-of-day to accuse the Trump administration of playing politics or interfering with this election. If the DOJ has evidence and is ready to indict they need to do it now.
If our Justice Department officials haven't done their job to expose the corruption, clean out our institutions and hold people accountable then it will be a tragedy for our nation and the American people. I'm frankly tired of the back and forth. I'm tired of being toyed with and lied to. I believe they should either put up or shut up.
- 192
Revolution_starts_now , 4 hours agoWestcoaster , 4 hours agoOh Please, JFK, MLK,RFK and MX were all just a few.
50 Years after JFK, still cannot release info?
Just who the hell are we kidding?
lay_arrowebworthen , 4 hours agoYou're absolutely right. And don't get me started on 9/11. The country needs an old fashion PURGE.
play_arrowCognitive Dissonance , 4 hours agoThis is how empires collapse.
NeitherStirredNorShaken , 4 hours agoThere are two things a sociopath acquires on the way up the socioeconomic ladder.
1) Power
2) Knowledge of where all the dead bodies are.....especially the ones he or she personally buried.
lay_arrow 1Gold Banit , 4 hours agoSara must have missed my detailed facts and evidence over the last five years or so proving the entire government guilty of sedition, treason, complete failure of fiduciary duty and seemingly endless more crimes. Waiting for the hierarchy to prosecute itself is a waste of time.
Instead of a book start putting together something like Citizens Arrest teams.
LEEPERMAX , 3 hours agoNobody has been charged and nobody has gone to jail and nobody will be charged or go to jail cause DemoRats and Republicans are best of friends....Fact
I have a question for all of the American posters here!
How did you all get so dumb naive brainwashed and FN Stupid?
Is Hillary in jail ?V
play_arrowyerfej , 3 hours agoIt's called " Running out the Clock " by almost every criminal on the planet.
WE'VE ALL BEEN PLAYED FROM THE GET GO .
play_arrowsborovay07 , 3 hours agoIts interesting that there are people out there who actually think this progressive push can be stopped, it is now impossible. Sixty or seventy years ago there might have been enough people with morals to fight but not anymore, the majority of people in the media, courts, academia, and bureaucracy are immoral thieves who are only interested in lining their pockets. They are HAPPY to see as many people as necessary sacrificed so they can get theirs, everyone else be damned. Not sure what the exact turning point was but its long ago.
ay_arrowFarmer Tink , 2 hours agoLove Sarah and John. She's 100% right as unless the top treasonists pay for their crimes it was nothing more of a shame investigation by Durnham. The victory laps taken by Hannity and others is nothing more than hot air. Easy to bring down the little guys, but the Comey's, Brennan's and Clapper's have to pay. Trump's trust in Barr is waning as we get closer to the election. Most who have followed all of this the past 4 years know the criminals are still within the bureaucracies that attempted to overthrow a sitting President. Only if Assange would have been granted immunity to testify. Now we are dependent on career government officials to bring justice. #RIPSeth.
geo_w , 17 minutes agoWeissmann's oped in the NYT strikes me as a threat against any DOJ attorney who dares work on any of Durham's cases. The Obama people would not have any compunctions against trying to ruin the lives of any attorney there who doesn't defy Barr. I wouldn't expect to be hired by any private firm ever again, I'd look for an attorney to represent me before the disciplinary committee off my bar association and I would assume that I'd be harassed and forced out by the next Dem AG if I did stay at DOJ.
Rather than see this as a symptom of strength, I see this as panic. If Durham has nothing or will do nothing, then why threaten junior lawyers? Weissmann's an unethical snake, but I think that he's rather nervous.
play_arrowSoloamber , 20 minutes agoMy respect for the FBI is gone.
InTheLandOfTheBlind , 4 hours agoI would like to see what Weissmann's $haul was from the "Mueller " investigation .
Sessions was a joke and the Mueller financed fraud should never have taken place .
Trump has been blind sided over and over by intel at the FBI and DOJ .
They take care of themselves .
play_arrow4Y_LURKER , 3 hours agoJustice dept doesnt hold people accountable. They have to prove the opposite and let a jury or judicial, not administrative, employee impose judgements.
Sara,
Dont overplay your hand.
What if it's a High Royal Flush?
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Aug 05, 2020 | crookedtimber.org
oldster 08.05.20 at 1:59 pm (no link)
Whenever there is a real social problem that affects many people, then rich, entitled elites will attempt to commandeer it in order to consolidate their privilege.
If the sentencing guidelines are draconian and cruel, sending poor people to prison for their lives, then white-collar criminals will complain that their 6-month sentence is a gross injustice that proves they should be let out on bail.
If housing prices are so high that ordinary workers cannot afford the rent, then millionaires will complain that they can no longer afford to keep a third home.
It's a predictable phenomenon. Elites will pretend that their minor inconveniences are epic agonies, in order to be spared even minor inconveniences. We know this.
But we also know that the mere fact of elite whinging is no evidence that there is not a real problem for non-elites.
In fact, the sentencing guidelines are unconscionably harsh: a man in Louisiana has been sent to jail for life, for stealing a pair of secateurs, and the Louisiana supreme court has declined to intervene.
In fact, housing is too expensive, and ordinary people are suffering on a massive scale from artificial scarcity designed to entrench real-estate wealth. The rent is too damned high.This is the lens through which I see so-called cancel culture: there is a real problem, for ordinary people, of having your life severely damaged by a trivial offense, or by no offense at all. And of course, predictably, elite whiners want to hijack this real concern in order to maintain their impunity.
But the elites are a parasitical epiphenomenon: they are attempting to take advantage of a pre-existing problem that hurts other people far more than it hurts them. And our justifiable contempt for the elites should not blind us to the existence of a real social problem that affects non-elites.
The pre-existing problems are those that Natalie Wynn enumerates: assumptions of guilt, essentializing moves from a single bad act to a wicked character, guilt by association, impossibility of forgiveness, and so on. These patterns pre-exist the internet, and are probably to be found in even small-scale societies. They are pathologies that are closely related to healthy and functional mechanisms of social cohesion, as tumor-growth is related to tissue-growth.
So, shed no tears for Bari Weiss and Bret Stephens. They do not need protecting -- they are already coddled far too much. When the OP focuses on their plights as examples of "cancel culture," then cancel culture, so-described, looks like a well-deserved comeuppance, a refreshing chink in the armor of elite impunity.
Fine: I agree with all of that. I also agree that I would love to see white-collar criminals go to jail for 20-50 years, and I'd love to see millionaires unable to afford a third house.
But it would be crazy to move from that stance to saying, "and I'd love to see petty thieves sent to jail for life, and I'd love to see minimum wage workers evicted from their homes because they cannot make the rent."
So, elite suffering is a side-show here (as it so often is). Focus on the lives of the non-elite. Their suffering should control our responses to the situation. Focus on the contingent academics fired from their jobs for speaking their minds. On the worker falsely accused of a white-power sign.
And what should be done after we focus on these things? Not what the right-wing zealots say, under the false flag of "free speech": not bringing back a regime in which the powerful can use slurs to subjugate the powerless.
No: if someone repeatedly uses the n-word in order to inflict pain and humiliation on others, then they should suffer real consequences. I totally agree with that. If someone repeatedly addresses a co-worker with the pronouns that offend them, and does so knowing that it will offend them, then they should suffer real consequences.
But I reject zero-tolerance regimes. A black school-guard asking students not to use the n-word should not be punished at all for mentioning the n-word. A well-meaning and supportive co-worker who mistakenly uses the wrong pronoun on one occasion should not be punished at all for that faux pas.
And along with zero-tolerance regimes, we should also get rid of the parade of abuses that Natalie Wynn lists: assumptions of guilt without evidence, guilt by association, refusal of forgiveness, and so on.
That's a practical agenda that allows for us to make fun of elite opinion makers as much as we like, allows us to hurl twitter tomatoes at J.K Rowling all day long, and in no way interferes with any notion of free speech worth defending.
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Aug 03, 2020 | www.zerohedge.com
How The Billionaires Control American Elections
by Tyler Durden Sun, 08/02/2020 - 23:40 Twitter Facebook Reddit Email Print
Authored by Eric Zuesse via The Strategic Culture Foundation,
The great investigative journalist Glenn Greenwald gave an hour-long lecture on how America's billionaires control the U.S. Government, and here is an edited summary of its opening twenty minutes, with key quotations and assertions from its opening -- and then its broader context will be discussed briefly:
"How Congress Maintains Endless War – System Update with Glenn Greenwald" - The Intercept, 9 July 2020
https://www.youtube.com/embed/ejqYrzEX14E
2:45 : There is "this huge cleavage between how members of Congress present themselves, their imagery and rhetoric and branding, what they present to the voters, on the one hand, and the reality of what they do in the bowels of Congress and the underbelly of Congressional proceedings, on the other. Most of the constituents back in their home districts have no idea what it is that the people they've voted for have been doing, and this gap between belief and reality is enormous."
Four crucial military-budget amendments were debated in the House just now, as follows:
to block Trump from withdrawing troops from Afghanistan.
to block Trump from withdrawing 10,000 troops from Germany
to limit U.S. assistance to the Sauds' bombing of Yemen
to require Trump to explain why he wants to withdraw from the Intermediate Nuclear Forces Treaty
On all four issues, the pro-imperialist position prevailed in nearly unanimous votes - overwhelming in both Parties. Dick Cheney's daughter, Republican Liz Cheney, dominated the debates, though the House of Representatives is now led by Democrats, not Republicans.
Greenwald (citing other investigators) documents that the U.S. news-media are in the business of deceiving the voters to believe that there are fundamental differences between the Parties. "The extent to which they clash is wildly exaggerated" by the press (in order to pump up the percentages of Americans who vote, so as to maintain, both domestically and internationally, the lie that America is a democracy -- actually represents the interests of the voters).
16:00 : The Chairman of the House Armed Services Committee -- which writes the nearly $750B annual Pentagon budget -- is the veteran (23 years) House Democrat Adam Smith of Boeing's Washington State.
"The majority of his district are people of color." He's "clearly a pro-war hawk" a consistent neoconservative, voted to invade Iraq and all the rest.
"This is whom Nancy Pelosi and House Democrats have chosen to head the House Armed Services Committee -- someone with this record."
He is "the single most influential member of Congress when it comes to shaping military spending."
He was primaried by a progressive Democrat, and the "defense industry opened up their coffers" and enabled Adam Smith to defeat the challenger.
That's the opening.
Greenwald went on, after that, to discuss other key appointees by Nancy Pelosi who are almost as important as Adam Smith is, in shaping the Government's military budget. They're all corrupt. And then he went, at further length, to describe the methods of deceiving the voters, such as how these very same Democrats who are actually agents of the billionaires who own the 'defense' contractors and the 'news' media etc., campaign for Democrats' votes by emphasizing how evil the Republican Party is on the issues that Democratic Party voters care far more about than they do about America's destructions of Iraq and Syria and Libya and Honduras and Ukraine, and imposing crushing economic blockades (sanctions) against the residents in Iran, Venezuela and many other lands. Democratic Party voters care lots about the injustices and the sufferings of American Blacks and other minorities, and of poor American women, etc., but are satisfied to vote for Senators and Representatives who actually represent 'defense' contractors and other profoundly corrupt corporations, instead of represent their own voters. This is how the most corrupt people in politics become re-elected, time and again -- by deceived voters. And -- as those nearly unanimous committee votes display -- almost every member of the U.S. Congress is profoundly corrupt.
Furthermore: Adam Smith's opponent in the 2018 Democratic Party primary was Sarah Smith (no relation) and she tried to argue against Adam Smith's neoconservative voting-record, but the press-coverage she received in her congressional district ignored that, in order to keep those voters in the dark about the key reality. Whereas Sarah Smith received some coverage from Greenwald and other reporters at The Intercept who mentioned that "Sarah Smith mounted her challenge largely in opposition to what she cast as his hawkish foreign policy approach," and that she "routinely brought up his hawkish foreign policy views and campaign donations from defense contractors as central issues in the campaign," only very few of the voters in that district followed such national news-media, far less knew that Adam Smith was in the pocket of 'defense' billionaires. And, so, the Pentagon's big weapons-making firms defeated a progressive who would, if elected, have helped to re-orient federal spending away from selling bombs to be used by the Sauds to destroy Yemen, and instead toward providing better education and employment-prospects to Black, brown and other people, and to the poor, and everybody, in that congressional district, and all others. Moreover, since Adam Smith had a fairly good voting-record on the types of issues that Blacks and other minorities consider more important and more relevant than such things as his having voted for Bush to invade Iraq, Sarah Smith really had no other practical option than to criticize him regarding his hawkish voting-record, which that district's voters barely even cared about. The billionaires actually had Sarah Smith trapped (just like, on a national level, they had Bernie Sanders trapped).
Of course, Greenwald's audience is clearly Democratic Party voters, in order to inform them of how deceitful their Party is. However, the Republican Party operates in exactly the same way, though using different deceptions, because Republican Party voters have very different priorities than Democratic Party voters do, and so they ignore other types of deceptions and atrocities.
Numerous polls (for examples, this and this ) show that American voters, except for the minority of them that are Republican, want "bipartisan" government; but the reality in America is that this country actually already does have that: the U.S. Government is actually bipartisanly corrupt, and bipartisan evil. In fact, it's almost unanimous, it is so bipartisan, in reality.
That's the way America's Government actually functions, especially in the congressional votes that the 'news'-media don't publicize. However, since it lies so much, and its media (controlled also by its billionaires) do likewise, and since they cover-up instead of expose the deepest rot, the public don't even know this. They don't know the reality. They don't know how corrupt and evil their Government actually is. They just vote and pay taxes. That's the extent to which they actually 'participate' in 'their' Government. They tragically don't know the reality. It's hidden from them. It is censored-out, by the editors, producers, and other management, of the billionaires' 'news'-media. These are the truths that can't pass through those executives' filters. These are the truths that get filtered-out, instead of reported. No democracy can function this way -- and, of course, none does.
Patmos , 8 hours agoAlice-the-dog , 2 hours agoEisenhower originally called it the Military Industrial Congressional Complex.
Was probably still when Congress maybe had a few slivers of integrity though.
As McCain's wife said, they all knew about Epstein.
Question_Mark , 1 hour agoAnd now we suffer the Medical Industrial Complex on top of it.
EngageTheRage , 9 hours agoKlaus Schwab, UN/World Economic Forum - power plant "cyberattack" (advance video to 6:42 to skip intro):
please watch video at least from minute 6:42 at least for a few minutes to get context, consider its contents, and comment:https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EOvz1Flfrfw
source for UN/WEF partnership:
https://www.weforum.org/press/2019/06/world-economic-forum-and-un-sign-strategic-partnership-framework/NewDarwin , 9 hours agoHow jewish billionaires control America.
EndOfDayExit , 7 hours agoVot3 for trump but don't waste too much energy on the elections. All Trump can do is buy us time.
Their plan has been in the works for over a century.
1) financial collapse with central banking.
2) social collapse with cultural marxism
3) government collapse with corrupt pedophile politicians.
JGResearch , 8 hours ago"The price of freedom is eternal vigilance." -Thomas Jefferson
Humans are just not wired for eternal vigilance. Sheeple want to graze and don't want to think.
KuriousKat , 8 hours agoMoney is just the tool, it goes much deeper:
The Truth, when you finally chase it down, is almost always far
worse than your darkest visions and fears.'
– Hunter S. Thompson, Kingdom of Fear'The world is governed by very different personages from what is imagined by those who are not behind the scenes' *- Benjamin Disraeli, Prime Minister of the United Kingdom
This information helps understand the shift to the bias we are witnessing at The PBS Newshour and the MSM. PBS has always taken their marching orders from the Council on Foreign Relations.
Some of the mebers of the CFR:
Joe Biden (47th Vice President of the United States )
Judy Woodruff, and Jim Lehrer (journalist, former anchor for PBS ) is a member of the Council on Foreign Relations. John McCain (United States Republican Senator from Arizona , 2008 Republican Party nominee for the Presidency), William F. Buckley, Jr (commentator, publisher, founder of the National Review ), Jeffery E Epstein (financier)
https://www.cfr.org/membership/roster
The Council on Foreign Relations has historical control both the Democratic establishment and the Republican establishment until President Trump came along.
Until then they did not care who won the presidency because they control both parties at the top.
FYI: Hardly one person in 1000 ever heard of the Council on Foreign Relations ( CFR ). Until Trump both Republicans and Democrats control by the Eastern Establishment.There operational front was the Council on Foreign Relations. Historically they did not care who one the election since they controlled both parties from the top.
The CFR has only 3000 members yet they control over three-quarters of the nation's wealth. The CFR runs the State Department and the CIA. The CFR has placed 100 CFR members in every Presidential Administration and cabinet since Woodrow Wilson. They work together to misinform the President to act in the best interest of the CFR not the best interest of the American People.
At least five Presidents (Eisenhower, Ford, Carter, Bush, and Clinton) have been members of the CFR. The CFR has packed every Supreme court with CFR insiders.
Three CFR members (Stephen Breyer, Ruth Bader Ginsberg, and Sandra Day O'Connor) sit on the supreme court. The CFR's British Counterpart is the Royal Institute of International Affairs. The members of these groups profit by creating tension and hate. Their targets include British and American citizens.
The CFR/RIIA method of operation is simple -- they control public opinion. They keep the identity of their group secret. They learn the likes and dislikes of influential people. They surround and manipulate them into acting in the best interest of the CFR/RIIA.
jmNZ , 3 hours agothere are 550 of them in the US..just boggles the mind they have us at each others throat instead of theirs.
x_Maurizio , 2 hours agoThis is why America's only hope is to vote for Ron Paul.
Voice-of-Reason , 6 hours agoLet me understand how a system, which is already proven being disfunctional, should suddenly produce a positive result. That's craziness: to repeate the same action, with the conviction it will give a different result.
If you would say: "The only hope is NOT TO TAKE PART TO THE FARCE" (so not to vote) I'd understand.
But vot for that, instead of this.... what didn't you understand?Eastern Whale , 8 hours agoThe very fact that we have billionaires who amass so much wealth that they can own our Republic is the problem.
MartinG , 5 hours agoall the names mentioned in this article is rotten to the core
Xena fobe , 4 hours agoTell me again how democracy is the greatest form of government. What other profession lets clueless idiots decide who runs the business.
quikwit , 3 hours agoIt isn't the fault of democracy. It's more the fault of voters.
_triplesix_ , 8 hours agoI'd pick the "clueless idiots" over an iron-fisted evil genius every time.
BTCtroll , 7 hours agoAm I the only one who noticed that Eric Zuesse capitalized the word "black" every time he used it?
F**k you, Eric, you Marxist trash.
freedommusic , 4 hours agoConfirmed. Blacks are apparently a proper noun despite being referred to as simply a color. In reality, no one cares. Ask anyone, they don't care expert black lies matter.
The very word secrecy is repugnant in a free and open society , and we are as a people, inherently and historically, opposed to secret societies, to secret oaths, and to secret proceedings .
And there is very grave danger that an announced need for increased security will be seized upon by those anxious to expand its meaning to the very limits of official censorship and concealment.
Our way of life is under attack.
But we are opposed around the world by a monolithic and ruthless conspiracy that relies primarily on covert means for expanding it's fear of influence, on infiltration instead of invasion, on subversion instead of elections , on intimidation instead of free choice, on guerrillas by night instead of armies by day. It is a system which has conscripted vast human and material resources into the building of a tightly knit, highly efficient machine that combines military, diplomatic, intelligence, economic, scientific, and political operations. It's preparations are concealed, not published. It's mistakes are buried, not headlined. It's dissenters are silenced, not praised. No expenditure is questioned. No rumor is printed. No secret is revealed. It conducts the Cold War in short with a wartime discipline, no democracy would ever hope or wish to match.
...I am asking the members of the newspaper profession and the industry in this country to re-examine their own responsibilities, to consider the degree and the nature of the present danger, and to heed the duty of self restraint, which that danger imposes upon us all.
It is the unprecedented nature of this challenge that also gives rise to your second obligation and obligation which I share, and that is our obligation to inform and alert the American people, to make certain that they possess all the facts that they need and understand them as well, the perils, the prospects, the purposes of our program, and the choices that we face.
I am not asking your newspapers to support an administration, but I am asking your help in the tremendous task of informing and alerting the American people, for I have complete confidence in the response and dedication of our citizens, whenever they are fully informed.
... that is why our press was protected by the First Amendment. The only business in America specifically protected by the constitution, not primarily to amuse and entertain, not to emphasize the trivial and the sentimental, not to simply give the public what it wants, but to inform, to arouse, to reflect, to state our dangers and our opportunities, to indicate our crises, and our choices, to lead, mold, educate, and sometimes even anger, public opinion.
-- JFK
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Apr 19, 2019 | www.zerohedge.com
loveyajimbo , 3 hours ago link
Trump DID commit obstruction of justice... he refused to force HIS Dept of Justice to indict Hillary, Comey, Brennan and Clapper for their obvious major felonies.
And YES... he could have.
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Jul 28, 2020 | townhall.com
Go back and watch the sad spectacle for yourself on C-SPAN's website, if you'd like. I wouldn't recommend it. As a preview of coming attractions, Chairman Nadler -- who recently dismissed the serious, documented violence in Portland as a "myth" -- concluded his harried Q&A with this: "Shame on you, Mr. Barr."
... Like many of his colleagues, Nadler repeatedly interrupted Barr's attempts to even begin to respond to the accusations being hurled at him, then concluded his scripted performance with a dramatic "shame on you!" And so it has gone. Alternating parcels of Five Minutes' Hate, interspersed with Republicans playing defense and scoring their own points. Occasional actual questions have slipped through the theater, but the overall episode has been largely useless.
From Berr opning statement:
Ever since I made it clear that I was going to do everything I could to get to the bottom of the grave abuses involved in the bogus "Russiagate" scandal , many of the Democrats on this Committee have attempted to discredit me by conjuring up a narrative that I am simply the President's factotum who disposes of criminal cases according to his instructions. Judging from the letter inviting me to this hearing, that appears to be your agenda today.
So let me turn to that first. As I said in my confirmation hearing, the Attorney General has a unique obligation. He holds in trust the fair and impartial administration of justice. He must ensure that there is one standard of justice that applies to everyone equally and that criminal cases are handled even-handedly, based on the law and the facts, and without regard to political or personal considerations...
Indeed, it is precisely because I feel complete freedom to do what I think is right that induced me serve once again as Attorney General. As you know, I served as Attorney General under President George H. W. Bush.
After that, I spent many years in the corporate world. I was almost 70 years old, slipping happily into retirement as I enjoyed my grandchildren. I had nothing to prove and had no desire to return to government. I had no prior relationship with President Trump.
Watch the whole thing here , or read the full transcript here . I'll leave you with this.
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Jul 06, 2020 | crookedtimber.org
bruce wilder 07.06.20 at 4:11 am (45 )
mainstream Democrats recognize the need for radical change, and Biden will align with the mainstream position as he always has done
You said you would leave this, your third assumption, to comments, so here is my comment.
The U.S. is in the midst of a deep legitimacy crisis and contrary to popular belief among liberals, it is not Trump particularly whose legitimacy is being called into question. Oh, sure, there have been relentless attacks on him -- from partisan opponents and from much of mainstream media -- but like the "anti-racism" of the recent protests -- much of it is dissembling and distraction. Charges of colluding with Putin to win the 2016 election turned out to be fake news -- rather obviously so from the beginning -- but a big enough mob went down that path with no self-awareness. I am not saying Trump is not an egregiously bad President; he is. But, notice please, before you go assuming that mainstream Democrats are going wake up in 2021 wanting to govern in the real world , that they have not shown much inclination toward truth-telling or critical realism these last 20 years.
It is July. By January 2021, the U.S. economy will have suffered a structural collapse in multiple sectors. That is the economic consequence of the pandemic. Restaurants, shopping malls, bars, colleges, hotels, airlines, cruise lines -- easily 15% of the workforce will be unemployed and another 25% seriously underemployed.
Did I mention that the U.S. is undergoing a legitimacy crisis?? Whose legitimacy is being called into question?
I would submit that the legitimacy of the elite professional and managerial classes is being called into question, for want of performance or any sense of responsibility. The urban PMC are the core constituency of the establishment Democratic Party. The vestigial working class elements and the ideological Left are distant memories and oppressed minorities seeking social justice, mere props.
I would say the Party establishment is confident they can put the re-animated corpse of Biden into the White House. And look how gleefully they welcome Republican never-Trumpers into the clubhouse! If you were one of the fools and tools who thought Obama did not want Republicans to control Congress, you are getting another chance to see how the Obama Alumni Association works with the Lincoln Project, how happy they are to deliver the kind of policy that appeals to rich, old, suburban Republican women.
The thing is, the political classes -- the millionaire media pundits, the politicians, the lobbyists, the generals, the journamalists, the manipulative political operatives and propagandists, the pious policy "experts", the highly paid executives and financial managers running monopolies into the ground and non-profits into irrelevance -- they have enacted their neo-liberal agenda and it doesn't work.
We have just watched the once highly touted CDC completely botch the great Pandemic. They could not devise a test. They screwed up the rules on who could or should be tested. They lied early on about the need to wear masks. They staged a moral panic over a need for ventilators, when ventilators are a terrible therapeutic alternative. In the new Puritanism, they shut down public beaches but they watched passively as liberal heroes like Cuomo set off a holocaust by sending COVID-19 patients to nursing homes.
This in a country that cannot manufacture PPE. Or win a war. Trump, in his fumbling way, might get the U.S. out of Afghanistan, but the NY Times -- who brought us WMD not that long ago -- reports the Russians are paying bounties on American soldiers killed. No report on the treatment of Julian Assange though. Boeing is going to get the 737 Max in the air real soon now. Citibank is borrowing at 0.03 from the Fed and lending to credit card users at 27% and may be insolvent.
So, let us assume the Democrats, after nominating an elderly SOB who had a hand in the crime bill that gave the U.S. the highest incarceration rate in the world, the bankruptcy bill that saddled tens of millions with credit card and student debt that cannot be discharged, and every stupid war of the last nearly twenty years, will suddenly see the necessity of radical change. And, after making an alliance with conservative Republicans hostile to even Trump's fake populism in order to elect Biden, seeing the light on radical reform is so likely! So plausible.
And, what's the play? The carrot of bi-partisan cooperation coupled with the fearful stick of abolishing the filibuster someday somehow if they don't play nice. You do realize that only Republicans are allowed to manipulate the filibuster and only in ways that favor their agenda of, say, stacking the courts? And, the strategic vision? Reinforcing the Rube Goldberg contraption which is Obamacare? You do know Biden is on record as adamantly opposed to Medicare4all? And, that Medicaid is a need-based nightmare of controlled deprivation? In a country where public health is such a shambles that a pandemic is running out of control.
You can do better.
Hidari 07.06.20 at 9:59 am ( 51 )
'All the attention in this thread so far has been on the political dimension of uncertainty, but it seems to me the public health dimension is also crucial and quite up in the air. What will the trajectory of the virus look like in the US over the next several months? Will infections continue to explode out of control?'
Not just the public health, but the economic effects of the public health. As I pointed out in a previous thread, it's not difficult to work out why Trump looked like he was going to win in January: the stock market was booming, unemployment was low, crime was low, there were no new wars it's not a mystery.
People vote with their wallets.
If Trump someone manages to face down the neo-liberals in his own party and arrange for a gigantic stimulus bill (bigger than the last one) and keeps 'benefits' going past August, he is in with a shout. If he doesn't, and if the economy continues its path to free fall, he will lose.
People vote with their wallets. It is not difficult. You don't need to invoke Russia and etc. to work out why Trump won in 2016 (the impact of the Obama stimulus package, which was too small, hadn't et 'percolated through' to people's bank balances at that point). And, if Trump loses in 2020, the reasons will be self-evident and nothing to do with 'people seeing through him' or 'brave liberals averted a turn to fascism'. If he loses it will be because he screwed up on the 'good' economy.
People vote with their wallets.
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Jul 03, 2020 | www.zerohedge.com
Writes The Washington Post:
"Durkan called for charges to be dismissed against those who were arrested for alleged misdemeanors The mayor also said that Seattle arts and parks departments would preserve a community garden and artwork and murals that protesters created within the zone."
...Statues of Washington, Jefferson, Jackson, Lincoln, Grant and Theodore Roosevelt are dragged down, while the murals and graffiti of misfits who trashed downtown Seattle are to be preserved.
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Dec 28, 2019 | crookedtimber.org
likbez 12.27.19 at 10:21 pm
John,I've been thinking about the various versions of and critiques of identity politics that are around at the moment. In its most general form, identity politics involves (i) a claim that a particular group is not being treated fairly and (ii) a claim that members of that group should place political priority on the demand for fairer treatment. But "fairer" can mean lots of different things. I'm trying to think about this using contrasts between the set of terms in the post title. A lot of this is unoriginal, but I'm hoping I can say something new.
You missed one important line of critique -- identity politics as a dirty political strategy of soft neoliberals.
See discussion of this issue by Professor Ganesh Sitaraman in his recent article (based on his excellent book The Great Democracy ) https://newrepublic.com/article/155970/collapse-neoliberalism
To be sure, race, gender, culture, and other aspects of social life have always been important to politics. But neoliberalism's radical individualism has increasingly raised two interlocking problems. First, when taken to an extreme, social fracturing into identity groups can be used to divide people and prevent the creation of a shared civic identity. Self-government requires uniting through our commonalities and aspiring to achieve a shared future.
When individuals fall back onto clans, tribes, and us-versus-them identities, the political community gets fragmented. It becomes harder for people to see each other as part of that same shared future.
Demagogues [more correctly neoliberals -- likbez] rely on this fracturing to inflame racial, nationalist, and religious antagonism, which only further fuels the divisions within society. Neoliberalism's war on "society," by pushing toward the privatization and marketization of everything, thus indirectly facilitates a retreat into tribalism that further undermines the preconditions for a free and democratic society.
The second problem is that neoliberals on right and left sometimes use identity as a shield to protect neoliberal policies. As one commentator has argued, "Without the bedrock of class politics, identity politics has become an agenda of inclusionary neoliberalism in which individuals can be accommodated but addressing structural inequalities cannot." What this means is that some neoliberals hold high the banner of inclusiveness on gender and race and thus claim to be progressive reformers, but they then turn a blind eye to systemic changes in politics and the economy.
Critics argue that this is "neoliberal identity politics," and it gives its proponents the space to perpetuate the policies of deregulation, privatization, liberalization, and austerity.
Of course, the result is to leave in place political and economic structures that harm the very groups that inclusionary neoliberals claim to support. The foreign policy adventures of the neoconservatives and liberal internationalists haven't fared much better than economic policy or cultural politics. The U.S. and its coalition partners have been bogged down in the war in Afghanistan for 18 years and counting. Neither Afghanistan nor Iraq is a liberal democracy, nor did the attempt to establish democracy in Iraq lead to a domino effect that swept the Middle East and reformed its governments for the better. Instead, power in Iraq has shifted from American occupiers to sectarian militias, to the Iraqi government, to Islamic State terrorists, and back to the Iraqi government -- and more than 100,000 Iraqis are dead.
Or take the liberal internationalist 2011 intervention in Libya. The result was not a peaceful transition to stable democracy but instead civil war and instability, with thousands dead as the country splintered and portions were overrun by terrorist groups. On the grounds of democracy promotion, it is hard to say these interventions were a success. And for those motivated to expand human rights around the world, it is hard to justify these wars as humanitarian victories -- on the civilian death count alone.
Indeed, the central anchoring assumptions of the American foreign policy establishment have been proven wrong. Foreign policymakers largely assumed that all good things would go together -- democracy, markets, and human rights -- and so they thought opening China to trade would inexorably lead to it becoming a liberal democracy. They were wrong. They thought Russia would become liberal through swift democratization and privatization. They were wrong.
They thought globalization was inevitable and that ever-expanding trade liberalization was desirable even if the political system never corrected for trade's winners and losers. They were wrong. These aren't minor mistakes. And to be clear, Donald Trump had nothing to do with them. All of these failures were evident prior to the 2016 election.
If we assume that identity politics is, first and foremost, a dirty and shrewd political strategy developed by the Clinton wing of the Democratic Party ("soft neoliberals") many things became much more clear. Along with Neo-McCarthyism it represents a mechanism to compensate for the loss of their primary voting block: trade union members, who in 2016 "en mass" defected to Trump.
Initially Clinton calculation was that trade union voters has nowhere to go anyways, and it was correct for first decade or so of his betrayal. But gradually trade union members and lower middle class started to leave Dems in droves (Demexit, compare with Brexit) and that where identity politics was invented to compensate for this loss.
So in addition to issues that you mention we also need to view the role of identity politics as the political strategy of the "soft neoliberals " directed at discrediting and the suppression of nationalism.
The resurgence of nationalism is the inevitable byproduct of the dominance of neoliberalism, resurgence which I think is capable to bury neoliberalism as it lost popular support (which now is limited to financial oligarchy and high income professional groups, such as we can find in corporate and military brass, (shrinking) IT sector, upper strata of academy, upper strata of medical professionals, etc)
That means that the structure of the current system isn't just flawed which imply that most problems are relatively minor and can be fixed by making some tweaks. It is unfixable, because the "Identity wars" reflect a deep moral contradictions within neoliberal ideology. And they can't be solved within this framework.
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Jun 23, 2020 | irrussianality.wordpress.com
- Gerald says: June 20, 2020 at 5:34 pm surely 'legitimacy' goes to the victor. Once you've won you can build a sort of legitimacy that the majority will agree with (whether its real or not) of course if you are a kind of despotic dictatorship (as appears to be happening in terms of western neoliberal capitalism) then you will merely do as you wish regardless until confronted with overwhelming opposition at which point you will infiltrate and co-opt said opposition, pay lip service to their vague claim for 'rights' and continue on your merry way.
I always thought that the greatest thing that the capitalists did in the 20th century was to get the slaves to love their slavery, its all advertising, hollywood, TV that's all that politics has become, certainly in the West. Edward Bernays has a lot to answer for.
Of course ultimately you reach a point where no one truly understands what is real and what isn't any more.
Boris Johnson PM of the UK? Surely not, Theresa May? I can barely wipe the smirk from my face. 4th and 5th rate politicians relying on SPADs to run the country.
There is no wonder that Putin looks like the greatest 21st century leader, the last of a dying breed. Reading his recent essay on the truths of WWII ( http://en.kremlin.ru/events/president/news/63527 ) yet again sees him posting uncomfortable realities to a West knee deep in vassalage to a crumbling US.
Change is coming whether we like it or not, with or without Putin, we'd best tend our own garden and stop worrying about an opposition that simply doesn't exist.
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Mar 03, 2020 | www.moonofalabama.org
TG , Mar 3 2020 22:02 utc | 56
Yet another circus. The proles get to scream and holler, and when all is done, the oligarchy gets the policies it wants, the public be damned. Our sham 'democracy' is a con to privatize power and socialize responsibility.Although it is shocking to see such a disgusting piece of human garbage like Joe Biden get substantial numbers of people to vote for him. Biden has never missed a chance to stab the working class in the back in service to his wealthy patrons.
The issue is not (for me) his creepiness (I wouldn't much mind if he was on my side), nor even his Alzheimer's, but his established track record of betrayal and corruption.
From wiping out the ability of regular folks to declare bankruptcy (something supported by our founding fathers who were NOT socialists), to shipping our industrial base to communist China (which in less enlightened days would have been termed treason), to spending tens of trillions of dollars bailing out and subsiding the big banks (that's not a misprint), to supporting "surprise medical billing," to opening the borders to massive third-world immigration so that wages can be driven down and reset and profits up (As 2015 Bernie Sanders pointed out), Backstabbing Joe Biden is neoliberal scum pure and simple.
It's astonishing that so many people will just blindly accept what they are told, that Biden is. "moderate." Biden is so far to the right, he makes Nixon look like Trotsky. Heck, he makes Calvin Coolidge look like Trotsky.
Mao , Mar 3 2020 22:01 utc | 55
Ian56:Joe Biden is a crook and a con man. He has been lying his whole life. Claimed in his 1988 Campaign to have got 3 degrees at college and finished in top half of his class. Actually only got 1 degree & finished 76th out of 85 in his class.
[VIDEO]
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Jun 02, 2020 | www.truthdig.com
...Inverted totalitarianism also "perpetuates politics all the time," Wolin said when we spoke, "but a politics that is not political." The endless and extravagant election cycles, he said, are an example of politics without politics.
"Instead of participating in power," he writes, "the virtual citizen is invited to have 'opinions': measurable responses to questions predesigned to elicit them."
Political campaigns rarely discuss substantive issues. They center on manufactured political personalities, empty rhetoric, sophisticated public relations, slick advertising, propaganda and the constant use of focus groups and opinion polls to loop back to voters what they want to hear. Money has effectively replaced the vote. Every current presidential candidate -- including Bernie Sanders -- understands, to use Wolin's words, that "the subject of empire is taboo in electoral debates." The citizen is irrelevant. He or she is nothing more than a spectator, allowed to vote and then forgotten once the carnival of elections ends and corporations and their lobbyists get back to the business of ruling.
"If the main purpose of elections is to serve up pliant legislators for lobbyists to shape, such a system deserves to be called 'misrepresentative or clientry government,' " Wolin writes. "It is, at one and the same time, a powerful contributing factor to the depoliticization of the citizenry, as well as reason for characterizing the system as one of antidemocracy."
The result, he writes, is that the public is "denied the use of state power." Wolin deplores the trivialization of political discourse, a tactic used to leave the public fragmented, antagonistic and emotionally charged while leaving corporate power and empire unchallenged.
"Cultural wars might seem an indication of strong political involvements," he writes. "Actually they are a substitute. The notoriety they receive from the media and from politicians eager to take firm stands on nonsubstantive issues serves to distract attention and contribute to a cant politics of the inconsequential."
"The ruling groups can now operate on the assumption that they don't need the traditional notion of something called a public in the broad sense of a coherent whole," he said in our meeting. "They now have the tools to deal with the very disparities and differences that they have themselves helped to create. It's a game in which you manage to undermine the cohesiveness that the public requires if they [the public] are to be politically effective. And at the same time, you create these different, distinct groups that inevitably find themselves in tension or at odds or in competition with other groups, so that it becomes more of a melee than it does become a way of fashioning majorities."
In classical totalitarian regimes, such as those of Nazi fascism or Soviet communism, economics was subordinate to politics. But "under inverted totalitarianism the reverse is true," Wolin writes. "Economics dominates politics -- and with that domination comes different forms of ruthlessness."He continues: "The United States has become the showcase of how democracy can be managed without appearing to be suppressed."
The corporate state, Wolin told me, is "legitimated by elections it controls." To extinguish democracy, it rewrites and distorts laws and legislation that once protected democracy. Basic rights are, in essence, revoked by judicial and legislative fiat. Courts and legislative bodies, in the service of corporate power, reinterpret laws to strip them of their original meaning in order to strengthen corporate control and abolish corporate oversight.
He writes: "Why negate a constitution, as the Nazis did, if it is possible simultaneously to exploit porosity and legitimate power by means of judicial interpretations that declare huge campaign contributions to be protected speech under the First Amendment, or that treat heavily financed and organized lobbying by large corporations as a simple application of the people's right to petition their government?"
Our system of inverted totalitarianism will avoid harsh and violent measures of control "as long as dissent remains ineffectual," he told me. "The government does not need to stamp out dissent. The uniformity of imposed public opinion through the corporate media does a very effective job."
And the elites, especially the intellectual class, have been bought off. "Through a combination of governmental contracts, corporate and foundation funds, joint projects involving university and corporate researchers, and wealthy individual donors, universities (especially so-called research universities), intellectuals, scholars, and researchers have been seamlessly integrated into the system," Wolin writes. "No books burned, no refugee Einsteins."
But, he warns, should the population -- steadily stripped of its most basic rights, including the right to privacy, and increasingly impoverished and bereft of hope -- become restive, inverted totalitarianism will become as brutal and violent as past totalitarian states. "The war on terrorism, with its accompanying emphasis upon 'homeland security,' presumes that state power, now inflated by doctrines of preemptive war and released from treaty obligations and the potential constraints of international judicial bodies, can turn inwards," he writes, "confident that in its domestic pursuit of terrorists the powers it claimed, like the powers projected abroad, would be measured, not by ordinary constitutional standards, but by the shadowy and ubiquitous character of terrorism as officially defined."
The indiscriminate police violence in poor communities of color is an example of the ability of the corporate state to "legally" harass and kill citizens with impunity. The cruder forms of control -- from militarized police to wholesale surveillance, as well as police serving as judge, jury and executioner, now a reality for the underclass -- will become a reality for all of us should we begin to resist the continued funneling of power and wealth upward. We are tolerated as citizens, Wolin warns, only as long as we participate in the illusion of a participatory democracy. The moment we rebel and refuse to take part in the illusion, the face of inverted totalitarianism will look like the face of past systems of totalitarianism.
"The significance of the African-American prison population is political," he writes. "What is notable about the African-American population generally is that it is highly sophisticated politically and by far the one group that throughout the twentieth century kept alive a spirit of resistance and rebelliousness. In that context, criminal justice is as much a strategy of political neutralization as it is a channel of instinctive racism."
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Jun 16, 2020 | www.moonofalabama.org
A User , Jun 16 2020 3:36 utc | 87
I'm always amused, nah that is a little harsh - dumbfounded is more reasonable, when Americans express dismay that 'their' constitution is not being adhered to by the elites.The minutiae of American political history hasn't greatly concerned me after a superficial study at high school, when I realized that the political structure is corrupt and was designed to facilitate corruption.
The seeming caring & sharing soundbites pushed out by the 'framers' scum such as Thomas Jefferson was purely for show, an attempt to gather the cannon fodder to one side. This was simple as the colonial media had been harping on about 'taxation without representation' for decades.
It wasn't just taxes, in fact for the American based elites that was likely the least of it. The objective of the elites was to wrest control of resources eg land and/or timber plus so-called royal warrants that controlled who was allowed to produce, sell export products to who, grab allocation out of the control of the mobs of greedy royal favorites, then into the hands of the new American elites.
A well placed courtier would put a bagman into the regional center of a particular colony (each colony becoming a 'state' post revolution), so that if someone wanted to, I dunno, say export huge quantities of cotton, the courtier would charge that 'colonial' for getting the initial warrant, then take a hefty % of the return on the product - all collected by the on-site bagman then divvied up.
The bagmen & courtiers grew fat at the expense of the colonists and generally the bagman, who also spied on the locals for obvious reasons, would go back to England once he had made his stash.
The system was ponderous inaccurate & very expensive. Something had to be done, but selling revolutionary change to the masses on the basis of the need to enrich the already wealthy was not likely to be a winner. Consequently the high faulting blather.
The American elites wanted and, after the revolution got, the power to control economic development for themselves.Hence the birth of lobbyists simultaneous with the birth of the American nation state.
IMO the constitution was about as meaningful to the leaders of the revolution as campaign promises are to contemporary politicians.That is, something to be used as self protection without ever implementing.
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Jun 11, 2020 | www.moonofalabama.org
Mao , Jun 11 2020 10:10 utc | 100
The nearly complete corruption of the U.S. republican form of government has largely come about due to the Citizens United decision by the Supreme Court in January 2010 that basically permitted unlimited donor-spending on political campaigns based on the principle that providing money, normally through a political action committee (PAC), is a form of free speech. The decision paved the way for agenda-driven plutocrats and corporations to largely seize control of the formulation process for certain policies being promoted by the two national parties.
No one has benefited from the new rules more than the state of Israel, whose hundreds of support organizations and principal billionaire funders euphemized as the "Israel Lobby" have entrenched pro-Israel donors as the principal financial resources of both major political parties.
https://ahtribune.com/us/israelgate/4206-ilhan-omar-surrenders.html
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Jun 09, 2020 | www.unz.com
Robjil , says: June 8, 2020 at 12:03 pm GMT
anonymous coward , says: June 8, 2020 at 1:03 pm GMTThe western world's biggest problem is the lack and the fear of Athenian Debate.
The west touts the word "Democracy" like crazy. It came from the ancient Greeks.
Yet, the west forgets the biggest part of Athenian Democracy. It is Athenian Debate.
Without Athenian Debate in the west, there are no Democracies in the west.
@RobjilThe western world's biggest problem is the lack and the fear of Athenian Debate.
Pretty sure there's quite a few ones bigger.
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Jun 08, 2020 | www.youtube.com
Kenny Heimbuch , 1 day ago
"Corporation" has become a synonym for mafia.
"Being poor in America is one long emergency". SO true. 😓
hotblooded1983 , 1 day agoBeing poor anywhere is one long emergency. And poverty does not give a damn about the colour of your skin.
AK Li , 1 day ago (edited)ROGUE STATE. Biden and Trump are both part of the Oligarchs!!
muffet nellon , 2 days agoI doubt the United States can change. There are agencies whose purpose are to destroy popular movements seeking change. Most people also don't want to admit it, but when a government can launch dozens of wars, killing millions of people, it's obvious that government would kill it's citizens to keep power. The wrong people are blamed for 911.
Stephen A. Sheehan , 1 day agoI remember the blue dog "purge" that arrived with Clinton. That was when anti-new dealers captured the Democratic Party.
Peter Parker , 1 day ago"The nation that neglects social inequality, mischievously increases military budgets, and then uses its power internally to suppress the citizens on the pretext of invasion by an external enemy is on the road to extinction." - Yang Wenli, Legend of the Galactic Heroes.
AnonymousTwoPointO , 2 days agoStop calling them ELITE, they are THE POLITICAL CRIMINAL CLASS, and as long as we cook their meals, drive their limos, tailor their suits, and guard them while they sleep, they are not untouchable. None of them.
Carl Jensen , 1 day agoAdvice to people in a time like this: DO NOT EVER VOTE FOR LESSER OF EVIL, BECAUSE YOU STILL GET EVIL.
Marius Chirita , 1 day ago"If you're not rioting, you're not black." Joe Biden
Right now, the puppet masters are laughing, pitting one puppet against the other, white vs. black, man vs. woman, worker vs. unemployed, police vs. citizens, while they rob you blind and enslave your children in debt and austerity...
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Apr 26, 2019 | off-guardian.org
In any event, the publication of the Mueller report has cleared things up for me. I get it now. The investigation was never about Trump colluding with Russia. It was always about Trump obstructing the investigation of the collusion with Russia that the investigation was not about. Mueller was never looking for collusion. It was not his job to look for collusion.
His job was to look for obstruction of his investigation of alleged obstruction of his investigation of non-collusion, which he found, and detailed at length in his report, and which qualifies as an impeachable offense.
... ... ...
In other words, his investigation was launched in order to investigate the obstruction of his investigation. And, on those terms, it was a huge success. The fact that it didn't prove "collusion" means nothing -- that's just a straw man argument that Trump and his Russian handlers make. The goal all along was to prove that Trump obstructed an investigation of his obstruction of that investigation, not that he was "colluding" with Putin, or any of the other paranoid nonsense that the corporate media were forced to report on, once an investigation into his obstruction of the investigation was launched.
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Mar 31, 2019 | www.moonofalabama.org
psychohistorian , Mar 30, 2019 7:51:28 PM | link
Here is an insightful read on Trump's (s)election and Russiagate that I think is not OTTaibbi: On Russiagate and Our Refusal to Face Why Trump Won
The take away quote
" Russiagate became a convenient replacement explanation absolving an incompetent political establishment for its complicity in what happened in 2016, and not just the failure to see it coming.
Because of the immediate arrival of the collusion theory, neither Wolf Blitzer nor any politician ever had to look into the camera and say, "I guess people hated us so much they were even willing to vote for Donald Trump ."
As a peedupon all I can see is that the elite seem to be fighting amongst themselves or (IMO) providing cover for ongoing elite power/control efforts. It might not be about private/public finance in a bigger picture but I can't see anything else that makes sense
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May 17, 2020 | www.moonofalabama.org
JC , May 17 2020 18:03 utc | 16
Almost every freaking day Trump and Pompeo bashing China including Huawei.. Not a day of peace without china bashing.Days earlier ZeroHedge, SCMP and other media reported freaking Trump and Pompeo... no companies inside or outside USA can sell American software or technology items or chips made with USA properties or machines to Huawei.
Meaning TSMC a Taiwan chip's foundry not permitted to sell any chips to Huawei, TSMC has been the world's dedicated semiconductor foundry. "curtailing its chip supply, an escalation of its campaign against the Chinese company that may also hurt Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co."
"China has the most fab projects in the world.... 30 facilities planned, including 10/7nm processes, but trade war and economic factors could slow progress...... SMIC 's move would put it on par with some of its foreign rivals. In addition, SMIC has obtained $10 billion in funding to develop 10nm and 7nm. Semiconductor Manufacturing International Corporation (SMIC) is a publicly held semiconductor foundry company, and the largest in China.
"Wuhan Hongxin Semiconductor Manufacturing (HSMC), a logic IC foundry founded in late 2017, is gearing up for 14nm and 7nm process manufacturing eyeing to be China's most advanced contract chipmaker.....Shang-yi Chiang, the former executive VP and co-chief operating officer overseeing R&D for Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Company (TSMC), will join a Wuhan-headquartered foundry in China. "<
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May 15, 2020 | apple.slashdot.org
An anonymous reader shares a report: China is ready to take a series of countermeasures against a US plan to block shipments of semiconductors to Chinese telecom firm Huawei , including putting US companies on an "unreliable entity list," launching investigations and imposing restrictions on US companies such as Apple and suspending the purchase of Boeing airplanes, a source close to the Chinese government told the Global Times. The Trump administration on Friday moved to block shipments of semiconductors to Huawei from global chipmakers. The US Commerce Department said it was amending an export rule and the Entity List to "strategically target Huawei's acquisition of semiconductors that are the direct product of certain US software and technology," according to a statement on its website. "China will take forceful countermeasures to protect its own legitimate rights," if the US moves forward with the plan to bar essential suppliers of chips, including Taiwan-based TSMC, from selling chips to the Chinese tech giant, the source told the Global Times in an exclusive interview.
Brain-Fu ( 1274756 ) , Friday May 15, 2020 @02:58PM ( #60064610 ) Homepage JournalAll chips have backdoors. ( Score: 5 , Insightful)Every hardware vendor has clear and strong incentives to bake backdoors into their hardware. The only difference is to whom they are loyal.
sehlat ( 180760 ) , Friday May 15, 2020 @02:20PM ( #60064454 )Universal Rule of Economic Warfare ( Score: 1 )Both sides lose
... BIG. bodog ( 231448 ) writes: UnknowingFool ( 672806 ) , Friday May 15, 2020 @02:45PM ( #60064558 )Re: ( Score: 1 ) BIGLY. tftfy.
Re:Universal Rule of Economic Warfare ( Score: 3 )Alain Williams ( 2972 ) writes: < [email protected] > on Friday May 15, 2020 @02:31PM ( #60064502 ) HomepageWell people on both sides lose. The leaders on both sides do not lose as much. Concisely Put.
Is anyone surprised ? ( Score: 5 , Interesting)China will also put a lot of money into making things that it has, up to now, obtained from the USA. It might take a few years, but China's government set up (ie one party always in power) means that it does not have to do things to an electoral cycle.
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May 12, 2020 | www.rt.com
Just over a third of Americans trust President Donald Trump's information about the Covid-19 pandemic, according to a new poll. But given decades of crises mishandled by the government, the only surprise is that it isn't lower. A CNN poll showing that just 36 percent of Americans trust Trump for reliable information about the coronavirus was held up triumphantly by the president's critics on Tuesday as proof his credibility is circling the drain. But it's more likely to be the fallout not just from Trump, but from the two preceding presidential administrations' misrepresentation of crises, that has created epidemic levels of distrust among the people.
Trump's own approval rating is hovering around 45 percent, according to the poll, conducted by CNN in conjunction with SSRS and released on Tuesday. While it's been presented as a scathing mass rejection of Trump, the same pollsters are actually seeing an uptick in support for the president – the approval rating last month stood at 44 percent, and the previous month's was 43. But Americans can't be faulted for distrusting the Trump administration's narratives, given prior presidents' tendencies toward crying wolf in ways that have invariably left the American people worse off.
The last time Washington tried to mobilize the US with the threat of an invisible enemy was during George W. Bush's 'War on Terror' after the September 11 attacks. While it soon became apparent that the many deaths that occurred on that day had nothing to do with the subsequent US invasions of Afghanistan and then Iraq, it was too late by the time Americans found out they had been lied to. Not only had the Afghan government willingly offered up Osama bin Laden, but Saddam Hussein was found to have had no 'weapons of mass destruction', and the entire narrative was the concoction of a secretive entity that had been set up to create a casus belli for war with Iraq despite the facts.
Bush's approval ratings declined steadily following 9/11, as the nation was forced into one war after another on false pretenses. At his lowest point, just 25 percent of Americans trusted him. The 'invisible enemy' of terrorism – supposedly lurking around every corner and requiring Americans to practically disrobe at entrances to airports – had lost its luster, and Bush's poor handling of real-life crises like Hurricane Katrina put the final nail in the coffin of his credibility.
While Barack Obama entered office on a high note with a promise of " hope and change ," his approval rating also plunged quickly – especially when he refused to stand in the way of the wildly unpopular 2008 'Wall Street bailout' – sinking to 41 percent in 2011 as Americans grew restive after years of recession with no change in sight. By 2014, 70 percent of respondents to an MSNBC poll stated the country was headed in the wrong direction, with 80 percent singling out the political system as the primary culprit. Congress enjoyed an appallingly low 14 percent approval rating.
In light of such a history of distrust – the president who'd promised to not only shutter the infamous Guantanamo Bay prison but also end the seemingly eternal wars in the Middle East had not only failed to deliver on those promises, but actually launched several new wars in Syria, Libya, Yemen, Somalia and Sudan – it's no surprise Americans are reluctant to embrace the Trump administration's Covid-19 narrative.
Another invisible enemy that requires them to sacrifice their livelihoods – a third of Americans couldn't pay their rent last month, while even the paltry $1,200 stimulus checks supposedly heading to 130 million Americans have apparently not reached half their intended recipients yet – is reminding Americans of what happened last time they were told to put aside their real-life concerns and fall in line behind a narrative that turned out to be false.
Like the fabled boy who cried wolf, it doesn't matter if the emergency is real this time – the government has simply worn out its welcome by making demands on false pretenses.
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May 11, 2020 | www.zerohedge.com
John Durham has supercharged his review into the origins of the Russiagate hoax orchestrated by the Obama administration during and after the 2016 US election - adding additional top prosecutors to explore different components of the original probe, according to Fox News .Durham, the U.S. Attorney for Connecticut tasked with by Attorney General Bill Barr with investigating the actions taken against the Trump team, has tapped Jeff Jensen - U.S. attorney for the Eastern District of Missouri who had been investigating the Michael Flynn case. Also added to the team is interim U.S. Attorney for the District of Columbia, Timothy Shea, according to Fox 's sources.
" They farmed the investigation out because it is too much for Durham and he didn't want to be distracted ," said one source, adding "He's going full throttle, and they're looking at everything. "
Word of Durham's beefed-up team comes amid worsening tensions between the Trump administration and congressional Democrats, who have been making the case that the Justice Department's reviews have become politicized given the decision last week to drop the Flynn case - a move which House Judiciary Committee Chairman Jerrold Nadler (D-NY) called "outrageous."
" The evidence against General Flynn is overwhelming ," said Nadler - who probably wasn't referring to handwritten notes by one of the FBI agents who interviewed Flynn which exposed their perjury trap . Flynn pleaded guilty to lying to the FBI about his perfectly legal communications with a Russian ambassador - a plea he made while under severe financial strain due to legal expenses, and to save his son from the FBI 'witch hunt.' Flynn would later withdraw his plea as evidence mounted that he was set up.
The DOJ determined that the bureau's 2017 Flynn interview -- which formed the basis for his guilty plea of lying to investigators -- was "conducted without any legitimate investigative basis."
Breadcrumbs were being dropped in the days preceding the decision that his case could be reconsidered. Documents unsealed the prior week by the Justice Department revealed agents discussed their motivations for interviewing him in the Russia probe – questioning whether they wanted to "get him to lie" so he'd be fired or prosecuted, or get him to admit wrongdoing. Flynn allies howled over the revelations, arguing that he essentially had been set up in a perjury trap. In that interview, Flynn did not admit wrongdoing and instead was accused of lying about his contacts with the then-Russian ambassador – to which he pleaded guilty. - Fox News
Jensen, the U.S. attorney now working with Durham, was reportedly the one who recommended dropping the Flynn case to Barr.
Barr speaks
When asked whether he thought the FBI conspired against Flynn, Barr told CBS News on Thursday "I think, you know, that's a question that really has to wait [for] an analysis of all the different episodes that occurred through the summer of 2016 and the first several months of President Trump's administration," adding that Durham is "still looking at all of this."
"This is one particular episode, but we view it as part of a number of related acts ... and we're looking at the whole pattern of conduct," Barr added, saying that they're investigating actions taken before "and after ... the election."
https://www.youtube.com/embed/g_OeiKXr0WE
And according to Fox' s source, Durham is investigating a "pattern of conduct" which includes lying to the FISA court to obtain warrants to spy on Trump campaign adviser Carter Page .
President Trump has long-referred to the investigation as a "witch hunt" - which Barr and Durham are now untangling.
"Barr talks to Durham every day," a source recently told Fox News . " The president has been briefed that the case is being pursued, and it's serious. "
President Trump on Friday offered a vague, but ominous, warning as the Durham probe proceeds.
" It was a very dangerous situation what they did ," Trump said during an interview with "Fox & Friends" Friday. " These are dirty politicians and dirty cops and some horrible people and hopefully they're going to pay a big price in the not too distant future. "
Trump was specifically reacting to newly released transcripts of interviews from the House Intelligence Committee's Russia investigation that revealed top Obama officials acknowledged they knew of no "empirical evidence" of a conspiracy despite their concerns and suspicions. - Fox News
Durham's probe is expected to wrap up by the end of the summer. Right as Trump is expected to face off against Joe Biden - who was VP while most of this was going on .
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May 09, 2020 | www.scmp.com
HiSilicon , Huawei Technologies ' in-house semiconductor and integrated circuit design company, has surpassed US chip giant Qualcomm in terms of smartphone processor shipments in China for the first time amid coronavirus-linked disruptions that have hit most major players, according to a report.
In the first quarter of 2020, HiSilicon shipped 22.21 million smartphone processors, according to Chinese research firm CINNO's latest monthly report on China's semiconductor industry. Although HiSilicon's shipments only increased slightly from the 22.17 million units it shipped in the first quarter of last year, it was the only major company that did not see a year-on-year decline in the quarter, CINNO said in a summary of the report posted on its official WeChat account.
As a result, the Huawei subsidiary's market share surged to 43.9 per cent, from 36.5 per cent during the same period last year, and beat Qualcomm for the first time to become China's top smartphone processor supplier. HiSilicon's steady performance comes at a time when the Chinese smartphone industry is being battered by delayed product launches and dampened consumer sentiment linked to the coronavirus pandemic. Smartphone shipments in the country slumped by 34.7 per cent – more than a third – to 47.7 million units in the first quarter of 2020, according to a report released earlier this month by the China Academy of Information and Communications Technology.
CINNO's report showed that there was a similar plunge in processor shipments, with overall smartphone processor shipments in the country dropping by 44.5 per cent in the first three months of 2020, compared to the same period last year. Huawei makes end-run around US trade ban by turning to its own chips 2 Mar 2020
US-based Qualcomm, the long-time market leader, fell to second place in the latest quarter with a year-on-year decline in its market share from 37.8 per cent to 32.8 per cent. Taiwan's Mediatek maintained its third-place position, but also saw its market share slide year-on-year from 14 per cent to 13.1 percent
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Table showing the market share of smartphone processor supplies according to CINNO Research. Source: CINNO Research / WeChat
Huawei, HiSilicon's parent company, is at the centre of a high-profile US-China tech war. The Trump administration added the company to its Entity List last year, citing the risk that Huawei could give Beijing access to sensitive data from telecommunications networks. The trade blacklist effectively bars Huawei from buying US products and services. In response, the Chinese company, which has denied the allegations, is ramping up its own capabilities to produce more American component-free network gear, including through HiSilicon.
Huawei is also reportedly shifting production of HiSilicon-designed chips away from Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co (TSMC) and towards Shanghai-based Semiconductor Manufacturing International Corp (SMIC) as Washington readies new rules which would require foreign companies using US chipmaking equipment to obtain a license before supplying chips to Huawei – a move that would directly affect TSMC.
Over 90 per cent of Huawei phones in China now use HiSilicon processors, according to CINNO. However, Huawei founder Ren Zhengfei said in an interview with Yahoo Finance last year that the company would continue using chips from US vendors such as Intel and Qualcomm as long as it is still allowed by US regulators.
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May 08, 2020 | www.nytimes.com
Originally from: 'Never Seen Anything Like This' Experts Question Dropping of Flynn Prosecution By Charlie Savage, NYT, May 7, 2020
WASHINGTON -- The Justice Department's decision to drop the criminal case against Michael T. Flynn , President Trump's former national security adviser, even though he had twice pleaded guilty to lying to investigators, was extraordinary and had no obvious precedent, a range of criminal law specialists said on Thursday.
"I've been practicing for more time than I care to admit and I've never seen anything like this," said Julie O'Sullivan, a former federal prosecutor who now teaches criminal law at Georgetown University.
The move is the latest in a series that the department, under Attorney General William P. Barr, has taken to undermine and dismantle the work of the investigators and prosecutors who scrutinized Russia's 2016 election interference operation and its links to people associated with the Trump campaign.
The case against Mr. Flynn for lying to the F.B.I. about his conversations with the Russian ambassador was brought by the office of the former special counsel, Robert S. Mueller III. It had become a political cause for Mr. Trump and his supporters, and the president had signaled that he was considering a pardon once Mr. Flynn was sentenced. But Mr. Barr instead abruptly short-circuited the case.
On Thursday, Timothy Shea, the interim U.S. attorney in the District of Columbia, told the judge overseeing the case, Emmet G. Sullivan, that prosecutors were withdrawing the case. They were doing so, he said, because the department could not prove to a jury that Mr. Flynn's admitted lies to the F.B.I. about his conversations with the ambassador were "material" ones.
The move essentially erases Mr. Flynn's guilty pleas. Because he was never sentenced and the government is unwilling to pursue the matter further, the prosecution is virtually certain to end, although the judge must still decide whether to grant the department's request to dismiss it "with prejudice," meaning it could not be refiled in the future.
A range of former prosecutors struggled to point to any previous instance in which the Justice Department had abandoned its own case after obtaining a guilty plea. They portrayed the justification Mr. Shea pointed to -- that it would be difficult to prove to a jury beyond a reasonable doubt that the lies were material -- as dubious.
"A pardon would have been a lot more honest," said Samuel Buell, a former federal prosecutor who now teaches criminal law at Duke University.
The law regarding what counts as "material" is extremely forgiving to the government, Mr. Buell added. The idea is that law enforcement is permitted to pursue possible theories of criminality and to interview people without having firmly established that there was a crime first.
James G. McGovern , a defense lawyer at Hogan Lovells and a former federal prosecutor, said juries rarely bought a defendant's argument that a lie did not involve a material fact.
"If you are arguing 'materiality,' you usually lose, because there is a tacit admission that what you said was untrue, so you lose the jury," he said.
No career prosecutors signed the motion. Mr. Shea is a former close aide to Mr. Barr. In January, Mr. Barr installed him as the top prosecutor in the district that encompasses the nation's capital after maneuvering out the Senate-confirmed former top prosecutor in that office, Jessie K. Liu.
Soon after, in an extraordinary move, four prosecutors in the office abruptly quit the case against Mr. Trump's longtime friend Roger J. Stone Jr. They did so after senior Justice Department officials intervened to recommend a more lenient prison term than standard sentencing guidelines called for in the crimes Mr. Stone was convicted of committing -- including witness intimidation and perjury -- to conceal Trump campaign interactions with WikiLeaks.
It soon emerged that Mr. Barr had also appointed an outside prosecutor, Jeff Jensen, the U.S. attorney in St. Louis, to review the Flynn case files. The department then began turning over F.B.I. documents showing internal deliberations about questioning Mr. Flynn, like what warnings to give -- even though such files are usually not provided to the defense.
Mr. Flynn's defense team has mined such files for ammunition to portray the F.B.I. as running amok in its decision to question Mr. Flynn in the first place. The questioning focused on his conversations during the transition after the 2016 election with the Russian ambassador about the Obama administration's imposition of sanctions on Russia for its interference in the American election.
The F.B.I. had already concluded that there was no evidence that Mr. Flynn, a former Trump campaign adviser, had personally conspired with Russia about the election, and it had decided to close out the counterintelligence investigation into him. Then questions arose about whether and why Mr. Flynn had lied to administration colleagues like Vice President Mike Pence about his conversations with the ambassador.
Because the counterintelligence investigation was still open, the bureau used it as a basis to question Mr. Flynn about the conversations and decided not to warn him at its onset that it would be a crime to lie. Notes from Bill Priestap , then the head of the F.B.I.'s counterintelligence division, show that he wrote at one point about the planned interview: "What's our goal? Truth/admission or to get him to lie, so we can prosecute him or get him fired?"
Mr. Barr has also appointed another outside prosecutor, John H. Durham, the U.S. attorney in Connecticut, to reinvestigate the Russia investigators even though the department's independent inspector general was already scrutinizing them .
And his department has intervened in a range of other ways, from seeking more comfortable prison accommodations last year for Paul Manafort, Mr. Trump's former campaign chairman, to abruptly dropping charges in March against two Russian shell companies that were about to go to trial for financing schemes to interfere in the 2016 election using social media .
Mr. Barr has let it be known that he does not think the F.B.I. ever had an adequate legal basis to open its Russia investigation in the first place, contrary to the judgment of the Justice Department's inspector general.
In an interview on CBS News on Thursday, Mr. Barr defended the dropping of the charges against Mr. Flynn on the grounds that the F.B.I. "did not have a basis for a counterintelligence investigation against Flynn at that stage."
Anne Milgram , a former federal prosecutor and former New Jersey attorney general who teaches criminal law at New York University, defended the F.B.I.'s decision to question Mr. Flynn in January 2017. She said that much was still a mystery about the Russian election interference operation at the time and that Mr. Flynn's lying to the vice president about his postelection interactions with a high-ranking Russian raised new questions.
But, she argued, the more important frame for assessing the dropping of the case was to recognize how it fit into the larger pattern of the Barr-era department "undercutting the law enforcement officials and prosecutors who investigated the 2016 election and its aftermath," which she likened to "eating the Justice Department from the inside out."
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Blue Republic on Tue, 05/05/2020 - 9:07amMay 05, 2020 | caucus99percent.com
leveymg on Tue, 05/05/2020 - 8:17am
Previously sealed FBI documents indicate close contacts between Israel and the Trump campaign and that the Mueller investigation found evidence of Israeli involvement, but largely redacted it.
May 04th, 2020
By Alison Weir @alisonweir
https://www.mintpressnews.com/fbi-documents-israel-collusion-2016-trump-...Menifee, CA (IAK) -- Newly released FBI documents suggest that Israeli government officials were in contact with the 2016 Trump presidential campaign and offered "critical intel."
In one of the extensively redacted documents, an official who appears to be an Israeli minister warns that Trump was "going to be defeated unless we intervene." He goes on to tell a Trump campaign official: "The key is in your hands."
The previously classified documents were released in response to a lawsuit brought by the Associated Press, CNN, the New York Times, Politico, and the Washington Post. The unsealed documents suggest that rather than Russia, it was Israel that covertly interfered in the election.
While all these media companies except one seem to have ignored the apparent Israeli connection revealed in the FBI documents, Israeli media have been quick to jump on it.
Israel's i24 News reports:
Newly released documents from the FBI suggest that Roger Stone, a senior aide in the 2016 Trump campaign, had one or more high-ranking contacts in the Israeli government willing to help the then-Republican Party nominee win the presidential election."
Israel's Ha'aretz newspaper reports:
Tantalizing hints" of "alleged clandestine contacts came to light in recent publication of redacted FBI documents."
The Times of Israel (TOI) the first to report on this, states:
The FBI material, which is heavily redacted, includes one explicit reference to Israel and one to Jerusalem, and a series of references to a minister, a cabinet minister, a minister without portfolio in the cabinet dealing with issues concerning defense and foreign affairs,' the PM, and the Prime Minister."
TOI points out: "Benjamin Netanyahu was Israel's prime minister in 2016," and reports circumstantial evidence that the "PM" mentioned in the document refers to Netanyahu:
One reference to the unnamed PM in the material reads as follows: 'On or about June 28, 2016, [NAME REDACTED] messaged STONE, "RETURNING TO DC AFTER URGENT CONSULTATIONS WITH PM IN ROME.MUST MEET WITH YOU WED. EVE AND WITH DJ TRUMP THURSDAY IN NYC.' Netanyahu made a state visit to Italy at the end of June 2016."
TOI also notes that "the Israeli government included a minister without portfolio, Tzachi Hanegbi, appointed in May with responsibility for defense and foreign affairs."
Ha'aretz also names Hanebi as the likely contact, and confirms that he "was in the United States on the dates mentioned, attending, among other things, a roll out of the first Israeli F-35 jet at a Lockheed Martin plant in Fort Worth, Texas."
The previously classified FBI affidavit says: "On or about August 12, 2016, [name redacted] messaged STONE, "Roger, hello from Jerusalem. Any progress? He is going to be defeated unless we intervene. We have critical intell. The key is in your hands! Back in the US next week."
Another section of the affidavit states: "On August 20, 2016, CORSI told STONE that they needed to meet with [name redacted] to determine "what if anything Israel plans to do in Oct." (Corsi refers to Jerome Corsi, a pro-Israel commentator and author known for extremist statements.)
Roger Stone, a longtime confidant of President Trump who worked on the 2016 campaign, was convicted last year in the Robert Mueller investigation into alleged collusion between Russia and the Trump campaign.
Stone has denied wrongdoing, consistently criticizing the accusations against him as politically motivated. Numerous analysts have found the "Russiagate" theory unconvincing, and the American Bar Association reported that Mueller's investigation "did not find sufficient evidence that President Donald Trump's campaign coordinated with Russia to influence the United States' 2016 election."
There have been previous suggestions that it was Israel that had most worked to influence the election.
[MORE]
The back story that's really significant here is that Mueller redacted evidence of Israeli interference in the U.S. election, and the Russiagate! scandal was a cover for that and other third-country meddling. Most of us here knew that a couple years ago .
Comments
Thank for postingleveymg on Tue, 05/05/2020 - 9:26amMint Press has also reported on Israeli intelligence involvement/infiltration into critical US defense networks as well as their strong presence in social media.
I'd be surprised if there was an election in recent decades that they weren't involved in.
If Trump campaign people were actually soliciting Israeli help, that would be newsworthy and probably criminal. But Mueller throwing the book at Stone and Corsi over BS and covering what could actually be serious? That's twisted.
Laura Rozen who covers these things, has posted the FBI docsleveymg on Tue, 05/05/2020 - 9:38am@Blue Republic and adds this:
Laura Rozen
@lrozen
Profile picture
https://threadreaderapp.com/thread/1255347751153434624.html
Apr 29th 2020, 5 tweets, 2 min read
Stone arranged for meeting, but said in later email that a "fiasco" ensued after the associate brought a foreign military officer along
Unroll available on Thread Readerhttps://twitter.com/kyledcheney/status/1255344430443347969
On Aug.20, 2016, CORSI told STONE they
needed to meet w/[ ] to determine "what if anything Israel plans to do in Oct"courtlistener.com/recap/gov.usco
huh courtlistener.com/recap/gov.usco
courtlistener.com/recap/gov.usco
(One PM in Rome on June 27 2016 was Netanyahu) mfa.gov.il/MFA/PressRoom/Copy of FBI docs, including this, are linked at: https://pbs.twimg.com/media/EWvp-fZWkAECFaN.jpg
Mint Press has also reported on Israeli intelligence involvement/infiltration into critical US defense networks as well as their strong presence in social media.
I'd be surprised if there was an election in recent decades that they weren't involved in.
If Trump campaign people were actually soliciting Israeli help, that would be newsworthy and probably criminal. But Mueller throwing the book at Stone and Corsi over BS and covering what could actually be serious? That's twisted.
The entire Court filing and Order sealing the FBI warrant appleveymg on Tue, 05/05/2020 - 9:54am@leveymg is reposted below, for those who want to read for themselves:
UNITED STATES DISTRICT COURT
for the
District of Columbia
In the Matter of the Search of
(Briefly describe the property to be searched
or identify the person by name and address)
INFORMATION ASSOCIATED WITH THE GOOGLE
ACCOUNT ,
)
Case: 1:18-sc-01518
Assigned To : Howell, Beryl A.
Assign. Date: 5/4/2018
Description: Search & Seizure Warrant
SEARCH AND SEIZURE WARRANT
To: Any authorized law enforcement officer
An application by a federal law enforcement officer or an attorney for the government requests the search
of the following person or property located in the Northern District of California
(identify the person or describe the property to be searched and give its location):
See Attachment A.
I find that the affidavit(s), or any recorded testimony, establish probable cause to search and seize the person or property
described above, and that such search will reveal (identify the person or describe the property to be seized):
See Attachment B.
YOU ARE COMMANDED to execute this warrant on or before May 18, 2018 (not to exceed 14 days)
';$ in the daytime 6:00 a.m. to 10:00 p.m. 0 at any time in the day or night because good cause has been established.
Unless delayed notice is authorized below, you must give a copy of the warrant and a receipt for the property taken to the
person from whom, or from whose premises, the property was taken, or leave the copy and receipt at the place where the
property was taken.
The officer executing this warrant, or an officer present during the execution of the warrant, must prepare an inventory
as required by law and promptly return this warrant and inventory to Hon. Beryl A. Howell
(United States Magistrate Judge)
0 Pursuant to 18 U.S.C. § 3103a(b), I find that immediate notification may have an adverse result listed in 18 U.S.C.
§ 2705 ( except for delay of trial), and authorize the officer executing this warrant to delay notice to the person who, or whose
property, will be searched or seized (check the awropriate box)
0 for __ days (not to exceed 30) 0 until, the facts justifying, the later specific date of
Date and time issued:
Judge 's signature
City and state: Washington, DC Hon. Beryl A. Howell, Chief U.S. District Judge
Printed name and title
Case 1:19-mc-00029-CRC Document 29-7 Filed 04/28/20 Page 1 of 35
AO 93 (Rev 11/13) Search and Seizure Warrant (Page 2)
Return
Case No.: Date and time warrant executed: Copy of warrant and inventory left with:
Inventory made in the presence of :
Inventory of the property taken and name of any person(s) seized:
Certification
I declare under penalty of pe1jury that this inventory is correct and was returned along with the original warrant to the
designated judge.
Date:
Executing officer's signature
Printed name and title
Case 1:19-mc-00029-CRC Document 29-7 Filed 04/28/20 Page 2 of 35
UNITED STATES DISTRICT COURT
FOR THE DISTRICT OF COLUMBIA Cf erk, U.S. District & Bankrupicy
Gourts for tirn District of Columbl&
IN THE MATTER OF THE SEARCH OF
INFORMATION ASSOCIATED WITH
THE GOOGLE ACCOUNT
ORDER
Case: 1: 18-sc-01518
Assigned To : Howell, Beryl A.
Assign. Date: 5/4/2018
Description: Search & Seizure Warrant
The United States has filed a motion to seal the above-captioned warrant and related
documents, including the application and affidavit in support thereof ( collectively the "Warrant"),
and to require Google LLC, an electronic communication and/or remote computing services with
headquarters in Mountain View, California, not to disclose the existence or contents of the Warrant
pursuant to !8 U.S.C. § 2705(b).
The Court finds that the United States has established that a compelling governmental
interest exists to justify the requested sealing, and that there is reason to believe that notification
of the existence of the Warrant will seriously jeopardize the investigation, including by giving the
targets an opportunity to flee from prosecution, destroy or tamper with evidence, and intimidate
witnesses. See 18 U.S.C. § 2705(b)(2)-(5).
IT IS THEREFORE ORDERED that the motion is hereby GRANTED, and that the
warrant, the application and affidavit in support thereof, all attachments thereto and other related
materials, the instant motion to seal, and this Order be SEALED until further order of the Court;
and
Page 1 of2
Case 1:19-mc-00029-CRC Document 29-7 Filed 04/28/20 Page 3 of 35
IT IS FURTHER ORDERED that, pursuant to 18 U.S.C. § 2705(b), Google and its
employees shall not disclose the existence or content of the Warrant to any other person ( except
attorneys for Google for the purpose of receiving legal advice) for a period of one year unless
otherwise ordered by the Court.
Date 41/Y>lf
THE HONORABLE BERYL A. HOWELL
CHIEF UNITED STATES DISTRICT JUDGE
Page 2 of2
Case 1:19-mc-00029-CRC Document 29-7 Filed 04/28/20 Page 4 of 35
AO 106 (Rev. 04/10) Application for a Search Warrant
UNITED STATES DISTRICT COURT
In the Matter of the Search of
(Briefly describe the property to be searched
or identify the person by name and address)
for the
District of Columbia
MA\t !,
•'II·\! • ·r 2018
,,t,c,rk, U.S. District & Bankruptcy
C . ,,gurt~ lar 1hli-•D1strlctof Gollf/nh]•
ase.1:18-sc-01518 ·'
Ass!gned To: Howell, Beryl A
INFORMATION ASSOCIATED WITH THE GOOGLE
ACCOUNT
)
)
)
)
)
)
Assign. Date: 5;412018 ·
Description: Search & Seizure Warrant
APPLICATION FOR A SEARCH WARRANT
I, a federal law enforcement officer or an attorney for the government, request a search warrant and state under
penalty of perjury that I have reason to believe that on the following person or property (identify the person or describe the
property to be searched and give ifs location):
See Attachment A.
located in the Northern District of _____ C,-_a-,.l"'if.=o,..rn~ia.._ __ , there is now concealed (identijj, the
person or describe the property to be seized):
See Attachment B.
The basis for the search under Fed. R. Crim. P. 4 l(c) is (check one or more):
~ evidence of a crime;
ief contraband, fruits of crime, or other items illegally possessed;
r'lf property designed for use, intended for use, or used in committing a crime;
D a person to be arrested or a person who is unlawfully restrained.
The search is related to a violation of:
Code Section
18 U.S.C. § 2
· et al.
The application is based on these facts:
See attached Affidavit.
r;/ Continued on the attached sheet.
Offense Description
aiding and abetting
see attached affidavit
D Delayed notice of __ days (give exact ending date if more than 30 days: ______ ) is requested
under 18 U.S.C. § 3103a, the basis of which is set forth on the attached sheet.
~44 Reviewed by AUSA/SAUSA: Appbcant's signature
•Aaron Zelinsky (Special Counsel's Office) Andrew Mitchell, Supervisory Special Agent, FBI
Printed name and title
Sworn to before me and signed in my presence.
Date:
City and state: Washington, D.C. Hon. Beryl A. Howell, Chief U.S. District Judge
Printed name and title
Case 1:19-mc-00029-CRC Document 29-7 Filed 04/28/20 Page 5 of 35
UNITED STATES DISTRICT COURT
FOR THE DISTRICT OF COLUMBIA
MAY ·· ti 1018
Clerk, LLS. District & Bar1i
#1 and adds this:
Laura Rozen
@lrozen
Profile picture
https://threadreaderapp.com/thread/1255347751153434624.html
Apr 29th 2020, 5 tweets, 2 min read
Stone arranged for meeting, but said in later email that a "fiasco" ensued after the associate brought a foreign military officer along
Unroll available on Thread Readerhttps://twitter.com/kyledcheney/status/1255344430443347969
On Aug.20, 2016, CORSI told STONE they
needed to meet w/[ ] to determine "what if anything Israel plans to do in Oct"courtlistener.com/recap/gov.usco
huh courtlistener.com/recap/gov.usco
courtlistener.com/recap/gov.usco
(One PM in Rome on June 27 2016 was Netanyahu) mfa.gov.il/MFA/PressRoom/Copy of FBI docs, including this, are linked at: https://pbs.twimg.com/media/EWvp-fZWkAECFaN.jpg
The entire FBI affidavit supporting the FBI seizure order and@leveymg request for sealing of the record -- Case 1:19-mc-00029-CRC Document 29-7 Filed 04/28/20 Pages 3 to 35 for those who want to read for themselves:
Judge's signature
Hon. Bery[ A. Howell, Chief U.S. District JudgePrinted name and title
UNITED STATES DISTRICT COURT
FOR THE DISTRICT OF COLUMBIA Glcrk, LL$. District & Bar1kruptcy
Gourts tor tirn District of ColumtHaIN THE MATTER OF THE SEARCH OF INFORMATION ASSOCIATED WITH THE GOOGLE ACCOUNT
Case: 1:18-sc-01518
Ass!gned To : Howell, BerylA Assign. Date : S/4/20 18
Description: Search & S izure WarrantAFFIDAVIT IN SUPPORT OF AN APPLICATION FOR A SEARCH WARRANT
I, Andrew Mitchell, having been first duly sworn, hereby depose and state as follows:
1. I make this affidavit in support of an application for a search warrant for
information associated with the following Google Account: (hereafter
the "Target Account 1"), that is stored at premises owned, maintained, controlled or operated by Google, Inc., a social networking company headquartered in Mountain View, California ("Google"). The information to be searched is described in the following paragraphs and in Attachments A and B. This affidavit is made in support of an application for a search warrant under 18 U.S.C. §§ 2703(a), 2703(b)(l)(A) and 2703(c)(l)(A)to require Google to disclose to the government copies of the information (including the content of communications) further described in Attachment A. Upon receipt of the information described. in Attachment A, government"authorized persons will review that information to locate the items described in Attachment B.
2. I am a Special Agent with the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI), and have been since 2011. As a Special Agent of the FBI, I have received training and experience in investigating criminal and national security matters.
3. The facts in this affidavit come from my personal observations, my training and experience, and information obtained from other agents and witnesses. This affidavit is intendedto show merely that there is sufficient probable cause for the requested warrant and does not set fotth all of my knowledge about this matter.
4. Based on my training and experience and the facts as set forth in this affidavit, there is probable cause to believe that the Target Accounts contain communications relevant to violations of 18 U.S.C. § 2 (aiding and abetting), 18 U.S.C. § 3 (accessory after the fact), 18
U.S.C. § 4 (misprision of a felony), 18 U.S.C. § 371 (conspiracy), 18 U.S.C. § 1001 (making afalse statement); 18 U.S.C. §1651 (pe1jury); 18 U.S.C. § 1030 (unauthodzed access of a protected computer); 18 U.S.C. § 1343 (wire fraud), 18 U.S.C. § 1349 (attempt and conspiracy to commit wire fraud), , and 52 U.S.C. § 30121 (foreign contribution ban) (the "Subject
Offenses"). 15. As set forth below, in May 2016, Jerome CORSI provided contact information for
that there was an "OCTOBER SURPRISE COMING" and that Trump, ''[i]s going to be defeated unless we intervene. We have critical intel." In that same time period, STONE communicated directly via Twitter with WikiLeaks, Julian ASSANGE, and Guccifer 2.0. On July 25, 2016, STONE emailed instructions to Jerome CORSI to "Get to Assange" in person at the Ecuadorian Embassy and "get pending WikiLeaks emails[.]" On August 2, 2016, CORSI emailed STONE back that,"Word is friend in embassy plans 2 more dumps. One shortly after I1m back. 2nd in Oct. Impact planned to be very damaging." On August 20, 2016, CORSI told STONE that they
needed to meet o determine "what if anything Israel plans to do in Oct."1 Federal law prohibits a foreign national from making, directly or indirectly, an expenditure or independent expenditure in connection with federal elections. 52 U.S.C. § 3012l(a)(l)(C); see also id. § 30101(9) & (17) (defining the terms "expenditure" and "independent expenditure").
(the Target Account) is le Account, which
sed to communicate with STONE and CORSI.
JURISDICTION
6. This Court has jurisdiction to issue the requested warrant because it is "a court of competent jurisdiction" as defined by 18 U.S.C. § 2711. Id. §§ 2703(a), (b)(l)(A), & (c)(l)(A). Specifically, the Court is "a district court of the United State (including a magistrate judge of such a court) ... that has jurisqiction over the offense being investigated." 18 U.S.C.
§ 2711(3)(A)(i). The offense conduct included activities in Washington, D.C., as detailed below, including in paragraph 8.
PROBABLE CAUSEA. U.S. Intelligence Community (USIC) Assessment of Russian Government Backed Hacking Activity during the 2016 Presidential Election
7. On October 7, 2016, the U.S. Depa1tment of Homeland Security and the Office of the Director of National Intelligence released a joint statement of an intelligence assessment of Russian activities and intentions during the 2016 presidential election. In the report, the USIC assessed the following, with emphasis added:
8. The U.S. Intelligence Community (USIC) is confident that the Russian Government directed the recent compromises of e mails frorri US persons and institutions, including from US political organizations. The recent disclosures of alleged hacked e mails on sites like DCLeaks.com and WikiLeaks and by the Guccifer 2.0 online persona are consistent with the methods and motivations of Russian-directed efforts. These thefts and disclosures
#1 and adds this:
Laura Rozen
@lrozen
Profile picture
https://threadreaderapp.com/thread/1255347751153434624.html
Apr 29th 2020, 5 tweets, 2 min read
Stone arranged for meeting, but said in later email that a "fiasco" ensued after the associate brought a foreign military officer along
Unroll available on Thread Readerhttps://twitter.com/kyledcheney/status/1255344430443347969
On Aug.20, 2016, CORSI told STONE they
needed to meet w/[ ] to determine "what if anything Israel plans to do in Oct"courtlistener.com/recap/gov.usco
huh courtlistener.com/recap/gov.usco
courtlistener.com/recap/gov.usco
(One PM in Rome on June 27 2016 was Netanyahu) mfa.gov.il/MFA/PressRoom/Copy of FBI docs, including this, are linked at: https://pbs.twimg.com/media/EWvp-fZWkAECFaN.jpg
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May 03, 2020 | www.nakedcapitalism.com
Third Party:
Here is what is real.
The Democratic Party elite doesn't care what we think. So all of the work that we do and have done around them is pretty much self torture.
We only will make a difference when we make ourselves a genuine #3rdparty collective voice. And it will be fun.
-- RoseAnn DeMoro (@RoseAnnDeMoro) May 1, 2020
By the midterms:
Fundamentally, we need a progressive 3rd party.
I am willing to spend the rest of my life working for that.
And yes, November is a massive problem.
I just don't ever want to be here again with bad choices in my lifetime.
We should prepare for a #3rdParty for the midterms.
-- RoseAnn DeMoro (@RoseAnnDeMoro) April 30, 2020
The other players would seem to be DSA and the Greens, and I'm not sure what they would think of this. But taking a big chuck of the labor movement out of the Democrat orbit would be interesting. Especially considering that nurses are as well-liked as, say, firefighters.
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Apr 19, 2020 | www.nakedcapitalism.com
shinola , April 16, 2020 at 3:34 pm
From The Intercept article "Wall Street Titans Finance Democratic Primary Challenger To Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez"
"Freedom and democracy are best secured when banking secrecy and tax havens exist," Caruso-Cabrera wrote.
"Plutocratic Primary Challenger" would be more apropos.
edmondo , April 16, 2020 at 7:23 pm
MCC is married to a VC multi-millionaire. To have hubby's business friends throw a couple hundred grand at her is unsurprising. It's kind of like when your kid has to sell chocolate bars so the marching band to go to the Thanksgiving Day parade. I doubt she'll get a thousand votes. It's a lark and great fun to talk about over cocktails with the other Masters of the Universe.
But then again Claire Booth Luce was a Congressperson but she had the good taste to run in Connecticut not the Bronx.
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Apr 17, 2020 | www.moonofalabama.org
karlof1 , Apr 15 2020 23:23 utc | 76
teatree @71--I see you're busy spreading BigLies. Please, jump out of your tree onto your head. Thanks.
"Neofeudalism by design" is today's Keiser Report Mantra --Max and Stacy present an excellent argument that tries to inform people about what I call the Money Power, which is the collective term for the Central Bank and the "Princely Class" within the Outlaw US Empire. And their critique about Sanders, Biden and "Progressives" I agree with 100%.
Become enlightened and watch at the link.
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Apr 17, 2020 | www.zerohedge.com
Authored by Sara Carter via SaraACarter.com,
Systemic FBI Effort To Legitimize Steele and Use His Information To Target POTUS
Newly declassified footnotes from Department of Justice Inspector General Michael Horowitz's December FBI report reveals that senior Obama officials, including members of the FBI's Crossfire Hurricane team knew the dossier compiled by a former British spy during the 2016 election was Russian disinformation to target President Donald Trump.
Further, the partially declassified footnotes reveal that those senior intelligence officials were aware of the disinformation when they included the dossier in the Obama administration's Intelligence Communities Assessment (ICA).
As important, the footnotes reveal that there had been a request to validate information collected by British spy Christopher Steele as far back as 2015, and that there was concern among members of the FBI and intelligence community about his reliability. Those concerns were brushed aside by members of the Crossfire Hurricane team in their pursuit against the Trump campaign officials, according to sources who spoke to this reporter and the footnotes.
The explosive footnotes were partially declassified and made public Wednesday, after a lengthy review by the Director of National Intelligence Richard Grenell's office. Grenell sent the letter Wednesday releasing the documents to Sen. Chuck Grassley, R-Iowa and Sen. Ron Johnson, R- Wisconsin, both who requested the declassification.
"Having reviewed the matter, and having consulted the heads of the relevant Intelligence Community elements, I have declassified the enclosed footnotes." Grenell consulted with DOJ Attorney General William Barr on the declassification of the documents.
Grassley and Johnson released a statement late Wednesday stating "as we can see from these now-declassified footnotes in the IG's report, Russian intelligence was aware of the dossier before the FBI even began its investigation and the FBI had reports in hand that their central piece of evidence was most likely tainted with Russian disinformation."
The Footnotes"Thanks to Attorney General Barr's and Acting Director Grenell's declassification of the footnotes, we know the FBI's justification to target an American Citizen was riddled with significant flaws," the Senator stated. "Inspector General Michael Horowitz and his team did what neither the FBI nor Special Counsel Mueller cared to do: examine and investigate corruption at the FBI, the sources of the Steele dossier, how it was disseminated, and reporting that it contained Russian disinformation."
A U.S. Official familiar with the investigation into the FBI told this reporter that the footnotes "clearly show that the FBI team was or should have had been aware that the Russian Intelligence Services was trying to influence Steele's reporting in the summer of 2016, and that there were some preferences for Hillary; and that this RIS [Russian Intelligence Services] sourced information being fed to Steele was designed to hurt Trump."
The official noted these new revelations also "undermines the ICA on Russian Interference and the intent to help Trump. It undermines the FISA warrants and there should not have been a Mueller investigation."
https://www.scribd.com/embeds/456702034/content?start_page=1&view_mode=scroll&access_key=key-FfQY6LojXtyOnkGw6OiJ
Russian's Appeared To Have Preferred ClintonThe footnotes also reveal a startling fact that go against Brennan's assessment that Russia was vying for Trump, when in fact, the Russians appeared to be hopeful of a Clinton presidency.
Steele's Lies"The FBI received information in June, 2017 which revealed that, among other things, there were personal and business ties between the sub-source and Steele's Primary Sub-source, contacts between the sub-source and an individual in the Russian Presidential Administration in June/July 2016 [redacted] and the sub source voicing strong support for candidate Clinton in the 2016 U.S. election. The Supervisory Intel Analyst told us that the FBI did not have a Section 702 vicarage on any other Steele sub-source."
The complete four pages of the partially redacted footnotes paint a clear picture of the alleged malfeasance committed by former FBI Director James Comey, former DNI James Clapper and former CIA Director John Brennan, who were all aware of the concerns regarding the information supplied by former British spy Christopher Steele in the dossier. Steele, who was hired by the private embattled research firm Fusion GPS, was paid for his work through the Hillary Clinton campaign and Democratic National Committee. The FBI also paid for Steele's work before ending its confidential source relationship with him but then used Obama DOJ Official Bruce Ohr as a go between to continue obtaining information from the former spy.
In footnote 205, for instance, payment documents show that Steele lied about not being a Confidential Human Source.
"During his time as an FBI CHS, Steele received a total of $95,000 from the FBI," the footnote states. "We reviewed the FBI paperwork for those payments, each of which required Steele's Signed acknowledgement. On each document, of which there were eight, was the caption 'CHS payment' and 'CHS Payment Name.' A signature page was missing for one of the payments."
Footnote 350In footnote 350, Horowitz describes the questionable Russian disinformation and the FBI's reliance on the information to target the Trump campaign as an attempt to build a narrative that campaign officials colluded with Russia. Further, the timeline reveals that Comey, Brennan and Clapper were aware of the disinformation by Russian intelligence when they briefed then President-elect Trump in January, 2017 on the Steele dossier.
"[redacted] In addition to the information in Steele's Delta file documenting Steele's frequent contacts with representatives for multiple Russian oligarchs, we identified reporting the Crossfire Hurricane team received from [redacted] indicating the potential for Russian disinformation influencing Steele' election reporting," stated the partially declassified footnote 350. "A January 12, 2017 report relayed information from [redacted] outlining an inaccuracy in a limited subset of Steele's reporting about the activities of Michael Cohen. The [redacted] stated that it did not have high confidence in this subset of Steele's reporting and assessed that the referenced subset was part of a Russian disinformation campaign to denigrate U.S. foreign relations.
A second report from the same [redacted] five days later stated that a person named in the limited subset of Steele's reporting had denied representations in the reporting and the [redacted] assessed that the person's denials were truthful. A USIC report dated February 27, 2017, contained information about an individual with reported connections to Trump and Russia who claimed that the public reporting about the details of Trump's sexual activities in Moscow during a trip in 2013 were false , and that they were the product of RIS (Russian Intelligence Services) 'infiltrate[ing] a source into the network' of a [redacted] who compiled a dossier of that individual on Trump's activities. The [redacted] noted that it had no information indicating that the individual had special access to RIS activities or information," according to the partially declassified footnote.
Looming QuestionsAnother concern regarding Steele's unusual activity is found in footnote 210, which states "as we discuss in Chapter Six, members of the Crossfire Hurricane Team were unaware of Steele's connections to Russian Oligarch 1."
The question remains that "Steele's unusual activity with 10 oligarch's led the FBI to seek a validation review in 2015 but one was not started until 2017," said the U.S. Official to this reporter. "Why not? Was Crossfire Hurricane aware of these concerns? Was the court made aware of these concerns? Didn't the numerous notes about sub sources and sources having links or close ties to Russian intelligence so why didn't this set off alarm bells?"
More alarming, it's clear, Supervisory Intelligence Agent Jonathan Moffa says in June 17, that he was not aware of reports that Russian Intelligence Services was aware of Steele's election reporting and influence efforts.
"However, he should have been given the reporting by UCIS" which the U.S. Official says, goes back to summer 2016.
Footnote 342 makes it clear that "in late January, 2017, a member of the Crossfire Hurricane team received information [redacted] that RIS [Russian Intelligence Services] may have targeted Orbis."
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Apr 17, 2020 | turcopolier.typepad.com
AMERICA-HYSTERICA. US Attorney General Barr just said the Russia collusion probe was a travesty, had no basis and was intended to sabotage Trump . All true of course. May we take this as a sign that at last (at last!) Durham is ready to go with indictments? Or will it prove to be another false alarm? There's certainly a lot to reveal: A recent investigation showed that every FISA application (warrant to spy on US citizens) examined had egregious deficiencies. It's not just Trump.
MEANINGLESSNESS. Remember the Steele dossier? Now it's being spun as Russian disinformation . So we're now supposed to believe that Putin smeared Trump because he really wanted Clinton to win? Gosh, that Putin guy is so clever that it's impossible to figure out what he's doing!
COVID BLAME I. Back in the day I read a certain amount of Soviet propaganda about the wicked West. And, while it was quite often over the top, pretty monotonous and probably – judging from what ex-Soviets have told me – not all that effective in the long run, it usually had, buried deep inside, a tiny kernel of reality. Western anti-Russia propaganda, on the other hand, is nothing but free-association nonsense. Take the NYT's latest: the headline alone tells you it's crap: " Putin's Long War Against American Science: A decade of health disinformation promoted by President Vladimir Putin of Russia has sown wide confusion, hurt major institutions and encouraged the spread of deadly illnesses ." Another difference was that Soviet propaganda at least ran on the assumption that the Soviet system was preferable: this, on the other hand, is a pitiful attempt to blame the US COVID failure on somebody else. Nonetheless, this is not rock-bottom for the NYT's anti-Russian fantasies: that target was hit a couple of years ago with " Trump and Putin: A Love Story ". (But, the goalposts keep moving: if you accuse a Dem of Trumpish grabbing, you're probably a Putinbot .) I guess it will only get more: " The old world is dying, and the new world struggles to be born; now is the time of monsters ."
COVID BLAME II. Maybe it's not Putin or Xi who's to blame: maybe it's your own propaganda outlet: " VOA too often speaks for America's adversaries -- not its citizens... VOA has instead amplified Beijing's propaganda. "
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Apr 15, 2020 | www.zerohedge.com
Her endorsement of Biden comes one day after former President Obama finally backed the former VP after months of remaining in the shadows.
Things sure do change fast in Washington...Just six weeks ago, Elizabeth Warren attacked Joe Biden as a "Washington insider" backed by "Washington insiders."
"Nominating a man who says we do not need any fundamental change in this country will not meet this moment," she said. pic.twitter.com/eXsByQUKIQ
-- Trump War Room - Text TRUMP to 88022 (@TrumpWarRoom) April 15, 2020
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Apr 07, 2020 | consortiumnews.com
John A , April 7, 2020 at 04:09
Over the last week, there have, to my knowledge, been three big claims of 'Russian disinformation' and 'Russian trolls/bots' on social media.
1. Last week, Russian equipment and support sent to Italy to help fight Covid-19. Nato stenographers claim and spread the disinformation that '80% of the equipment was useless', citing one anonymous source. Total lies.2. Swedish minister claims social media campaign against a 5G network in Sweden is run by russian trolls. Turns out it is a 64 year old grandmother living in Stockholm who is behind the campaign.
3. Yesterday afternoon, russia media report, according to a National Health Service source, Boris Johnson is on a ventilator in hospital. Utter nonsense say MSM, Russian disinformation. Overnight headlines in British media – Boris in intensive care.
The western media are so totally venally corrupt in serving the 1% yet get found out in their lies time after time and yet carry on. I try to read as many different media as possible, but have no doubt, which are more credible, and it aint NATO stenographers
AnneR , April 7, 2020 at 14:33
Yes, John A. Truly there is something warped about the western ruling elites' mindset. But I guess they have to have a bugaboo and Russia (then China, sometimes Iran and others) is the primary, western created, go-to one. Even among those who did not grow up, or were only young, during the cold war.
I am only thankful that, despite my father's Tory politics (all but regarding the land, which he believed should be nationalized and 50 acres given to every male [well, he was sexist]; an curious, decidedly not Tory viewpoint) the USSR as was then never was on either his or my mother's agenda. Indeed, we used to watch with much pleasure the Red Army choir, once we got a television (not till 1958, when I was 10), which toured the UK, I *think*
No ducking under school desks. Nor any other weird thing
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Mar 27, 2020 | www.moonofalabama.org
Likklemore , Mar 26 2020 21:56 utc | 66
Is the troop deployment along the Canadian border is to stop anyone interfering in the coming chaos?Posted by: Ian2 | Mar 26 2020 20:34 utc | 36
You have a point there --the coming chaos after the COVID-19 Health crisis.
Wondering if Trudeau knows about the fences that were erected this morning?
Maybe I missed Trump's tweet on his declaration of War.
- He has imposed more sanctions on Iranians.
- Indicted Maduro of Venezuela on narco trafficking, sponsor of terrorism; placed a $15 million bounty on his head --straight from the Panama playbook.and this beauty - continues his trade war on China because -----
Exclusive: U.S. prepares crackdown on Huawei's global chip supply - sources(Reuters) - Senior officials in the Trump administration agreed to new measures to restrict the global supply of chips to China's Huawei Technologies, sources familiar with the matter said, as the White House ramps up criticism of China over coronavirus.
The move comes as ties between Washington and Beijing grow more strained, with both sides trading barbs over who is to blame for the spread of the disease and an escalating tit-for-tat over the expulsion of journalists from both countries.
Under the proposed rule change, foreign companies that use U.S. chipmaking equipment would be required to obtain a U.S. license before supplying certain chips to Huawei. The Chinese telecoms company was blacklisted last year, limiting the company's suppliers.[.]
"This is going to have a far more negative impact on U.S. companies than it will on Huawei, because Huawei will develop their own supply chain," trade lawyer Doug Jacobson said. "Ultimately, Huawei will find alternatives."[.]Huawei has been doing just that - finding alternatives. Trade wars have been proven to end badly. They end up going hot.
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Mar 16, 2020 | www.zerohedge.com
Half Of Young American Democrats Believe Billionaires Do More Harm Than Good by Tyler Durden Sun, 03/15/2020 - 21:25 With income inequality the political hot potato du-jour and wealth concentration at its most extreme since the roaring twenties, is it any wonder that even Americans' view of what used to be called 'success' is now tainted with the ugly taste of partisan 'not-fair'-ism.
Income inequality is roaring...
Wealth concentration is extreme to say the least...
But still, according to Pew Research's latest survey , when asked about the impact of billionaires on the country, nearly four-in-ten adults under age 30 (39%) say the fact that some have fortunes of a billion dollars or more is a bad thing...
...with 50% of young Democrats.
"The recent reigning conventional wisdom over the last several decades of what I call the 'Age of Capital' is that [billionaires] are 'up there' because they are smarter than us," said Anand Giridharadas, author of "Winners Take All: The Elite Charade of Changing the World."
But the Pew data, he says, suggest that young Americans are concluding that billionaires have amassed their wealth "through their rigging of the tax code, through legal political bribery, through their tax avoidance in shelters like the Cayman Islands, and through lobbying for public policy that benefits them privately. "
"Bernie Sanders taught a lot of people [about wealth inequality], including people who did not vote for him," Giridharadas said.
"The billionaire class is 'up there' because they are standing on our backs pinning us down."
The good news - for the rest of America's "capitalists" - is that a majority (58%) say the impact of billionaires on America is neither bad nor good.
Finally, one quick question - where were all these under-30s when Bernie needed them the most in the Primaries? Was it all just virtue-signaling pro-socialist bullshit after all?
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Mar 12, 2020 | www.counterpunch.org
The Democratic presidential nomination race is a fascinating case study in how power works – not least, because the Democratic party leaders are visibly contriving to impose one candidate, Joe Biden, as the party's nominee, even as it becomes clear that he is no longer mentally equipped to run a local table tennis club let alone the world's most powerful nation.
Biden's campaign is a reminder that power is indivisible. Donald Trump or Joe Biden for president – it doesn't matter to the power-establishment. An egomaniacal man-child (Trump), representing the billionaires, or an elder suffering rapid neurological degeneration (Biden), representing the billionaires, are equally useful to power. A woman will do too, or a person of colour. The establishment is no longer worried about who stands on stage – so long as that person is not a Bernie Sanders in the US, or a Jeremy Corbyn in the UK.
It really isn't about who the candidates are – hurtful as that may sound to some in our identity-saturated times. It is about what the candidate might try to do once in office. In truth, the very fact that nowadays we are allowed to focus on identity to our heart's content should be warning enough that the establishment is only too keen for us to exhaust our energies in promoting divisions based on those identities. What concerns it far more is that we might overcome those divisions and unify against it, withdrawing our consent from an establishment committed to endless asset-stripping of our societies and the planet.
Neither Biden nor Trump will obstruct the establishment, because they are at its very heart. The Republican and Democratic leaderships are there to ensure that, before a candidate gets selected to compete in the parties' name, he or she has proven they are power-friendly. Two candidates, each vetted for obedience to power.
Although a pretty face or a way with words are desirable, incapacity and incompetence are no barrier to qualifying, as the two white men groomed by their respective parties demonstrate. Both have proved they will favour the establishment, both will pursue near-enough the same policies , both are committed to the status quo, both have demonstrated their indifference to the future of life on Earth. What separates the candidates is not real substance, but presentation styles – the creation of the appearance of difference, of choice.
Policing the debate
The subtle dynamics of how the Democratic nomination race is being rigged are interesting. Especially revealing are the ways the Democratic leadership protects establishment power by policing the terms of debate: what can be said, and what can be thought; who gets to speak and whose voices are misrepresented or demonised. Manipulation of language is key.
As I pointed out in my previous post , the establishment's power derives from its invisibility. Scrutiny is kryptonite to power.
The only way we can interrogate power is through language, and the only way we can communicate our conclusions to others is through words – as I am doing right now. And therefore our strength – our ability to awaken ourselves from the trance of power – must be subverted by the establishment, transformed into our Achilles' heel, a weakness.
The treatment of Bernie Sanders and his supporters by the Democratic establishment – and those who eagerly repeat its talking points – neatly illustrates how this can be done in manifold ways.
Remember this all started back in 2016, when Sanders committed the unforgivable sin of challenging the Democratic leadership's right simply to anoint Hillary Clinton as the party's presidential candidate. In those days, the fault line was obvious and neat: Bernie was a man, Clinton a woman. She would be the first woman president. The only party members who might wish to deny her that historic moment, and back Sanders instead, had to be misogynist men. They were supposedly venting their anti-women grudge against Clinton, who in turn was presented to women as a symbol of their oppression by men.
And so was born a meme: the "Bernie Bros". It rapidly became shorthand for suggesting – contrary to all evidence – that Sanders' candidacy appealed chiefly to angry, entitled white men. In fact, as Sanders' 2020 run has amply demonstrated, support for him has been more diverse than for the many other Democratic candidates who sought the nomination.
So important what @ewarren is saying to @maddow about the dangerous, threatening, ugly faction among the Bernie supporters. Sanders either cannot or will not control them. pic.twitter.com/LYDXlLJ7bi
-- Mia Farrow (@MiaFarrow) March 6, 2020
How contrived the 2016 identity-fuelled contest was should have been clear, had anyone been allowed to point that fact out. This wasn't really about the Democratic leadership respecting Clinton's identity as a woman. It was about them paying lip service to her identity as a woman, while actually promoting her because she was a reliable warmonger and Wall Street functionary . She was useful to power.
If the debate had really been driven by identity politics, Sanders had a winning card too: he is Jewish. That meant he could be the United States' first Jewish president. In a fair identity fight, it would have been a draw between the two. The decision about who should represent the Democratic party would then have had to be decided based on policies, not identity. But party leaders did not want Clinton's actual policies, or her political history, being put under the microscope for very obvious reasons.
Weaponisation of identity
The weaponisation of identity politics is even more transparent in 2020. Sanders is still Jewish, but his main opponent, Joe Biden, really is simply a privileged white man. Were the Clinton format to be followed again by Democratic officials, Sanders would enjoy an identity politics trump card. And yet Sanders is still being presented as just another white male candidate , no different from Biden.
(We could take this argument even further and note that the other candidate who no one, least of all the Democratic leadership, ever mentions as still in the race is Tulsi Gabbard, a woman of colour. The Democratic party has worked hard to make her as invisible as possible in the primaries because, of all the candidates, she is the most vocal and articulate opponent of foreign wars. That has deprived her of the chance to raise funds and win delegates.)
. @DanaPerino I'm not quite sure why you're telling FOX viewers that Elizabeth Warren is the last female candidate in the Dem primary. Is it because you believe a fake indigenous woman of color is "real" and the real indigenous woman of color in this race is fake? pic.twitter.com/VKCxy2JzFe
-- Tulsi Gabbard 🌺 (@TulsiGabbard) March 3, 2020
Sanders' Jewish identity isn't celebrated because he isn't useful to the power-establishment. What's far more important to them – and should be to us too – are his policies, which might limit their power to wage war, exploit workers and trash the planet.
But it is not just that Democratic Party leaders are ignoring Sanders' Jewish identity. They are also again actively using identity politics against him, and in many different ways.
The 'black' establishment?
Bernie Sanders' supporters have been complaining for some time – based on mounting evidence – that the Democratic leadership is far from neutral between Sanders and Biden. Because it has a vested interest in the outcome, and because it is the part of the power-establishment, the Democratic National Committee (DNC) is exercising its influence in favour of Biden. And because power prefers darkness, the DNC is doing its best to exercise that power behind the scenes, out of sight – at least, unseen by those who still rely on the "mainstream" corporate media, which is also part of the power-establishment. As should be clear to anyone watching, the nomination proceedings are being controlled to give Biden every advantage and to obstruct Sanders.
But the Democratic leadership is not only dismissing out of hand these very justified complaints from Bernie Sanders' supporters but also turning these complaints against them, as further evidence of their – and his – illegitimacy. A new way of doing this emerged in the immediate wake of Biden winning South Carolina on the back of strong support from older black voters – Biden's first state win and a launchpad for his Super Tuesday bid a few days later.
It was given perfect expression from Symone Sanders, who despite her surname is actually a senior adviser to Biden's campaign. She is also black. This is what she wrote: "People who keep referring to Black voters as 'the establishment' are tone deaf and have obviously learned nothing."
People who keep referring to Black voters as "the establishment" are tone deaf and have obviously learned nothing.
-- Symone D. Sanders (@SymoneDSanders) March 3, 2020
Her reference to generic "people" was understood precisely by both sides of the debate as code for those "Bernie Bros". Now, it seems, Bernie Sanders' supporters are not simply misogynists, they are potential recruits to the Ku Klux Klan.
The tweet went viral, even though in the fiercely contested back-and-forth below her tweet no one could produce a single example of anyone actually saying anything like the sentiment ascribed by Symone Sanders to "Bernie Bros". But then, tackling bigotry was not her real goal. This wasn't meant to be a reflection on a real-world talking-point by Bernie supporters. It was high-level gaslighting by a senior Democratic party official of the party's own voters.
Survival of the fittest smear
What Symone Sanders was really trying to do was conceal power – the fact that the DNC is seeking to impose its chosen candidate on party members. As occurred during the confected women-men, Clinton vs "Bernie Bros" confrontation, Symone Sanders was field-testing a similar narrative management tool as part of the establishment's efforts to hone it for improved effect. The establishment has learnt – through a kind of survival of the fittest smear – that divide-and-rule identity politics is the perfect way to shield its influence as it favours a status-quo candidate (Biden or Clinton) over a candidate seen as a threat to its power (Sanders).
In her tweet, Symone Sanders showed exactly how the power elite seeks to obscure its toxic role in our societies. She neatly conflated "the establishment" – of which she is a very small, but well-paid component – with ordinary "black voters". Her message is this: should you try to criticise the establishment (which has inordinate power to damage lives and destroy the planet) we will demonise you, making it seem that you are really attacking black people (who in the vast majority of cases – though Symone Sanders is a notable exception – wield no power at all).
Symone Sanders has recruited her own blackness and South Carolina's "black voters" as a ring of steel to protect the establishment. Cynically, she has turned poor black people, as well as the tens of thousands of people (presumably black and white) who liked her tweet, into human shields for the establishment.
It sounds a lot uglier put like that. But it has rapidly become a Biden talking-point, as we can see here:
NEW: @JoeBiden responds to @berniesanders saying the "establishment" is trying to defeat him.
"The establishment are all those hardworking, middle class people, those African Americans they are the establishment!" @CBSNews pic.twitter.com/43Q2Nci5sS
-- Bo Erickson CBS (@BoKnowsNews) March 4, 2020
The DNC's wider strategy is to confer on Biden exclusive rights to speak for black voters (despite his inglorious record on civil rights issues) and, further, to strip Sanders and his senior black advisers of any right to do so. When Sanders protests about this, or about racist behaviour from the Biden camp, Biden's supporters come out in force and often abusively, though of course no one is upbraiding them for their ugly, violent language. Here is the famous former tennis player Martina Navratilova showing that maybe we should be talking about "Biden Bros":
Sanders is starting to really piss me off. Just shut this kind of crap down and debate the issues. This is not it.
-- Martina Navratilova (@Martina) March 6, 2020
Being unkind to billionaires
This kind of special pleading by the establishment for the establishment – using those sections of it, such as Symone Sanders, that can tap into the identity politics zeitgeist – is far more common than you might imagine. The approach is being constantly refined, often using social media as the ultimate focus group. Symone Sanders' successful conflation of the establishment with "black voters" follows earlier, clumsier efforts by the establishment to protect its interests against Sanders that proved far less effective.
Billionaires should not exist. https://t.co/hgR6CeFvLa
-- Bernie Sanders (@BernieSanders) September 24, 2019
Remember how last autumn the billionaire-owned corporate media tried to tell us that it was unkind to criticise billionaires – that they had feelings too and that speaking harshly about them was "dehumanising". Again it was aimed at Sanders, who had just commented that in a properly ordered world billionaires simply wouldn't exist. It was an obvious point: allowing a handful of people to control almost all the planet's wealth was not only depriving the rest of us of that wealth (and harming the planet) but it gave those few billionaires way too much power. They could buy all the media, our channels of communication, and most of the politicians to ringfence their financial interests, gradually eroding even the most minimal democratic protections.
That campaign died a quick death because few of us are actually brainwashed enough to accept the idea that a handful of billionaires share an identity that needs protecting – from us! Most of us are still connected enough to the real world to understand that billionaires are more than capable of looking out for their own interests, without our helping them by imposing on ourselves a vow of silence.
But one cannot fault the power-establishment for being constantly inventive in the search for new ways to stifle our criticisms of the way it unilaterally exercises its power. The Democratic nomination race is testing such ingenuity to the limits. Here's a new rule against "hateful conduct" on Twitter, where Biden's neurological deficit is being subjected to much critical scrutiny through the sharing of dozens of videos of embarrassing Biden "senior moments".
Twitter expanding its hateful conduct rules "to include language that dehumanizes on the basis of age, disability or disease." https://t.co/KmWGaNAG9Z
-- Ben Collins (@oneunderscore__) March 5, 2020
Yes, disability and age are identities too. And so, on the pretext of protecting and respecting those identities, social media can now be scrubbed of anything and anyone trying to highlight the mental deficiencies of an old man who might soon be given the nuclear codes and would be responsible for waging wars in the name of Americans. Twitter is full of comments denouncing as "ableist" anyone who tries to highlight how the Democratic leadership is foisting a cognitively challenged Biden on to the party.
Maybe the Dem insiders are all wrong, but it's true that they are saying it. Some are saying it out loud, including Castro at the debate and Booker here: https://t.co/0lbi7RFRqG
-- Ryan Grim (@ryangrim) March 6, 2020
Russian 'agents' and 'assets'
None of this is to overlook the fact that another variation of identity politics has been weaponised against Sanders: that of failing to be an "American" patriot. Again illustrating how closely the Democratic and Republican leaderships' interests align, the question of who is a patriot – and who is really working for the "Russians" – has been at the heart of both parties' campaigns, though for different reasons.
Trump has been subjected to endless, evidence-free claims that he is a secret "Russian agent" in a concerted effort to control his original isolationist foreign policy impulses that might have stripped the establishment – and its military-industrial wing – of the right to wage wars of aggression, and revive the Cold War, wherever it believes a profit can be made under cover of "humanitarian intervention". Trump partly inoculated himself against these criticisms, at least among supporters, with his "Make America Great Again" slogan, and partly by learning – painfully for such an egotist – that his presidential role was to rubber-stamp decisions made elsewhere about waging wars and projecting US power.
I'm just amazed by this tweet, which has been tweeted plenty. Did @_nalexander and all the people liking this not know that Mueller laid out in the indictments of a number of Russians and in his report their help on social media to Sanders and Trump. Help Sanders has acknowledged https://t.co/vuc0lmvvKP
-- Neera Tanden (@neeratanden) December 8, 2019
Bernie Sanders has faced similar smear efforts by the establishment, including by the DNC's last failed presidential candidate Hillary Clinton – in his case, painting him as a "Russian asset". ("Asset" is a way to suggest collusion with the Kremlin based on even more flimsy evidence than is needed to accuse someone of being an agent.) In fact, in a world where identity politics wasn't simply a tool to be weaponised by the establishment, there would be real trepidation about engaging in this kind of invective against a Jewish socialist.
One of the far-right's favourite antisemitic tropes – promoted ever since the publication of the Protocols of the Elders of Zion more than 100 years ago – is that Jewish "Bolsheviks" are involved in an international conspiracy to subvert the countries they live in. We have reached the point now that the corporate media are happy to recycle evidence-free claims, cited by the Washington Post, from anonymous "US officials" and US intelligence agencies reinventing a US version of the Protocols against Sanders. And these smears have elicited not a word of criticism from the Democratic leadership nor from the usual antisemitism watchdogs that are so ready to let rip over the slightest signs of what they claim to be antisemitism on the left.
But the urgency of dealing with Sanders may be the reason normal conventions have been discarded. Sanders isn't a loud-mouth egotist like Trump. A vote for Trump is a vote for the establishment, if for one of its number who pretends to be against the establishment. Trump has been largely tamed in time for a second term. By contrast, Sanders, like Corbyn in the UK, is more dangerous because he may resist the efforts to domesticate him, and because if he is allowed any significant measure of political success – such as becoming a candidate for president – it may inspire others to follow in his footsteps. The system might start to throw up more anomalies, more AOCs and more Ilhan Omars.
So Sanders is now being cast, like Trump, as a puppet of the Kremlin, not a true American. And because he made the serious mistake of indulging the "Russiagate" smears when they were used against Trump, Sanders now has little defence against their redeployment against him. And given that, by the impoverished standards of US political culture, he is considered an extreme leftist, it has been easy to conflate his democratic socialism with Communism, and then conflate his supposed Communism with acting on behalf of the Kremlin (which, of course, ignores the fact that Russia long ago abandoned Communism).
Sen. Bernie Sanders: "Let me tell this to Putin -- the American people, whether Republicans, Democrats, independents are sick and tired of seeing Russia and other countries interfering in our elections." pic.twitter.com/ejcP7YVFlt
-- The Hill (@thehill) February 21, 2020
Antisemitism smear at the ready
There is a final use of weaponised identity politics that the Democratic establishment would dearly love to use against Sanders, if they need to and can get away with it. It is the most toxic brand – and therefore the most effective – of the identity-based smears, and it has been extensively field-tested in the UK against Jeremy Corbyn to great success. The DNC would like to denounce Sanders as an antisemite.
In fact, only one thing has held them back till now: the fact that Sanders is Jewish. That may not prove an insuperable obstacle, but it does make it much harder to make the accusation look credible. The other identity-based smears had been a second-best, a make-do until a way could be found to unleash the antisemitism smear.
The establishment has been testing the waters with implied accusations of antisemitism against Sanders for a while, but their chances were given a fillip recently when Sanders refused to participate in the annual jamboree of AIPAC, the American Israel Public Affairs Committee, a prominent lobby group whose primary mission is to ringfence Israel from criticism in the US. Both the Republican and Democratic establishments turn out in force to the AIPAC conference, and in the past the event has attracted keynote speeches from Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton.
But Sanders has refused to attend for decades and maintained that stance this month, even though he is a candidate for the Democratic nomination. In the last primaries debate, Sanders justified his decision by rightly calling Israel's prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu a "racist" and by describing AIPAC as providing a platform "for leaders who express bigotry and oppose basic Palestinian rights".
Trump's Vice-President, Mike Pence, responded that Sanders supported "Israel's enemies" and, if elected, would be the "most anti-Israel president in the history of this nation" – all coded suggestions that Sanders is antisemitic.
But that's Mike Pence. More useful criticism came from billionaire Mike Bloomberg, who is himself Jewish and was until last week posing as a Democrat to try to win the party's nomination. Bloomberg accused Sanders of using dehumanising language against a bunch of inclusive identities that, he improbably suggested, AIPAC represents. He claimed :
"This is a gathering of 20,000 Israel supporters of every religious denomination, ethnicity, faith, color, sexual identity and political party. Calling it a racist platform is an attempt to discredit those voices, intimidate people from coming here, and weaken the US-Israel relationship."
Where might this head? At the AIPAC conference last week we were given a foretaste. Ephraim Mirvis, the chief rabbi of the UK and a friend to Conservative government leader Boris Johnson, was warmly greeted by delegates, including leading members of the Democratic establishment. He boasted that he and other Jewish leaders in the UK had managed to damage Jeremy Corbyn's electoral chances by suggesting that he was an antisemite over his support, like Sanders, for Palestinian rights.
His own treatment of Corbyn, he argued, offered a model for US Jewish organisations to replicate against any leadership contender who might pose similar trouble for Israel, leaving it for his audience to pick up the not-so-subtle hint about who needed to be subjected to character assassination.
WATCH: "Today I issue a call to the Jews of America, please take a leaf out of our book and please speak with one voice."
The Chief Rabbi speaking to the 18,000 delegates gathered at the @AIPAC General Session at their Policy Conference in Washington DC pic.twitter.com/BOkan9RA2O
-- Chief Rabbi Mirvis (@chiefrabbi) March 3, 2020
Establishment playbook
For anyone who isn't wilfully blind, the last few months have exposed the establishment playbook: it will use identity politics to divide those who might otherwise find a united voice and a common cause.
There is nothing wrong with celebrating one's identity, especially if it is under threat, maligned or marginalised. But having an attachment to an identity is no excuse for allowing it to be coopted by billionaires, by the powerful, by nuclear-armed states oppressing other people, by political parties or by the corporate media, so that they can weaponise it to prevent the weak, the poor, the marginalised from being represented.
It is time for us to wake up to the tricks, the deceptions, the manipulations of the strong that exploit our weaknesses – and make us yet weaker still. It's time to stop being a patsy for the establishment. Join the debate on Facebook More articles by: Jonathan Cook
Jonathan Cook won the Martha Gellhorn Special Prize for Journalism. His latest books are " Israel and the Clash of Civilisations: Iraq, Iran and the Plan to Remake the Middle East" (Pluto Press) and " Disappearing Palestine: Israel's Experiments in Human Despair " (Zed Books). His website is http://www.jonathan-cook.net/
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